Bilateral Perspectives on Regional Security: Australia, Japan and the Asia-Pacific Region.

• Author: Rolfe, Jim
• Position: Book review

Bilateral Perspectives on Regional Security: Australia, Japan and the Asia-Pacific Region. Edited by William T. Tow and Rikki Kersten. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012. Hardcover: 279pp.

The region's major security stories recently have focused on the rise of China and America's so-called "pivot" or rebalancing of military forces towards Asia. A related story, which is arguably as important but not mentioned nearly as often, has been Japan's gradual moves to "normalize" its defence posture. The recent re-election of Shinzo Abe as Prime Minister in Japan might, according to a number of senior commentators, reinforce this trend as evidenced by, for example, Japan's tentative participation in operational tasks in Iraq, its active counter-piracy patrols in the Indian Ocean and off the coast of Somalia, attempts to redefine Article 9 of its Constitution, and moves to develop military links beyond those with its treaty ally the United States.

It is against that final context that the present volume has been produced. It is the collected and edited papers of scholars who have been working since 2008 to assess the implications for regional security of the 2007 Australia-Japan Joint Declaration on Security Cooperation. In thirteen chapters plus an introduction and conclusion, the editors and contributors traverse the domestic issues related to a closer military relationship between Japan and Australia, the dynamics of their security relationship, and the regional and global ramifications of an intensified relationship. In the words of the editors, the "security relationship is proving to be adaptable to rapid and historical structural changes", defence relations fit "with the emerging strategic doctrine of their mutual senior ally", and these relations supersede "traditional post-war alliance politics by being less threat-centric and more nimble instruments of strategic reassurance" (p. 241).

The book is timely. It provides a very useful background to this developing relationship and a range of insights concerning its utility.

Part 1 of the volume--the interplay of domestic and international factors leading to the closer relationship--is, perhaps inevitably, backward looking and focuses heavily on Japanese politics. The three chapters contain a good deal of useful detail and alternative views, but only one is devoted to the debate within Australia, a reflection, perhaps, of the relative interest in the topic in the two countries.

Part 2...