Japan’s new focus on Asia is good for India

Time to take relationship beyond narrow focus on China, ‘balance of power’...




28 December 2009
The Hindu

NEWS ANALYSIS
Japan’s new focus on Asia is good for India
Time to take relationship beyond narrow focus on China, ‘balance of power’

Siddharth Varadarajan

New Delhi: Yukio Hatoyama, who is on his first visit to New Delhi as Prime Minister of Japan, is unlike any other Japanese leader that the Indian side has dealt with in the past decade.

After the bilateral chill that set in with the 1998 nuclear tests at Pokhran, political relations steadily improved from 2001 onwards, during the tenures of Junichiro Koizumi, Shinzo Abe, Yasuo Fukuda, and finally Taro Aso. Defence cooperation, including high-level visits and joint exercises began. Despite the immense sensitivity of the nuclear question, Japan finally went along with the Nuclear Suppliers Group consensus decision to lift sanctions on India. And in October 2008, when Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was in Tokyo for the annual summit, the two countries signed a potentially far-reaching security declaration that seemed to suggest Japan looked at India as a potential strategic partner in the long-term game of hedging against the rise of Chinese power in Asia. As foreign minister during Mr. Koizumi and Mr. Abe’s tenures, Taro Aso was the strongest advocate of the short-lived and ill-fated ‘quadrilateral’ concept that saw India joining Japan, Australia and the United States in joint political consultations and even war games in the Bay of Bengal. Mr. Aso also spoke openly of the need to build an ‘arc of democracy and prosperity’ across Asia, a geopolitical construct clearly designed to exclude China, though business and pragmatic considerations within Japan helped to staunch any serious deterioration in relations with the Chinese side.

With the victory of the Democratic Party in parliamentary elections this September and the arrival of Mr. Hatoyama in the Prime Minister’s office in Tokyo, the entire conception of Japan’s relations with China and the rest of Asia has undergone a radical change.

Looked at superficially, his eagerness to mend Tokyo’s fences with Beijing and break free from Washington’s vice-like grip on Japanese foreign and security policy may not augur well for bilateral relations with an India accustomed to looking at Japan as a hedge against a rising China and an extension of American power in Asia.

But Mr. Hatoyama’s vision of an East Asian Community and his desire to work with China provides India and Japan with an opportunity to build their bilateral relations on ground firmer than the quicksand of ‘balance of power.’ Japanese foreign minister Katsuya Okada has spoken of India and Australia as part of the proposed EAC, a formulation that is in line with the East Asia Summit process run on the basis of Asean+6 rather than the more limited Asean+3 (i.e. China, Japan, South Korea) concept that would exclude India.

There is also no reason why triangular relations between India, Japan and China should be zero-sum: all lines of the triangle can and should be strengthened without adversely affecting each other. Indeed, now that the Japanese government is less paranoid about China, an excellent opportunity exists for Indo-Japanese political and strategic relations to be strengthened as something desirable for cooperative security in Asia as a whole. And the first test will be the concrete steps the two sides take to implement the 2008 Security Declaration.

The Hatoyama-Okada approach to nuclear disarmament also offers India the prospect of starting a serious dialogue with Japan on how best global efforts to eliminate weapons of mass destruction can be pursued. In the past, India’s refusal to accede to the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty and Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty has been a major irritant. But on other fronts – the proposed Fissile Material Cut-off Treaty, for example – there is no reason why India and Japan cannot work together. As for the CTBT, the Indian side should have no problem reiterating its test moratorium. Most importantly, the new Japanese government has begun to debate an issue close to the India’s global disarmament initiative – the policy of no-first use (NFU).

Today, among all declared nuclear weapon states, only India and China adhere to an NFU posture. Japan, which is shielded by the American nuclear umbrella, has traditionally argued that extended deterrence is credible only with the threat of a U.S. first strike on any nuclear-armed adversary. Mr. Okada has spoken of the desirability of NFU but there is, at present, within the Pentagon, no appetite for this. The U.S. focus is on ‘non-proliferation,’ with the elimination of nuclear weapons a long-term goal that President Barack Obama has said will not be reached in his lifetime. The DPJ’s views on disarmament open a door for India and Japan to begin a constructive dialogue on intermediate steps like NFU that serve to delegitimise the role of nuclear weapons in military planning.

Dateline Tokyo: India, Japan say new security ties not directed against China

but Joint declaration creates framework for closer political, military interaction in Asia...

23 October 2008
The Hindu

India, Japan say new security ties not directed against China

Siddharth Varadarajan

Tokyo: On a day that saw India and Japan sign a declaration on security cooperation and assert that their partnership would be “an essential pillar for the future architecture of the region,” it was left to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to introduce a harsh dose of reality by reminding an elite gathering of Japanese and Indian businessmen that the increase in India’s bilateral trade with China in the past one year alone is more than the whole of India’s total trade with Japan.

That one statistic was not intended to minimise the importance India attaches to its “strategic and global partnership” with Japan, Indian officials said, but merely to drive home the point that India was not going to allow its ties with Tokyo to affect its relations with Beijing. Indeed, in a press conference at the residence of Japanese Prime Minister Taro Aso on Wednesday evening, Dr. Singh sought to emphasise that India’s economic relations and security cooperation with Japan would not be “at the cost of any third country, least of all China.”

Though the security declaration largely contains elements like joint exercises, disaster management and counter-terrorism which figure in Indian agreements with many countries, what is likely to raise eyebrows around Asia is the fact that Japan considers India so crucial to its strategic calculus that it is only the third country — after the United States and Australia — with which it has signed such a document. And that India appears to have picked Japan as its most important partner for the task of fashioning the political and security dimensions of Asia’s emerging institutional structure.

Like Japan’s agreements with the U.S. and Australia, the “common commitment” of India and Japan to “democracy, open society, human rights and the rule of law” is foregrounded again, though the scope of security cooperation envisaged is far less than Tokyo’s military alliance-driven arrangements with Washington and Canberra. Terrorism, piracy and non-proliferation are covered but there is no reference in the Indo-Japan text to the “new security challenges and threats” referred to in the Japan-Australia agreement — a code phrase for the rise of China.

Mindful of the symbolism, however, Mr. Aso, who is also the intellectual author of the growing security-centric dimension to Japanese foreign policy, sought to play down any suggestion that Tokyo was still pursuing his earlier idea of trilateral or even quadrilateral military cooperation in Asia. Asked whether the Japan-India joint declaration could serve as the framework for an eventual security framework involving the U.S. with China as the special object of concern, he said: “We regard security cooperation with India as very important ... There was a mention of China — and we do not have any assumption of a third country as a target such as China.”

In terms of its contents, the new security declaration essentially builds on the existing momentum in defence ties while seeking to gradually widen the ambit with a view to influencing the nature of Asia’s emerging security architecture. Among the elements of cooperation listed are “policy coordination on regional affairs in the Asia-Pacific region,” “bilateral cooperation within multilateral frameworks in Asia, in particular the East Asia Summit, Asean Regional Forum and the ReCAAP process” against piracy in South-East Asia.

The mechanisms of cooperation include regular foreign office consultations, and defence ministry and armed forces interactions, including “bilateral and multilateral exercises.”

While bilateral exercises are routine, some multilateral exercises have been controversial, like the 2007 Malabar war games at sea involving ships from India, Japan, Australia, the U.S. and Singapore. Both China and Russia conveyed their concerns at the time, saying Asia should avoid “exclusive” groupings.

As the Foreign Minister in the Shinzo Abe government, Mr. Aso had advocated a trilateral security dialogue involving Japan, India and the U.S., an idea South Block was lukewarm to. However, a Track-II interaction involving the former U.S. Deputy Secretary of State, Richard Armitage, the Confederation of Indian Industry and the Japan Institute of International Affairs issued a document in Tokyo this week urging a deepening of Indo-Japan security ties as a stepping stone for working closely with the U.S. towards fashioning “an open and inclusive regional framework in Asia that advances our shared norms and strengthens cooperation on new challenges.”

While acknowledging that the form the security declaration took was new as far as Indian foreign policy was concerned, Foreign Secretary Shiv Shankar Menon told reporters here that this was more a product of Japan’s long-standing reluctance to cooperate in matters other than economic with India. “I wouldn’t say the ideas [in the declaration] are new,” Mr. Menon said, when asked about the significance of the document. “We have 24 counter-terrorism joint working groups, for example, and military exercises with several states. But the format is new because of the particularity of Japan.” He said political and security cooperation was now the “second leg” of the bilateral relationship. And he made it clear India still believed the first leg, economic cooperation, had yet to realise its full potential.

Japan was committing more than $4 billion at this time of global uncertainty to the Delhi-Mumbai freight and industrial corridors, he said, and the number of Japanese companies involved in India had grown dramatically.

While defending the security declaration as one which gave India the opportunity to build on what it was already doing, senior officials concede that the document is largely the product of Mr. Aso’s exertions. Indeed, one official said the erstwhile Yasuo Fukuda government would probably not have considered the security agreement a priority, perhaps because of greater sensitivity over not wanting to send the wrong signals to Beijing and the rest of Asia.

But Mr. Menon emphasised that India did not believe any of its relations were exclusive. He said that at the lunch with Japanese and Indian businessmen, for example, Prime Minister Singh had spoken of India and Japan as part of an ‘arc of prosperity’ that could come up with an “Asian response” to the global financial crisis. “But this is a conversation we will have later this week in Beijing as well, during the Asia-Europe Meeting, with other countries.”

Dateline Tokyo: Japan not keen on nuclear cooperation with India

We think it is more important you stick to your no-test moratorium, says Prime Minister Aso...

23 October 2008
The Hindu

Japan not keen on nuclear cooperation with India

Siddharth Varadarajan

TOKYO: Despite finally supporting the United States-India civil nuclear initiative at the International Atomic Energy Agency and Nuclear Suppliers Group, Japan is less interested in exporting nuclear material to India than in ensuring New Delhi sticks to its non-proliferation pledges.

Asked whether his government would now be prepared to encourage Japanese firms to export reactor components to India, Japan’s Prime Minister, Taro Aso, baldly told a joint press conference with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Wednesday that “we are not engaged in discussions regarding nuclear energy with India.”

He revealed that Dr. Singh had raised the subject in their summit-level talks here. “Prime Minister Singh did express his desire to have future cooperation, and I said it is important that India lives up to its commitments and actions, including continuing its moratorium on nuclear testing.” As for a Japan-India nuclear cooperation agreement — considered by some Japanese industry analysts as a legal requirement for any nuclear exports from here — he said somewhat cryptically, “We will have to take into account various factors.”

Asked what he expected from Tokyo in the civil nuclear field, Dr. Singh said India was very grateful to the Government of Japan for the support it had extended at the IAEA and NSG. “It is our sincere desire to strengthen and develop our cooperation with Japan in civil nuclear energy but I do recognize the sensitivity of this in Japan and therefore I mentioned [to Prime Minister Aso] that we will move at a pace at which the Japanese people and government are comfortable.”

The joint statement issued at the end of the summit only noted that the two Prime Ministers “shared the view that nuclear energy can play an important role as a safe, sustainable and non-polluting source of energy.”

India will wait till Japan is “ready” for nuclear cooperation

Ties with Tokyo will play a significant role in the emerging Asian security architecture, says Manmohan Singh on an official visit to Japan...





22 October 2008
The Hindu

India will wait till Japan is “ready” for nuclear cooperation
The Japanese side has been keen to expand security cooperation with India

Siddharth Varadarajan

Tokyo: Japan was one of the eight countries — alongside China — to hold out till the end on the waiver for India at the Nuclear Suppliers Group meeting in Vienna last month and is in no hurry to embrace the idea of nuclear cooperation with New Delhi. But Indian officials say that as far as they are concerned, there are at present no legal obstacles to Japanese firms like Hitachi and Toshiba supplying reactor components for safeguarded nuclear power projects in India.

According to senior Indian officials, a bilateral nuclear cooperation agreement between the two countries is not on the agenda and will not be the subject of discussion between Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and his Japanese counterpart Taro Aso when the two leaders meet here on Wednesday. The officials said India was mindful of the special sensitivity nuclear issues had in Japan. “When it comes to [nuclear] cooperation between us, when they are ready, we are ready,” a senior official told reporters. He said more time was needed for everyone to factor in the changes that had been ushered in as a result of the NSG’s decision to allow nuclear commerce with India. “It’s not just a question of Japan, this is new for everybody, including for us. So don’t expect a big bang.”

“Internally divided”

Indian officials concede that Japan is internally divided on the question of nuclear cooperation with India. Under corporate pressure, the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) favours a more liberal approach towards India. But the Ministry of Foreign Affairs — as well as Japanese civil society — is continuing to stick to a hardline non-proliferation stance in which any encouragement to civil nuclear energy in India is seen as tantamount to legitimising India’s nuclear weapons programme.

As Foreign Minister in 2006, Mr. Aso had told a Diet panel that the U.S.-India nuclear agreement could weaken the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. In an interview to PTI on Tuesday, he sidestepped a question on whether Japanese firms would be allowed to export nuclear components to India, saying only that “Japan has pursued steadily the construction of nuclear power plants, while making an effort to conform with” non-proliferation standards and “seeking international understanding and trust.” At the same time, he did plug Japanese capabilities in the field, saying, “Japan’s nuclear industry, which has a solid record of constructing power plants even during difficult times for the industry, is one of the most experienced and the most advanced industries.”

Japan’s reluctance to countenance cooperation with India in civil nuclear matters became evident last month when the Third Japan-India Energy Dialogue steered clear of any concrete discussion on the subject. The dialogue, held in Tokyo on September 17 between Deputy Chair of the Planning Commission Montek Singh Ahluwalia and Toshihiro Nikai of METI envisaged cooperation only in conservation and efficiency, coal, oil and natural gas.

The only concession to nuclear was a reference to the NSG’s September 6 waiver and a promise to “exchange views and information of their respective nuclear energy policy.” At the same time, the door to nuclear cooperation was kept slightly ajar, with the two emphasising that “bilateral cooperation based on the Japan-India Energy Dialogue will not be limited to what has been identified above and that [the two countries would] continue to further deepen their bilateral cooperation.”

Speaking about the bilateral relationship and the growing economic and political cooperation between the two countries, Indian officials accompanying the Prime Minister on his official visit here said Japan, in recent years, had obviously made a “strategic bet” on India. Thirty per cent of all of Japan’s foreign aid was now directed at India and “not a single week goes by without a Japanese business delegation coming to India,” an official noted.

Admitting the proposed Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement had hit a temporary roadblock on the questions of agriculture, pharmaceuticals and country-of-origin rules, the officials said this was hardly surprising given the very different economies the two countries had. “But we’ve made tremendous progress since January 2007.” Japan, they said, was “tightly protectionist” but New Delhi could not afford to take a holier-than-thou attitude since it was asking Tokyo to do many things that it was itself reluctant to do.

Japan has seen five prime ministers in as many years and is heading for elections again soon. Despite this, however, there has been no let-up in the expansion of ties with India across a wide number of areas. Indian officials say the Japanese proposals to help finance the country’s western freight and industrial corridors will give a new thrust to economic ties, which is still seen as the backbone of the bilateral relationship.

Key component

But if India’s other preoccupation is energy and nuclear power, Japan has tended to be fairly security-oriented in its approach to New Delhi.

In his book, A Beautiful Country, the former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe described India as a key component of a new Asian order whose other pillars would be Japan, Australia and the United States. Mr. Aso, who as Foreign Minister in Mr. Abe’s government actively canvassed for a trilateral security dialogue linking Delhi, Tokyo and Washington, is also a proponent of this sort of Sino-centric architecture.

The Japanese side has been keen to expand security cooperation with India beyond the current level of bilateral visits, exchanges and exercises. Indian officials said Dr. Singh and Mr. Aso would issue a joint declaration on security on Wednesday.

In a statement just before his departure for Tokyo on Tuesday, Prime Minister Singh described ties with Japan as “one of the most important bilateral relationships we have.” He added that a strong India-Japan relationship “will play a significant role in the emerging Asian security architecture and will contribute to the peace, stability and prosperity of Asia and the world.”

Though nuclear cooperation is not a bilateral priority right now, India feels there is enough economic and political momentum to propel the relationship to a level where Tokyo may also eventually come around to seeing merit in working with India in the civil nuclear field.

In any case, since Japanese export regulations tend to be more administrative than statute-based, Indian officials say Japanese entities would be able to send safeguarded nuclear components to India without the approval of the Diet. At any rate, this has been India’s experience on non-nuclear high technology trade. Since January 2006, India and Japan have held three rounds of discussions on the easing of restrictions, leading to seven India entities being taken off Tokyo’s export blacklist.

Nuclear rules

According to the authoritative trade newsletter Nuclear Fuel, however, trade between India and Japan may not be that straightforward a matter.

Quoting Japanese industry and diplomatic sources, the newsletter said the two countries “must conclude a bilateral nuclear trade agreement in order for Japanese nuclear industry firms to sell [NSG] trigger-list items to India.”

The two principal Japanese nuclear vendors are Hitachi, which partners GE, and Toshiba, which owns the American nuclear supplier, Westinghouse. Other firms like Mitsubishi also manufacture nuclear components like pressure vessels for nuclear reactors.

These firms, says Nuclear Fuel, “may not export to India equipment triggering IAEA safeguards under the Zangger Committee export control list without a bilateral cooperation agreement between Japan and India.” Current Japanese law, it said, allowed nuclear exports only to countries that were either a party to the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT) or allowed the International Atomic Energy Agency to safeguard all its nuclear facilities.

But a nuclear cooperation agreement Japan signed with China before Beijing’s accession to the NPT may serve as a precedent for India, said Nuclear Fuel, quoting unidentified “experts”.

While not ruling out the desirability of a bilateral cooperation agreement, Indian officials say the NSG’s new guidelines were expected to simplify matters considerably. “Many Zangger Committee countries take the view that its requirements have been subsumed by the NSG, so now that India has a waiver, a bilateral agreement may no longer be a strict requirement” for safeguarded exports, an official said.

Four-power meeting drew Chinese démarche

Last month, India held a quiet meeting with Japan, Australia and the United States to discuss security issues. Each member of this new 'four power' initiative denies the aim is to gang up against China. But Beijing is wary of this new alignment.

14 June 2007
The Hindu

Four-power meeting drew Chinese démarche
U.S., Japan keen to rope in India in quadrilateral security cooperation

Siddharth Varadarajan

New Delhi: Days before the first-ever official-level security consultation between the United States, India, Japan and Australia last month, China issued démarches to each of the participants seeking to know the purpose behind their meeting.

A démarche is a formal diplomatic communication made with the purpose of, inter alia, eliciting information from another State and reflects the seriousness of the issue at stake.

Unlike India, Japan and Australia are close military allies of the U.S. and trilateral security cooperation between Washington, Tokyo and Canberra has been going on for some time. New Delhi -- which had been resisting the idea of a quadrilateral security meeting for more than a year because of its ‘encirclement of China’ connotations -- finally committed itself to a dialogue with Japan “and other like-minded countries in the Asia-Pacific region on themes of mutual interest” during Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s visit to Tokyo last December.

Concrete plans for this new quadrilateral dialogue process were firmed up after the visit to Delhi last month of Japan’s Vice-Foreign Minister, Shotaro Yachi. The first “exploratory meeting” at the level of senior officials took place on the sidelines of the Asean Regional Forum (ARF) security policy meeting in Manila on May 24-25. The U.S. was represented by Christopher Hill, Washington’s point man for the Six-Party talks on Korea, India by Additional Secretary K.C. Singh from the MEA, Japan by Chikao Kawai, deputy Vice Minister for foreign policy, and Australia by Jennifer Rawson from its Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.

Largely mindful of China’s concerns, however, the four countries decided to meet without any formal agenda and to not publicise the meeting itself or the subjects discussed. "In the run up, the Chinese had démarched all four of us to find out what was going on, and I suppose we were conscious of not trying to create the impression of a gang-up against them”, a senior official told The Hindu.

India, said the official, "certainly does not wish to send such a signal to China and I think at this time, none of the others wants to either”. On May 27, Ms. Rawson told an Australian parliamentary panel that the four countries were not seeking to create a new security alliance and were only "looking at issues of common interest”.

Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Aso has been pushing the idea of bringing New Delhi into the existing trilateral security process with Australia and the U.S. since his visit to Delhi in January 2006. For Japan, India is a key part of the ‘Arc of Prosperity and Freedom’ it is trying to build around the “outer rim of the Eurasian continent”. In practice, this ‘Arc’ -- which bears no resemblance to the actual geometrical shape -- skirts almost entirely along the borders of China and Russia.

India as ‘common strategic objective’

On its part, the U.S. has been quick to realize the value of a quadrilateral framework for dealing with strategic developments in Asia. In particular, the Bush administration has sought to build a patchwork of military and strategic partnerships around China with a view to “encouraging” Beijing to play the role of a “responsible stakeholder” in Asia.

Since 2005, the U.S. has officially begun to speak of India as part of this network of “values-based relationships” surrounding China. And this year’s U.S-Japan Security Consultative Committee joint statement made a direct reference to New Delhi, the first time this has happened at that forum.

The high-level statement -- issued on May 1 by U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Defence Secretary Robert M. Gates, Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Aso and Defence Minister Fumio Kyuma -- sets out as a “common strategic objective” the task of “continuing to build upon partnerships with India to advance areas of common interests and increase cooperation, recognizing that India's continued growth is inextricably tied to the prosperity, freedom, and security of the region.”

By meeting on the sidelines of the ARF, Indian officials hope the message went out that the new ‘quadrilateral’ sees itself as essentially an adjunct to Asean. “Just as the ARF itself is Asean-plus, the Quad is an ARF-plus arrangement. For example, anything we do on the maritime security front, or humanitarian front like tsunami relief, would have to involve the Asean countries”, an official said.

Asked what the logic of creating a ‘mini-ARF’ was, the official said that there were many overlapping structures in Asia and this did not mean they were competing with each other. “India, for example, is not part of APEC and the U.S., Japan and Australia are not part of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO)”, he said.

Given the explicit military dimension to the cooperation envisaged, however, it is unlikely that others in Asia -- least of all China -- will see the ‘Quad’ as just another “overlapping structure”.

The Indian, Japanese and Australian Navies worked together under U.S. “leadership” after the 2004 tsunami and in April this year, India, Japan and the U.S. staged trilateral naval exercises off Japan’s eastern coast.

Predictably, the latest “humanitarian” exercises did not go down well in Beijing. In a commentary on April 21, People’s Daily wrote: “It is absolutely not new for Japan and the U.S. to sit down and plot conspiracies together but it is rather intriguing to get India involved”. Unconvinced by the Indian Navy’s plans to have joint exercises with China and Russia, the official Chinese newspaper saw the trilateral exercises as “a signal for a new balance of force in the Asia region”. The U.S., it said, was “an old-brand power” but is “striving to win the support of Japan and India in a bid to prevent China and Russia from joining forces”.

Though no date has been fixed for the next quadrilateral meeting, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is expected to try and upgrade the process to the ministerial level when he visits New Delhi later this year. At that point, say officials, India will have to carefully evaluate the inevitable signals any enhancement of security cooperation between the ‘four powers’ will likely send to China and the rest of Asia.

Perils of three-way security cooperation

Tokyo wants India, Japan, and the U.S. to develop a trilateral framework for security cooperation. But New Delhi has good reason to be wary.

14 February 2006
The Hindu

Perils of three-way security cooperation

Siddharth Varadarajan

THIS WEEK, the chief of Japan's Maritime Self-Defence Force — a well-equipped and robust navy that is still shy about calling itself by its proper name — will arrive in India to kick off a series of the most intensive high-level military and security-related contacts the two countries will have had to date.

Admiral Takashi Saito's visit will be followed in March by that of General Tsutomu Mori, head of Japan's Ground Self-Defence Force (i.e. army), and in April, the chief of Japan's Air Self-Defence Force, General Tadashi Yoshida, will come calling. Sandwiched between these high-profile visits is the annual security dialogue between the two foreign offices as well as a visit to Tokyo by India's Defence Minister, Pranab Mukherjee. In April, provided Prime Minister Manmohan Singh names a full-fledged External Affairs Minister by then, Japan and India will conduct their first strategic dialogue at the Foreign Minister level. And the grand finale will be Dr. Singh's visit to Japan sometime in June or July, by which time both Indian and Japanese officials hope to have brought about a qualitative transformation in the strategic aspect of the bilateral relationship.

One Japanese diplomat used the phrase `hop, step and jump' — to describe Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's visit to India last year, Foreign Minister Taro Aso's visit this January, and Dr. Singh's return visit to Japan later this year when Tokyo hopes the two sides will be ready and willing to "jump" to a new level of understanding. From India's point of view, this growing engagement with Japan makes good sense. The two countries have dealt with each other on the economic front for years but the political and strategic dimension in the relationship is relatively new.

India, Japan, South Korea, and China have emerged as principal powers in Asia and it is essential that they interact with each other both at the bilateral level as well as in multilateral regional forums. Without these four countries — and Russia — establishing a relationship of comfort among and between themselves, it will not be possible to develop the security architecture Asia needs to deal with future challenges. This is where the present round of interaction between Japan and India — and the unprecedented visit of the three Japanese service chiefs in successive months — could play a useful role. The only hitch is that Tokyo wants more.

Apart from developing the bilateral strategic relationship with India, Japan is keen to establish a trilateral framework for dialogue and security cooperation with the United States as the third leg. The Indian side is understandably wary. The Manmohan Singh Government seeks a strong strategic relationship with the U.S. but India has no interest in ganging up — or being seen to be ganging up — against China. As it is, there is considerable wariness in China and South Korea about the future direction of Japanese regional policies. Japan has maritime disputes with both countries over the Senkaku/Diaoyutai islands and the Takeshima/Dokdo islets, respectively, and at least on the latter, there has been an escalation of rhetoric in the past few years. In February 2005, Japan also angered the Chinese by agreeing with the U.S. that Taiwan was a "common strategic objective." The last thing India wants to do is wade into that triangular relationship.

Testing the waters

When Mr. Aso visited Delhi last month, the Ministry of External Affairs displayed little enthusiasm for developing the trilateral framework that both Tokyo and Washington would like to see. But the Japanese foreign office has not dropped the idea completely. As a first step, it would like to broaden the ongoing Track-II demi-official bilateral security dialogue between the two countries by including an American component. Thus, in the next meeting of this forum in Tokyo at the end of March, the Japanese side intends to test the waters by inviting Richard Armitage — who served under Colin Powell as Deputy Secretary of State in the first administration of President George W. Bush — as an observer. This will mark the first time the bilateral India-Japan dialogue takes a trilateral turn with the inclusion of the U.S.

From the Bush administration's perspective, trilateral cooperation makes good sense. New Delhi is a crucial part of the web of alliances it has with Japan, India, and Korea which — as Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said at Tokyo's Sophia University last March — ensure that China plays a "positive role" in Asia. "[I]f China were simply untethered, simply operating without that strategic context," Ms. Rice had said, it may be likely to play a more "negative role."

As far as Japan-India defence exchanges are concerned, a trilateral element has already crept in because of Washington's decision to use Japan-based air assets for the `Cope India' joint exercises held in Kalaikunda, West Bengal last year. The F-16s that took part in the exercise came from the Misawa USAF base in Japan and the E-3 Awacs from the Kadena base. Not only did U.S. air force personnel come from Japan (and Guam and Hawaii) but six Indian Air Force personnel visited Misawa before the exercises to familiarise themselves with the F-16.

In general terms, the trilateral idea has two dimensions. At the military level, the United States would like to enhance the inter-operability of Asian forces loosely aligned with Washington. And at the political and strategic level, it would like to demonstrate that India, Japan, and the U.S. will provide the nucleus around which any emerging security architecture in Asia must be built. A precursor on both fronts was the short-lived but strategically crucial four-power naval initiative the U.S. launched with India, Japan, and Australia in the wake of the Asian tsunami. The selection of the three countries was not fortuitous. China and South Korea also had naval assets that could have been used in relief work but they were not asked to join. In their own way, the Chinese have taken note of the significance of the quartet.

At last year's naval commanders conference organised by the U.S. Pacific Command, the dominant theme for discussion was how to effect a defence transformation that would strengthen inter-operability between the U.S. Navy and friendly or allied navies like those of India, Japan, and Singapore. The purpose being mainly to deal with the so-called Chinese military and naval build-up and the development by Beijing of an "assassin's mace" type of capability. These discussions — which are still ongoing — parallel what is being attempted on the domestic political front in Japan since the March 1999 and December 2001 "suspicious boat incidents' and more specifically after the defence panel set up by Mr. Koizumi called for a smaller but more "functional" SDF.

In its October 2004 document, "The vision for the future national security and defence capabilities," the panel also advocated a change in the constitutional principles that have prevented the Japanese military from playing a more pro-active or offensive role.

When Admiral Saito meets his Indian counterpart, he is likely to explain Japan's evolving defence policy. According to Japanese diplomats, he will focus on the "importance of the U.S. military presence in Asia, and their contribution to peace and security" as well as the "Chinese military build-up" and the situation in the Korean Peninsula. There will also be the usual plans of fleet visits and friendly maneouvres.

How to remain strategically engaged with Japan while also developing a strategic relationship with China and South Korea is a key diplomatic challenge that India will increasingly have to face up to. In its interaction with Japan, the Indian side needs to encourage a constructive approach to Asian security based on addressing current concerns as well as the lingering burdens of history.

Security, and maritime security in particular, is not a zero-sum game in which a select group of countries needs to band together and exclude others in a manner reminiscent of the Cold War. Cooperative security rather than containment is what Asia needs. This is the goal India and Japan should work with others in the continent to achieve.

© Copyright 2000 - 2006 The Hindu

The Tokyo Trap

8 December 2001
The Times of India

The Tokyo Trap

Siddharth Varadarajan

Tokyo: The Bush administration may have killed the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty but when Prime Minister Vajpayee arrives here this week, he will still be politely asked to sign it.

Four years after New Delhi stunned the world with its nuclear tests, the Japanese government and strategic community have not been able to reconcile themselves to the idea of a nuclear-armed subcontinent. Though Tokyo appreciates what it says is the restraint india has shown in terms of nuclear doctrine and posture, it is keen for India legally to commit itself to a ban on further nuclear tests. ‘‘Since Vajpayee told us India will not test until the CTBT comes into force, this means India is saying it will never test again. So why not sign the treaty?’’, a senior foreign ministry official told this writer.

A number of Japanese analysts working on nuclear issues also conveyed a similar demand. To the extent to which the Japanese perspective is driven by fears that India may test again, such a view is understandable. But what is difficult to understand is the tenacity with which Tokyo is clinging to the discourse of ‘non-proliferation’ built around the CTBT and Fissile Materials Cut-off Treaty — even as the US missile defence programme is forcing ardent believers in nuclear theology to turn apostate. Emotionally and officially, Japan is still wedded to the goal of universal nuclear disarmament but it is unable to resist the drive towards a new arms race that the US is imposing on the world.

With a new class of offensive ‘defensive’ weapons being developed in the first step towards the militarisation of outer space, one would have thought opposing the US missile defence programme is a far more pressing goal than getting India to sign the CTBT. Yet, many analysts here seem to accept not just the rationale of the programme but also Japan’s participation in it.

Whatever its misgivings about the impact of the larger national missile defence (NMD) programme on strategic stability — Tokyo only abstained on a draft Russian-Chinese resolution on the anti-ballistic missile treaty at the UN last year rather than voting against it — the Japanese government is assisting the US in research on the more limited theatre missile defence (TMD) system to protect itself from the threat of ‘low density’ missile attacks.

Prof Satoshi Morimoto, a former diplomat and air force officer, supports Japan’s cooperation with the US especially because of North Korea’s Taepodong missiles. ‘‘Of course, if the US, Japan and Taiwan are linked together in missile defence, this would alarm China’’. He believes China will try and develop a land-based system but does not rule out Beijing ending its moratorium on nuclear tests. ‘‘This depends on how Washington handles the US-China relationship. The Peoples’ Liberation Army is very nationalist and anti-American. So if pushed, they could react to US pressure by testing. But the Chinese political leadership has no such intentions’’.

Mr Morimoto concedes that the impact of the NDM/TMD programmes in East Asia would have a bearing on South Asia. ‘‘China’s nuclear development is the key. The Indian programme will be based on how to react to the Chinese threat. And Pakistan’s on India’s’’. However, Masahiro Omura, research director at the Japan Institute of International Affairs, feels Japan’s participation in TMD would have no wider repercussions. ‘‘We want to protect Japan from the mishandling of missiles by North Korea. We are not even talking about a system to defend ourselves from China’’, he says. ‘‘For this reason, China need not be alarmed. That is why we are encouraging the US to have a dialogue with China, to help address its concerns’’.

This confidence about missile defence not triggering an arms race is shared by Ambassador Ryukichi Imai of the Institute for International Policy Studies. ‘‘China has never been in an arms race with the US’’, he says. ‘‘I am not very convinced about their technological capabilities. I don’t think China has a great capacity to build missiles to reach the US’’. At the same time, Mr Imai is not very convinced about the TMD rationale. ‘‘I don’t think North Korea has nuclear weapons. They don’t have more than a kilo of plutonium’’. According to Mr Imai, the Japanese government’s emphasis on a (sea-based) TMD system ‘‘has probably more to do with the politics of the budget of the three services since the navy is due for a big project’’.

For Prof Mitsuru Kurosawa of Osaka University, a specialist on disarmament affairs, the NMD is fraught with destabilising potential in part because it means unilateral US defence of its homeland. As for TMD, he feels this is of limited value. ‘‘A better way to deal with our Korean concerns is for US, Russia, Japan and China to work together in projects like the Korean peninsula Energy Development Organisation (KEDO)’’ devised in 1994 to deal with fears of a North Korean nuclear weapons programme. Unfortunately, says Mr Kurosawa, far from pursuing the cooperative security framework established by Mr Clinton, the Bush administration is undermining the inter-Korean dialogue process.

Mr Kurosawa is also not impressed with US claims that missile defence is needed to deal with so-called ‘rogue states’. ‘‘The system will take more than 10 years to develop so obviously it is aimed at China and Russia. The aim is clearly to dissuade Beijing from increasing the number of its missiles. The US wants to be top of the world, a hegemon’’. By linking NMD with TMD, the US hopes to win over Europe and Japan, feels Mr Kurosawa, but strategic stability will still be affected. ‘‘One of the biggest problems we face is the unilateralism of the US. Its stand on the CTBT is based on its perception of whether the treaty ensures the technological superiority of the US arsenal or not. On afghanistan, it did not want a UN mandate because that would limit its freedom to operate. Even on reducing the number of strategic missiles, Mr Bush wants to act unilaterally rather than reach a transparent, irreversible and verifiable agreement with Russia’’.

Even though under some scenarios, Japan’s own security interests might be compromised, most Japanese analysts do not expect Tokyo to play much of a restraining role vis-a-vis Washington. ‘‘Institutionally’’, said one senior japanese official who did not wish to be identified, ‘‘people build their careers in the foreign ministry on the basis of the centrality of the US-Japan security relationship. This is the basic infrastructure and it is not to be disturbed or changed’’.