 Welcome to the National Security College. I'm Chris Farnham and we're here on the Strengthening Australia-Japan-US Strategic Cooperation Conference and today I'm here with Professor Yuichi Hissoya from the KO University and we're going to discuss the regional environment and the prospects and challenges for increasing trilateral cooperation between the three countries. Professor Hissoya, thank you very much for joining us. I'd like to start by talking about some of your recent work. You've talked how the United States and the United Kingdom have shaped and protected the liberal international order throughout the 20th century. What does Brexit and the election of Donald Trump now mean for that liberal international order? Yes, Anglo-American relations has been at the center of international community. They have created current international institutions and also they have created many, many important core values or norms in international community. But interesting and strangely enough, the United States itself is now abandoning some of their own values or norms which they have embraced for many, many decades. So by abandoning some of the important norms, maybe the world will be changed. International community will be more and more turbulent and unresting. So we need to prepare for the time when we see some unexpected turbulence maybe caused by President Trump or his administration and we have to fix it. Do you think that there's a significant risk of the instability and uncertainty being caused from the US, from the new administration or is there a greater likelihood that because of the uncertainty, maybe missteps can be made from say China, from Russia or maybe even India or Japan or Australia because we are so now uncertain that our great power partner may not be there. Is there also pressure on the alliance partners to maybe wait and write it out with the US or where is the actual risk at? The current problem is that there are so many game changes. If there is only one game changer like Iraq in 1990, maybe international community can fix that instability by cooperating each other. Actually international community has responded to many, many questions but the real problem now we are facing is that there are so many game changes. China of course, Russia and of course President Trump perhaps. So the interaction of these game changers will cause problems because one action and one reaction will perhaps become much larger impact upon international community. So other powers as you mentioned about allies like Japan, Australia or other country need to coordinate their policy to respond to these kind of coming unexpected maybe foreign policy by some of these countries, great powers. You have actually argued that one of the responses that Japan should make is to become more of a leader within the international liberal order. Can I ask what does it look like when Japan is a greater leader, especially when you compare that to Japan from the post-World War II era? Yes, at least I think that Japan should do two things. One thing is that Japan should embrace and respect the current international norms. Human rights, respectful international law, rule-based international order and so on. And maybe Japan should ask and encourage other countries on the importance of these values because without these values and norms, international community cannot be maintained. This is the first thing. The other thing that Japan should do is to change partly the current international system because current international system is basically created 17 years before. So we need to update the current international system to fit to current international order like rise of China and rise of India and Asia become much more important than before. So the previous Western-oriented international system maybe has been causing some frustrations, particularly in China or some other countries, including India. So maybe Japan as a European power and Asian power, of course, Japan should encourage otherwise Western countries like United States or European countries to accept to modify previous international system, which should be beneficial to China or India or other rising power. Now I really do have to push you on that answer. You say to update and to modify the international system. Does that mean say voting rights in the IMF and so on? Or does that mean changing the G20 into a different? What does updating or what does modifying the international system actually mean? Well, China has been saying, Chinese leaders have been saying that current international order was created by Western powers, United States and Europe. And this is not quite beneficial to China, they are saying. I don't think so because under the current international system, China has become one of the richest countries in the world or at least one of the biggest economic power in the world. So China could benefit from the current international order. But on the other hand, we have to admit that China could not join in creating the previous international order. Not that China, but other many Asian countries because majority of Asian countries were colonized 70 years before. So now international community is much more diversified, much more plural and much more multicultural than before. So we need to include these kind of different bodies, African people, Asian people, Latin American people and of course Islamic, Muslim people and so on. And they should have some voice or say to decide the future course of international community. So like a UN reform, United Nations report, only China is a non-Western country or a non-European country. Well, United States, Russia and some European countries, France and UK. Well, maybe we have to reform United Nations to include much wider voices from the world. And maybe international norms and values should not be only based upon Christian values, but much more plural values. Of course, it is really difficult to create it, but at least we need to respect many other kind of institutions or many other kind of regional organizations. We have some regional organization in Asia and of course in Middle East and Africa, they have their own regional kind of arrangements. So it is perhaps more difficult than before for the United States or some European country to admit this kind of multiculturalism or to admit other religious values, but maybe by educating people, by focusing on public diplomacy and so on, we have to be educated more to understand the importance of other values, respect other countries' values or other religious values. But less and less we are interested in this kind of understanding or norms of other people. So it takes time, but at least we are now going to a different kind of direction by criticizing other countries, criticizing other values. So that's why we are facing chaos or some confusion or quite a big anxiety about the future. So it takes time, but we cannot simply maintain the current international order. We have to modify it, but at the same time, we have to maintain some of the important core institutions or core values by modifying the current one. So we need the mixture of two different kind of directions. And without combining two different kind of directions, maintaining the previous order and including new values, new norms, without combining these two things, maybe we cannot really maintain international order. That's an interesting suggestion. And keeping in tune with the idea of modifying and changing, you've mentioned that shifts in the geopolitical system in Northeast Asia have spurred Japan to reinterpret Article 9 of its pacifist constitution. What do you think is possible in further reinterpretations if we do see a Trump administration putting pressure on the US alliance system in the Indo-Pacific? The main idea of current Japanese security policy is to maintain rule-based international order in the Asia Pacific. Until recently, Japan could just rely on American goodwill or American leadership role in this region. Maybe we rely too much. And American people really, really don't like the idea that the United States should do everything to the stability of the region, to the public good in the region. Maybe other countries should share larger burden to do these kind of things. Otherwise, the United States will retreat from the region. And Japan is one of the most important candidate to share a much larger burden. For that purpose, I think that Prime Minister Abe and his administration really needed to change the previous constitutional interpretation because a previous constitutional interpretation largely prohibited Japan to play larger security activities, to play a larger security role in the region. So by partially changing the previous constitutional interpretation now, Japan can play a larger security role in this region by only with the cooperation with other countries like Australia or ASEAN and India and so on. So we need to know the understanding, I mean, India's understanding or Australia's understanding about the future of this regional order by talking or exchanging views with them. I think that Japan can play a much larger role. But larger role and the leadership role of Japan is quite different from American leadership role because America and China are too big power in the region. But at the same time, from domestic political reasons, I think that these power inclined to be more unilateral to the other countries. But Japan really has a very strong instinct to respect international law or multilateral institutions. So Japanese approach is quite different. It means that Japan should need to consult with other countries because Japan really respects multilateralism or multilateral international institutions or forum because otherwise Japan really can play a leading role in this region. Excellent. That's given us a lot to think about. Thank you very much. And if you would like to see more analysis on this and other issues, please come and visit us at the ANU channel on YouTube. Thanks very much.