Thammasat University students interested in Japan, The United Kingdom, international relations, political science, diplomacy, history, and related subjects may find it useful to participate in a free 10 January Zoom webinar on The UK, Japan and the “Free and Open International Order”.

The event, on Wednesday, 10 January at noon Bangkok time, is presented by the Tokyo College, The University of Tokyo, Japan.

The TU Library collection includes several books about different aspects of Japan-United Kingdom international relations.

Students are invited to register at this link:

https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_9rfP8dOhQEGD0JjxL-stJg

The event webpage announces:

In May 2023, the Prime Ministers of Japan and the UK sealed “an enhanced UK – Japan global strategic partnership,” pledging to strengthen “the free and open international order based on the rule of law.”  Is this a realistic objective for two distant, mid-sized, island nations in an increasingly contested, volatile world?  How much can their partnership really contribute to international rulemaking or tackling global issues?  Can it indeed safeguard either party’s national security or prosperity?  How should we measure the results?

Lecturer

Alastair MORGAN

(Ushioda Fellow, Tokyo College, The University of Tokyo; Former British Ambassador to the DPRK 2015-2018)

Commentator

FUJIWARA Kiichi

(Professor & Special Advisor to the President, Chiba University; Visiting Professor, Institute for Future Initiatives, The University of Tokyo)

Moderator

SHIMAZU Naoko

(Professor, Tokyo College, The University of Tokyo)

An article posted in August 2023 on the website of the Human Security Centre (HSC), a UK think tank, suggested:

Islands on other sides of the world: prospects and challenges for UK-Japan bilateral relations

[…]

From a British perspective, the consolidation of bilateral relations with Japan is part of its tilt towards a comprehensive Indo-Pacific strategy. This trend became particularly pronounced following Dominic Raab’s visits to Vietnam and South Korea in September 2020.  Following his return to the UK, Raab emphasised the growing importance of the Indo-Pacific region for both the UK and the G7 in a set of issues ranging from economic cooperation to the COVID-19 pandemic in an October 2020 House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee meeting. It has been argued by some that such a shift in British foreign policy represents a wider ‘Global Britain’ paradigm which is also supplemented by a changing view of China as a threat. While this ‘Global Britain’ strategy has been deemed by an expert writing for the Kremlin-affiliated Russian International Affairs Council (RIAC) as a ‘neo-Victorian’ and ‘imperialist’ project fuelled by a romanticisation of the UK’s colonial past and potentially unsavoury intentions, such myths can be easily dispelled. First, many prospective partners are not former British colonial subjects. Vietnam, with which the United Kingdom-Vietnam Free Trade Agreement was signed in December 2020, is in fact a former French colonial possession. In the context of UK-Japan bilateral relations under the ‘Global Britain’ framework, Japan was along with Thailand never colonised by an external power. The ‘Global Britain’ approach is not merely an instrument for the UK to conduct trade and cooperation with its Commonwealth partners, but rather to transcend pre-existing formats.  Second, it is natural for any state to pursue cooperation with other states, be it economic or political, regardless of the nature of their respective histories. This has been demonstrated by the work of scholars such as Duncan Snidal, who has shown through his work on the concept of “constant returns” that there is a tendency for the benefits of inter-state cooperation between any two states to be proportional to their respective sizes and also to be shared equally.

From a Japanese perspective, bilateral relations with the UK hold great importance from both a political and an economic point of view. The UK has been identified as a vital regional hub for Japanese soft power projection in Europe. Soft power resources, according to the cofounder of neoliberal IR theory and pioneer of the concept of ‘soft power’ Joseph S. Nye Jr., differs from ‘hard power’ in that it holds a more co-optive rather than coercive nature while resources include “cultural attraction, ideology, and international institutions”. The primary reason for soft power’s central position in Japanese foreign policy has been identified as Japan’s postwar pacifist constitution, which subsequently rendered it more difficult for Japan to develop its hard power resources. At least, this has been the case until the 2015 revision of the constitution’s Article 9 championed by the late Shinzo Abe, which in turn permitted the dispatch of Japanese military personnel to participate in combat missions overseas as well as allow more flexibility for collective self-defence. The importance of the UK for Japanese soft power projection became clear in the summer of 2018, when a ‘Japan House’ was opened in the Kensington area of London, serving as an establishment spreading knowledge of Japanese culture and technology through exhibitions and workshops. Moreover, the London Japan House is alongside its counterpart branches in Los Angeles and Sao Paulo administered by the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA).

[…]

Both countries enjoy reputations as renowned US allies. While the UK is a long-standing member-state of NATO, Japan is considered a major regional partner in the Indo-Pacific region alongside Australia, New Zealand and South Korea. One way in which the nature of UK-Japan relations could be defined in the future is by their greater cooperation within the framework of NATO or related organisations such as the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (Quad). On one hand, Japan’s entry into NATO is unlikely for several reasons: Japan is not eligible to join NATO due to its geographical location, Kishida has denied any plans for Japan’s entry into NATO and there are also fears that this would cause unnecessary friction with China. On the other hand, this does not change the fact that NATO has expressed an increasing level of attention to developments in the Indo-Pacific. It has largely been credited to the initiative of NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg that Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand were invited to the July 2023 NATO Summit in Vilnius and that a joint statement involving all parties was delivered. Furthermore, there have been proposals recently expressed by Japanese officials such as Japan’s ambassador to the US Koji Tomota for the establishment of a NATO liaison office in Tokyo. These proposals have faced fierce opposition from France in particular. Nevertheless, Stoltenberg has affirmed that the possibility to establish such a facility still remains: the symbolic significance of such a move is difficult to exaggerate. Given milestones such as the first joint military exercise between the British and Japanese air forces in October 2016, the first joint military exercise between the British Army and Japan Ground Self-Defence Forces (JGSDF) in October 2018, joint naval drills in August 2021 in the vicinity of Okinawa and a joint paratrooper exercise also involving Australia and the US in January 2023, it is quite clear that greater NATO-Japan cooperation will equate to greater UK-Japan security cooperation.

(All images courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)