Japan’s Maritime Strategy

Japan has expanded the capabilities and mission of its Japan Maritime Self-Defense Forces (JMSDF) to respond to the changing regional security environment. Japan’s maritime strategy continues to be grounded in the U.S.-Japan alliance, but Japan has widened its operational range and focused on new potential challenges to stability and open access. 

The third panel at the conference on East Asia maritime issues co-hosted by the Carnegie-Tsinghua Center and the Institute for Asia Pacific Studies focused on Japan’s maritime strategy and its intersection with U.S. and Chinese policies and objectives. Captain Keiichi Kuno of the JMSDF, Patrick Cronin of the Center for a New American Security, Alexandre Sheldon-Duplaix of the French National Defense University, and other experts discussed these issues. David Winkler of the U.S. Naval Historical Foundation moderated.

Japan’s Maritime Strategy

• Dynamic Defense: Japan is following a dynamic defense strategy under which the JMSDF would pursue dynamic deterrence through continuous surveillance and reconnaissance; build or maintain the capacity to respond immediately to various situations; and undertake proactive activities to improve the security environment. The mission of the JMSDF remains exclusively defense-oriented, but its area of operations has expanded and the level of its participation in maritime activities has increased.
   
• Part of the U.S. Alliance System: Japan’s naval development has been shaped by challenges to the U.S.-led alliance system. During the Cold War, the JMSDF protected U.S. submarines and aircraft carriers in the Pacific and tracked Soviet ships. Post-Cold War, the JMSDF took on new missions like responding to the North Korean threat and operating to support U.S. forces in the Middle East and to contribute to anti-piracy missions. In 2010, in response to what was perceived as additional pressure from China on jurisdictional disputes, Japan announced the dynamic defense strategy and shifted its geographic focus.
   
• Providing Public Goods: Japan sees the U.S.-Japan alliance as a cornerstone of its defense policy and as providing the public goods of stability and secure maritime transport in the region. Japan’s maritime strategy is to support the United States in providing these goods, particularly in securing the Sea Lines of Communication.
   
• Environmental Conservation and Development of Resources: The 2007 Basic Act on Ocean Policy called for environmental conservation and sustainable development in Japan’s exclusive economic zones (EEZs) and continental shelf as principles. This includes promoting Japan’s sovereignty claims to offshore islands and the adjacent EEZs in the South China Sea and exploiting the resources there.

Potential Tension with China

• Maritime Disputes: Japan and China both claim sovereignty over the Diaoyu/Senkaku islands in the South China Sea. The conflicting sovereignty claims give rise to conflicting resource claims in the area around the islands and conflicting claims about fishing rights, explained someone. Furthermore, Japanese and U.S. conceptions of free navigation sometimes conflict with the Chinese conceptions on issues of military exercises and intelligence gathering.
   
• Obstacles to Resolution: Both Japan and China have strongly held positions on sovereignty grounded in an interpretation of history and of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. Both countries have strong interests in protecting their claims to the resources in the adjacent maritime area. Sheldon-Duplaix stated that neither side supports resolution by an international court. A Chinese participant stated that even if both sides agreed to establish a mechanism to resolve the dispute, it is not clear which agency within the Chinese government would have the authority to settle the issue.
   
• Persistent Mistrust: China has criticized Japan’s recent policies in the South China Sea as too militarist and expansionist. Japan has responded that the policies are not new, that the Japanese military budget remains only 1 percent of GDP, and that though the mission is expanding it is still purely defensive. Still, mistrust seems to permeate the relationship; when Chinese participants asked why only 15 of the 200 Chinese personnel sent to assist Japan after the Fukushima-Daiichi disaster were accepted, Japanese participants said that while the government had not known the scale of the disaster and that there were a lot of personnel and ships on the scene already, they did not know why the government had refused help in some cases.

Possibilities for Cooperation

• Combating Non-Traditional Security Threats: Common challenges such as piracy, terrorism, and humanitarian disasters cannot be met alone. Japan leads a range of defense exchange and training programs, joint exercises, port visits, and personnel exchanges with other countries to address these. Captain Kuno stated that the maritime surveillance would be an important area for Sino-Japanese cooperation.
   
• The U.S.-Japan Maritime Cooperation Model: American and Japanese participants stressed the strength of U.S.-Japanese cooperation as a model or goal for other cooperative ventures. In the wake of Fukushima, U.S. and Japanese forces were interoperable and relied on joint use of military bases.

International Paradigms for China’s Maritime Development?

Sheldon-Duplaix suggested that the maritime policies of European countries or Japan during the Cold War might suggest a path for China’s maritime development. He predicted that France’s naval capabilities during the Cold War, which included two aircraft carriers, six nuclear powered ballistic nuclear missile-carrying submarines, and ten fast-attack submarines, would be about what the PLA Navy could realistically achieve in the near future. He also proposed that the Japanese model of beginning with defensive operations close in and expanding outward may preview China’s development as well. Admiral Yang of the PLA Navy remarked that France was “too small” to serve as a model for China.