Japan's “Strategic Coordination” in 2015: ASEAN, Southeast Asia,and Abe's Diplomatic Agenda

Summary

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has highlighted Japan's commitment to Southeast Asia since his inauguration for his second term as Prime Minister in December 2012. His first year in office, 2013, represented a search for new initiatives to determine his administration's strategic objectives towards Southeast Asia under the fortieth anniversary of the ASEAN–Japan Friendship and Cooperation rubric. Unlike many of his predecessors, Abe visited all ten Southeast Asian states, and this diplomatic approach culminated in the “Vision Statement on ASEAN–Japan Friendship and Cooperation: Shared Vision, Shared Identity, Shared Future” and the Joint Statement, “Hand in Hand, Facing Regional and Global Challenges”, which endorsed comprehensive cooperation between ASEAN and Japan.

In 2014 Japan's efforts focused on the implementation of the 2013 Vision Statement, promoting cooperation on the four pillars — security, economics, sociocultural ties, and people-to-people interaction. In the face of increasing terrorist threats, Japan emphasized non-traditional security cooperation through the “ASEAN–Japan Joint Declaration for Cooperation to Combat Terrorism and Transnational Crime”.

Abe also constantly reassured Southeast Asia about Japan's changing security policy. Indeed, Abe aimed to relax constitutional and political constraints on Japan's security policy under the “Proactive Contribution to Peace” policy — such as its constitutional reinterpretation to enable Japan to exercise the right to collective self-defence — and Japan began to have more domestic political room to strengthen security cooperation with Southeast Asia. At the same time, Japan attempted to reassure ASEAN member states that it would maintain the line of the 1977 Fukuda Doctrine, comprising three principles — never becoming a military power, forging ties with ASEAN based on “heart to heart” understanding, and cooperating with ASEAN member states as equal partners. In this context, Japan's policy towards Southeast Asia in 2015 was characterized by “strategic coordination”, which focused on policy implementation with several new diplomatic initiatives.

ASEAN Policy

The objective of strategic coordination is not only to continuously deepen Japan's comprehensive ties of friendship with Southeast Asian states and ASEAN, but also to shape China's behaviour in Southeast Asia and beyond through ASEANled institutions and Japan's bilateral ties with individual Southeast Asian states.