Paper short abstract:

This paper examines Japan's alignment cooperation with India and France in the Indo-Pacific region. It looks at the drivers of these alignments and achieved levels of cooperation, while also assessing the opportunities and constraints of these partnerships to meet Japan's security needs.

Paper long abstract:

As one of the strongest supporters of the US-led "hub-and-spoke" security system in the Asia-Pacific, Japan under Prime Minister Abe Shinzo has made significant efforts to reinforce its alliance with the US. Contemporaneously, Tokyo has enthusiastically promoted a deepening of Japan's security cooperation with other "like-minded" countries - both treaty and non-treaty allies of Washington. These include regional (Australia and India) and extra-regional (the UK and France) nations, which share liberal democratic values with Japan, as well as support America's continuity security engagement in Asia and Europe.

Differently from Japan's formal, threat-based alliance with the US, and its military-strategic focus, Tokyo's bilateral partnerships with these countries are representative of alignment cooperation - they are characterised by a lower level of institutionalisation, informality, and emphasis on shared interests and (primarily) non-traditional security (NTS) challenges. Abe's Free and Open Indo-Pacific Strategy (FOIPS) - which focuses on promoting regional economic prosperity through connectivity, maritime capacity-building and free navigation - has become central in Japan's strategic alignments. FOIPS has largely contributed to the recent reconceptualisation of the region, from the Asia-Pacific to the Indo-Pacific, under the Donald J. Trump administration.

Against the above background, the proposed paper takes a closer look at Japan's alignment cooperation with India and France, with a particular focus on the Indo-Pacific region. These two countries come second after Australia and the UK in terms of their strategic importance to Japan in Asia and Europe, respectively; additionally, India (differently from Australia) has not been a formal "spoke" in the US-led security system, while France (in contrast to the UK) has remained a key pillar of the EU. The paper examines, from Japan's perspective, the drivers of these alignments and achieved levels of cooperation so far. It also assesses the opportunities of these partnerships, as well as the constraints they face, to meet Japan's security needs and address the deficiencies of the US-led alliance system, especially concerning more threat-based security issues.