 Welcome to the National Security College. I'm Chris Farnham and we're on the sidelines of the Strengthening Japan-Australia-U.S. Strategic Cooperation Conference and I'm here with Colonel Grant Neucham, the Senior Research Fellow for the Japan Forum of Strategic Studies and we're going to be discussing the prospects and challenges for greater trilateral cooperation between Australia, Japan and the U.S. Thanks very much for joining us, Grant. Can I ask straight off about what does the Trump administration mean for the U.S.-Japan alliance and what does it mean for Japan in a wider strategic sense? I think it's good for the Japan alliance. I think a lot of the worries and the hair pulling on the part of the Japanese are ill-founded. I think they will find as some time passes that Mr. Trump is not going to pick a fight over how much money he gets from the Japanese and he understands the importance of this relationship, both in a political sense and economic sense and a military sense. I think to remember is that Mr. Trump has got some very good advisers around him. Some of his people handling the Asia-Pacific matters are really good and that they know which ends up. So I'm really not worried at all. I think what it will require though is Japan to do more and by do more, I mean it's got to spend more on itself. The JSDF's budget has been underfunded for decades. This affects their ability to train and it affects their willingness to cooperate for the three services to cooperate with each other. And if you analogize it to survivors in a lifeboat, once the water in the food runs low, you don't really think about cooperating with the other people. You want their stuff or you even want to eat them. And they have been so underfunded that this really has affected their capabilities and their, really, they're ultimately their usefulness for defending Japan. And this is where Japan will be asked to do more, is to really look after its own defense. I think there'll be great willingness to sort of further, really further and much work needs to be done to further the linkages between US military and Japanese forces as well. An example of what's doable is the relationship between the US Navy and the Maritime Self-Defense Force, the Japanese Navy, which is excellent. And they've had a very good solid operational relationship for years. The other services need to do this and I think a Trump administration is going to encourage Japan to do everything it possibly possibly can. So I think it's actually going to require Japan to do more. It's done too little for too long. And so I think it's actually a good opportunity. So the concerns, the worries that you saw immediately after Mr. Trump was elected, which surprised like every single person in Japan and all 100% of the people in the government, that their worries were there, they will find that those were unfounded. But this does not mean they have to do just what they've always been doing. So you've written about the too difficult idea, both from in Japan and from maybe some diplomats who work in Japan as well. So if you think that the Trump administration isn't the brewing storm for alliances like some people would say, what actually needs to change in the Japanese administration to be able to work well with the Trump administration by spending more money on their forces and by having all the different services work better. Where are the changes and what are the changes that are needed within the Japanese administration to achieve this? That's the right question to ask, because how do you get it to come about? How do you do it? And that ultimately requires the Americans, the American government to strongly suggest that the Japanese do these things, create some real jointness within their forces, spend more on their own forces, not on us, but on their own forces, and then do things to make the alliance of the guideline, the newly revised guidelines, give them some concrete substance to them. There's something called like an alliance coordination mechanism that's called for, well it hasn't gone very far yet, create a standing joint headquarters in Tokyo or in Japan, permanently staffed with U.S. and Japanese forces to really do operations together. But ultimately there's something called gaiatsu, which means foreign pressure, and the word was coined during the trade wars of the 80s and part of the 90s, and ultimately it, and that was the idea, was foreign pressure was forcing the Japanese to change. And ultimately that's what it is going to require is the U.S. administration to quietly just insist that this is what the Japanese need to do in exchange for a promise from the United States that Americans will die on their behalf, but it really is a very small request considering what Japan gets in return. But there is really no easy way to do it, it's almost as if persuasion and logic just doesn't seem to work, but it does require pressure. But also keep in mind that within Japan, with the people who think about defense and foreign affairs, there's plenty of people who understand what Japan needs to do and wish it would do it. But in any society trying to effect change can be difficult, but it will ultimately require some pressure, which ultimately Japanese reformers can then run with. And there is an angle of the foreign pressure that allows somebody in the Japanese government to say, well, the Americans made us do it. And it's one way to defuse the blame or the responsibility. It sounds sort of snide, but it really is true. We have our own, the Americans have their own version of that, which is, well, the lawyers told me I had to do it. That's what the consultant advised me to do. There's always somebody to blame it. Absolutely. Now you just touched on the difficulties in terms of interoperability between the Japanese services and that it's not so fantastic. And only in the maritime self-defence and US Navy is it really at an operational level. If interoperability within the Japanese forces and between the different services with the US isn't so great, what are the prospects for real trilateral strategic cooperation between countries like the US, Japan, and Australia? You've certainly cited the problems that they have. For instance, communications between the three Japanese services, literally electronic communications, the ability to get on a radio and talk to someone in the Army, to talk to someone in the Navy, or in the Air Force, or vice versa, any combination, it's almost impossible. And you would say, well, how can that possibly be? Well, that's how it is. And so you really have some fundamental shortcomings, but they are able to work around it when they have to. It's just extremely cumbersome and done on an ad hoc basis instead of being a problem that's just being corrected. And that's how it is. But not to say that it couldn't be fixed or shouldn't be fixed, despite those shortcomings, Japan is the JSDF is able to actually get out and do some good operations when they need to. And particularly in the amphibious area, where the Japanese Navy and the Japanese Army cooperate, the Navy provides ships, the Army puts troops and helicopters aboard, and they get out and about. They've gone to California twice and done very good amphibious operations with the Americans. They do some with the Americans down in sort of the southern parts of Japan in the fall and they do some on their own. And this really is a very good sort of platform for Japan and Australia in particular to get together and really exercise all their muscles, air, sea, and ground capabilities together. And once you do that, I'd say it creates a very different kind of relationship. I'd compare it to shaking hands with somebody and just going away or actually getting into a Greco-Roman wrestling match with them. You just see things very differently and you get more familiar with people, you get more trust in them, better more confidence in yourself, and in them when they become they're not strangers anymore. Plus you set a precedent, then you can then do the next thing. So I would suggest that one opportunity is the Australia's new amphibious force, which has really gotten pretty good pretty fast and is able to do an awful lot, that it link up with Japan's new amphibious force. And some start small and conduct an exercise, conduct an operation with all the planning that takes place, all of the exchanges, what we call cross-decking where you put their troops on, you put Japanese on Australian ships, Australians on Japanese ships, you've really got your planners together, you have liaison officers all over the place, and you're figuring out how to play baseball and to play it pretty well. And with the idea being that you're able to operate together, conduct a real-world operation, and this has immediate relevance for things like HADR, Humanitarian Assistance Operations, both in learning how to do them together and potentially in a real-world scenario. So actually I think that's a pretty good way to do it. Plus there's a lot of substance to that. As I said, it's like cross-fit training, whereas if it's just a question, say, of an Australian platoon going up to, say, Japan and doing a ground exercise with the GSDF or vice versa, the Japanese sending 40 troops to Talisman Saber exercise, that's really not a very substantial exercise. It's better than nothing. But amphibious is where you really get the scale and the complexity and the depth to make some real progress. And once you find once you've done that, it does have a political effect, just a psychological effect. And that I would suggest that that has a strategic effect ultimately, because then that's one of the issues that Mr. Abe has been keen on, is to really link up with the Australians. The submarine deal, of course, didn't go. But that said, maybe a blessing in disguise, as I've mentioned before, but the... So use amphibious capabilities to build this tie. And I think that is a very good prospect. Another idea I've heard is actually raised probably 15 years ago by a young marine major writing a thesis. And he suggested sending an Australian F-18 squadron to Japan, stationed at Iwakuni with where the marines are. And this was thought revolutionary at the time, but one knew that if several things happened, it could happen. It is now it's not so unthinkable. And why not eventually a Japanese F-15 squadron send it down to Australia or such like? So there are some other opportunities, but amphibious interaction is the one that really gives some substance to the relationship. Plus, there's an operational benefit. I mean, that you just get better at doing these kinds of amphibious operations, which ultimately, as I said, are very useful for HADR. And the Australians, with their new amphibious force last year, went over to Fiji right after and really did a good job. But it shows what's doable with that capability. And without that capability, it leaves a gap. So that was what I would say is one good opportunity. You mentioned the submarine issue. Now, this was a very large issue in Australia, as I'm aware, in some circles in both Japan and the US. It was quite a big deal as well. It's worth asking an outsider to that deal is how the choice in Australia of choosing a French design over the Japanese design, what effect did that have in Japan? And has that changed Japan's view of Australia in terms of strategic cooperation at all? I don't think it has. Actually, it seemed to me that really the person who wanted that submarine deal most in Japan was Mr. Abe himself. Even around him, people weren't all that convinced. MHI Mitsubishi, the main company that was going to build it, they weren't all that interested in it. It was kind of a daunting project to build a submarine overseas for the first time and have to deal with a foreign labor force. You would probably know more of the vagaries of that, how fun that would be for the Japanese in doing that in Australia. But MHI wasn't all that keen. There were few that kind of convinced themselves that it was a good deal. But by and large, it was resistance. Even the Japanese Navy had shown some reluctance to give up their crown jewels. So you had to say there was, whilst there were some people who were, I think, shocked by this and probably Mr. Abe. And I suspect the people who arranged that barbecue before the deal was announced between the Japanese and the Australians, they were probably disappointed. But I don't think many other people in Japan were. As for the Americans, it was kind of a little bit of a jolt. But like with most things, wait a week and we'll forget about it. But you can make up for this. I say that's where the amphibious connection. Really, I think, if you get that right, you build these operational, psychological, political ties. And I think it would actually make up for the submarine deal. And I'm not so sure that had the submarine deal gone through that after some months of dealing with the labor force, and they had just the complications that come with building a submarine, I'm not so sure there wouldn't have been some ill will on both sides. So actually, you have some progress, you have the opportunity to make some progress minus the ill will. And so you could actually do better with the amphibious thing. It's obviously a lot cheaper. So not as lucrative. And the submarine deal did have, there were some good things to say for it, particularly from the strategic sense that it would force Japan to really look outwards and do something that had never been done before. Plus Australia making the commitment to link up with the Japanese, and Beijing would not have been terribly happy about that. So there were some very good things about the submarine deal, but ultimately, I think from a business perspective, that and plus just the, if you're the administration and you're trying to figure out who is, which side is more likely to be able to build it with too much trouble, they may have gone with what they saw as the safer bet. Plus the defense industry is a very, it's a sharp elbowed business. And the Japanese have never been in it. And in that regards, they probably didn't have a chance ultimately. Yes, well, you certainly give us a lot to think about and quite a lot more optimism than other people talking on the same subject might. So thank you very much for joining us today. And thank you for joining us. If you'd like to see more discussions about strengthening Australia, Japan, US trilateral strategic cooperation, please visit us at the ANU channel.