Japan and the US are immensely immportant to each other .............

GREG SHERIDAN

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,12370937%255E25377,00.html

Help for Japan pays off

February 26, 2005
THERE was a certain geo-strategic elegance about the Howard Government's deployment of 450 new Australian troops to Iraq. This elegance centres on Japan.

The Japanese aspect of this decision has been too little discussed. It is probably the case that even if Australia had not made this commitment, then some combination of British and-or US troops could have been found to guard the Japanese and thus they could have stayed in Iraq.
Nonetheless, Australia's deployment is designed in large measure to ensure that the Japanese stay in Iraq. Apart from supporting the general coalition operation, this brings two very distinctive Australian interests into play.
One is intensifying Australian military and diplomatic co-operation with Japan. This is pure regionalism of the highest order and demonstrates the way in which regional and global activism can reinforce each other.
Japan is the US's most important ally in Northeast Asia. Japan and the US are immensely important to each other. By deploying soldiers to protect Japanese Self Defence Forces in Iraq, Australia has simultaneously done a service to the US, Britain, which has responsibility for the overall area of Iraq, and Japan.

Japan remains our largest trading partner and the second largest economy in the world. Despite the scars of World War II, Canberra has been engaging in a slowly accelerating military relationship with Tokyo. This can only be good for us. Now, Australian and Japanese soldiers will be closely co-operating operationally, and doing so in a way that cannot raise any spectre of Japanese militarism.

That pay-off, in terms of Asian engagement, is gold. It is a perfect illustration of how Australia cannot optimise its regional position by rejecting global engagement. There is no contradiction between effective regionalism and participation in the broader task of maintaining the global security order. If they're managed with even a modicum of intelligence, they flow naturally into each other.
The other big Australian interest that is engaged by our action is the broader one of encouraging Japan to take a bigger and more assertive role on the international stage. Japan is, like Australia, a democracy and, also like Australia, a part of the US alliance system. It follows from this that Japan and Australia share many interests and values. It is enormously good for us to have Japan actively shape the international environment.
Australians have substantially missed the story of the revolution in Japanese defence and security policy that is under way.
For example, the day after the deployment was announced, an article in The Sydney Morning Herald commented that: "Iraq represented the first, historic deployment of Japanese troops overseas since World War II."
One notes this not to sling off at a colleague -- we all make mistakes, after all -- but to lament that even those with a claimed speciality in foreign affairs in Australia often know next to nothing about Japan.
The first deployment of Japanese troops overseas since World War II was, of course, in Cambodia, also very much under Australian tutelage. Since then Japan has deployed SDF forces in East Timor, Rwanda, Mozambique, the Golan Heights and Afghanistan, all before Iraq.

But the writer's innocence of Japanese policy development is symptomatic of the broader Australian neglect of quite fundamental changes in Japan's national orientation.
These changes are usefully outlined in a recent paper, Unsheathing the Samurai Sword, Japan's Changing Security Policy by Alan Dupont of the Lowy Institute.
During the past 10 years, Japan and the US have completely recast their military alliance. Traditionally, the alliance meant that the US provided for Japan's security. Japan did not make a reciprocal commitment to help provide for US security, even in the Pacific. Japan's only contribution was to provide bases for US forces in the Pacific.
These bases were, and remain, absolutely critical to the US ability to project military power in Asia, which in turn is the underlying guarantee of Asian security.

But now Japan feels itself free to provide all kinds of support, short only of actual combat, to the US in the context of the alliance. Further, Japan's remarkable Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi has embarked on a process designed to make Japan a "normal country".
Because of the atrocities it committed in World War II, Japan rightly adopted a pacifist constitution, which prevented it in theory from even maintaining a military. Thus we have the slightly absurd fiction of calling them Self Defence Forces, even though Japan has the third highest military budget in the world.
Japan also eschewed the right to collective defence. These and other constraints are enshrined in the constitution, but Japan is clearly moving to interpret these constitutional constraints out of existence or eventually to amend its constitution.
From Australia's point of view, this is a wholly desirable development. Japan has been an exemplary democracy for 60 years. Other nations, under previous leaderships, have committed atrocities comparable with Japan's -- Germany under the Nazis, China during the Cultural Revolution, the former Soviet Union over and over again. But now they are free to pursue normal security policies, to engage in collective security, to shoulder security burdens and to use their armed forces as a normal instrument of national policy.

Japan is moving into that position, too, and we should applaud this and do everything we can to foster it, which is part of what the Iraq deployment is about.
China is most uncomfortable with Japan's new assertiveness. Japan recently annoyed China by joining with the US to oppose the European Union lifting its arms embargo on China. In this Japan was braver than Australia.

Japan also recently issued a joint declaration with the US over Taiwan, calling for a peaceful resolution of the Taiwan issue (which means China must not use force to reunite with Taiwan) and calling for greater Chinese transparency in military matters (China is engaged on a massive arms build-up). All this took guts from Japan.
The Asia-Pacific region will have a much better chance of remaining peaceful if Japan and India emerge as natural, democratic counterweights to China. By deploying in Iraq, we have made that a bit more likely.