“Ukraine today may be East Asia tomorrow,” Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida told an international security gathering in Singapore, a catchphrase that speaks to the harsh lessons learned over the past few months.
Better deterrence and response capabilities, he told a room packed with defense officials and diplomats, is “absolutely essential if Japan is to learn to survive in the new era and keep speaking out as a standard-bearer of peace.”
Cranking up rhetoric, though, is the easy part.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has jolted the pacifist nation into making bigger promises on spending, security and a foreign policy that relies on more than economics — welcome news for allies eager to have a muscular Japan discouraging provocations from its nuclear-armed neighbors. Tokyo needs to overcome what remains of domestic resistance, free up funds and strengthen alliances — and fast.
However, this “courteous power” can already use diplomatic tools to do more for the “rules-based free and open international order” that Kishida talked up at the Shangri-La Dialogue on Friday last week.
He could do worse than to start in Southeast Asia. It is a region that, like much of the emerging world, has largely distanced itself from allies’ responses to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s aggression, and where Japan has more credibility than most.
Ukraine has made even Tokyo’s most ardent pacifists realize that a totally unprovoked war is not a distant prospect. It is a tough neighborhood: North Korean missiles; Russian saber-rattling around islets it says are part of its Kuril chain and Japan calls its Northern Territories; and tensions in the East China Sea, never mind the dramatic consequences of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. Joint military exercises by Russia and China have done little to ease nerves.
Little wonder that even if an overhaul of Japan’s constitutional article forbidding “land, sea and air forces, as well as other war potential,” remains unlikely, public opinion is shifting, and limits are becoming more flexible, with counterstrike capabilities up for discussion.
Even Kishida, whose family hails from Hiroshima and is less hawkish than others in his party, is pledging a substantial increase in defense spending, a step further from the pacifist mindset of Japan’s past few decades.
Even so, it could be challenging to move quickly at home. Kishida gave no specifics, but an increase in the defense budget to 2 percent of GDP, or NATO levels, as his party has proposed — roughly doubling the current share — could be a tough sell in practice, given post-COVID-19-pandemic demands and stretched public finances.
Kishida can still add troops to the Self-Defense Forces, as Japan’s military is known. He can also bolster missile defense and cybersecurity while strengthening Japan’s alliance with the US — although Kishida has, for now, pushed aside nuclear sharing, or the possibility of hosting foreign nuclear weapons on Japanese soil.
However, Japan, which has already broken with precedent by accepting refugees and sending bulletproof vests to Ukraine, can take other steps to protect itself and the rules-based order it depends on, with more forceful diplomatic efforts to help widen the alliance of nations condemning Russia’s aggression and pushing to isolate its economy.
Southeast Asia is a good place to begin.
With the exception of Singapore, which has imposed unilateral sanctions for the first time in more than four decades, the region has largely sought to remain neutral in the conflict.
That is due in equal parts to the power of Russian weapons exports, deep-seated anti-Western sentiment, Soviet-era ties, disinformation — and of course diplomatic disengagement on the part of the wealthy world, not to mention sheer distance.
Just a day after Kishida addressed the Singapore gathering, Indonesian Minister of Defense Prabowo Subianto, whose country has refused Ukraine’s request for weapons, defended what he called strategic neutrality, with a reference to former South African president Nelson Mandela’s comment when asked in a US interview about former Cuban president Fidel Castro: “Your enemy is not necessarily my enemy.”
It is a position Russia is exploiting as the food crisis worsens, which is likely to be used to weaken support for Ukraine as the war grinds on, and it is an issue the West is not doing enough to tackle.
Southeast Asia is important, not just as a grouping of important emerging economies, but because this year it has the global spotlight. Indonesia is to chair the G20 in Bali in November, and Thailand is to host the APEC Global Economic Leaders Summit.
So it matters when Cambodia, the current chair of ASEAN, joins with Indonesia and Thailand to issue a statement on their respective meetings that skirts the small matter of a war of conquest entirely, in favor of working “with all partners and stakeholders.”
Japan is already engaged with the region, and Kishida in his first months has visited Cambodia, Vietnam, Indonesia, Thailand and Singapore, and welcomed Malaysian Prime Minister Ismail Sabri Yaakob in Tokyo.
Japan is also the region’s most trusted partner, not to mention a leading investor — but as with its investment, diplomatic efforts have been patient and understated, and far more is needed. There is an uncomfortable colonial past, and officials are dealing with reluctant and distracted governments. Indonesia, for one, is looking ahead to a 2024 election.
Japan also needs to steer away from values conversations around political systems. Singaporean Minister of Defence Ng Eng Hen is right that there are likely to be “few takers for a battle royale on that basis.”
However, stronger economic ties should help, as should military supplies to reduce dependence on Russia, not to mention coordinating food aid and support where needed as the Ukraine conflict fuels a surge in prices and hunger. Persistent diplomacy too. Avoiding another aggressor trampling over smaller neighbors demands it.
Clara Ferreira Marques is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist and editorial board member covering foreign affairs and climate. She previously worked for Reuters in Hong Kong, Singapore, India, the UK, Italy and Russia. This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.
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