Japan’s Defense Engagement in the Indo-Pacific: Deterrence, Strategic Partnership, and Stable Order Building

The objective of this book is to examine Japan’s defense engagement with its strategic partners in the security and defense domain, to comparatively analyze the purposes of its defense engagement activities since the end of the Cold War to the end of May 2022, and to assess Japan’s approach in light of its national security objectives.
The 2013 National Security Strategy identified three national security objectives, namely to strengthen deterrence, to strengthen alliance and partnerships, and lastly to build a stable world order based on values and rules. Taking these three ends as the conceptual framework of this book, it focuses on the purposes of Japan’s defense engagement activities with ten strategic partners: Australia, India, Indonesia, Vietnam, the Philippines, ASEAN, the UK, France, NATO, and the EU. This is a comparative research supported by case studies and text analysis, further substantiated by in-person, semi-structured interviews. The specific activities analyzed in this research are joint training and exercises, capacity building, and defense equipment transfer and technology cooperation. To account for the wide variety of purposes, I develop five categories: (1) relationship building, (2) partner capacity building, (3) capability building, (4) deterrence/reassurance, and (5) defense equipment transfer and technology cooperation. This research argues that, while the Japan-US alliance is still the most indispensable, Japan’s strategic partnerships are a valuable instrument of deterrence that contributes to Japan’s national security objectives. In order to more effectively pursue these objectives and thus secure the national interest, Japan must pursue a purpose-driven defense engagement. This book sheds light on the purposes of Japan’s defense engagement as the missing component in the defense of the national interest.