Japan's 'Free and Open Indo-Pacific' Strategy: Tokyo's Tactical Hedging and the Implications for ASEAN.

AuthorKoga, Kei

Japan's relations with Southeast Asia are at a crossroads. Faced with rapid changes in US-China relations, Japan has begun to reevaluate the utility of the existing political and security frameworks in East Asia, including regional institutions led by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and the US-Japan alliance. Potentially, this reassessment of regional security could lead Japan to re-orient its regional strategy in the future.

Over the past decade, Japan has significantly enhanced diplomatic and security cooperation with ASEAN, particularly since 2013, when Prime Minister Shinzo Abe visited all ten member states and ASEAN and Japan held a commemorative summit the same year. (1) In 2016, Japan issued the "Vientiane Vision" which reaffirmed Japan's commitment to the enhancement of ASEAN member states' defence capabilities, while facilitating regional coast guard capacity building. (2) In addition, Japan has indicated its respect for ASEAN unity and centrality, and attempted to recast the East Asia Summit (EAS) so as to transform it into "the premier political and security forum in the region". (3)

However, for Japan, ASEAN's strategic utility in East Asia has its limitations, as demonstrated by the lack of internal consensus which prevented the organization from explicitly endorsing the July 2016 Arbitral Tribunal ruling which rejected China's jurisdictional claims in the South China Sea represented by the so-called "nine-dash line". Moreover, China's influence has grown beyond the maritime domain. It has begun to enhance its political and economic influence across Asia not only through increased trade and investment, but also infrastructure development assistance, most notably via President Xi Jinping's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Despite the Obama administration's "pivot/rebalancing" policy towards Asia, US effectiveness and commitment continues to remain uncertain, particularly since President Donald Trump took office in January 2017.

It is in this context that Japan declared a new strategic initiative, the "Free and Open Indo-Pacific Strategy" (FOIPS) in 2016. Essentially this initiative is aimed at maintaining the existing regional order based on US preponderance by readjusting the regional strategic balance. More specifically, FOIPS has the following aims: to ensure America's continued commitment to the region; to check and balance China's growing influence; and to mutually empower ASEAN, Australia and India through coalition building and capacity building support. (4) While Australia had already articulated its Indo-Pacific concept in 2013, and India had discussed its Indo-Pacific concept in conjunction with Prime Minister Narendra Modi's

"Act East Policy" as early as November 2016, FOIPS only gained international attention after President Trump announced America's "Free and Open Indo-Pacific" vision in November 2017. (5) As this Indo-Pacific concept was heavily influenced by Japan's FOIPS, many have speculated that Washington and Tokyo seek to contain China in the Indo-Pacific region. (6)

The problem is, however, that the initial conceptual vagueness created not only speculation but also confusion among policymakers and researchers. (7) This confusion is caused by four factors. First, the basic principles of FOIPS are nothing new, because they are based on existing international rules and norms such as freedom of navigation, the rule of law and an open economy. (8) Second, the geographical scope of FOIPS--ranging from the Pacific Ocean to the Indian Ocean--placed Japan's emphasis on strengthening its relations with regional powers, namely, India and Australia. However, this geographical scope is not necessarily shared by other key partners, particularly the United States, and it remains unclear what concrete political and security collaboration they would facilitate. (9) Third, Japan implicitly emphasized the consolidation of quadrilateral cooperation among the United States, Japan, Australia and India--the so-called "Quad"--given their shared democratic values and perceptions concerning the rise of China. (10) Nevertheless, the strategic objectives and priorities of Japan's FOIPS have yet to be fully shared with its allies and partners. (11) Fourth, the role of ASEAN in FOIPS was missing in the initial phase despite its geographical location at the centre of the Indo-Pacific region.

Due to these conceptual ambiguities, some argue that the FOIPS is not a strategy per se--which would require clear objectives and the means to achieve them--but rather a strategic vision. (12) In fact, the Japanese government dropped the term "strategy" from FOIPS in late 2018 and began using "Free and Open Indo-Pacific" (FOIP) instead. (13) However, fundamental questions remain: Why has Japan created such an ambiguous vision by repackaging international principles it has long supported? What are the strategic objectives of FOIPS/FOIP? What institutional frameworks does Japan aim to utilize, especially given Japan's emphasis on ASEAN centrality? How important is ASEAN's support for Japan's FOIP concept? Although the existing literature carefully traces the development of FOIPS, these questions remain largely unanswered. (14)

This article argues that by creating FOIPS Japan has engaged in "tactical hedging" to cope with the rise of strategic uncertainty caused by China's growing economic power, military might and political influence in Asia and America's uncertain commitment to the region under Trump. Tactical hedging refers to a declaratory policy doctrine that aims to utilize temporal strategic ambiguity to understand and determine whether any long-term strategy shift is necessary or possible. In doing so, Japan has bided its time to understand strategic trends and coordinate policies and principles with allies and partners--especially the United States and ASEAN--and shaped the concept of FOIPS in accordance with their consultations since 2016. Nevertheless, the emerging trend, especially the clear division between the Trump administration's more hardline policy towards China, on the one hand, and ASEAN's own conceptualization of the Indo-Pacific, which aims to facilitate cooperation with China, on the other, indicates that Japan needs to clarify its political vision in the near future if it wants to maintain its own FOIP concept as a viable strategic vision.

This article consists of five parts. The first section discusses the concept of tactical hedging; the second and third sections explain the historical origin and evolution of Japan's FOIPS, respectively; the fourth section analyses Japan's diplomatic approach to ASEAN and the individual member states and their responses; and the last section discusses the implications of Japan's FOIP concept for the region.

Tactical Hedging and Japan in the Indo-Pacific Region

Tactical hedging refers to an ambiguous, temporal declaratory policy doctrine that helps an actor bide time to determine whether the status quo policy will be appropriate for ensuring its own security in the long term. It is activated when the actor faces strategic uncertainty, and by creating an ambiguous concept, the actor can modify the meaning of the policy as the strategic situation changes. As such, the concept is inherently evolutionary.

Unlike other traditional state strategies in the field of International Relations, such as balancing and bandwagoning, tactical hedging does not aim to immediately alter the shifting power configuration in the region or the world. (15) It is also different from conventional hedging behaviour, which is conceptually located between balancing and bandwagoning in the balance of power theory. More specifically, conventional hedging is defined as "a state behaviour that attempts to maintain strategic ambiguity to reduce or avoid the risks and uncertainties of negative consequences produced by balancing or bandwagoning alone". (16) In this sense, tactical hedging is conducted before a state makes firm strategic choices rather than being a state's strategic behaviour itself. This classification is useful in understanding the nuance of state action and preventing a certain declaratory policy from being easily labelled as balancing, bandwagoning or hedging.

Specifically, there are three characteristics that differentiate tactical hedging from conventional hedging. The first characteristic is the time span. Tactical hedging is ultimately a temporal, short-term declaratory policy doctrine for the state to utilize its strategic ambiguity in order to defer from having to immediately make a strategic choice of either balancing, bandwagoning or hedging, while conventional hedging by itself is a long-term strategy. (17) In other words, as the ambiguities of the doctrine lessen, the utility of tactical hedging diminishes, and it is eventually expected to be subsumed by a long-term strategy. The second characteristic is the anticipation of environmental change. Admittedly, a shift in the balance of power would likely force the state to reassess, and possibly change, its existing strategy. This is true of those states which conduct both tactical and strategic hedging. However, tactical hedging is based on the existing strategy of either balancing, bandwagoning or hedging, and the state has already anticipated a potential strategy change in the future. On the other hand, conventional hedging is a strategy that the state does not expect to change in the short-term, although it might be forced to do so if there is an abrupt change in the strategic environment. The third characteristic is the exclusivity/inclusivity of behaviour. Tactical hedging can be conducted concurrently with existing strategic behaviours as its declaratory policy doctrine is ambiguous enough to be interpretively consistent with the existing strategy. On the other hand, conventional hedging cannot co-exist with pure balancing or pure bandwagoning as it is a long-term state strategy...

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