 Ladies and gentlemen, I'm Murray McLean, chair of the Australia Japan Foundation and just saying that because we are a sponsor and have supported the Japan Updates since its inception several or a number of years ago now. And I must say that the Japan Updates are a very key part of our reason to exist because we like to support dynamic activities that help foster understanding and knowledge between Australia and Japan and the Japan Update does that brilliantly. So thank you very much for once again inviting me to your conference. It's a great pleasure today for me to introduce as a political keynote speaker, Professor Fujihwara Kiiichi who's a professor of international politics and director of the Institute for Future Initiatives at the University of Tokyo. He has many, many hats as we were discussing over lunch. He obviously has excellent English having studied in the United States as a Fulbright scholar at Yale and he's spent a great deal of time at various universities but also as a highly published author of a number of works relating to geopolitics and our regional and global interests. He writes a weekly film review for the Mainichi which he tells me is really what he does most of the time is sit around watching films to review. I'm sure that's a very modest disclaimer because he is clearly also extremely well known as a highly stimulating and authoritative commentator on Japanese politics, Japanese foreign policy, strategic issues and I look forward very much to hearing from him today not just in this keynote speech but also as part of the panel that will follow this. So please join me in welcoming Professor Fujihwara Kiiichi. Thank you. Thank you Ambassador McLean for your kind words which is a bit too generous I should say and thank you very much indeed for inviting me to the 2019 Japan update. I always treasure opportunities to visit Australia. First of course because there's a great number of excellent scholars and practitioners in Canberra and more importantly should I say this is a hub, a place where scholars from very different regions sometimes with very different views to each other can be engaged in constructive discussion and I recall my visit in 2004 when we had extremely difficult relationship between Japan and China related to history issue, Japanese wartime responsibility and the Yasukuni shrine and there was many meetings that I had attended in Tokyo or for that matter Washington but the one I had here with Chinese, Korean American and Australian scholars was the best really and somehow you know in Australia we can be friends and that must have something to do with this attention to multilateralism in a very sincere way and not as a political token so I shouldn't take too much time thanking Australia but thank you very much indeed for inviting me to this meeting. Now we have a puzzle here Prime Minister Abe is about to become the longest tending Prime Minister in Japanese history. He's well it's not that long really compared to other nations but I should say that Australia has become more democratic than we are took pride in choosing one Prime Minister each year but then that is not the case right now and Abe is the strongest Prime Minister since Koizumi or Nakasone not only in Kenya but also on his grasp grip over the executive and also on his control of the parliament I'm not praising him it's just a statement of fact and at the same time Prime Minister Abe has not been so successful as it might seem when it comes to foreign policy. Take a look at his record of his attempted negotiation with Russia over the well a new treaty and that would restore Japanese sovereignty to what the Japanese called Hopo Ryodo or the Korean islands and the repeated negotiations both at the foreign minister level and also at the level of well I'm talking about Putin and Abe Shinzo and they met several times it came out with nothing really we do not see any results at all you take a look at Japan's relationship with the United States and this is something I will be discussing later on but right now an even more important issue is this conflict with ROK the South Korean government. This I would not discuss here although this would be a topic down there I believe I don't really understand what's going on but what it shows is that the foreign policymaking mechanism in Japan has changed quite abruptly this is something I'll come back at the later part of my talk in the issue of Kante Gaiko so the puzzle here is that you have a very strong Prime Minister, a very strong administration in fact possibly the strongest in the post-war years and he has been surviving failures if I may in foreign policy so this is a puzzle to me Abe bashing is an intellectual well habit in some ways but that's not the purpose here I want to understand and I want to think with you now the topic here is well embracing Trump this is a pretty strong choice of words but as a matter of fact Mr. Abe has been embracing Mr. Trump. Just take a look at the series of summits there has been many summits but even before Mr. Trump became the President of the United States Prime Minister Abe visited New York exchanges gifts, golf related gifts and that most certainly developed a personal relationship and then on January that's only two months after the New York meeting and Abe was invited to Malalago, the Florida house and down where they played two rounds of golf and that gave sort of a platform there was a preview for things to come the G7 summit in 2017 was a glorious moment for Abe because well in essence Trump was isolated you have Trump here and you have others now the only person who could talk to both was Prime Minister Abe so this was a fantastic moment for the Japanese Prime Minister as a linchpin that brings European Union nations together with the United States and then you see a whole series of summits three summits a year in 2018 that's a record really and 2019 this year May Mr. Trump visited Japan and well watched Sumo in a very serious matter and he brought a chair to the Kokugikan this small tournament auditorium it's not supposed to be done but of course it's being Mr. Trump he could do that and then from but then G20 Osaka summit this is one of the strongest personal connection between the Japanese Prime Minister and the President of the United States take a look at the origin of embrace and it's quite obvious Japanese foreign policy always paid attention to our relationship with the United States US-Japan relations is of paramount importance for Japan and when it comes to policy matters you have alliance and you have trade on alliance we depend on our capabilities so for obvious reason a relationship between the US and Japan is critical when it comes to trade and again US-Japan relationship has always been rocked by trade disputes so managing good and stable institutional framework that support bilateral trade if not multilateral trade is essential alliance makes US obviously important to Japan not only that US President works as a political asset a Prime Minister who has strong ties with the United States President has an extreme influence in Japanese politics for the simple reason being that he has backing over the US government you can take a look say for example Prime Minister Nakasone who used on his relationship with President Reagan to a maximum degree he had a personal tie with President Reagan and that worked to his benefit or Koizumi also was successful in building strong relationship with President Bush and that worked as a political asset for Prime Minister Koizumi so personal confidence here goes a long way another factor is that President Trump is totally unpredictable he's a newcomer he had a little connection to formal diplomatic networks so well how can you work with Mr. Trump the first thing that Abe did was to embrace Trump develop personal relationship and develop an asset that can work to his benefit so far so good it's quite understandable and this was also preemptive embrace there was a fear that President Trump the newcomer might be tough on Japan both in trade and alliance there was a fear that Trump might well rock the alliance between US and Japan demand higher host nation support when it comes to trade Trump not only criticized China but also criticized Japan Japan is a free rider of trade I think he was working on an image of the 1970s and it gives me some satisfaction to see US President praising Japan as if it is a major economic power but nonetheless Trump can go in many directions unpredictable so to prevent stronger reaction against Japanese policy embracing become a necessity and there was another issue and that is China between Japan and China one of course is territorial disputes and maritime safety it's quite obvious so I don't really think I have to inform you about that but there's a territorial dispute and Chinese naval powers have been pretty active in the neighborhood the Japanese of course and in a more general sense there was this attention to geopolitical rivalries for China is not only expanding in east or south China sea China is now a major military power that has moved out to the blue waters so one built one road could be interpreted in geopolitical terms I hope with the rising power that is China that was a major concern I should also add an economic rivalry one thing that I think I'll have time to discuss about later on is that we see a revival of what I have called economic diplomacy in Japan in more cruel terms it was called checkbook diplomacy and ODAs, official development aids as a key tool for Japanese foreign policy now this is a policy that has become strongly recognized in late 1970s to 1980s all throughout 1990s I should say but somehow went away partially because of Japanese economic demise and Japan accommodated global standards on development aids and stopped using checks for political purposes this has changed take a look at the recent international conference development conference on Africa that took place late August in Yokohama this was a key important moment for Japanese policy but why Africa, well one reason would be to win support for nominating Japan for the standing member of the Security Council that's a long shot to say the least but that is of course there a more important reason is China China's economic influence in Africa and suddenly Africa became important I'm only talking about Africa and there's quite a bit of things that I can discuss here but we can argue that we see a revival of economic diplomacy that we had observed up until the end of the Obuji cabinet, Obuji administration so it's been quite sometimes and that's because of China now Abe administration has been quite assertive in putting Japan back on the chess board the idea was that China is rising power and Japan is neglected, Japan is being passed over so putting Japan back in the regional chess board became so important to do that Japan not only approached the United States but also ASEAN, Australia as key partners Abe has visited all ASEAN nations twice never happened before this key attention to Southeast Asia is something that we have not observed for more than 30 years and that is of course because of China and Australia is a key partner in this regard and it also served a domestic purpose well this was about making Japan great again to restore confidence in Japan I hope it's not unilateralism like Mr. Trump but Mr. Abe's keen attention to put Japan back on the global chess board had a domestic importance as well and then Russia this leads to a hope for a tougher America I'll be very quick here but there was disappointment today about Obama administration's approach to China there was frustration about the engagement policy which essentially allowed China to become much stronger and much more of a challenger in the region and also the other point is that the geopolitical aspect of Obama administration's policy was quite volatile the air-sea battle idea did not really come out with a coherent strategy and that invited frustration from Tokyo now so Tokyo doesn't want to fight China in fact Tokyo cannot fight China what Tokyo wants is a tough US to push China away and what I consider to be a mistaken expectation of President Trump President Trump might be unpredictable he might be only a newcomer to foreign policy but so long as he's tough against China the initial two years was all spent on mobilizing US influence over China for Japan's political interests I'll tell you later on that has changed over time in 2018 summit with Shijin Pin and Abe Shinzo something totally different took place we see a new rapprochement between Beijing and Tokyo coming back to this mistaken focus on Trump as a tough US against China we have to admit that there is a strong personal tie between the two leaders when it comes to policy consequences it doesn't work Trump administration has been tough to both China and Japan when it comes to alliance management a good personal relationship with President Trump will bring about a more nuanced view on host nation support in fact the opposite is the case we believe that US demands for host nation support is much higher than has been accepted originally it was supposed to be twice as much but there are reports that Washington is asking four times more that's a ridiculous figure and we're not taking this seriously but nonetheless when it comes to the Trump administration you have to take everything seriously and furthermore when it comes to China there is a different policy preference Japan is more afraid about China as a military power to be sure but to push China by economic means can disrupt the global market on the other hand the Trump administration has focused on the economy first and geopolitics second in fact it will not be too much to say that the military strategy from the Trump administration toward China has been actually less consistent even compared to the Obama administration in the Obama administration there was a strong focus on geopolitics which is not the case right now the focus is on trade so that led to the confusion that we see now I'm really running out of time so I have to skip a couple of slides US-China trade wars right now looking in this direction we were in a stalemate a temporary how to tariff war could be expected but the threat of retaliatory tariff will continue but geopolitics and trade would be relatively independent that was where we were that was a probable scenario the great scenario, the agreement, comprehensive agreement including structural adjustment is not going to happen anyway we're moving into this direction a stalemate to a new cold war I do not want to use a word cold war yet and if we want to apply the word cold war this is more closer to the period before the Korean War 1949 to 1950 where the strategic situation was much more volatile between the Soviet Union and the United States it's not a cold war yet however we are moving in this direction and that led to the October summit this was essentially about risk management this was how Japan and China could somehow hedge the risk that comes from the trade policy from the Trump administration and that much has been reported quite widely but I should also add that this was the first time that we see collaboration on defense policy between China and Japan which we have not seen for quite some time we now have an LSE communication mechanism and search and rescue agreement and of course we have high level defense talks defense dialogues as well this is a meeting where the expectation was high on the Tokyo side but not on the Chinese side and after the meeting Prime Minister Abe stated that the two nations agreed on three principles from competition to cooperation partners not trips development of free and just agreed regime apparently these three principles were prepared by the Japanese cabinet but was not agreed with the Chinese government so the statement was quickly withdrawn just to make sure the Prime Minister said this in a press conference and that we now agree on three principles and then that was taken away doesn't happen like this Japanese diplomacy is such a boring place so predictable all the papers come out before the meetings before bullet points of the Chichibin Abe summit before was available to the press before that meeting which they actually invited anger from Beijing it's just the opposite side I would say that this is related to a new kind of diplomacy that is taking place in Japan I only have two minutes so I have to be very brief this essentially is a top down approach in diplomacy the role of the Prime Minister in foreign policy was extremely limited the actor foreign policymaking was essentially the minister of foreign affairs with little initiative coming from the Prime Minister this has changed almost totally under the administration we have the cabinet bureau of personal affairs which actually means that the cabinet secretariat would be in a position to choose key leaders in each ministry and not tell you how important this is to destroy the integrity of individual ministries for the simple reason being that now the bureaucrats have to watch what Kante or the cabinet office wants to do or they might be sucked and furthermore you see the national security council and Yachi Shotaro and Yachi along with Kanihara and it's now the key architects of Japanese foreign policy but not the ministry of foreign affairs and then there is another issue the prime secretary when it comes to Hishokan the inner clique of the other administration we see a strong influence from many ministries of external trade and industry you might have heard about Imai Takaya probably the second most important person in Japanese politics today because Imai Takaya is the one who is running the show really and he is not only from METI he has openly stated to the press that foreign policy coming from the ministry of foreign affairs is obsolete oops but that is what he said there are limits to counter diplomacy well there are merits of course and this top down approach brings more integrity and more leadership for Japanese foreign policy it puts a face on the Japanese government and that's good it also allows for flexibility if there is anything about Japanese foreign policy it is always inflexible but when it comes with strong leadership from the prime minister it changes policy quite abruptly and that's what we saw in the change of policy toward China from 2016 to 2018 especially but there are limits one is demise of professionalism with all my disrespect for ministry of foreign affairs where many of my former students work they are professionals and they do have good information about foreign relations they also have information about how the other side works this is something that is conspicuously absent in Abe administration's approach to Russia and Abe administration's approach to South Korea it is working on a wishful thinking that the Prime Minister would break the barrier and achieve great achievements Russia this was essentially about money not ODAs about investment when it comes to South Korea money in the reverse case in the opposite direction you give money to Russia and you buy back the islands essentially and then use the economy the focus is on the economic diplomacy or the lack of it but this is not a professional approach to foreign policy for many of the Russian experts voices or South Korean experts voices has been silenced in the ministry of foreign affairs so that leads to swing of policy failures if I may Japan-Russia relations with the US and Mr Trump being treated with a small tournament and all the hospitality has a nerve excuse my language to argue about increasing tariff on Japan and Abe's initiative on Iran is so painful that I don't really want to talk about but I'm not laughing about this really cause there was a serious conflict between Iran and the United States and Tokyo working in between is not a wrong policy at all what is wrong was that it lacked all the procedures all the negotiations with Iran all the negotiations with the United States the professionals were kept out the cabinet secretaries were in and well that's where we are more 33 minutes I'm very sorry the nice thing about the keynote speech is that we have a panel discussion later on so I'm only leaving this podium by addressing key questions instead of answering them one do we see a stable alliance or do we see decoupling the possibility of decoupling is very much there with US unilateralism and also US in global retreat but it's not clear yet this is not yet the stage like President Nixon's statement in Guam which essentially was about pulling out US influence from the Asian region we haven't reached that stage yet we might this would be an important issue the future of Japan PRC of Approach 1 the 2018 summit went well but nonetheless can this kind of relationship be sustained between China and Japan I find it highly doubtful because there is really no institutional basis for the agreement it's just a collection of ad hoc agreements will counter diplomacy survive after Abe is this not just a case of a long standing Prime Minister with a long tenure Nakasone Koizumi Abe you stay long in office and you have a stronger Kante that may be so but like I said there are also institutional changes that took place in Japan so whether this Kante gaeko Kante diplomacy can be sustained is an open question and I'm not only asking the fourth question because Professor Peter Dreistel is here does multilateralism have a future I don't want to be cynical about this because I do believe that we do need multilateralism but nonetheless I would be foolish to deny that multilateral institutions have become endangered species so we have to address that question and the final question is which is more dangerous or China? Abe's administration started from the assumption that China is more dangerous than the United States and have come to realize that the United States can be as unpredictable and as challenging as China so that decision is still yet to be made but that's the media that we find ourselves today in Japan thank you for your attention Six minutes. Kichi thank you I think everyone probably wanted you to keep talking for another hour I live out Korea and a special favor to Lauren Welcome everyone to the politics and foreign policy panel I think you probably most of you already know who is sitting here in front of you. We have Professor Pimentre Jane from the University of Adelaide we have Lauren Richardson from our very own ANU we have Rumi Aoyama-san from Waseba and of course our keynote speaker and I hail from across the Nullarbor Perth at Murdoch University Let's get started we're not going to dive into policy and politics and we might be here till midnight because it's really interesting stuff I'd like to start with a couple of observations you know the theme of our conference here today is about leadership in an age of uncertainty and I think that's great you read it everywhere it rolls off the tongue a few people I do have a problem with it except last week when I met Malcolm Cook in Singapore and he said I'm tired of hearing this talk about uncertainty we are becoming more and more certain every day about how China is going to behave and what we may or may not expect from the United States we have more certainty about what that looks like than arguably we had before the advent of the Trump administration arguably before 2016 if we're talking about China in particular so we might play with that idea recently Peter Baragay's in a speech referred to the liberal international order as being on life support that's quite a dramatic thing to say there's no question that we're in an era of strategic transition and we are moving away from what we can comfortably understand as a liberal international order and we're moving towards something else and we probably know also that it's not just about strategic accommodation of a rising power it's about disrupting or even dismantling that order and we are moving towards something else and the question is well what is that something else going to look like that's where leadership comes in to balance it how is strategic competition going to create or challenge any new emerging order so it's within that framework that I'd like to talk to the panellists today and I think we need to start Penangio with the domestic political scene there have been some elections and I'm really interested in hearing from you what do you think those elections tell us about where Japanese politics and the electoral cycle is heading what are the outcomes of those elections that you think we ought to take note of I just want to open with a statement that this year 2019 has been a very interesting year for Japan in political terms because there have been some political events and they take place once in decades one I'm referring to the accession of the new emperor to the throne 30 years since he say 1989 so we have got a new emperor this year 2019 is the year of the war and this is especially significant for politics in Japan why it is significant for politics in Japan that in this year of the war the unified local elections and the upper house elections happen in a two months difference time this year we had the unified local elections in Japan in April and then the upper house elections in July going back in 2007 the last year of the war election the LDP performed the Liberal Democratic Party which is the ruling party of Japan it performed very badly in 2007 and Abe was the prime minister then he went to India in August after the election and gave a very impressive often quoted talk to the Indian parliament called the Conference of the Two Seas which is kind of a return into Indo-Pacific and free and open Indo-Pacific but my point is that in 2007 from India he resigned his position because of immense pressure on him because of the poor performance of the LDP so he resigned now 2019 let's talk about 2019 completely reverse Abe is still the second time prime minister in Japan unified local elections they did quite well in the unified local elections and they did well at the upper house elections because Abe had set a low bar for the LDP and his coalition partner the Komeito so they performed much above what Abe had said as the bar for how many seats the LDP should get so that brings Abe into a stronger position compared to 2007 at the same time before these upper house elections the LDP had super majority as they call it that is the two thirds majority in both houses of parliament and that means that if the government wants to propose a parliament in the constitution they can do that but in this upper house election Abe lost his super majority in the upper house and what does that mean because I think Abe's dream project or maybe one of the two dream projects is to change the constitution so that dream project of Abe has gone backward or maybe he may not be able to realize but he still insists that he would do that so that's the political side of the comment but also just a little bit maybe I will stop there and come back later keep going and I'm hoping for a particular 2019 elections the upper house elections do not attract international media or even in Australia we didn't hear much about it but this is a very important election and this year was very important and this takes me back to the LDP rule for a very very long period of time so in 1989 when the Heisei emperor came to the throne the LDP was a very weak political party almost on the verge of losing its majority but somehow they survived at that time 1993 we see a coalition LDP losing its majority a coalition party comes and since 1993 what we are seeing in Japan is a trend in the government in Japan even the LDP has been in coalition with the Komeito party for the last about 20 years so this is quite an interesting trend in Japan at the same time we see the LDP being dominant so the old LDP domination persists it's a trend for a coalition government and also the LDP lost power in 2009 but he could also argue that the LDP would love nothing better than to shake off the Komeito because the Komeito is standing in the way of that great aspiration that usually attaches to Prime Minister Abe of revising the pacifist laws of the constitution is the opposition ever going to get its act together the opposition is pretty much focused on the constitution the constitution is one issue that makes it easy confront the other administration in a straight forward manner this also marginalizes the opposition as a possible governing party and that's the dilemma we saw in the Japanese Socialist Party and we are seeing this right now with Riken Mishito you clear on the constitution and that can grab considerable amount of votes that's true and that's something that the LDP is struggling with right now at some point Abe wants to reverse the constitution period really and that is his priority and having said that if you shake off Komeito I'm not sure if the LDP members of parliament would be happy because they become so dependent on vote mobilization from Soka Gakkai so yes Abe doesn't want Komeito to shake policy on defense matters he certainly didn't like the way Komeito handled the anti-hostile security laws and Komeito of course is opposed to the religion of the constitution but at the same time an LDP without Komeito is going to be pretty tough for first term, second term members of parliament that brings us to Abe and isn't it true and even the slides that we have behind us for this Japan update it's all about Abe and there's a lot written about Abe as a conviction nationalist politician wants to revise the peace clause of the constitution etc etc but many people have been pointing to several indications that Abe is sacrificing his ideology and you might call his super ideological convictions for the cause of pragmatism and I'm going to especially bring that out when I talk to the panel about some bilateral relationships at the moment but the indicator of this is the latest blue book and newspaper articles have been written about this many things have been written about the great difference between the 2018 blue book and the 2019 because all of a sudden in 12 months between the blue books the DPRK, Russia and China are referred to in rather nice conciliatory and future focused terms whereas you cannot say that at all about the way they were referred to in the 2018 version of the blue book and Adam Lyft, Tobias Harris, they're now saying Abe has become a pragmatist and he has reduced his ideological ambition for constitutional revision to getting the self-defence forces from the Constitution as a legal entity. Forget about all the rest of Article 9 being changed and that is what he has reduced his ambition to. So to what extent panellists do we think that it is all about Abe and going back to Keech's presentation there has been significant institutional change likely to survive Abe. When he moves from the political stage the National Security Council, the incredibly well-staffed secretariat, the Cabinet Personnel Bureau the centralisation of foreign and security policy authority and coordination into the Prime Minister's office why should that change when Abe lives a stage Keech? Do you think it will? So the question is about post-Abe which is 2021 We are talking about that. In theory? We have to be in theory. We must do a quadruple lesson. Tomorrow anything can happen in politics. One week is a long time in politics as we know. But let's think 2021. So post-Abe what is the scenario? Who are the people who are going to replace Abe? In Japan as most of you know there is still a very strong hereditary politics even within the LDP So I have counted there are eight names always put forward as post-Abe leadership and all of them are in the old LDP mode. Some might be a little bit more liberal, others might be more conservative if you think about Ishiba he wants to change but not like Abe. If you look at other politicians in the LDP they might have a little bit liberal ideas but there is no renewal of policy ideas in my view So all these politicians have been in the LDP for such a long period of time and they have been with Abe for such a long period of time and we are now hearing a generation of LDP politicians. So everyone is talking about Shinjiro Koizumi and even there is a talk that he might be in the next Abe cabinet so my question is whether we have got renewal in Japanese politics and I can't see that Who needs renewal when you are on the winner? But you keep on doing the same old thing So if it works, it works We are coming back to this on Abe, an ideologo or pragmatist question. Abe has been quite pragmatic in his second administration for the simple reason being that he wants to stay in power and there is a remarkable difference between the first administration and the second administration but none of this. There was consistency in taking China as the main threat and that was common to both Abe 1 and Abe 2 and in Abe 2 since 2018, the point you discussed about this blue book is a significant change and also where North Korea seems to be dangerous when the American president thinks it is dangerous when North Korea is not willing to work on long-range missiles that endanger U.S. security then somehow Japan seems to be happy with short-range missiles that can reach Japan with nuclear warheads I don't want to be cynical but it is quite difficult to take all these seriously and yet there is this pragmatic line radiating out of the blue book although I would say that when it comes to his ideologies Prime Minister Abe still remains a right-wing politician especially when it comes to the definition of Japanese nation after the Second World War that has been under control in a way because you visit Yasukuni and you're out really or if you start something that rocks the history issue with China they would challenge the legitimacy of the administration observing the development of this dispute between China and Japan I think I can say that this is still very much a nationalistic administration. It is a nationalistic administration but let's look at some counter examples straight away we heard from Kichi's own mouth just a few minutes ago that things are going the right way with the Japan-China relations especially from 2018 Kichi was suggesting this is ad hocary it's not going to last but can we contemplate that perhaps by moving in a more positive direction in its relationship with China that Abe is and Japan is creating some strategic space or distance even between Japan and the US as far as the China policies concerned so China-Japan relations has received a lot of attention and many people get the impression that China-Japan relations is improving but my question is so in what field or at what front that Sino-Japan relations have improved and the bilateral relations have been tightening since I would say 2014 when the first Xi Jinping Abe summit was held at APEC and then they met with each other constantly and the Japanese government has promised to cooperate with BRI so I would say that improving relations between the two countries is really very symbolic the only achievement coming out of this kind of improving political climate as they have working on the mechanism averting unintended military clashes and their forces in and above near water I think that's the only achievement but because if you look at the public opinion toward China so constantly over 80% of Japanese people they say they don't have affinity with China the Senkaku-Diao-Yu island issue so the Chinese coastal armies constantly entered near the Senkaku-Diao-Yu island so these kind of things have always been there and the tension over the economic and political tensions have not been eased first of all and then about economic cooperation the Japanese government has promised to work with BRI but only on a case-by-case basis and they qualified with four preconditions so currently there is no one single project being co-operated by the two governments under the umbrella of BRI are you willing to say however grudgingly that things are going in a more positive direction yeah maybe if without the trade war between China and the United States but we have the trade war so what does this mean isn't Japan going to be squeezed by the US so we embrace a harder line towards China in the trades there well I think the several things we need to look very carefully first of all the US-Japan trade negotiation and whether the agreement will include the same class like Mexico-Canada US agreement being said that is targeted against China and second whether the US is they determined to decouple the economic relations with China or not because the Japanese government has adopted kind of engagement policy with China where they adopt the containment policy against China in the security arena but on the other hand it promotes the functional cooperation with China but if this kind of decoupling things go on then it's really difficult for Japan to co-operate on this kind of engagement policy towards China and that kind of the US policy will actually shape the future direction of Sino-Japan relations so I'm going to cling to my line about pragmatism being evident and Lauren I just want to ask you about DPRK at this moment because we'll come back to the ROK later I don't think that's an example of pragmatism DPRK and Keiichi you might chip in here as well and Japan has been utterly marginalized in all of the recent DPRK diplomacy if Trump mentioned the words abductees during one of his meetings with Kim I'm not sure how big a success we can call that so do you think we're going to see some independent Abe diplomacy is he going to get his own bilateral with Kim what's going on there? I think it's very unlikely I would have to agree with Keiichi and also Tobias Harris in East Asia for a quarterly piece where he says that Abe has often sacrificed foreign policy goals and other goals for the sake of maintaining his power base and I think that's the best way to understand his treatment of the DPRK because I think Abe knows that if he was to take a chance on the DPRK and say okay let's have a summit a denuclearization summit, Abe has to bring up the abduction issue and he has to get something back from Kim on the abduction issue or he'll suffer domestically and he knows what Kim can give him on the abduction issue all he's going to say is that... national interest how about honestly we have an example of security being outgunned by domestic popularity it's quite astounding that Japan especially under the Abe administration has always put the abduction issue before the nuclear issue even though the abduction issue is essentially a historical issue okay maybe some of them are still alive but the nuclear issue is a current issue and Japan having been victim of atomic bombs before shouldn't know better than any other country what a serious threat that is and to really put that at the forefront so that again just speaks to I think how much he just wants to stay in power and appease his domestic constituencies at any cost okay we've gone away from pragmatism so clinging to it here now Keiji Japan US we've heard about the bromance between Abe and Trump there's a question of dividend versus detriment there's an incredible list of detriment first of all being marginalised from DPRK diplomacy there's TPP Abe is leading America is out as a court there's the tariffs and the threat of harsh terms on the next round of host nation support negotiations the list is actually longer than that but let's stop there for the detrimental aspects apart from the domestic political cache of being a mate of Trump's what has shown for actually going a long way to demean himself and subordinate himself in this bromance Ricky you're pushing me into a position to defend others but nonetheless I think it's fair to say that a list of difficulties if not crisis and foreign policy of ideas has not worked against other's popularity it's a puzzle really and I really don't have good answers to that in one way this is a pragmatist who is successful in showing his face overseas giving good and he does deliver pretty well in Washington, Canberra or London I've heard him once in London he did it pretty well but that has little to do with actual policy of students what you can say is that without the bromance it's much more troublesome to Japan so Abe has worked in a way to somehow contain the Trump crisis that would be the mainline argument that you would hear from Kasami Gaseki what would have happened if Abe worked in a way like Merkel or Macron and then we have a major crisis that doesn't mean that well we have been successful in winning a policy that we wish from the United States at all and you know isn't there still a prospect of tariffs being imposed on Japanese cars will that be the point where domestic credibility is stretched I doubt it this is an interesting point take a look at the trade policy in the United States and you see support for trade regulations and tariff among the Democrats as well support for well if I may say protectionist measures it's actually quite bipartisan so the move away from liberal internationalism is actually going to its opposite this is not a place to discuss about this but liberal internationalism always had a democracy deficit this was more about well intellectuals liberals elites but with limited support from domestic public opinion middle of the road this position is now being discredited and that is something I see when it comes to unprofessionalism and other foreign policy I have very strong words but that has not attracted much attention from Japan Japanese media at all really and I feel like I'm talking like a bureaucrat you're alright Keiichi but somehow this relationship between support from the civil society for a more liberal international institution this nexus might be weaker than we understood yeah there's a lot of hums and nods with you Keiichi I think the pragmatism idea is being shot down and Adam Liff is going to have to retract a couple of these recent articles where he argues this and we'll have to get onto Tobias about his article because really we haven't found evidence yet for the pragmatism direction behind the administration's foreign and security policy and yeah I was going to juxtapose at this point and say that we have one glaring exception of a departure from pragmatism being Japan ROK now we have harsh words including from you in your article there is no clear way out of this impasse your words John Nielsen right something seems to have snapped between Japan and the ROK now this is feeling very serious it feels like national identity politics coming out of every nook and cranny in both countries what is driving it can you shed some light on it for us how much time have we got so obviously there's no pragmatism here on either side I think it's very clear that there's no winners in this dispute both countries are going to suffer a lot economically diplomacy wise the relationship's taking a real hit so I don't want to discuss all these current disputes you see going on because you can I'm sure you've all heard about them the trade wars and court cases and things like that but I would like to say that I think in understanding what's going on we can't find the cause by looking at the current disputes I would say that all of these disputes are just an effect of a much deeper struggle and this is where the cause lies I think the reason we have so much trouble understanding Japan ROK relations especially the history problems in the post Cold War period how they've played out is because we have the level of analysis wrong and I think it's not I don't see it as identity disputes or really national disputes we can't understand these disputes as a Japan versus Korea problem or in like a national framework from all the field work I've done on these issues especially concerning Korean victims and they're the ones the comfort women the forced laborers they're the ones really at the forefront of what's going on here and really these disputes can only be understood as a struggle between the individual and the state and when I say the state I'm not talking about Japan I'm talking about the Japanese and Korean government versus the Korean victims and many left-wing activists in Japan who've been supporting them in their struggle for decades and this struggle obviously stems from the fact that the two governments a lot of Koreans suffered under colonialism terribly especially these categories of victims that we see dominating today economic bomb victims who don't really get a voice and that's a whole other story but you know the two governments tried to resolve their problems in 1965 they signed a treaty waived all of their rights the problem was that these victims didn't support that treaty they didn't support that settlement well they weren't consulted exactly so they had no choice the only category of victim that was negotiated specifically was forced laborers and I think this is partly why Japan saw emotional today we solved that issue with you now you're just throwing that up in the air but the problem was many analysts are drawing this treaty as the source of today's problems but I would say that's the foundation but the actual source is really South Korea's democratization in the late 1980s that's when everything changed that's when these victims rise up and they were supported by many Japanese left-wing activists and that's when this struggle began that we see culminating today first they tried to sue Japan in Japanese courts didn't work then they tried to sue Japan and Japanese companies in US courts didn't work then they came to Korea sue Japan through Korean courts finally the Korean judiciary is realizing international law does not empower citizens of one country to challenge a government of another country there's no laws that allow for that treaties are designed to facilitate relations between states so this is their last chance we need to empower them we're going to do that by supporting them in the court ruling and you know the reason I say it's been individual versus state is because every time I visited the officers of these victims and their advocates including their advocates in Japan I always found not just angry at the Japanese government they're angry at the South Korean government for not supporting them in their pursuit of compensation from Japan and so they've attacked both governments for decades and Moon is the first president since that treaty was signed that has totally aligned his position with the victim's position and because he's done that up until then all of the Korean governments yes they would push Tokyo say we need an apology we need some money but they respected the treaty they said let's work around it let's find solutions around it because Moon has changed the diplomatic status quo he's really angered Japan and because he changed the diplomatic status quo Japan responded by saying we're going to change the economic status quo that's your punishment and I don't think they expect a career to then retaliate against that and say well we don't trust you anymore so we're going to change the security status quo of our relationship we're not going to share intelligence with you So is this just state exhibitionism towards their own citizenry demonstrating a change to dynamic between state and individual is that what you're saying I think so and a lot of people like to look at Japan and South Korea as this very unique fascinating relationship where they should get along but they don't and they're bizarre in that sense they have common threats this and that but what we overlook is there's similarities this same struggle has been going on with another big perpetrator in World War 2 Germany exactly the same scenario in 2000 and 2008 the Greek and Italian victims of Nazi crimes who never got conceded under Germany's you know post-war settlements they sued Germany through their own domestic courts and they won you know and that sent the relationship in a downward spiral and exactly the same effect Germany said we're not paying you the money just like Japan said to the companies in Japan don't pay these laborers the money and as a result Greece and Italy said well we're going to freeze your assets exactly what's happening in Japan today we're going to liquidate the Goethe Institute assets and you're going to have to pay and the relationship hit rock bottom the media was saying the same thing you know this is the worst the relationship's been since 1945 so there is a big struggle going on some people are calling it a rights revolution where you know there is a recognition among you know judiciaries around the world that yeah there is a major legal loophole where these victims from the war and there were so many victims from World War 2 they can't you know sue a foreign state and they because of all these post-war settlements that were decided by states so the courts are trying to challenge that and say that individual in the state are separate legal entities and you never had the right to make that deal so therefore it's null and void and that's revolutionary and that's manifesting as a great deal of friction so what we see is capitalism is only superficial and what's actually going on underneath is business as usual but beneath what seems like lunacy when you look at it from a national interest point of view and from a security point of view and a responsibility to protect point of view there's actually some substance beneath that that is not crazy I'm reducing your argument everyone probably thinks you know this is crazy and it was actually the hypothesis when I started my PhD my hypothesis was these victims are trying to get a control of the diplomatic relationship because they want it settled on their terms and then to my surprise when I attended meetings of Korean force laborers in Tokyo was all Japanese people fighting for justice it was actually written on their you know their paper they want to control the diplomatic handling of this problem finally they found their leverage for the comfort women the leverages building statues in front of embassies for the laborers it's seizing assets in Korea what about the atomic bomb victims they've had a much harder time in a sense they had an easier time because Japanese atomic bomb victims got paid by the Japanese government so Japanese government said a legal precedent had to apply to them not all of them but what I argue is that it's the U.S. alliance with Japan and South Korea that's suppressed this issue because the U.S. is implicated in this and doesn't want this issue coming out and the two governments don't want to upset the U.S. so they've had a much harder time getting their voice out Keechie brings us back to the U.S. again right so at what point if at any stage is the U.S. expected or able to intervene in what ought to be an issue of concern to them because it impacts on their basing and their security strategy for the region Japan's relationship with South Korea was always an issue for U.S. security policy because and after all it impacts the United States there was always this possibility of building strong relationship between Japan and South Korea on defense so that the defense structure would be more multilateral in nature we already have a mini-lateral as we call it between Australia and Japan so that makes a triangle here U.S., Japan, Australia and also a minded viewpoint of security strategies and building strong relationship between our cage and Japan was critical and sharing defense information was not really Tokyo's idea this was a Washington because they wanted closer cooperation between our cage and Japan the agreement was actually symbolic because most of the information and they did not give much information anyway so the defense information intelligence information is not about a fully functioning regime but nonetheless this was critical for the United States so that they can build strong relationship between South Korea and Japan it was never popular in South Korea and well right now as you can see the opposition to President Park is now the ruling party so you can easily see why they are dropping that idea however we're talking about Trump here right? Yes, this is the Trump administration that is willing to push China on one hand and still impose tariff on Japan on Japan and linking trade with security which is something quite recent so this would weaken the alliance on one hand and also lead to a more unilateral behavior from the United States on the other just repeat the point I've made about North Korea the Trump administration at least seems to believe that North Korea is no longer a threat although we believe that from the advisers of my respected friend Jeffrey Lewis the short range missiles are capable of nuclear warheads it's not a matter of when it has happened already which is a larger threat than it used to be the credibility of what it means to have an alliance with the United States is actually what's in play here if you cannot rely on fundamental understanding of core national interest issues from the United States as an ally of the United States then where do you have to turn? Yes, maybe you can turn to China and that's what I call hedging because actually China is playing a very interesting role between South Korea and Japan and China was mediating, right? Yes, China is mediating the two countries but not as an ally China is not happy about the defense information sharing system but what China wants is the RCEP which China wants the RCEP to be concluded this year and also China wants China, South Korea and Japan trying to show FTAs to be concluded soon and so this rift between South Korea and Japan has actually undermined China's strategic influence so that is why China is mediating between the two countries so that's kind of very interesting and that kind of things like pragmatism, she said, heroically returning to the theme if Japan could swallow its pride and accept China's role as an intermediary I'm not saying it's going to happen I'm not living in total fantasy It ain't going to happen It would be lovely if it happens and speaking to a core audience which is pretty extreme on policy positions if it's a two level game, there's no win set This foreign policy you're saying is based in domestic politics to a certain extent and that brings me to this point that whether we love or hate Abe he remains in his position until 2021 barring what she said but there is a prospect that he might get another term because some LDP leaders have been talking about it and if you look at Abe's popularity it's not very high but high enough it's in relation to the opposition the popularity is in its 40s or late 30s, 40s the next party in the Japanese parliament, constitutional democratic party their popularity is in a single digit so whether we like or we don't like it it seems to me that Abe is going to be in this position so everyone else has to negotiate with Abe for life, president for life Abe has been in this position for already seven years and it's likely another two years plus another three years so that's a long time for any leader then let's see, is there a prospect of any kind of Japanese foreign policy or security leadership in this current strategic environment Japan-India diplomacy which has been remarkable it's quite interesting actually and we have the free and open Indo-Pacific no longer called a strategy now it's called a concept which is slightly worrying or a thing this is an example of an attempt to stimulate and shape multilateralism exclusively to counterbalance China's global influence or not I think doesn't undermine this idea that here we see Japan at least engaging in a kind of thought leadership when it comes to multilateralism Abe is extremely popular in India extremely popular in India and Abe and Modi, the current prime minister are not just embracing actually hugging each other and Abe was taken to Modi's electoral constituency where he was seen doing worshipping the Hindu gods there he was asked to come to Modi's hometown and similarly Abe hosted Modi in his villa in Yamanashi so also in Southeast Asian countries the whole idea of Indo-Pacific has been embraced now and Abe remains quite popular in most of the Southeast Asian and they share that vision including Australia including Africa we can talk about Decade 7 however I just want to clarify with my gatekeepers in the front row do we have 10 minutes more for Q&A because I've been operating on that principle any final words on free and open Indo-Pacific as Japan leading? the US has now embraced this idea the whole Western Pacific command is now known as Indo-Pacific that's true but in Southeast Asia we have been also advocating this idea of Indo-Pacific one final word when we talk about materialism or international cooperation each participating nation should limit the exceptional power the self-limit of power is essential for construction of an institution and this is something that is conspicuously absent so for that matter China's role as a mediator we see negotiation but we do not see well discipline that is required so you don't see any significance in free and open Indo-Pacific vision replacing strategy I know it's a breach I'm giving up on pragmatism now yes in the front row here can we go back to some pre-pragmatic panel discussion where you were talking about Article 9 of the Constitution even last year before the elections Prime Minister Abe seemed to be courting the Kometo in terms of changing Article 9 in that he was going to allow a third clause which Kometo seemed to want a second clause too which speaks about the legitimacy of the STF now you did say that he might have achieved a minor goal and that is getting the STF accepted as a legal entity but there are those who do say that it hasn't gone far enough in other words with the support of the Kometo in this current parliament could he get the 70% and if he can is he likely to get the 50% beyond him to change Article 9 along the panel Keiji to put it very simply unlikely Kometo would be still strongly opposed to changing the substance of Article 9 and that is of course the centre of the revision of the Constitution and an LDP without Kometo is a political risk for too many members of parliament so the outcome would be quite limited now Abe is going to push a limit if he is successful in the next lower house election he is having a cabinet reshuffle too the cabinet reshuffle with Moghi possibly as a foreign minister might change things a bit but nonetheless I am pretty skeptical about the outcome Ruby? Yeah, why? Yeah, I think part of the problem with the proposed amendments to Article 9 is the lack of conceptual clarity it's not just because people are still sticking with pacifism but there seems to be a lot of dispute about what it should entail Alendra? Well apart from Article 9 there are other articles which are being considered for revision and amendment but the point is Abe has lost two-third majority in the upper house so that's the first point where he cannot move forward and I agree with Keiichi in terms of Kometo certainly they are dead against this idea I have talked to the leader of the Kometo party several times and he has made it very clear that they don't agree. The other thing is if you look at the public opinion polls in Japan about the Constitution they don't get majority there so there is a big split people who support the idea of constitutional amendment and people who don't support so the people who don't support still have got the majority of the people who do support. Okay, there seems to be consensus here Peter other questions, there's one at the back there and then one there. Hi, I'm Michael First of the International Security here at ANU. We've been in the rising China a potential of drawing U.S. and a joker card that is North Korea there's been discussion of strong potential nuclear weapons. Is there a similar discourse within Japan about nuclear weapons and what's your personal stance on that? Japan going nuclear? There has been politicians who have made their observation about including Isha Harashintaro who used to be the mayor of Tokyo, Governor of Tokyo but no essentially no. However it's now being discussed in various public media whereas before it was unthinkable. The other point is the U.S.-Japan relationship is Japan has got the nuclear umbrella and if Japan goes nuclear the whole rationale behind U.S.-Japan relationship is under attack. So I don't think the U.S. would like Japan to go nuclear that's my take on that issue. Yeah I think a lot of this discussion is sort of based on an assumption that maybe the U.S. is withdrawing from the region and maybe one day there will be no alliance but yeah I see Trump as an aberration. I mean if you look at the alliance on an operational level it's extremely strong and an institutional level I think yeah. And it's increasing in terms of joint exercises etc. Well I don't think Japan will go nuclear because the public sentiment the anti-nuclear energy against this kind of nuclear weapons so I don't think Japan will go nuclear in the near future or in the long term Japan will go nuclear. Thank you very much. I'm Yasukido from Western University. I'd like to take this great opportunity to ask a very naive question to Professor Fujiwara. You mentioned that liberal internationalism has shrunk. I'm also very much concerned about it and I think people are concerned about globalization against globalization and so could you tell us how we could stop it. For example education with education or promoting social interactions help to decrease this tendency that's the question I want to answer in my next book based on a series in the world and I haven't finished the final chapter but that is the key question. Realistically speaking the origin of internationalism is in many ways based on the fear of cross national challenges could be disasters could be major wars say after the first world war the European powers at least had to agree to restrain their conduct the use of force and foreign policy that was a utopian vision that became a reality after the war. When it comes to international market the paradox of the oil prices was that after the oil prices we see far more cooperation between major economic powers in the management of global market for the simple reason being the cross national disaster in the market brings suffering to all. Now if there is a global issue that is rightly recognized across all of us it's not about trade it's not about populism it's not about migration it's about global climate change and I do support the movement for against global climate change and that's one of the project that is being done in my center but nonetheless this also means that we are not really addressing other issues the demands of liberal internationalism in the economic institutions the listening of alliance had a way to control the use of power of the United States so alliance was not simply saying yes to the United States this was also a framework that puts the US power in a way that other allies can find them to be agreeable to that extent it was it had a multilateral character that is being destroyed right now all these are common issues that are not addressed or shared by the public and frankly not likely to be in the future so global climate change is an issue that is being recognized across but there are other issues that is not really the threat perception is not really shared really and without a shared threat perception it's very difficult to revive on institutions we are exactly on time and I want to ask you to join me in thanking our marvelous panelists