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ABSTRACT
The article uses Strategic Narrative Theory to explain how NATO has successfully communicated narratives of “natural partnership” and cooperative security to Japan. Japan strongly perceives NATO to be an embodiment and guarantor of global norms and international law. NATO and Japanese security commentators make a clear and consistent linkage between Russian and Chinese threats to international law respectively, as part of an extended deterrence strategy. We refer to this approach as one of “strategic parallelism.” Less positive dimensions of Japan–NATO relations are also considered: a significant majority of Japanese elite interviewees are critical of NATO’s handling of Russia and believe that this will have implications for the defense of the rule of law in the East and South China Seas. Japan has also reached out diplomatically to Russia, seeking a rapprochement that further undermines joint commitment to strategic parallelism.
Notes
1. Laura Roselle, Alister Miskimmon, and Ben O’Loughlin, “Strategic Narrative: A New Means to Understand Soft Power,” Media, War and Conflict 7, 2014, no. 1: 71, 70–84. See, in particular, pages 76–9.
2. NATO, “Cooperative Security as NATO’s Core Task,” September 7, 2011, http://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/topics_77718.htm?selectedLocale=en.
3. “National Security Strategy of Japan,” (English translation) December 17, 2013, 1, http://www.cas.go.jp/jp/siryou/131217anzenhoshou/nss-e.pdf.
4. Anders Fogh Rasmussen, “NATO and Japan: Natural Partners,” NATO, April 15, 2013, http://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/opinions_99634.htm.
5. Shinzo Abe, “Japan and NATO as ‘Natural Partners,’” Prime Minister of Japan and his Cabinet, May 6, 2014, http://japan.kantei.go.jp/96_abe/statement/201405/nato.html.
6. “National Security Strategy of Japan,” 4, 5.
7. Nikkei Asian Review, “Tokyo Encouraging Banks to Lend more in Russia,” November 2, 2016, http://asia.nikkei.com/Politics-Economy/Policy-Politics/Tokyo-encouraging-banks-to-lend-more-in-Russia.
8. NATO, “NATO’s Relations with Japan,” April 7, 2016, http://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/topics_50336.htm.
9. NATO, “Wales Summit Declaration,” September 5, 2014, http://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/official_texts_112964.htm.
10. NATO, “NATO’s Relations with Japan.”
11. Ibid.
12. Alessio Patalano, ‘“Natural Partners’ in Challenging Waters? Japan–NATO Co-Operation in a Changing Maritime Environment,” The RUSI Journal 161, 2016, no. 3: 42–51.
13. Takeshi Inoguchi and Paul Bacon, “Rethinking Japan as an Ordinary Country,” in The United States and Northeast Asia: Old Issues, New Thinking, edited by G. John Ikenberry and Chung-In Moon (Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield, 2008), pages 79–98.
14. Paul Bacon and Hidetoshi Nakamura, “Ordinary/Civilian, not Normative/Post-Modern: Lessons from the EU for Japanese Security Policy,” in EU–Japan Relations: Cooperation in the Shadow of Two Great Powers, edited by Alex Berkofsky, Christopher Hughes, Paul Midford and Marie Soderberg (New York: Routledge, 2017).
15. Tokyo Foundation “New Security Strategy of Japan: Multilayered and Cooperative Security Strategy,” October 8, 2008, 28, 36, http://www.tokyofoundation.org/en/additional_info/New%20Security%20Strategy%20of%20Japan.pdf.
16. Christopher Hughes, “Japan’s Strategic Trajectory and Collective Self-Defense: Essential Continuity or Radical Shift?” Journal of Japanese Studies 43, 2017, no. 1: 93–126, 93.
17. Justin McCurry, “China Accuses Japan of Threatening Pacific Peace with Military Law,” The Guardian, March 29, 2016, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/mar/29/china-accuses-japan-of-threatening-peace-in-pacific-with-new-law.
18. Abe, “Japan and NATO as Natural Partners.”
19. Ibid.
20. Ibid.
21. Ibid.
22. Taro Aso, “Arc of Freedom and Prosperity: Japan’s Expanding Diplomatic Horizons,” November 30, 2006, http://www.mofa.go.jp/announce/fm/aso/speech0611.html.
23. Shinzo Abe, “Asia’s Democratic Security Diamond,” Project Syndicate, December 27, 2012.
24. Aso, “Arc of Freedom and Prosperity.”
25. Ibid.
26. Abe, “Democratic Diamond.”
27. Ibid.
28. “National Security Strategy of Japan,” for example 2, 4.
29. Senior Defence Intelligence Official, August 14, 2015.
30. Senior Defence Thinktank Analyst, August 13, 2015.
31. Senior MOFA representative, August 7, 2015.
32. Member, “Advisory Panel on National Security and Defense Capabilities,” August 6, 2015.
33. Senior defence thinktank analyst, August 13, 2015.
34. Michito Tsuruoka, “Japan-Europe Security Cooperation: How to “Use” NATO and the EU,” NIDS Journal of Defence and Security 12: 2011, 27–44, 31.
35. Professor, Japanese National Defense Academy of Japan, January 19, 2016.
36. Former Chief of Staff of the Joint Staff Council, JSDF, November 25, 2015.
37. Senior MOFA representative, August 7, 2015.
38. Member, Advisory Panel on Reconstruction of the Legal Basis for National Security, October 19, 2015.
39. Former Chief of Staff of the Joint Staff Council, JSDF, November 25, 2015.
40. Senior defence thinktank analyst, February 11, 2017.
41. Senior defence thinktank analyst, February 11, 2017.
42. Ewen MacAskill, “Mattis Threatens NATO with Reduced US Support over Defence Spending,” Guardian, February 15, 2017, https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/feb/15/nato-bedrock-of-us-defence-policy-says-general-james-mattis-defence-secretary-trump.
43. “Trump Says NATO ‘No Longer Obsolete,’” BBC, April 12, 2017, http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-39585029.
44. “Tokyo Encouraging Banks,” Nikkei Asian Review.
45. NATO, “Cooperative Security.”
46. Ibid.
47. Ibid.
48. Patalano, “Natural Partners in Challenging Waters,” 42.
49. “Pirates Capture Fourth Vessel off Somalia,” Maritime Executive, April 5, 2017. http://www.maritime-executive.com/article/pirates-capture-fourth-vessel-off-somalia.
50. Patalano, “Natural Partners in Challenging Waters,” 45.
51. Ibid.
52. Ibid., 46.
53. Ibid.
54. Christopher Hobson, Paul Bacon, and Robin Cameron, eds., Human Security and Natural Disasters (New York: Routledge, 2014).
55. Patalano, “Natural Partners in Challenging Waters,” 48.
56. “Pirates Capture Fourth Vessel,” Maritime Executive, http://www.maritime-executive.com/article/pirates-capture-fourth-vessel-off-somalia.
57. Senior and Editorial Staff Writer, Nikkei Shimbun, January 13, 2016.
58. Paul Kallender and Christopher Hughes, “Japan’s Emerging Trajectory as a ‘Cyber Power’: From Securitization to Militarization of Cyberspace,” Journal of Strategic Studies 40, no. 1–2: 2016, 118–45, 119–20.
59. Yoko Nitta, “Japan’s Approach Towards International Strategy on Cyber Security Cooperation” (paper presented at the East-West Institute Worldwide Cyber Summit, November 5, 2013), 4, http://cybersummit.info/sites/cybersummit.info/files/Japan_edited%20v2.pdf-FINAL.pdf.
60. Motohiro Tsuchiya, “Japan Needs Research on Cyber-Offense Capabilities for and After the Tokyo 2020 Olympic and Paralympic Games,” USJI Voice 24, March 16, 2017, http://www.us-jpri.org/en/voice/usji-voice-vol-24.
61. “Cyber Coalition 16: NATO’s Largest Cyber Defence Exercise,” SHAPE, December 1, 2016, https://www.shape.nato.int/2016/cyber-coalition-16-ends-natos-largest-cyber-defence-exercise.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Paul Bacon
Paul Bacon is a professor of International Relations at Waseda University, Japan. His research interests include EU–Japan relations, NATO–Japan relations, human rights, and human security. In 2016/17, three of his co-edited Routledge monographs, The European Union and Japan, Human Security and Japan’s Triple Disaster, and Human Security and Natural Disasters, appeared in paperback. Professor Bacon has also published more than 30 book chapters and articles in respected international relations journals
Joe Burton
Dr. Joe Burton is a senior lecturer in the Political Science and Public Policy Programme and the New Zealand Institute for Security and Crime Science, University of Waikato. His research focuses on regional responses to transnational security challenges, most notably cyber security, with a focus on the Euro-Atlantic and Asia-Pacific regions.