Japan’s Perspective on the Security Environment in the Asia Pacific and Its Approach toward Multilateral Cooperation: Contradictory or Consistent?

The international community is currently undergoing an incremental but definite shift of the economic and strategic centers of gravity to Asia. The fundamental change has been brought about mainly by newly emerging powers like China and India. In the Asia-Pacific region, this geo-strategic reconfiguration has led to a changing balance of power and influence between the United States and China in the sense that the latter could challenge the leading position of the former because of China’s growing economic, political, and military power. Against the backdrop of this potential competition between the two great powers, other regional countries like Japan are urged to cope with such a new strategic environment in terms of dealing with maritime and other strategic issues. How Japan responds and accommodates itself to this regional and global change in the security landscape is critical.1 Since its launch in December 2012, the Abe administration has been restructuring Japan’s security policy, typically exemplified in his decision to review the National Defense Program Guidelines (NDPG), which was issued in December 2010 under the previous administration of the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ). Based upon the cabinet’s decision, the Ministry of Defense (MOD) established a commission to review the defense posture in order to set a general direction of new defense guidelines. In July 2013, the commission issued an interim report, which re-emphasizes the salience of reinforcing Japan’s defense capabilities and the US-Japan alliance, mainly for effectively dealing with emerging and potential