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ABSTRACT
The United Kingdom (UK) and Japan have conducted unprecedented military exercises as each other’s closest security partners in Asia and Europe, respectively. Despite publicly avowed closeness, these military exercises were not predicated on formal alliance commitments or deterrence of common adversaries underpinned by shared threat perceptions. Addressing this puzzle, a hitherto-overlooked perspective of mutual strategic reassurance for trusted partners is proposed here. This paper derives hypotheses from existing – but relatively under-developed – literatures on military exercises and reassurances that locate the drivers of reassurance in the needs and weaknesses of the other. What stems from this starting premise is an importance placed on high-level diplomacy and adjusting military deployments to allay each other’s strategic concerns. These hypotheses are tested by presenting original interview data supplemented with discourse analysis of both primary and secondary sources. The findings suggest that effusive diplomatic language vowing politico-strategic support for each other, reinforced by ground-breaking military exercises mutually reassured UK concerns about retaining post-Brexit global standing and Japan’s apprehension over its dire geo-strategic context. While not quite deterrence or alliance, these military exercises enabled the UK and Japan to transform their predominantly trade-based relationship into a more defence-oriented one.
Acknowledgements
The author is indebted to the anonymised UK and Japan officials who kindly shared their views. Thanks also to participants at the First International Workshop by the Informal Empire Research Project (January 2020) and the SSU Forum/GrASPP Research Seminar on “The UK-Japan Joint Declaration on Security Cooperation” (February 2020), especially Kiichi Fujiwara; Chris Hughes; Ryo Sahashi; Chiyuki Aoi; Kazuto Suzuki and Ryo Ikeda. Adroit research assistance was provided by Kai Koki.
Disclosure Statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1. I thank Chris Hughes for this suggestion.
2. Interviews with MOFA officials B and C.
3. Interview with MSDF officer, MOD.
4. I thank Chris Hughes for this.
5. Interviews with FCO official A corroborated by MOFA officials A and B.
6. Interview with FCO official B and a point also made by Abe’s special advisor Tomohiko Taniguchi.
7. Interview with MOFA official A.
8. Interview with MOFA official D.
9. Interview with MOFA official C.
10. Interviews with MOFA official B and C, and MSDF officer, MOD
11. Interview with MSDF officer, MOD.
12. Interview with MOFA official B.
13. Interview with senior MSDF officer, MOD
14. I thank Chris Hughes for this.
15. Interview with FCO official B.
16. I thank Chris Hughes and interview with MOFA official B.
17. Interview with FCO official A corroborated by interviews with MOFA officials A and B.
18. Interview with FCO official B.
19. Interview with FCO official B.
20. Interview with MOFA official C.
21. Interview with senior MSDF officer, MOD and FCO official C
22. Interview with FCO official C
23. Interviews with FCO officials B and C corroborated by MOFA official C.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Yee-Kuang Heng
Dr. Yee-Kuang HENG is Professor of International Security at the Graduate School of Public Policy, The University of Tokyo, Japan