Since Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe took office, there has been an escalation in tensions with China in the East China Sea.
Abe has overseen national security strategic shifts — establishing the National Security Conference, revising the National Defense Program Guidelines and reinterpreting the country’s pacifist constitution to allow the Japan Self-Defense Forces to exercise collective self-defense.
Many view this as an opportunity for Taiwan to rewrite its national security relationship with Japan, saying Taiwan should try to purchase submarines from Japan, or encourage Japan to enact its own version of the US’ Taiwan Relations Act. Nevertheless, amid this optimism, Taiwan must make a practical assessment of the structural limitations of any security cooperation with Japan.
Your enemy’s enemies are not necessarily your friends, especially within the complex Asia-Pacific security situation, where alienating others is not advisable. In China, Taiwan and Japan have a shared adversary, but for different reasons: The tensions between Japan and China are born of different factors from the fraught complexities plaguing cross-strait relations. The latter would prove a headache for Tokyo, while the former, with their frequent nationalist overtones, would give Taipei pause.
Therefore, even if Japan is readjusting its strategic considerations, it remains difficult, especially in the short-term, for Japan to enter into a cooperative relationship with Taiwan. To expect Japan to sell Taiwan weapons that even the US, with its legal obligations, is reluctant to commit to, is overly optimistic.
Under self-imposed constraints in Japan’s post-war constitution, Japan has limited itself to tending its own backyard in terms of military matters.
Taiwan and Japan have maintained amicable bilateral trade and cultural ties, but the two countries have been slightly cooler on cooperation on national security issues, due to differences in their circumstances. There has been little practical cooperation beyond sharing intelligence and meetings between various personnel.
Abe’s focus has been on furthering Japan’s military alliance with the US to complement cooperative initiatives with Pacific rim countries like Australia and the Philippines, reinforcing the US’ strategic shift of focus to the Asia-Pacific, but this has also annoyed a China set on being more dominant in the region.
Japan ruffling China’s feathers will not help Taiwan’s case. The thing that will help Taiwan is how it highlights anew the nation’s geo-strategic importance. Nothing has changed in Taiwan’s size or geographical coordinates, but its geo-strategic importance depends upon how other nations view it within the context of their own strategic planning.
For Tokyo, trying to reassert its geo-strategic gravity in the Asia-Pacific, Taiwan’s importance is amplified by its very proximity, compared with Guam, Washington or Canberra, and its greater significance than countries like the Philippines, despite their actually being closer than Taiwan.
Taiwan’s national defense must go beyond the traditional framework, and be expanded from just within the Taiwan Strait context to the wider Asia-Pacific, and from being limited to territorial security to encompassing regional security.
The nation needs to be more engaged internationally, maintaining security in shipping lanes in the open seas and being more involved in humanitarian aid, environmental protection and data security, and thereby gradually creating the environment and need for systematic security cooperation with Japan.
Otherwise, when friends come calling, they may be scared off by the trouble we could bring.
York Chen is an assistant professor in the Graduate Institute of International Affairs and Strategic Studies at Tamkang University.
Translated by Paul Cooper
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