Japan and Australia: sustainable and unsustainable options for security partnership

Richard Tanter

Australia and Japan: anxious allies

• Both emphasizing military responses to security problems

• Both hardening and growing military capacities

• Both moved closer to the United States• Both contributed to Iraq and Afghanistan• Deep and growing security cooperation• Both have deepening involvement with US

space war planning

Expansion of old bases and building new ones (announced 2004-2010)

• Bradshaw Training Area (Western Australia, 2004) • Shoalwater Bay Training Area (Queensland) (2004)• Joint Combined Training Centre (Western Australia, 2004)• Yampi Sound Training Area (Western Australia, 2004)• Delamere Air Training Range (Northern Territory) (2005)

(B-2 bombers)• Australian Defence Satellite Communications Station,

Kojarena, Geraldton, (Western Australia, 2007)• Harold E. Holt Naval Communications Base [North West

Cape] (Western Australia, 2008, 2010) : (Space Situational Awareness Partnership)

Michael Leunig on Delamere

Geraldton/Kojarena: Australian Defence Satellite Communications Station

Joint Defence Facility

Pine Gap

(Google Earth, August 2005)

“U.S. to Build Up Military in Australia - Move Aimed at Countering China in Asia,Clarifying Free Access to South China Sea”, Wall Street Journal, November 11

Mike Green: ''They want to be able to fly helicopters, drop out of planes and shoot at things, and you can't do that in crowded Okinawa.''

Robertson Barracks, Darwin, Northern Territory

After US hegemony in Asia: two versions

• Shiraishi Takashi, Umi no Teikoku [Empire of the Seas]

• 「海の帝国」白石隆（著）、中央公論新社 (2000 年）

• Steve Chan, China, the US and the Power-Transition Theory: A Critique, (2007)

Hugh White on Australia and the rise of China (2010)

“We can hardly imagine what it would be like to live in an Asia that is not led by the US. All our history and instincts therefore incline us to push the US to contest China's challenge and maintain the status quo for as long as possible.Yet our interests and our future should incline us to push the other way.”

• “[Professor Hugh White has written the single, stupidest strategic document ever prepared in Australian history by someone who once held a position of some responsibility in our system (White was once deputy secretary of the Defence Department).”

• Greg Sheridan, Foreign Editor, The Australian, 11 September 2010

Hugh White: five Australian alternatives in a

more contested Asia. • “We can

– remain allied to America,– seek another great and

powerful friend, – opt for armed neutrality, – build a regional alliance with our

Southeast Asian neighbours, or – do nothing and hope for the

best. • David Martin, Armed

Neutrality for Australia (1984)

A call from former P.M. Hosokawa Morihiro, 1996: “De-construct the alliance, and remove the US troops”:

• “The single most important determining factor in Japan's national interest is the relationship between Japan, China, and the United States. We must build and maintain friendly relations with China in the future just as we have with the United States.

• the bases now much more important than in the Cold War

• the Ampo treaty is now “a military cooperation treaty on a global scale”

• there has been “no dialogue from the Japanese side with America in the past 50 years”

Identity, balance and hegemony

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Richard Tanter• http://www.nautilus.org/about/associates/

richard-tanter/publications• rtanter@nautilus.org

Australian Defence Facilities, Nautilus Institute• http://www.nautilus.org/publications/books/

australian-forces-abroad/defence-facilities