{"id":68914,"date":"2021-11-29T06:00:12","date_gmt":"2021-11-28T19:00:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?p=68914"},"modified":"2021-11-28T17:16:29","modified_gmt":"2021-11-28T06:16:29","slug":"aspis-decades-japan-and-australia-go-from-tri-to-quad","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/aspis-decades-japan-and-australia-go-from-tri-to-quad\/","title":{"rendered":"ASPI\u2019S decades: Japan and Australia go from tri to Quad"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/figure>\n

ASPI celebrates its 20th anniversary this year. This series looks at ASPI\u2019s work since its creation in August 2001.<\/em><\/p>\n

Australia built a triangular security relationship with Japan and the US in the first decade of the 21st century.<\/p>\n

In the second decade, at the second attempt, the triangle became the Quad with India. China\u2019s anger helped sink Quad 1.0, while China\u2019s actions revived Quad 2.0.<\/p>\n

Japan was the most cautious in accepting the trilateral, but became the cheerleader for the Quad.<\/p>\n

The shape of Australia\u2019s trilateral with Japan and the US was prematurely revealed in the main committee room of the Australian Parliament in July 2001.<\/p>\n

Concluding the annual AUSMIN with a press conference, US Secretary of State Colin Powell was lobbed a final question about linking the separate US alliances in Asia<\/a>: Could the US join together its bilateral alliances with Japan, South Korea and Australia? Powell delighted and surprised the journalists by giving a revealing answer:<\/p>\n

Interesting, we were talking about this subject earlier in the day, as to whether or not we might find ways of talking more in that kind of a forum. I don\u2019t think it would lead to any formal arrangement of the kind you suggest. But there might be a need for us to seek opportunities to come together and talk more often. So yes, we\u2019ve talked about that, but not in the form of some formal kind of new organization. We just began speaking about that today.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Foreign Minister Alexander Downer, sitting beside Powell, glimpsed a diplomatic flashing light.<\/p>\n

Downer confirmed that Australia had held informal discussions with Japan while issuing a caution: \u2018So as not to allow a hare to rush away here, we obviously\u2014I think it must be obvious\u2014wouldn\u2019t want new architecture in East Asia which would be an attempt to kind of replicate NATO<\/a> or something like that. We are talking here just about an informal dialogue.\u2019<\/p>\n

Downer walked back to his office telling staff he\u2019d headed off a diplomatic explosion.<\/p>\n

On the contrary, his denial of an Asian version of NATO created an instant label that has echoed ever since in China\u2019s strategic community.<\/p>\n

The foreign minister had triggered the Henry Kissinger rule on denials. Kissinger said that when a state denies it intends to do something it sends two signals. One message is that, for the moment, the country will not do something. But the second is that the denial is a statement that the country has the capacity to take such action if it chooses.<\/p>\n

NATO was about opposing the Soviet Union, just as Asia\u2019s non-NATO is about China. At every stage of the process that created a trilateral\u2014and then the Quad\u2014Canberra has denied that it\u2019s about China. The \u2018doth protest too much\u2019 line works as well from Hamlet as Kissinger.<\/p>\n

The denial of a NATO-style unification of forces and single command is patently true. That bit of denial fits the facts. The demurral about responding to China, though, became increasingly disingenuous. What were once barbed questions about China\u2019s real intentions in the trilateral became responses to China\u2019s actions in the second version of the Quad.<\/p>\n

The absence of South Korea from the joined-up alliance structure mooted in 2001 points to China\u2019s magnetic abilities, as well as the continuing schism between Seoul and Tokyo.<\/p>\n

Looking back at the triangle creation, Downer said China \u2018objected right from the word go when we started the diplomacy of trying to set up the trilateral strategic dialogue\u2019. The US was interested in the trilateral, but he got a dismissive response<\/a> from Japan\u2019s foreign minister (presumably Yohei Kono). Downer recalled:<\/p>\n

I took it up with the then Japanese Foreign Minister, very unsuccessfully initially. He said to me, \u2018Minister, why would we\u00a0bother to have a trilateral security dialogue with a country like Australia. You\u2019re not a very significant country compared to the US.\u2019 I thought this was not terribly diplomatic. I remember when I am crossed. He passed as the Foreign Minister and others came. The Japanese Foreign Ministry was pretty supportive.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

By 2005, John Howard was hailing the coming together of three great Pacific democracies<\/a> to work \u2018more closely than ever\u2019 on shared security challenges:<\/p>\n

Our Trilateral Security Dialogue has added a new dimension to the value all sides place on alliance relationships … This quiet revolution in Japan\u2019s external policy\u2014one which Australia has long encouraged\u2014is a welcome sign of a more confident Japan assuming its rightful place in the world and in our region.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

After the lost decade of the 1990s, Japan began to redefine its regional role and itself, with the idea that it would become a \u2018normal nation\u2019.<\/p>\n

\u2018Towards being a more normal nation\u2019<\/a> was the title of the speech by the director of the Japan Institute of International Affairs, Makio Miyagawa, at ASPI\u2019s 2005 Global Forces conference: \u2018Anxiety about China\u2019s military build-up has heightened the sense of urgency inside Japan for re-evaluating its defence strategy and addressing new security realities.\u2019<\/p>\n

What started as dialogue between senior officials in 2002 shifted up in 2006 to the foreign ministers<\/a> of Japan and Australia and the US secretary of state.<\/p>\n

In 2007, Howard flew to Tokyo to sign the Joint Declaration on Security Cooperation<\/a> with Japan\u2019s Shinzo Abe.<\/p>\n

Howard said the agreement meant Japan would have a closer security relationship with Australia than with any other country except the US. The briefing line to Canberra correspondents was that Howard was willing for a more ambitious alliance treaty, but Tokyo was cautious.<\/p>\n

Australia would have preferred to sign a formal defence treaty<\/a>, Aurelia George Mulgan<\/a> wrote, but \u2018settled for the declaration in the hope of moving to a formal pact at some time in the future. The end game is, therefore, potentially much more momentous: a profound shift in the security architecture of the Asia Pacific.\u2019<\/p>\n

Whatever the spirit Howard intended, the agreement had no provisions for the parties to come to each other\u2019s aid if attacked, instead stating that \u2018Japan and Australia will, as appropriate, strengthen practical cooperation\u2019 between defence and security forces.<\/p>\n

Howard said the declaration built a \u2018strategic dimension\u2019 to the partnership: \u2018Japan had become, to most Australians, a key partner, economically, and now strategically.\u2019 In his memoir<\/a>, Howard wrote that \u2018China\u2019s great power ambitions\u2019 meant that \u2018one of the shrewdest foreign policy thrusts of the Bush Administration was to encourage the trilateral security dialogue between the United States, Japan and Australia. The possibility of extending it to include India, thus creating a quadrilateral dialogue, was raised during the Bush presidency.\u2019<\/p>\n

The trilateral was \u2018an unexceptional way of providing a democratic counterbalance to China\u2019, Howard said, and was a \u2018democratic riposte\u2019 quietly welcomed by some of the smaller nations of the region.<\/p>\n

ASPI\u2019s Rod Lyon said the 2007 Australia\u2013Japan declaration confirmed that the Asian security order was moving into a new phase<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Although the pact is limited in its scope, it heralds an age when Asian great powers will be more engaged in the regional security architecture, both as players in their own right and as \u2018partners\u2019 to other regional countries. This phase of Asian security will probably take ten to twenty years to run its course. But when it has finished, the age of US hegemony in Asia will have ended. The US might well still be the strongest player, even then, but Asian security arrangements will have taken on many more of the characteristics of multipolarity.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The security agreement and the start of negotiations for an Australia\u2013Japan free trade agreement were both surprises, according to George Mulgan. Since the 1970s, this had been a relationship of \u2018rather dull predictability<\/a>\u2019. Much, though, was shifting. In May 2007, she noted, China had assumed Japan\u2019s position as Australia\u2019s largest trading partner.<\/p>\n

Japan was hedging against China, George Mulgan said, but also the danger that the US would swing towards China and downgrade the importance of Japan:<\/p>\n

Japan fears being isolated by the US and China on East Asian strategic issues. Hence, it wants to create a Japan\u2011centred economic and security system in which it can exercise influence independently of both China and the United States. Building a direct security link with Australia (and India) provides a convenient vehicle for Japan to exercise greater strategic autonomy.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In December 2007, the 1.5-track dialogue conducted by ASPI and the Japan Institute of International Affairs discussed a \u2018maritime coalition<\/a> centred on the Japan\u2013Australia\u2013US trilateral alliance\u2019, how to respond to \u2018strategic shocks in Asia\u2019, the \u2018impacts of China\u2019s rise on the Asian international system\u2019, the role of the two nations in the emerging Asia\u2013Pacific security architecture, and prospects for the Australia\u2013Japan security relationship.<\/p>\n

Apart from Japan and Australia, speakers at the two-day conference mentioned the US 62 times, India and the Indian Ocean 116 times, and China or the East China Sea got 466 mentions.<\/p>\n

Drawn from the book on the institute\u2019s first 20 years:\u00a0<\/em>An informed and independent voice: ASPI, 2001\u20132021<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

ASPI celebrates its 20th anniversary this year. This series looks at ASPI\u2019s work since its creation in August 2001. 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