Critical Studies of the Asia-Pacific. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014. xii, 221 pp. (Graphs.) US$105.00, cloth. ISBN 978-1-137-38554-3.
In the field of international security, Japanese behaviour is pre-eminently explained as the product of one of two different attitudes. A core of realist scholars considers Japanese governments to have a preference for strategies seeking to avoid major responsibilities in dealing with major security issues. Others, including constructivist writers, understand that Japanese behaviour is trapped between an inability to “normalize” and the tendency to conform to international norms. In particular, the combination of the engrained nature of what Thomas Berger defined as Japan’s culture of anti-militarism, and the legacy of the imperial military past, have continuously constrained the scope of Japanese actions in international security.
Lindsay Black disagrees with this view. In this carefully constructed book, he argues that this literature has failed to capture Japan’s “innovative contribution to the maintenance of international order since the late 1990s” (7). Black looks at Japanese responses to maritime security threats to show how, in this branch of international security, authorities in Tokyo have not merely followed other international actors, nor have they just sought to do as little as possible. On the contrary, they took a frontline role in tackling maritime outlaws, from terrorist groups and pirates to criminal organizations. Indeed, Black argues, Japanese authorities displayed a degree of entrepreneurship, devising innovative policies that contributed to the capacity building of law-enforcement agencies and the financing of multilateral institutions from Southeast Asia to the Gulf of Aden. This is no trifling achievement since, in so doing, Japanese authorities balanced self-perceptions about anti-militarist norms and the legacy of the imperial past against the need to address a serious security challenge.
Black’s choice to focus on maritime security is no coincidence. No aspect of international security is more relevant to explore the evolving nature of Japanese behaviour, and few areas of international security have gained the same level of attention in East Asia over the past decade and a half. As a maritime nation, Japan depends upon unfettered access to shipping routes for its economic survival. From a security perspective, the sea represents both a crucial factor of vulnerability and a platform from where the defence of national borders is exercised. Thus, changes to the international maritime security order require Japanese authorities to act and, in a fast-changing East Asian maritime landscape, Black had no lack of examples to investigate the subject. The intellectual framework underscoring the book’s analysis draws upon the English School of International Relations, which the author mobilizes with great mastery to conceptualize both the boundaries of the Japanese identity as a member of the international society, and the nature of the challenge presented by state and non-state maritime outlaws. The first half of the book is used to adapt this theoretical framework to the maritime context—an exercise that is particularly successful.
The second part of the book focuses instead on examining Japanese policy reactions in relation to three sets of issues: North Korea’s incursions into Japanese waters in 1999 and 2001, piracy in Southeast Asia and in the Gulf of Aden, and counterterrorism and anti-proliferation initiatives. The chapter analysis of the Japanese policy-making process vis-à-vis maritime piracy in Southeast Asia is particularly compelling. In it, the lengthy theoretical discussions of the previous chapters find a clear empirical application. The book convincingly reviews the Japanese choice to see the Japan Coast Guard (JCG) promoting cooperation with counterparts in ASEAN, offering advice through personnel exchanges and thematic seminars, and hosting and contributing to exercises. As the chapter shows, Japan’s self-perceived identity informed by anti-militarism and the legacy of the imperial past shaped the process, favouring the use of the JCG instead of the navy, known as the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force (JMSDF). On the other hand, this self-perception did not prevent innovative action to ensure the maintenance of regional order, with the Japanese active promotion of a Singapore-based Information Sharing Centre, established in 2004.
Notwithstanding the title (and the cover image), however, this book is not really about maritime strategy, nor about the Japan Coast Guard (JCG). Practitioners or specialists of maritime affairs will find no intellectual reference in the theoretical chapters to the classic works of Alfred Mahan and Sir Julian Corbett or to more modern authors like Ken Booth and Geoffrey Till, nor practical explanations as to how the JCG operates or how it interacts with the JMSDF. This has two implications. The first is that the book lacks a basic understanding of maritime operations, leading the author to overstate the case of the JCG. For example, in the Gulf of Aden, the JCG maintained a mere eight officers on board a JMSDF task force of three warships and two P-3C aircraft based in Djibouti. Contrary to what is suggested in the book, the navy deployed its own special boarding unit for the mission and maintained a firm operational control in patrols, inspections, boarding, convoying, and coordination with other navies. The JCG had a supporting role in monitoring the compliance to law enforcement; this state of affairs makes it hard to support the notion that the Japanese government perceived piracy as “falling within the purview of a civilian police authority” (138). The second implication is that what the author calls Japan’s “dual” maritime security strategy, is actually a maritime security policy aimed at deploying the coast guard or the navy (or both of them in tandem) depending on the nature of the challenge. Indeed, from a maritime perspective the examples referred to in this book—most notably that of North Korea’s incursions—undermine the very existence of “two” strategies. These events have in fact been driving the development of manuals and practices for coordinated actions between the two organizations. Like other state actors with significant maritime interests, Japan seems to have one strategy and coordinated maritime policies to employ its coast guard and navy to maximum effect.
In all, these considerations leave the door open for further research as to what is the balance between identity and operational requirements in the shaping of Japan’s responses to maritime security. Is the entrepreneurial behaviour displayed by Japan in tackling maritime outlaws during the 1990s and early 2000s a sign of the emergence of a different international security actor with a tendency to favour civilian actions as opposed to military ones? Or, are the examples cited by Black just the expression of an initial cautious engagement that is now seeing the navy taking a stronger role alongside the JCG? Recent Japanese naval exercises with NATO as part of the anti-piracy missions in the Gulf of Aden and increasing defence engagements in Southeast Asia would suggest that the latter interpretation stands at least on equal footing with the former. The debate is open and this book deserves credit for setting forth a strong theoretical framework in support of one of the possible answers.
Alessio Patalano
King’s College London, London, United Kingdom
pp. 432-434