 Welcome back to session three. My name is Brendan Taylor. I'll be the chair of today's session which is looking at opportunities to deepen the Australia-Japan US Strategic Partnership. I'd just like to begin by thanking Rory McRaff and colleagues at the NSC for the opportunity to be part of this panel today. We've got three really great speakers lined up, each of whom will speak to you for about 10 or 15 minutes each, starting off with Colonel Grant Nusham, who's a senior research fellow at the Japan Forum for Strategic Studies. Then an old friend and colleague, Dr. Ross Babbage, non-resident senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. For those of you who haven't caught it yet, Ross has just put out a very good and important paper on the South China Sea that I'd certainly recommend to you. And last but certainly not least, we'll hear from Professor Yuichi Hosoya from Kaio University. We'll hopefully have some time for Q&A at the end of the session, so it's out further ado. Could you please warmly welcome Colonel Nusham to the floor? Thank you for I'm glad to be here. One of the earlier speakers this morning mentioned something like the facade of a marine officer. With the implication it was like expecting a moron. So I'll see if I can live up to that. Okay, now obviously what I'm talking about is real concrete opportunities for trilateral cooperation between the Americans, the Japanese, and the Australians, actually in the reverse order. And when I was in Sydney for a day before I got here, so I got up early in the morning and I went out to get Pud Lova for breakfast, and I ascertained that this is not the custom. So I kept going around the harbor by the Opera House and then went round again by the Botanic Gardens, and then I came around a corner and behold, there was an amphibious ship, and then there was even another amphibious ship, and then in the middle there was an old amphibious ship. Now this almost made up for the absence of Pud Lova, because I like amphibious ships. I like amphibious things for some reasons I'll get to. Now the the the submarine deal that failed, I'll just mention this very quickly. I think that's a blessing in disguise. I can imagine what would have happened once MHI had to deal with Australian labor unions. It could be that the Japanese and the Australians ended up hating each other. Now but that's it's gone away, but that said there's the opportunity to deepen Japan and Australian defense relationships with the knock-on psychological and political effects is offered by these ships by the oops by this thing. I saw it again later once the Sun had really come up. These amphibious ships, the amphibious capability and the development of this gives you an opportunity to really deepen the relationship in some meaningful ways, and obviously Japan has now, or Japan has got a smallish amphibious capability that's getting a bit better, but it's certainly serviceable. Australia is a bit ahead and will have a battalion, basically has a battalion-sized capability either now or really soon. And there's something qualitatively different about amphibious training, about merging amphibious capabilities. I would compare it to crossfit training where you have to exercise air, sea and ground capabilities together. It's exponentially more difficult than, say, sending a platoon of GSDF Japanese Army to Talisman Sabre, which is, you know, it's better than nothing, but not by much, but compared to amphibious, if you could join the amphibious units or capabilities together, then you're getting some, say, the crossfit training. Otherwise, it's kind of like lifting up a little weight with your right arm, and you have no idea what your other arms are going to do. But the crossfit, when you do an amphibious exercise, get together, figure it out and do it, you suddenly had to build every muscle in the body, and that's how you get better. Now the, it's also, there's a couple things that amphibious capability does. It forces jointness. It forces the Army, Navy and Air Force to cooperate. Otherwise, you can't do that, that kind of operation. And that is a shortcoming in every military, just everywhere. Additionally, it forces sort of external jointness, where when you get together with a foreign country, a foreign country's amphibious force, and try and figure it out, you have suddenly done something much more complicated and deeper than just the rudimentary, almost pro-forma exercises that take place in parallel, ended up with a barbecue where everyone declares everything is fine. Also, what you get out of an amphibious, working together amphibiously, is you develop a useful operational capability. You can actually, then you suddenly have the ability to take men in equipment from ship to shore and back again, and until you have that amphibious capability, you can't do it in any useful way. And this capability is immediately useful, and particularly in HADR, Humanitarian Assistance, Disaster Relief Operations. You saw the Australians just last year, had with their new amphib force, they sent it over to Fiji after a storm, did very well. The Japanese in 2013, towards the end, they sent basically three ships down to the Philippines after the big hurricane, and did pretty well. And that was based on their rudimentary amphibious capability that they had put together about four months before that. It's worth noting that after the tsunami in 2011, because Japan had no capability, they let about 3,000 to 4,000 people freeze to death in the first 24, 48 hours, because they did not have the ability to do amphibious operations. So there's a really practical usefulness to it. Also I would note that 90% of the things of the know-how, the hardware that you have to have in order to do an amphibious operation is identical to what you use for war fighting. It's 90% the same at least. The only difference is you're not hitting the launch switch and trying to kill people. More often than not, you're doing HADR operations. Now additionally, and I mentioned it earlier, there's a psychological effect of doing this kind of sophisticated military-to-military training. And it's a political effect, psychological effect, force builds up its confidence, it builds up its confidence and familiarity with its counterparts. And this has a way of translating into, say, things beyond the military realm. And as I said, this is amphibious training is infinitely better than, say, the pro-forma feel-good sort of training and exercises, which many people are very happy with. Now how do you bring this about? Now I'll start with the Japanese and the Australians, because that's really what we need, in my opinion, is to have the Japanese and the Australians get together and actually do something and put simply do an amphibious operation, an exercise, either in Australia, up in Japan, do it in Guam, start small. Even just a couple ships is fine. Maybe give it an HADR focus, but you have to go through the planning required. You have to do the cross-decking where you can put Japanese on Australian ships and Australians on Japanese ships, you can fly your aircraft helicopters from one ship to another, and you're really exercising all the body parts. And the objective is to be able to operate well enough together to do a real-world operation. And that's compared to most exercises, that is a fairly tall order, but that's the objective. Let's say they start small and start with the Australians and the Japanese, you have the hardware, go ahead and do it. Now, where does the Americans fit into this? U.S. involvement would be nice, but I would suggest it's not essential. It would be good to have American Navy and Marine advisors in on this, and maybe perhaps an American ship might join in, but as I said, it's important that the Japanese and the Australians take the lead on this. Historically, it's been the Americans who, like the Harlem Globetrotters, go around the region and have these amphibious exercises and they show how terrific they are, and they might let somebody from the audience come in and they'll hold them up and let them drop the ball through the hoop, and they go away, and they've established kind of a cargo cult of amphibiosity. And if the Americans aren't there, nobody seems to get any better. But what you need is the other people in the regions to do things together, plus the significance of Japan and Australia doing this kind of sophisticated training. It has once again a political effect, and that's worth doing. But going off on a small tangent, what you can do immediately, both the Australians and the Japanese, is take advantage of what's of an American Mu ARG, the Amphibious Ready Group Marine Expeditionary Unit, like the 31st Mu. And these go all around, and there's no reason you cannot plug and play while you cannot put an Australian ship into this and a Japanese ship into this. And this could be done anytime that the will is the desire is there. And just doing that alone would have immense significance to be operationally useful. Additionally, you'd learn a lot, and once again there is a real significance to this sort of thing. Now, looking out, sort of back on track now, looking out a few years if the Australians and the Japanese can make some progress with the Amphibious angle, then invite in a few select countries to maybe join in perhaps Singapore, Indonesia, Vietnam. But don't invite everybody at once. And then gradually, maybe what I would suggest is go aim for something like an Amphibious RIMPAC. You have in Hawaii this RIMPAC exercise, which is a very exclusive party to which everybody in the neighborhood is invited. And they do some of everything, so they end up not doing some of the things they should be doing. But an Amphibious RIMPAC, say sponsored by the Japanese and New Zealand, is something to aim for. Additionally, once you can, if you can make some progress here, why not the possibility of using Amphibious capability, particularly for HADR operations, to try and get, use that as the thing around which a sort of regional force could coalesce. The idea has been raised before, but it just takes some imagination. Now, the key to a lot of this, if you want to make progress, and this is based on my experience, is that if you need to have liaison officers, the Australians send them up to the GSDF and the MSDF, the Japanese send them to the Australians. If you don't have them, this simply becomes something like a once a year convention which everyone goes to, has fun and goes away. But a liaison officer there who is not there to answer the mail and have a neat time, but rather to further Amphibious capabilities and linking these things. That's what you need. I've had senior Marine officers tell me that we have 60, and I've suggested having American LNOs put around the region, that we have 16,000 active duty Marine officers, we have twice as many reserve ones, but we don't have a single one available for liaison officer work. Nor do we have five cents. So anyway, that's one of the challenges you will face. So if you can do the... Once again, you can see what I think of Amphibious capability and its usefulness for actually doing something concrete for the particularly Japan-Australia relationship, both defense and political relationship. The Americans can get worked into this anytime very easily, but they should ideally not take the lead but support it in every way possible. If you do that, you've done something good, plus nobody will even remember the submarine deal. Now, the last thing I want to go over, because I think everyone probably agrees with what I've said, in principle at least, you will find that there's any number of senior officers who can give you 10 reasons why a good idea is a bad one. And I'll go over these ideas, and I've heard every one of these from Americans and Japanese collectively, but I just want to inoculate to them. Inoculate, you have no money, we have no ships, we have no fuel, we don't have any officers available. It's too far away to go do it. We've never done it before. We already have the capability since we have an amphibious ship. We did an exercise once. Why do we need to do another one? We sent a platoon to Talisman Sabre. We have an amphibious capability. It's too hard, we're too busy. We're busy in the Middle East. That's a good one, that works perfectly, particularly for the Marines. And the Chinese will complain. Now, if you drill down on all of these, just keep asking, and what do you come up with? The real reason is, well, we don't feel like it. Well, you should feel like it. But anyway, I want to leave you with something. This is it. The one thing to remember is the potential benefit, usefulness of amphibious capability, and this amphibious RIMPAC held down in Australia or somewhere in Guam or somewhere, figured out. That's the thing that you should keep in mind, and that's sort of the objective. It's a few moves out, but if you remember nothing, when you hear about trilateral, bilateral cooperation, amphibious capability development is an excellent way to do it. And this amphibious RIMPAC, if that's your end state, that'd be pretty good as well. And I'll end with is, I was here a few years ago, and I was in Hunter Valley to speak at a thing, and I really wanted Pavlova, because I liked the stuff, and I went in and looked everywhere. I had the hotel concierge try to track some down, and he was unsuccessful, so I even went to a bakery in this little place, and I said, you have Pavlova, and the lady says, why don't you ask your grandmother to make it? And I still haven't found it, but thank you very much. Let me say it's a special pleasure to be back here at ANU amongst friends and colleagues and addressing really a pretty important topic. My aim this afternoon is to be very brief and very clipped, and really to throw out some points for consideration and hopefully a bit of discussion. I really want to build on some of the broader points, very excellent points that were made by a range of folks this morning. I don't want to try and repeat them. But what I'm going to focus on a bit like the way Grant has is some of the practical issues. What are some of the practical things we could seriously consider doing to build, if you like, more meat on the bones, more muscle, if you like, to some extent, on the bones of these trilateral relationships we have. Okay, I'm not going to address this at all. Really, except to say this is my top 10 for those, why should we bother? And there are occasionally people who say that, not many actually, I'm glad to say. But there are many other reasons why we should be doing this, but there are some of the points that I've got up there. So I'm going to just touch quickly on 12 options or issues. My first one is this. We don't really have a strategy. We don't have a strategy for how we should be managing China and for that matter, we don't really have a very well-developed strategy of handling North Korea and some of the broader security issues. So my first question is this. What is the outcome we want? If you're going to have a strategy, you better work out where we're going or where we want to go. Are we clear what we want the region to look like in five years' time or in 10 years' time or perhaps further down the field? If we can define that and I suggest we should be doing this together, then I think it's possible to start considering a range of options for strategy. Now in Washington, there are a range of options being tossed around by various people. This is just four of them. I'm not going to dwell on them. Denial strategy is not just a physical denial. This is actually to deny an opponent or a competitor the political, economics, social, whatever they may be, advantages that they may think they're winning by acting overassertively, aggressively in a destabilizing way. Costive position is pretty obvious. Make it expensive for them in not just economically in a whole raft of other ways. Thirdly, understand the other guy's strategy and undermine it. And the last one is, well, if you think of strategy in the context, if you're going to get what you really need, you need the other side to change the leadership on the other side to change their mind. How do you pressure the other leadership on the other side to change their mind? How do you do it? And in some of the work that's been done recently in the South China Sea, it's been very interesting because most people we've spoken to in the early research stage immediately said, well, there's only three or four options we've got and almost everyone's highlighted diplomatic and military options. The conclusion after consideration in closed workshops with some very senior people was actually some of the most powerful and effective options were neither diplomatic in a formal sense or military. I'm not saying they're irrelevant, but they did include elements of all those. So what we're talking about here, depending on what your strategy is, is selectively taking a range of instruments and there are many, many more measures than most people will have thought about yet and putting them together in various ways to have the effect you really want on getting change. And for those who are interested in this whole strategy development process you may want to have a look at this. Brendan mentioned earlier, it's a very recent report we've put out on the strategy options in the South China Sea and it's available free on the CSBA website and also on the Strategic Forum website. The second thing I think, and I'm going to now accelerate, the second thing we really got to do is look at the mechanisms we've got at the moment for trilateral consultation. They're friendly, they're good in some respects, but they're pretty ad hoc, most of them. And I think it's time we thought more creatively about what we should be having. Both at senior government level, but I think also at the operational level and at the tactical level. We need to have better links. Again, maybe maybe this sort of proposal on a few of these operations could be one element of doing that. I think another thing when we think about, just for a second about the Australia-Japan element of the relationship there's one thing that I think is grossly underdeveloped. If those of us have been involved much of our careers in Australia anyway dealing with the United States there is a whole incredibly complex and sophisticated network of friendships, partnerships, business relationships, all sorts of things. Most of us know a lot of Americans, many of them are in senior positions, some of us know General Mattis and other people like that. And so the way we understand each other really has a, you know, it seriously reflects that level of personal intimacy you've got with lots of different people. I'd suggest to you, we have for Australians, most Australians including the official community that our networks in Japan are much less developed. And I think we ought to be doing more about that. And I think we ought to be thinking about how to do that. Part of it is to train more together including in staff colleges and similar ways. I think we also, in our trilateral work, we ought to be looking beyond the three of us to other things we ought to be doing together with other regional partners and friends. And one of the big themes that I believe in very strongly is we ought to be working very closely, in maritime Southeast Asia, but there are others, not least I certainly would include India in this, in looking at with them and talking with them in offline private discussions about what the security challenges, how they see their security challenges, and asking them what we can do to give them a hand. The idea is really, if Australia, the United States and Japan did similar things together and worked with some of these regional neighbours and friends in a true partnership way to help them build their resilience particularly against the external coercion, that would be a great advantage for them and for us. There's a lot of work, of course, that's happened in the last few years about regional C4ISR in particular, making what I'm talking about here is making most of Southeast Asia effectively transparent. And my thinking on this was some years ago was that well, there's a secret version of what's really happening in the maritime sphere and share that with our... with our relevant ASEAN friends and there's, I think, you know, that was sort of fairly readily agreed by many. What has surprised me is that many of my American colleagues believe it's possible to do pretty well what we're talking about here in an unclassified forum. The point I'm making here is to sort of speak about what the Japanese public opinion is or might be or perception of what's been going on particularly in the South China Sea and what's been going on in terms of the island building and the... now we have effectively just being finished now three air bases on three of the islands in the Spratlys. I think the Australian knowledge of that is really weak but it wouldn't be really weak if we actually were telling the public and the photography and showing them other things. It's obvious that before and after pictures are riveting and when I've occasionally briefed business groups in this... they're shocked but then they're angry why weren't we told and I think it's a fair point and I think it's a point about political leadership we need to get better at it and making the region more transparent I think ASEAN is being a very appropriate thing for democracies to do. Another option to consider is think about the problems the United States has and I'm not a pessimist in one respect I think the United States is and I think this Trump administration is dead serious about building and strengthening rebuilding if you like US military capability. It'll take time but there's a lot of things that are going to be coming down the pipe and I think we're also going to see more deployed forward over time. The problem with that for the Americans is that it's all very well to deploy more forces forward and already they've done some of that but they don't really have the exercise and range facilities to maintain currency and readiness levels to the level that they really need. Well, Japan has not a similar problem in some sense it's because of its geographic constraints there are many things it has trouble with doing in exercise activities but Australia has a competitive advantage we've got a lot of space we've got a lot of good exercise areas we could actually make these we actually could network them in new ways although there's a pretty advanced instrumentation on most of these range facilities already and make those things a more a valuable thing for all three parties and for our other partners in the region it would potentially over time build a lot of good relationships and do other things besides. I think it's we're getting close to the end group between the three of us of some shape or form to plan and think about talk about the sort of contingencies you may face and think about how we're going to handle them if they arise. I think there is scope for expanded intelligence cooperation for a range of reasons we're developing of course and we're acquiring many of the same technologies and systems at the moment the point I'd really like to stress here the tactical and local area in particular it's really important that we have better mechanisms for exchanging intelligence and operational information the last thing we want to do is be bumping into each other unexpectedly and we need to be working in a more coordinated fashion. I think as everyone has been several mentions of this this morning of course there have been significant developments with the United States and Japan about developing access agreements in recent months and years but I think there's scope for going quite a bit further and I think we're going to need it and we ought to be thinking creatively about how to best progress these agendas to make it easy for the three countries to work in and around our own theaters our own operating areas. I think there's scope also for considering how we can do a range of things in the cyber domain together there's a rock going on in some parts of this but I also think there's scope for helping our regional neighbors build their defensive capabilities there's some work going on there too but I think it's worth having a discussion about. One thing that I think we'd all agree on is we're seeing ballistic missile and for that matter cruise missile but particularly domestic missiles proliferating substantially right across the region and of course we've seen Japan deploy and now South Korea receiving United States THAAD and other capabilities and of course we have a number of naval combatants in Japan obviously the US and the 7th Fleet with capacities to operate in various forms of ballistic missile defense modes all of those are expensive but there are new things coming and what it might surprise so you to know is that all three parties in my view have some things to bring to the table Australia actually has some very advanced technology generally known in some elements of this which are likely to be pertinent and my last point is this I think there's scope for some joint defense development and production programs between the three countries I think there in particular it's interesting to contemplate between Australia and Japan and this is another way of thinking beyond the submarine but there are some things underwater that are not necessarily the major boats and cells that could easily be done and potentially with great advantage be done together that is Australia in certain areas and there's a range of other areas as well I think it's really worth thinking more creatively and considering how that can be done so that's a quick dance through of my top 12 there are, it seems to me my conclusions are fourfold, there are many more reasons than ever that we ought to be doing more together there are many opportunities and options it seems to me we'll only get where we want to go if we know where we're going and we really need to have a joint strategy beyond the priorities of the past because what we're looking at now is a rather different regional environment and we're going to have to do different things and preferably together more and we're going to have to get energetic about it thank you thank you very much for giving me the second opportunity to talk today because this is my second chance so my because in the morning I talked a lot so my talk should be brief to leave sufficient time for discussion with you all well, I in the morning I was quite pessimistic about the future of regional security challenges but I am more optimistic about the tri-lateral security cooperation for some reasons I will talk why in the beginning I like to talk why it is necessary because three countries, I mean United States, Australia and Japan are leading maritime nations in this area and also these three countries are leading democracies in this region from the point of view of value and norms and from the point of view of the nature of these countries' powers I think that it is really important for the three countries to deepen and broaden security cooperation particularly for the purpose of maintaining open understable seas open understable seas core concept of Japan's national security strategy which was published in December 2013 and since then Japanese security strategy or policy has been focusing on the importance of maintaining open understable seas for that reason I think that Japanese government has been critical to what China has been doing in South China Sea so to maintain open understable seas Japan needs partners but we think about partners, of course no doubt two countries, United States and Australia are the most important partners for Japan to do that so this is why the second thing is how we can do it we can deepen and broaden security cooperation among the three maritime powers there are several different levels the first level is operational level I think that from the operational point of view the three countries have already deepened to some extent security cooperation defense cooperation but there are other levels the next level is strategic level and it is already mentioned and maybe strategic coordination would be the most important perhaps area where three countries can do their difference about the understanding about the nature of Chinese power three powers basically I think welcome the economic growth of China but from the geographical differences I think that their conception about Chinese military power is quite different that's why I think two years before 2015 April 2015 Feng to government Chinese government and United States government agree on the new guideline for the US-Japan defense cooperation Feng it was published until then to government needed to really talk a lot about the fulfilling that gap between their understanding of China and so I think that the determination is very difficult but at the same time strategic differences understanding about the nature of Chinese military power is one of the most difficult point that three governments should talk more this is an important issue I agree I really think that three governments really need to talk deeply and negotiate deeply about on that point so this is a strategic level the other level is policy planning I think that on that point United States often produce new strategic concept and then I think Japanese government try to incorporate the new strategic concept into Japanese defense policy like A2AD or ASA battle A2AD operation and also ASA battle concept and so on that's why in 2010 and in 2013 Feng Japanese government created new Japanese guideline for national defense they introduced a new concept of dynamic defense force and by introducing this new dynamic defense force Japanese government can focus on both maritime self defense forces and air self defense forces to try to adapt to new American security concept so this kind of level of cooperation is also very important but I think that the fourth the fourth level will become to some extent the most probable and perhaps important that the fourth level is cooperation on the development of new defense equipment because Trump administration is very much interested in doing it together with Japan or other countries in the beginning of this month I visited Washington DC several conservative think tanks and I talked with some people who are close to Trump team and they not most of them but some of them focus on the importance of US Japan cooperation on defense development because this can produce of course American jobs and also this can produce stronger American defense and Japan should serve it of course it is it will be difficult for Japan to do it from Japanese national interest point of view we can deepen our defense cooperation but maybe Japanese government and of course Japanese business companies need to really think about what kind of way Japanese Japan can collaborate with the United States on that issue but anyway of course this can serve to strengthen trilateral security cooperation there are different levels of cooperation and in the beginning maybe Japanese government and Australian government need to understand what kind of level of cooperation the new US administration is really interested in by understanding it because it's not still it's not still clear so we need to clear the understanding about a new American new administration interest in deepening security cooperation it depends on that of course new administration shows no willingness to deny any kind of security cooperation of course in some areas of security defense cooperation I'm sure that the new administration under President Trump is interested in but it's not still clear so we need to clear have a clear understanding then finally I like to focus on Japanese approach to the security cooperation with these two countries among the three countries three maritime powers one of the biggest change which we saw of course is security bills until then the Japanese security cooperation with other partners or ally was extremely limited to just like a humanitarian assistance or disaster relief maybe that's all because if it's quite unnatural and strange well if Japan joining some computer simulation with United States Australia to do some joint exercise some areas of this joint exercise could be regarded as constitutional illegal and constitutional because it well according to cabinet legislation it relates to the exercise of the collective defense so Japan could not do this kind could not join in some areas of joint exercise with the United States or with Australian forces so after the passing of the security bill the government has cleared so many limits in deepening security cooperation and the biggest focus of the security bill is to build on security cooperation in the areas of first PKO and the second logistical support Japan from now on Japan can much deeply do it of course together with United States or together with Australian government or together with other forces so this is a big change so we now have much larger area of security cooperation which we could not have before the security registration but our focus is not combatting operations non-combatting operation is our focus logistical support and also PKO and particularly peacetime security cooperation is our main focus of security cooperation so in the peacetime there are so many things that we can do like joint exercise as I talked because there were so many limits in doing it as some of the military people fully understand perhaps so this kind of security cooperation in the peacetime is our focus and also PKO is another focus so there are some new areas that Japanese self-defense forces can do together with other forces and Japan national security strategy this should serve to maintain or create regional stability because it is written in Japan national security strategy document that our first priority of national security strategy is to maintain rule-based international order and I'm sure that Australian government can fully share this point of view and I'm also sure that the US administration can step by step fully understand the importance of maintaining rule-based international order so there are many areas and there are many possibilities and new frontiers but we need to focus on some areas we need to have some priorities because we cannot do everything and this kind of peacetime security cooperation in the peacetime and PKO logistical support and this kind of thing is of course I think Japan's focus from these areas I think that Japan can broaden security cooperation with particularly Australia and the United States and finally I'd like to say that it is usually thought or seen that Japan is a follower and America is a leader largely of course it's true but in some areas it's not true like a new guideline for defense cooperation between Japan and the United States this was initiated by Japan in the beginning US government didn't think that it is important or it is necessary of course it is important but at the same time United States government thought that it could use previous defense guidelines and Japan did not fully fulfill its requirements but Japanese government thought it was necessary and it is important because of the new security environment in East Asia and the person who actually launched the process was defense at the time defense minister Morimoto he as defense minister initiated the process and Prime Minister Abe actually succeeded in so it was a necessary process and Japan initiated it and once again I think that Japan and Australia by coordinating fully to government can lead in some areas of trilateral security cooperation to create to make trilateral security cooperation more constructive and more acceptable to other regional powers thank you very much well what we might do is to start off with a round of questions and comments from the floor and then give the panel a chance to respond to those if you could just identify yourself as you ask those your questions or make your comments it would be much appreciated so start off with Professor Kirsten oh hello Ricky Kirsten from Murdoch University I'd like to ask Professor Josiah if the US were to step back from its primary role in maintaining order and stability to what extent do you think Japan wants to or is willing to or is capable of filling a leadership gap in maintaining the liberal international system there's a question up there gentlemen up there my name is Mitchell Smith I'm from the Department of Immigration and Border Protection I noticed that you all three of you sort of focus more on the military side of cooperation I wonder if you believe that civil maritime cooperation such as through Coast Guards or in our case Coast Guards equivalent is an effective way to further the trilateral relationship I had a lot of great ideas my compliments to the thinkers up there for putting those together a lot of this is what we call in America motherhood and apple pie there's nothing that was said that anybody could argue against and would be received in all three countries I think how do we get this thing started I'll just address a couple of those the civil maritime cooperation it's a good idea the if you look at the size of the US Coast Guard you could probably fit the whole thing into this room one of my take is it's just too small to make a huge difference although that said one example of where there is a sort of a good opportunity for some bilateral cooperation would be to actually sort of bring a US Coast Guard cutter two of them maybe to Japan and have them do joint patrols down in the East China Sea around the Senkakus with the US Navy in the background that is one type on one's hind legs and biting back a bit that's one example of how it might be done if you need more ships build more so there's opportunities there but I see in terms of scale and actually the umph that it's the military that is probably where the biggest opportunities are not to overlook the civil cooperation the question about what Japan could do I'll leave that up to a real Japanese person and the question about how do you get going I'm convinced that if you leave it up to the captains and the majors you'll make progress and I'm not entirely joking you give it, it has to be the top dogs have to say this is what we want and then give it to some aggressive major on all sides and have them get it done I would note the Australian LNO to Marfor Pack most recently a fellow in Pat Davidson was a major and was basically responsible for the very good amphibious portion of the RIMPAC exercise and it was really through his efforts that it was done another option and this is the last one is an anecdotal thing is that Japan's amphibious capability they had none at the time of the tsunami and then 18 months later they were able to send three ships across the ocean to California to do something like an amphibious exercise you had people on the Japanese side who knew that this was necessary and they were and the Americans finally put a marine in Tokyo with implied orders to do something useful and don't ask permission and you're able to get this done in an ad hoc way and actually move things forward pretty well so it's kind of a screwy way that happened but ultimately if the top people on both sides is necessary just say this is what we want and then leave it up to the working class to get it done I think you can make progress but you have to somebody's got to say this is what we want Can I start with I think it's a might fit it back you really interesting question about well why do we focus primarily on the military when we got civil maritime cooperation and implied I think in the question and I hope you implied actually there's a whole lot of other things as well I think you're absolutely right I think a few quick observations I think part of the issue is that what we have in Border Protection Command is all very interesting but it's a bit different from both the US and the Japanese Coast Guard's forces and you know that raises some interesting questions they have they basically do different things and their relationships with their respective navies are a bit different and so on having said that I have noticed just in the last few weeks that the US Coast Guard is thinking seriously about doing more in the western Pacific with Coast Guard vessels it's worth looking at I think though the broader question which let me just drag something across the table which we haven't even touched on because we didn't really have I didn't have time anyway in my presentation you would have noticed that there were eight categories I think of possible action and I really only addressed one of them properly and even that you know was only superficial I'd suggest to you some of the biggest challenges will be when we get serious about how do we combine information ops how do we have proper information ops coordination between our three countries and other allies and friends because it's going to have to be I mean even if you want to count it in terms of a counter-ISIL campaign that is difficult to do extremely difficult to do and it's not frankly I don't believe we're really doing that well yet well then you get to there's a whole lot of other things there are some economic issues and financial measures that are possible to contemplate who in our respective countries thinks about coordinating the security aspects of some of those things together so the point I'm making here is I think it's going to be you're putting your finger on something which is abroad actually I think Australia maybe slightly better placed in terms of the civil maritime thing than some other countries but there's a broader problem and it's a much bigger one for effective strategy and that is the non-military, non-diplomatic elements of potential instruments how do we best coordinate those in our national security systems I don't think we've done that well for a long time and there are some people in the US that are looking hard about what and reprising if you like looking at what happened and what was done in the Cold War do we have to rebuild some of those in a sort of 21st century version interesting I don't know it's interesting to think about but you've put your finger on a broader issue so I haven't really addressed I think there's scope for civil maritime people to talk more and maybe do stuff to go and help some of the regionals in that space but I think it's a bigger set of issues there on the Michael Schuberge's point about a joint planning group how do we you know what could we do I think my suggestion is there we could actually have a joint planning group that to start with for a particular exercise or maybe a series of exercises to start you know I am a claim you know this is a bit of a Trumpism I mean a lot of people don't know those who haven't read Trump's books don't probably understand it's a bit like saying he should be why isn't he a foreign policy expert we've never had that training he's actually something else quite different well how is he behaving he's a behaving as a negotiating businessman that's how he's behaving and so his first step in every almost every step is to in every negotiation is to am but claim so I was putting in an am but claim a bit of Trumpism if you like for having a standing group for but I think what really is I think a good way to start would be on a particular fairly non-challenging exercise or maybe series of exercises would maybe a group that could be stood up but got to know each other well and did things and required that would be a really good start would that be controversial I don't think it would be controversial here I'm not sure whether it would be controversial in Tokyo it's a question of making the case seeing the logic if you want to have a good exercise you could argue we need these people to get to know each other and do it well I would have thought I don't think our ministers would probably have a big trouble with that my gut feeling I may be wrong I guess the other point I'd make about this is some of these proposals and how to get things moving a lot of it comes back to national leadership and James made a really terrific point and emphasised this morning I think he's absolutely right all of these countries at the moment driven primarily by domestic priorities and intensely so and when they're looking unless there's a crisis their dwell time in looking at most international stuff is fairly limited and to be frank also we're facing a generational thing where many of these people haven't really have to wrestle with especially international security issues if you go back a few years we had people who fought in the Vietnam war who were in cabinet and we had people who'd been in career and even in earlier times of course in the Second World War and they didn't need a lot of convincing well it's a bit different and I think it's probably you're seeing that reflected in all three countries in various ways although you know so it's not going to be simple but I think I like the idea I come back to the point of transparency if you put the facts in front of people very clearly and if you show them the pictures and you point out some of the consequences I think it can be a pretty riveting story about things need to be done I think the other thing though is in many of those areas including the ones that I listed we've already done doing a lot but we're just talking about reshaping and doing things differently and maybe more intensely in certain areas Thank you very much and the Japanese potential for leadership role in the region from a traditionally military point of view definitely the short answer is no Japanese military power is quite limited and Chinese military budget is four or five times bigger than Japanese difference budget and also Japan doesn't have expeditionary forces Japan has no forward deployment so the nature of Japanese military power is totally different from other parts such as the United States or China so in a sense there's no place any American role which the United States has been playing in the region but from a slightly different point of view it can be so because to do that maybe there should be two conditions one condition is political will and the second condition is the relevancy of Japanese power the first one is that Prime Minister Abe I think is willing to play a larger role in the region to, as I said to enhance rural-based international order in the region so he has will and I think that he has a broad political support among Japanese public about the nature of Japanese power I I don't know how relevant it is I will soon publish a book both in Japanese and English together with Yoichi Funabashi a very famous journalist and I co-authored a chapter on the Global Civiton Power 2.0 and we need to combine two things both Civiton Power and military power to play a larger role in the region and to do that I point out several examples one is ODA two years before the Japanese government changed the ODA policy to include some of the security aspects to bring peace and stability by using Japanese ODA it was prohibited but now it is possible this is one thing the other thing is joint Coast Guard as the second question actually means Japanese government has been helping other Asian countries to build up Coast Guards there are many Asian countries to build their own Coast Guards so they can now to some extent defend their own domain by themselves by having such Coast Guards of course to a limited extent but Coast Guards can be useful to avoid war and military clashes so that's why Japanese government is intentionally try to use Coast Guard to bring stability and to avoid any unexpected war so this is a Coast Guard the third one is so capacity building is a second Japanese method and also Japanese government is helping other Asian countries to educate some expert and official about law many many Japanese law professors actually go to Asian country to help their government to have much more sophisticated legal system so by having their own legal system they can understand what the rule of law means or how the rule of law is important not just in their own countries but in regional order as well so Japanese approach is quite indirect non-combatting is quite civilian oriented approach but Prime Minister Abe has been of course increasing some of the Japanese security activities or security cooperation with other countries that's why Japanese current strategy is different from previous strategy by combining both civilian and military areas but that approach is quite different from American approach or Chinese approach so I don't know how relevant it is if it's not relevant Japan can't become a leadership law can't become a leader in the region or can play some leadership role but if it is relevant to the extent it is relevant I think that Japan can enlarge its role in the region just a very quick one if I made the panel up how serious are we about trilateral cooperation when we can't agree on a bilateral reciprocal access agreement with Japan after years of of negotiation Ross's ideas of standing up in a strategic planning group and other initiatives like that seem to be very much dependent on being able to operate within each other's countries but it all seems to rest on these endless debates about privileges and immunities while the world has changed in the meantime thank you my name is Miles Cooper formerly with the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade and now I'm going to talk about the U.S. U.S. U.S. U.S. U.S. U.S. U.S. U.S. U.S. U.S. U.S. U.S. U.S. U.S. U.S. U.S. U.S. U.S. U.S. U.S. U.S. U.S. U.S. U.S. U.S. U.S. U.S. the Japanese government might be tempted to consider acquiring a nuclear weapons capability. John Blakson from the Strategic and Defence Study Centre. Look, I really enjoyed the presentations. A question that kind of came out of it in my mind was, I wonder how this is going to be perceived in Beijing? And does it matter? And if it does, what should we do about it? And how much should we let that thinking influence our choices on what we do? I might be interested in the panel's views on that. Thanks. Thank you everyone. My name is Cameron Noble from the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. This follows on a bit from Bill's question, but everyone has talked about the need to do more, including our esteemed Japanese speakers. The fact is that there's still a lot of opposition in Japan to whether it be the public, the bureaucracy or political circles, but Japan doing more, especially in terms of military activities. A lot of people don't see the greater, the value of doing more cooperation. Public opinion has changed slightly with China's growing assertiveness, but it's still a very slow process. So I'm just wondering, I was hoping to get the opinion of Dr Hosoya about how he thinks Japan is changing its attitudes both in all of those three circles. Thank you. Should we reverse the order this time and Professor Hosoya, would you like to start off and particularly in response to that nice question? Yes, difficult questions, but important ones. The last one, Japan should do more, particularly in military field and also the previous nuclear weapons. In Japan's national security strategy of 2013, it was written, it is included that Japan should respect three principles on nuclear, non-nuclear, and maybe within a few years Japanese government will produce the new one, new national security strategy. The point is further, the government or the government panel will include still the three principles on non-nuclear, because more and more countries in the region are having nuclear weapons. And among Japanese officials and also among Japanese public opinion, it's quite a small minority who advocate that Japan should have a nuclear weapons, because we need to, together with nuclear weapons, we need to have ballistic missiles or maybe nuclear submarines to maintain a second straight capabilities, or Japan is a small island, so it's very difficult to hide those nuclear weapons or missiles. So, from perhaps an operational and strategic point of view, maybe it's difficult for Japan to fully exploit or fully utilize the advantages of nuclear weapons. So, I personally think that Japan shouldn't and cannot have it, but maybe Japanese debates about nuclear weapons are more motivated and initiated by Japanese nationalistic feeling to have it, because North Korea have it, and now some of the experts in South Korea are starting to debate about that, on the importance of the possibility of allocating to have it. And some other Asian countries are interested in it, and if all other Asian countries have nuclear weapons, I don't think that the Japanese people deny the possibility of having our own. But until then, I mean, until for several future, I think that Japanese people and the voters and the government officials, political leaders, do not really have a strong will to have it, I mean, Japanese own nuclear weapons. And the last question about Japan should do more about military field. This is a very important question, because as I talked previously, that now there exist much less legal constraints. Beforehand, there exist many, many legal constraints to do some military activities. But now, because there are less legal constraints, now it is political will, whether Japan should spend more money or to do more military activities to contribute to international society. And I don't know whether the current Prime Minister, Prime Minister Abe, has a strong will to expand military activities so far I don't see, but there is a Prime Minister and Chief Cabinet Secretary Suga clearly deny Japanese operation, ISR operation in South China Sea, because it is dangerous. And the costly, we don't have sufficient ships. We use most of the ships in East China Sea. It is difficult to move our ships from East China Sea to South China Sea. And it is dangerous because we don't have between Japan and China any maritime communication mechanism so far. If we have, between the United States and China, they have it, but we don't have it. So it means that any unexpected clash will be some regional war. So I don't think that Japanese government is willing to undertake much broader security military activities except for our own national defence. Just briefly, really interesting question about status of the forces of agreements and the like and the difficulties of negotiating. I probably have the unusual background of having actually have to draft a couple of status of forces of agreement earlier in my career. And my enduring memory of it is the complexity and the need to tailor for specific circumstances some key issues. I'm not familiar at all and I'm not really going to comment on the current negotiations. Because I'm not familiar with what actually has been the stumbling blocks in this particular case or these cases. But I would simply say this. There have been cases in the past that I am aware of where it has been necessary to elevate to surprising high levels to clear away some obstacles or get some clear understanding, maybe even write some new words because a lot of status of forces of agreements, and this is I learnt early in the piece, use essentially the same words that are said between different countries or very similar and sometimes people get locked into positions which might need someone senior to shove them a little bit sideways in a better interest. But I don't know in this case. Just this, John Blacksmith made this really interesting point. What, should we worry about what Beijing thinks or does it matter? I guess the basic point is I think, I agree with James and a couple of other people this morning. I think we've been a little bit too timid on some aspects. I'm not saying we should be, you know, if we're going to have effective deterrence amongst close Western allies, we have to make it very clear that we have certain positions and we're prepared to do things about protecting those interests. And that's part of deterrence. That's the very foundational element. There have been times in recent years I'd argue that we haven't done that very well. And I think it's also not inappropriate amongst major allies, particularly there are some countries that can do more than others, the United States in particular can, sometimes leaving a bit of ambiguity and uncertainty in a competitor's mind. So they're rather more cautious than they otherwise might be. Now this has got to be done very carefully and with a lot of, you know, careful thought. But the point I'd make is sometimes we are a little bit too cautious about saying anything or hardly anything for fear that you might get a bad press report in the Beijing Daily. Well I frankly think we ought to be a little bit more grown up than that. But we also ought to be very careful. Not for me. Just a few comments. The first one about how can you make progress in all of this. It is true that sometimes when you negotiate with the Japanese about certain things you'd think you were negotiating with the North Koreans. I've told actually the environmental people in Australia or the equivalent when you try to bring equipment in. But nonetheless you find where you can make progress. Now you have these just paradoxical conundrums that it really seems like you're dealing with an enemy. And yet you are able to make progress. And I would cite the amphibious progress the Japanese have made in the last three years, which a guy who went to sleep five years ago woke up today and saw what the Japanese have, what they have done with it, wouldn't believe that it happened. And it's progress that has been made in the, whilst all these other, you know, the SOFA agreements, the Okinawa promises never get kept. But very considerable progress in this area. So you find where you can make progress. And things do move forward. Regarding the, what is it, the, what are the Japanese capable of? I, you know, speaking like a guy from Virginia, but I did live in Japan 20 years and they're capable of doing anything they want to do. Article 9 of the Constitution is a wonderful excuse for not doing anything Japan doesn't feel like doing. And I'm not being, I am being, I'm saying it in a funny way, but I'm serious. Before, but there's a sort of a mindset that manifested itself before the Gulf War. And guys from around the Koizumi were asking me, which mean they really scraped the bottom of the barrel in Tokyo. What is the, the question was, what is the least we have to do so George Bush will not be mad at us? You know, at which time I of course took offense at that. But, but that was their thinking. What's the least we have to do? Rather than what can we do to be helpful? So I say one underestimates what Japan is capable of at their own peril. They can do whatever they want to my way of thinking. The last one about worrying about what Beijing thinks. I wouldn't say don't worry about it, but it is possible to tie yourself into such a knot you are incapable of moving because you're concerned about what will China think. I would suggest that we've gotten ourselves into this fix in the South China Sea, where China's pretty much, almost got de facto control of it, or at least a hair's breath away, because we were so concerned about what China would think. But I think it is, and in, as Rosa said, that in foreign affairs, business as well, if the other side knows you are not automatically going to concede, that's a helpful thing to have. You want some uncertainty in that. But we have spotted China a lot of runs by that approach, and it will see what happens when it looks as though the new administration might actually take a different approach that isn't so concerned about what China thinks. It'd be good to make the Chinese wonder what the Americans think for once. So we'll see how that goes.