By land and by sea: the potential of EU-Japan security cooperation

Abstract

This article argues that the EU has a potentially important and unique role to play as a security partner for Japan. The EU, as the broadest grouping of liberal democracies that embraces a broad political spectrum from conservatives to social democrats, can help Japan to redefine its international security role beyond the narrower confines of the US-Japan alliance. This article tests this hypothesis in two potentially promising areas of security cooperation: post-conflict reconstruction operations and counter-piracy deployments off the coast of Somalia. The EU has great potential to help Japan expand its overseas security role precisely because the EU is not controversial or polarizing in Japan, unlike some aspects of the US alliance, especially those related to overseas SDF deployments. Cooperation with the EU can help Japan re-legitmate overseas deployments, disassociate these from the use of force, the controversial ‘normal nation’ discourse in Japan, and expand them into more ambitious, but non-combat areas. Military cooperation with the EU overseas also largely eschews the fears of entrapment that feature prominently in Japanese overseas military cooperation with the US.