Monday, June 29, 2020

Australia-Japan relations and pitching for a post-COVID future

Some thoughts on the 2020 Lowy polling

Looking ahead at what can be: Australia, Japan and the post-COVID world

If Prime Minister Abe reads the annual Lowy Institute poll, it might have provided about the only fillip to his recent political fortunes. He would have no doubt been pleased that a constituency, somewhere, thought rather highly of his leadership. In recent weeks, PM Abe’s polls in Japan, across most of the leading polling outlets, have seen a drop in satisfaction or popularity of him and his Cabinet (depending on the phrasing of the question). Scandals surrounding his government continue to hamper his leadership, his handling of the response to the COVID-19 crisis has drifted in the wake of more assertive responses by prefectural governors, and with the end of his third term approaching, there is less confidence he can once again persuade party colleagues of yet another extension to the previous two-year-two-term limit on the party presidency. His planned triumphs of 2020, the Tokyo Olympics and a referendum on changes to the Peace Constitution are all but corona-ed. Both incumbent Australian and Japanese governments are in lockstep with the Trump Administration, and PMs Morrison and Abe look set to accept the dubious invite to Trump’s G7 later in the year.

The Lowy poll invites an opportune moment to look to where the Australia-Japan relationship might go, in a post-COVID world, beyond the fog of the US-China entanglement. In key findings, seven in ten Australians express confidence in PM Abe, 79 percent recognise Japan as a democracy and in the ‘feelings’ thermometer Japan came in at 69 degrees, around the midpoint of 63 in 2007 and 74 in 2018. It is probably reasonable to speculate that Japan’s popularity as a tourist destination for Australians in recent years is reflected in these figures. In Japan, at the time of writing, a few news sites picked up the The Agence France-Presse (AFP) report with the focus on the China angle, nothing about Australians high level of confidence in Japan.

Prior to the signing of the security agreement in 2007, Japan viewed Australia as a key partner in the Asia-Pacific region, building a relationship as ‘advanced liberal democratic countries, supporting and strengthening peace and prosperity and a free trade system’, (Diplomatic Bluebooks, inter alia) amongst other aims. As successive Australian governments of both persuasions encouraged and enabled a stronger defence outlook by Japan, the two countries have boasted of a ‘special strategic partnership…sharing fundamental values and strategic interests’ (Diplomatic Bluebook 2016ff).

Despite a record of government-level engagement dating from the late-nineteenth century, most observers view the relationship through its mutually beneficial economic growth from the 1960s onwards, or more lately, the security agreement signed by PMs Howard and Abe in 2007. But in a post-COVID world, where we might hope for a return for good global citizenship, Australia and Japan could leverage this bilateral goodwill to forge a partnership with a broader ‘human security’ remit.


Abe has much to ponder (from a class simulation exercise) 
In an international environment which has accommodated advancing militarisation over other forms of security in recent years, it will take a courageous turn in leadership to recalibrate national interests to reflect a more nuanced, post-COVID world. To borrow an Olympic analogy, we may need try to pole vault our way into a new era. In doing so, I would suggest that the potential strengths in a future Japan-Australia alliance lie not in a narrow security alliance but a broader, human security approach. Many years ago, as a graduate student doing interviews about Japan’s relationship with Australia, one bureaucrat especially conversant with the Australian vernacular, told me ‘Japan sees Australia as a friendly corner shop; we might like to occasionally shop elsewhere but Australia will always there when we need them’. It is a comment that has stayed with me ever since and re-emerges when I think about what could be. In the 1970s and 1980s, the bilateral relationship was informed by regular ministerial meetings where ministers across several portfolios would gather to confer on matters of state. The increase in regional fora and a sense of redundancy saw the ministerial level meetings diminish over time, only to be revived in a foreign affairs/security 2+2 format as a part of ‘strengthening the strategic partnership’.

The bilateral relationship could return to its shared interests in the region (beyond narrow strategic parameters) and begin to build regional resilience on climate change and embrace the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). In Japan, the SDGs are being taken up across corporate, educational and social institutions (disclaimer: including my own university) and operate within parameters that resonate with past practices of comprehensive security and human security. A renewed effort at people-to-people engagement (previously a strength of the bilateral relationship) would help facilitate and reconnect the breadth of the relationship and the possibilities. Those seven in ten people who believe PM Abe is doing a good job might not be aware that more than half the Japanese population still resist amendments to the peace constitution. We rarely see that reflected in the 2+2 dialogues.

There is a sense of the inevitable in expanding military responses. It is the dominant frame through which we view ‘security’, through which we view ‘strong leadership’. At the time of writing, there is speculation coming out of the weekend that PM Abe might call a snap election, a tactic he has used previously to try and bolster support for his agenda (though the opposition parties continue to be in disarray and unable, seemingly, to garner a majority vote). Tokyo is in the throes of a gubernatorial election in which former Abe foe and incumbent Governor Koike looks set to retain her post. That Koike is effectively backed by the Liberal Democratic Party this time (unlike the previous election where she faced a candidate supported by the LDP) will offer the national leadership a charade of support, should they choose to do so.

With many observers urging governments to reset the levers in a post-COVID world, Japan and Australia have a capability to do so, in the region, with the right leadership mix. We ought to start planning now, and rather than running behind opinion polls, here is an opportunity to get out in front.