Japan-India Maritime Exercise (JIMEX) 2024 | Press Information Bureau.
Japan and India are strengthening their partnership with the United States, a technologically and militarily advanced nation, in an effort to jointly create public goods for regional stability and prosperity. The top priority for this purpose is to maintain the regional security and order. Japan and India are advancing MDA with Space technology through technical cooperation in the Indian Ocean as well as the Pacific Ocean. For Japan and India, technical and security cooperation in space with the US would provide public goods to the region and at the same time, a kit for their own growth and prosperity.
Introduction
In April 2024, President Biden invited Prime Minister Kishida to the White House as a guest of honour, and the leaders of the United States and Japan upgraded their security and technical cooperation, especially in the field of space. Among other things, the two leaders announced the shared goal of having two Japanese astronauts be the first non-Americans to land on the Moon in a future mission of the US-led international lunar exploration: the Artemis Project.1 This was an upgrade of the US-Japan alliance in the Indo-Pacific for global public goods.
A year earlier, in June 2023, President Biden welcomed India's participation in the Artemis Project as Indian Prime Minister Modi also visited the White House as a state guest and agreed on security and technical cooperation in the Indo-Pacific region between the US and India.2 President Biden also visited India in September 2023 to attendthe G20 Summit, where he praised the successful and historic landing of the Indian lunar probe Chandrayaan-3 on the moon and announcedfurther cooperation in establishing a working group for commercial space cooperation between the US and India.3
Prime Minister Kishida also visited India to attend the G20 Summit and met Prime Minister Modi. He, too, conveyed his congratulations on the successful landing of the Chandrayaan-3 on the moon.The two leaders agreed to maintain and strengthen a free and open international order based on the rule of law and to work together in advanced technology areas, including space.4
Thus – Japan and India – as the most important partners for the United States – have shared a strategic cooperation agenda for the stability and prosperity of the Indian Ocean region.
Common elements of the US-Japan and US-India Summit Agreements
Looking at the agreements reached at the series of summits between Japan, India and the US since 2023, there is a clear common thread. The momentum is to promote maritime security cooperation and technological development in the space sector and other areas as public goods for stability and prosperity in the Indo-Pacific region. It shows the potential for Japan and India to play a growing role in the future in the areas of maritime and coastal security in the Indian and Pacific Oceans, in space cooperation and maritime situation awareness from space.
At the Quad Summit in May 2022, Japan, India, the US and Australia agreed to work together to create a monitoring and sustainable development framework based on maritime observation from space and launched the “Indo-Pacific Partnership for Maritime Situation Awareness” and the “Japan-US-Australia-India HADR (Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Relief) Partnership in the Indo-Pacific”.5
These agreements among Japan, India, the US and Australia demonstrate a willingness to work together to shape the public goods for stability in the Indo-Pacific region. An important foundation for this is both traditional and non-traditional security, which would be fundamental to regional and global economic prosperity. Above all, technical cooperation is a key element in ensuring the goal. Consequently, the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (Quad) members have been following up on the agreement.
Importantly, these policies are closely linked not only to the formation of public goods but also to the vital national interests of each of the Quad countries. For them, mutual cooperation in the framework of the Quad is a win-win situation where steady progress is being made. The former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe proposed the Quad Strategic Dialogue in 2006 but the time was not yet ripe for the Quad to be formally launched.
However, looking at the steady progress that has been made since then, it can be said that the Quad was an excellent idea that focused on the national interests and strategic commonalities of each of all at an early stage. Indeed, the Abe vision at the time provided the incentive for Japan to move forward with its subsequent policies.
As early as 2012, Prime Minister Abe, in a contribution to the web journal Project Syndicate, made it clear that Japan’s national interest lies in the freedom of navigation in the Indian and Pacific Oceans and that this is also an interest shared by India, the United States and Australia:
Peace, stability, and freedom of navigation in the Pacific Ocean are inseparable from peace, stability, and freedom of navigation in the Indian Ocean. Japan, as one of the oldest sea-faring democracies in Asia, should play a greater role alongside Australia, India, and the US -in preserving the common good in both regions.6
Japan is poor in natural resources, especially fossil and nuclear fuels, which it imports daily through the sea lanes of communication (SLOCs) passing through the Indian Ocean, South China Sea, East China Sea and Pacific Ocean. Japan also secures the funds to import them by exporting industrial products such as automobiles through the same SLOCs. In other words, SLOCs are literally the lifeline which guarantees Japan's survival and prosperity.
One of the major challenges in defending these SLOCs is China's territorial claims in the East and South China Seas that deviate from international law with its military build-up, including sea, air, land, space and deployment of law enforcement forces to establishits claims.7 China simultaneously also imports resources and exports products through these very SLOCs Japan uses, and one of the motivations for its expansionary stance in the East and South China Seas is the defensive aspect of securing its own SLOCs.8 For China the Indian Ocean which forms its SLOCs, is a vital region for its own survival and prosperity, and it has been making strategic moves by increasing its economic influence over Indian Ocean littoral states such as Bangladesh, the Maldives and Sri Lanka.9
Japan's National Security Strategy, released in December 2022, presents the following recognitions and policies:
As a maritime nation surrounded by the sea on all sides and blessed with one of the world's most extensive jurisdictional waters, Japan will work with its ally, like-minded countries, and others to promote efforts to ensure the freedoms of navigation and overflight and to ensure safety, as well as maintain and develop the international maritime order based on universal values, including the rule of law. Specifically, Japan will advance multilateral maritime security cooperation by enhancing maritime surveillance to respond to threats in sea lanes, active bilateral drills and exercises with other countries, and overseas port calls.10
Background of Japan's Historic Policy Shift
The maritime surveillance indicated in the National Security Strategy of Japan requires strengthening satellite capability in the space domain. Thus, it states that Japan will promote measures to utilise Japan's overall space-related capabilities in the security field, including strengthening cooperation between the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) and other organisations and the Self-Defense Forces.
In fact, this policy represents a historic policy shift for Japan. Until now, Japanese academia, which has been strongly influenced by leftist pacifism due to its defeat in World War II, has placed severe restrictions on the military use of space.11 In recent years, however, Japan has made a fairly remarkable policy shift.12
Until this policy change, there had been an ongoing dialogue between Japanese academia and the government.13 On 25 September 2023, the Science Council of Japan representing general academia’s interests, published its views on research into dual-use technologies, recognising that it would not impose any restriction on the dual-use technology since it is difficult to clearly separate military and civilian research. This is believed to have resulted in a certain level of political consensus in the space sector to promote the use of space for security purposes.
The field of Maritime Domain Awareness (MDA) using space technology in the Indian or Pacific Ocean is an area where military and civilian, as well as traditional and non-traditional security, cannot be clearly separated. Japan has taken a step forward in space cooperation and maritime situational awareness with the US and India by gaining some consensus from domestic academia to work with security-related technological developments. This can be attributed to the fact that even sceptical Japanese academics could not back away from international cooperation in the MDA, which contributes greatly to the safety of civilian ship and aircraft operations, and in which dual-use technology can make a contribution.
The Japanese government's National Security Strategy has the following recognition and policy regarding dual-use technology.
Cutting-edge science and technology are advancing at an accelerated pace, and it has become extremely difficult in practice to distinguish between technologies for civilian. Against this backdrop, in order to widely and actively utilize Japan's advanced technological capabilities in the public and private sectors for security purposes, Japan will strengthen the system to improve technological capabilities of the public and private sectors that can be used for security purposes, to utilize, in a whole-of-government manner, funds and information related to research and development.14
In fact, the framework that became the prototype for the Quad cooperation was pioneered when Japan, India, the United States and Australia formed an ad hoc core group and led the international community's assistance in the wake of the December 2004 Sumatra earthquake and Indian Ocean tsunami disaster.15
In this regard, cooperation between Japan, India and volunteer countries in the non-traditional security area of HADR continues to be an important area, with MDA being the most useful information infrastructure for disaster prevention and rescue activities.
Challenge 1 – How to rein inChinese behaviour
Needless to say, MDA is of vital importance in the realm of traditional security as well. The Quad leaders welcomed the Indo-Pacific Partnership for Maritime Domain Awareness (IPMDA) in the 2022 summit.16 The IPMDA is designed to enable a near-real-time, integrated and cost-effective maritime domain awareness picture to aid the involved nations to monitor the waters and shores in the increasingly contested Indo-Pacific region.17
Even when the US military shot down a Chinese reconnaissance balloon flying over US mainland airspace in 2023, a senior US Department of Defense official pointed out the significance of international information sharing through the IPMD as a future counter-intelligence purpose at a US think-tank seminar.18
In addition, it is indisputable that the IPMD is an important element of Intelligence, Surveillance, Reconnaissance and Targeting (ISR&T) in military operations. Equally the IPMDA is critically important in dealing with the grey -zone challenges, which is the boundary between peacetime and wartime are not clear and could escalate to the military conflict. Images provided by the IPMDA could be useful information to ensure that agray-zone situation does not escalate.
In theIndo-Pacific region, China is increasingly using gray-zone tactics against the existing international order. The perception of experts at Japan's National Institute for Defense Studies (NIDS) is givenbelow, but this perception is also shared by experts inIndia and the US:
China has attempted to change the status quo through low-intensity conflicts in the maritime domain. In order to avoid war and create a favorable posture, China uses the PLA Navy as a deterrent force, while at the same time utilizing the China Coast Guard (CCG) law enforcement agency and the maritime militia to manage the intensity of the dispute so that it does not lead to armed conflict and exacerbate the conflict thereby gradually expanding China's rights and interests.19
On the other hand, if there is one perception that China shares with Japan, India, the US and Australia and India, it is that China does not want to clash with the US and its allies in a large-scale war. It is obvious that if the US and China were to engage in a military conflict, the losses to the countries involved would be unimaginable. However, there is no indication that China will stop its current expansionary posture or gray-zone challenge. We should assume that “the Chinese leadership seeks to create gray-zone situations constantly and exert pressure on the opponent while avoiding military clashes with other countries.”20
Eventually, what Japan and India could do is to engage the US in the region to maintain a military balance with China for deterrence, as well as to continuously monitor the situation to prevent gray-zone tactics by China or to manage escalation of their gray-zone challenge. The ultimate policy goal would be to make China realize that gray-zone challenges are an operation not worth the cost.
Challenge 2 – Solidarity with Indian Ocean littoral states and South Asian countries
China's use of influence through the so-called ‘debt trap’ policy of economic aid and economic coercion measures such as a tactical export restriction of critical minerals and other goods are also challenges to the existing order. In this regard, coordination of economic cooperation to the countries concerned, including capacity-building assistance in MDA or coastal security in the Indian and Pacific Oceans and, the South China and East Seas, is an important agenda for both Japan and India.
In the South China Sea for example, China has strengthened its claim to the Second Thomas Shoal against the Philippines and CCG vessels have been exerting pressure on Philippine vessels in the surrounding waters.21 In April 2024, the first trilateral summit meeting betweenJapan, the US, and the Philippines was held in conjunction with the Japan-US summit meeting. Japan confirmed progress in cooperation, including negotiations towards an early conclusion of the Japan-Philippines Reciprocal Access Agreement (RAA), the provision of coastal surveillance radars to the Philippines through the government's newly created Official Security Assistance (OSA) and the provision of additional patrol vessels through Official Development Assistance (ODA).22
In the September 2023 Joint Statement of India-Japan leaders in which they agreed to concretize future cooperation in the field of defense equipment and technology, Prime Minister Kishida welcomed Prime Minister Modi's 2019 announcement of the Indo-Pacific Ocean Initiative (IPOI), and expressed his hope that the IPOI and the Free and Open Indo-Pacific (FOIP) would be integrated, recognizing the growing scope for cooperation between the two countries, and expressing hope that Japan and India will seek to expand cooperation to other countries in recognition of the progress of ongoing projects in Bangladesh.23
India and Japan sign the summit-level Joint Statement Partnership for a Peaceful, Stable and Prosperous Post-COVID World, September 2023. | pmindia.gov.in
In fact, Japan has been cooperating with the Indian Ocean littoral states such as Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. On 12 March 2024, Japan's Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) and Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced the start of negotiations for a bilateral Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) with the Bangladeshi government. With Bangladesh scheduled to graduate from the Least Developed Countries (LDC) in November 2026, expectations for the bilateral EPA are high in both countries. The two governments launched a Joint Study on Bangladesh EPA in 2022-2023, and after a total of three study sessions, the two governments have reached this decision.24
On 4 May 2024, Japanese Foreign Minister Kamikawa visited Sri Lanka and stated, "Sri Lanka is an important partner situated in a strategic location on the sea lanes in the Indian Ocean and Japan would like to actively work with Sri Lanka, the Chair of the Indian Ocean Rim Association (IORA), in order to achieve inclusive growth for the entire Indo-Pacific region.” She also stated that "Japan has decided to offer a vessel equipped with a sonar to be used for compiling maritime charts."25
On 27 April 2024, Foreign Minister Kamikawa visited Madagascar, where she said that Madagascar, located at a strategic point between the Indian Ocean and the east coast of Africa, is an important partner in promoting the FOIP and that Japan supports the Thomasina port to enhance maritime connectivity. She conveyed Japan’s commitment to the multifaceted development of Madagascar.26
Conclusion
Thus, Japan and India are strengthening their partnership with the United States, a technologically and militarily advanced nation, in an effort to jointly create public goods for regional stability and prosperity. The top priority for this purpose is to maintain the regional security and order. Japan and India are advancing MDA with Space technology through technical cooperation in theIndian Ocean as well as thePacific Ocean. For Japan and India, technical and security cooperation in space with the U.S. would provide public goods to the region and at the same time, a kit for their own growth and prosperity.
(Exclusive to NatStrat)
Endnotes
The Indus Waters Treaty: Why Pakistan's obsession does not mask its failure
PM Modi’s Russia Visit: Extending Ties in the Arctic within Greater Eurasian Space
Russia in the Indian Ocean Region: From Power Projection to Classical ‘Mahanism’
