As Japan and the UK face serious challenges at home and in their respective regions, this report makes the case that a stronger relationship could advance each country’s ability to address shared global concerns.
A Japanese translation of the report is also available as a PDF via this link.
Japan and the UK both benefited greatly from the period of international stability that accompanied first the Cold War and then the post-Cold War era. That stability helped them to protect their national interests and to sustain their citizens’ welfare. Today, with nationalism on the rise across the world, with China and Russia challenging the foundations and dominance of the Western-led post-Second World War order, and with the US appearing to step back from its global leadership role, both countries face major challenges to their status as beneficiaries of that order. This chapter considers the nature of these challenges and the possible responses that the two countries might make together as partners and allies, and as prominent mid-sized powers – even if their power is often manifested and exercised in different ways. The chapter focuses on the ways in which both countries will need to take a more proactive stance in standing up for the principles, institutions and policies that will sustain a rules-based international order, rather than seeking defensive ways to manage its decline.
Relations between the UK and Japan have undergone periods of closeness and of severe strain over the past 150 years. The UK was used as a model for Japan’s modernization as the country transitioned from the Tokugawa era to the Meiji period in the 19th century, and it provided assistance to Japan during the Russo-Japanese War (1904–05). Relations deteriorated in the 1930s as Japan challenged the collective security structure of the League of Nations that Britain supported after the First World War. They reached their nadir during the Second World War, when Japanese brutality towards Allied forces and civilians left deep scars on British public opinion and limited the scope for political reconciliation. The process of healing did not begin properly until some 30 years later. The UK played only a limited role in Japan’s post-war reconstruction (British Expeditionary Forces were stationed in Japan during the US-led occupation of Japan from 1945 to 1952), but the relationship deepened as Japan’s industrial and technological prowess expanded in the 1980s. Its companies became major foreign direct investors in the UK economy, particularly under prime ministers Margaret Thatcher and Yasuhiro Nakasone.
Alongside this growing economic relationship, the two countries deepened their political and cultural relations through a number of cumulative steps. These included the creation of the UK’s Sir Peter Parker Awards for Spoken Business Japanese in 1990; a long history of educational exchanges, including the UK’s inclusion in the Japan Exchange and Teaching (JET) Programme; and the establishment of the UK–Japan 21st Century Group (formerly the UK–Japan 2000 Group) in 1985. This last still brings together ministers, leading members of the two parliaments, business leaders, academics and journalists every year to explore new opportunities for cooperation.
There are numerous important parallels between Japan and the UK that influence their role as international actors and point to them serving as allies on the international stage. Both countries have evolved as island states, and have difficult – and at best ambivalent – relations with their immediate continental neighbours. Japanese and UK leaders in politics and business have always looked beyond their regions, as much as to their neighbourhoods, for economic opportunity. For example, the UK and Japan hold the third and sixth largest shares respectively in the global stock of outward foreign direct investment (FDI),1 with Japan being the fifth largest exporter in the world, and the UK the 11th.2
At the same time, on the security front, both countries have a recent history of acting as the principal regional allies of the US,3 which provides the security umbrella on which they depend. Both are active supporters and beneficiaries of the international political and economic order that the US established and has led since the end of the Second World War; both play important roles within the Bretton Woods institutions such as the International Monetary Fund and World Bank. Both countries have also sought to contribute in their own capacity to Western structures and approaches to international security and development – the UK through one of the largest and most comprehensive development budgets, and Japan through its substantial foreign assistance programmes – in addition to their contributions to the World Bank and relevant UN agencies.
Nevertheless, there are also important differences between the two countries in their international roles and outlooks. Although they are both island nations, in the 19th century the UK succeeded in building a world empire, which has enabled it to retain global connections and ambitions, including through the Commonwealth, long after the empire’s demise in the 1960s. As a victor in the Second World War, the UK remains a recognized nuclear weapons state and a permanent member of the UN Security Council. For much of the recent past, therefore, and especially during the Cold War, the UK played an elevated role in managing the international order, as a regular contributor to military operations around the world. It has also sought to use its status to advise and try to influence (sometimes encouraging, sometimes restraining) US administrations – from Prime Minister Clement Attlee’s advice to President Harry Truman in the Korean War, to Margaret Thatcher’s role in George Bush’s response to the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait and Tony Blair’s close relationship with George W. Bush in the lead-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
For its part, Japan has traditionally been a relatively passive beneficiary of the international order. On security issues, its long-term pursuit of the Yoshida Doctrine4 and Article 9 of the Japanese Constitution,5 enabled it to avoid major military commitments while following a low-profile, non-offensive defence policy heavily reliant on US security guarantees. On economic issues, Japan was initially content to focus on infant-industry development and protection, and a mercantilist trade policy. Since China’s economic opening from the 1980s onwards, Japan has, like other Western powers, chosen on occasion to balance its support for Western values with the need to retain access to its neighbour’s growing market – for example, by not disrupting its economic engagement with China after the violent suppression of the Tiananmen Square protests in 1989.
While the UK and Japan have both been among the leading supporters of the liberal international order in recent decades, the UK has been far more open to the world, whether in terms of inward FDI or immigration. Even after the British decision to leave the EU, UK governments will find it difficult to disentangle their economic model from the international connections that many of the country’s citizens resent but that have been central to its relative prosperity. In contrast, Japan still has markedly low levels of FDI as a share of GDP as a result of informal – including linguistic – barriers to foreign business penetration. These, in turn, often reflect a deep-seated culture favouring economic self-sufficiency and a suspicion of market-led, capitalist risk-taking. Moreover, Japan’s immigration levels remain remarkably low despite its rapidly ageing, and now declining, population. Partly because of these different policies, the UK runs a persistently high current account deficit, reflecting its low levels of private saving and public investment, while Japan’s high domestic savings rates have underpinned long periods of current account surpluses and a rising level of public indebtedness.
There now exists an element of uncertainty in the internal character of both countries that could affect their future capacity for bilateral cooperation
Alongside these historical parallels and differences, there now exists an element of uncertainty in the internal character of both countries that could affect their future capacity for bilateral cooperation. Since the Second World War, there has not been a clear consensus in Japan about national identity. Those on the political right have struggled to find a way of sustaining pride and confidence in the country’s historical traditions and institutions, while the left has embraced a low-profile pacifism and postmodern identity founded on internationalism. Many conservatives at home criticize that stance as anodyne and lacking in emotional, effective resonance. This context explains, in part, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s determination to try to forge a more confident and assertive sense of identity from the increasingly uncertain geopolitical environment in which Japan finds itself.
In reality, since Prime Minister Nakasone’s era, and especially since the end of the Cold War and the first Gulf war, Japan has been inching away from its previous low-profile diplomacy and from its image as an ‘economic giant but political pygmy’,6 towards becoming a more activist state that publicly embraces stronger diplomatic engagement, alongside its traditional focus on economic self-interest. Abe has sought to build on the progress of earlier leaders from both the governing Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and the main opposition Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ),7 with a view to bringing the country closer to a position like the UK’s – as a proactive contributor to international as well as its own regional order.
But then came the shock of the UK referendum decision in June 2016 to leave the EU. This decision, taken by a majority of the UK electorate against the advice of most British political, business and civil society leaders, will detach the UK from its main regional institution, the EU, and complicate its relationship with its main strategic ally, the US. It also calls into question the popular base for the UK’s traditional role as a proactive international power, irrespective of its continued position as a permanent member of the UN Security Council and its important roles in NATO, the G20, the G7 and the Bretton Woods institutions. At a minimum, the process over the coming years of disentangling the UK from its decades-long relationship with the EU and its forerunner institutions (assuming there is no second referendum that reverses the 2016 vote) will distract British policymakers from pursuing the rhetorical ambitions of a ‘Global Britain’, and may limit the resources available. The internal cleavages and debates over what defines British national ‘identity’ – including interpretations of the UK’s historical trajectory, persistent resentment between the regions and London, tensions over cultural diversity, and the continuing potential of the break-up of the UK – could make it a less confident and assertive player on the international stage.
Can Japan and the UK capitalize now on their diverse experience of foreign policy activism – deep-seated and historically grounded in the case of the UK; newer and developing in the case of Japan – to advance their common interests? These could be advanced functionally (for example on climate change, non-traditional security threats, fragile states) or in relation to their individual relationships with the US, China and Russia. Can they serve as leading, order-enhancing international actors, offset the revisionist, anti-status quo powers of Russia and China, and work with and advise a US that seems increasingly uncertain of its role and identity, either as a status quo or a revisionist power? Or will both countries remain mired in domestic debate over their appropriate international roles and distracted by the complexities of managing relations with their near neighbourhoods? Both countries have much to lose should the liberal international order weaken any further or move into retreat. And yet this is precisely what appears to be happening.
Since the mid-2000s, from the administration of George W. Bush to the end of Barack Obama’s presidency, US global leadership in determining world order has waned. In part, this simply reflects the economic growth of emerging powers such as China and their increasing political assertiveness about their international interests. It also reflects Western uncertainty about how to deal with Russia’s challenges to Western powers at home and abroad as it moves to reassert its position as a global ‘great power’. But Western states’ declining influence is also a result of the disruptive domestic effects that economic globalization has had on the welfare and security of large segments of their populations, with people now calling their political leaders to account and demanding a greater focus on protection from, rather than engagement with, globalization.
The election of Donald Trump in 2016 was a symptom of this process, but it has also had a seismic effect on international relations. The US president’s determined advocacy of an ‘America First’ doctrine, particularly in terms of US trading and security relationships, not only poses risks to its economic competitors and security challengers. It also creates a more unpredictable and potentially dangerous environment for both the UK and Japan, two of its most important international allies.
One risk is that the US will now respond to China’s inexorable economic rise and the rebalancing of global economic power by stepping back from multilateral leadership and by trying to apply a toxic combination of political isolationism, economic bilateralism and self-interested, values-free foreign and security policy. After his inauguration in January 2017, Trump immediately withdrew the US from the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and sounded the death knell for the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP). Since then, he has imposed punitive tariffs on countries with which the US runs trade deficits, and has proposed company-specific restrictions on those who do not meet his personal standards of domestic job creation. He has also bracketed German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Russian President Vladimir Putin together as leaders he could ‘trust’, if not for the long term;8 has accused Germany of dominating the EU and undermining US economic interests, and Japan of manipulating its currency; and has threatened long-standing US military allies, from NATO members to South Korea and Japan, with a withdrawal of the US security umbrella if they fail to shoulder a greater share of defence spending commitments.
The series of resignations, firings and hirings of senior officials in his first two years in office suggests that Trump is gradually drawing around him a team that shares his zero-sum world view. In response, America’s competitors – and rivals – may seek to expand their own influence and resist US efforts to assert dominance in discrete areas. Russia may acquire even more room for manoeuvre across the Middle East. China may become more influential both regionally, expanding its own increasingly important economic sphere of influence in East Asia, as well as further afield, in sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America for example.
With increased ambiguity around the extent of support they can expect from the US, traditional allies such as Japan and the UK may be exposed to the re-emergence of submerged rivalries in their own regions. For instance, Germany may try to compensate for the perceived loss of US protection by further deepening EU integration; South Korea may be forced to favour its economic dependence on China over its security dependence on the US; and the countries of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) may also be drawn further into China’s orbit.
Meanwhile, the global economy has entered a far less benign period. Trade may no longer serve as an engine of global growth, while the disruption of global supply chains from Trump’s ‘America First’ trade policies may increase inflationary pressures across the world. At the same time, domestic-led job creation is threatened in the developed and developing worlds alike by the rapid spread of automation into the service sector, high-skilled manufacturing and many hitherto protected white-collar jobs. The loss of secure employment opportunities and the flattening of wage differentials that accompanies this ‘Fourth Industrial Revolution’ will sharpen the current mood of ‘counter-politics’ and strengthen the appeal of populist messages – even potentially in Japan, where these have yet to fracture the post-war political status quo. From here, it could be a short step to the rise of competing nationalisms, in both developing and developed countries, and a further weakening of the glue of economic globalization.
In such a scenario, who will manage the inescapable impacts of interdependence in areas as diverse as climate change, pandemic outbreaks, weapons proliferation, international terrorism and resource competition? Are major powers likely to cooperate bilaterally or plurilaterally,9 if traditional institutions no longer carry the authority that they did in the era of permissive US hegemony? Are new institutions like the G20 likely to step up in their place?
The changing strategic context carries potentially important implications for the bilateral relationship between the UK and Japan. Can the two countries approach this new environment cooperatively? Do they still share a similar outlook?
The increasingly bellicose commentary about how the US will need to confront China’s rise, including through military means, runs counter to the more pragmatic instincts of leaders and officials in London and Tokyo
Superficially, the rise of China poses more concerns for Japan than for the UK, where this rise is seen by some as a significant economic opportunity for post-Brexit Britain.10 The current reality, however, is that China remains Japan’s most important bilateral trading partner. Whatever the impact of the cooling or cold political relationship, China’s rise is not strictly a zero-sum development for Japan. As a result, the governments in Tokyo and London may have more in common with each other than with Washington as regards China. The increasingly bellicose commentary about how the US will need to confront China’s rise, including through military means, runs counter to the more pragmatic instincts of leaders and officials in London and Tokyo. To date, Japan has sought to compartmentalize its strategic concerns about China. It wants US support over Chinese pressure in the East China Sea and the Senkaku/Diaoyu islands, but it wants to avoid being dragged into a conflict in the South China Sea.11 Consequently, it worries simultaneously about being both entrapped and abandoned by the US and its China policy.12 With this in mind, Prime Minister Abe has pursued a hedging strategy. He has devoted greater attention to maintaining a diplomatic dialogue with China through such mechanisms as the Trilateral Partnership between Seoul, Tokyo and Beijing; and in October 2018 he made an official visit to Beijing (the first by a Japanese premier since 2011) for a major summit with President Xi Jinping that put into place a range of new bilateral economic cooperation projects.13
China’s wider ambitions pose a deeper problem for UK–Japan relations, as exemplified by their attitudes to the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), led by China, to create a major new set of transport and infrastructure interconnections across Eurasia. Japan has long (in its earlier variant of Beijing’s more recent ‘Silk Road’ diplomacy) been promoting its own set of connectivity plans in Eurasia via bilateral ties in Central Asia with Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan. Abe’s new Indo-Pacific strategy also offers opportunities to leverage ties with India to offset China’s infrastructure plans. Moreover, Japan has been lobbying vigorously for Indonesia, India and the Philippines to consider its Shinkansen ‘bullet’ train for their own high-speed rail investments, in competition with Chinese bids that have sometimes – as in the case of Indonesia14 – proved more attractive.
In the UK, in contrast, Prime Minister May and her cabinet colleagues have remained focused on increasing economic interaction with China. This is despite intense pressure from the Trump administration to take a more hawkish line, and May’s own early efforts to cool the ‘golden era’ rhetoric associated with the previous government of David Cameron – and particularly with his chancellor of the exchequer, George Osborne. Recent examples include the May government’s decision to allow a continuing role for Chinese companies in the UK’s 5G telecoms and civil nuclear infrastructure. And one of the main opportunities lies in the City of London’s role as a financier of the BRI, to which it can bring experience in the long-term financing of major infrastructure projects, and advice on how to ensure its environmental sustainability.
In this more competitive global context, the Japanese government has begun to tilt its political and economic diplomacy in Europe more proactively towards Germany. This reflects Japan’s perception that Chancellor Merkel has become more cautious and in some cases critical of Germany’s close economic engagement with China. This applies particularly in the grey zone of dual-use technology, and China’s efforts to acquire sensitive leading-edge technology companies – most notably its successful takeover of the robotics specialist Kuka, and the blocked takeover of German chip-maker Aixtron in 2016.
Japan’s Ministry of Economics, Trade and Industry, under the instructions of the Abe cabinet, has joined US officials in lobbying European governments to restrict their dual-use technology exports to China and deals with Chinese companies involving mergers and acquisitions. The UK government will need to decide whether to give equal attention to the risks as to the opportunities of its deepening relationship with Chinese companies.
In an echo of the concern felt in Tokyo about British backsliding in its commitment to rules-based economic relations over China, Abe’s efforts to rekindle Japan’s bilateral relations with Russia are proving a source of irritation in London. The UK government is deeply – and increasingly – concerned about Russia’s deliberately disruptive impact on European political stability and security. These concerns were greatly exacerbated by the nerve-agent attack on Sergei and Yulia Skripal in March 2018, in response to which the US and most NATO European allies expelled Russian intelligence agents – a step that Abe chose not to emulate. Underscoring its shift in strategic posture, the UK has deployed troops to Estonia in the latter’s capacity as one of NATO’s new ‘Framework Nations’. So, while the Japanese government privately criticizes the UK for adopting an overly mercantilist policy towards China, UK officials are concerned about what may be a short-sighted warming of Japanese relations with Russia.15
These tensions over China and Russia are all the more important because, for the next few years at least, the UK’s decision to leave the EU has put the bilateral relationship with Japan under serious strain. Japanese officials and corporate leaders feel betrayed by a partner that has long promoted the UK’s role as a gateway for Japanese exports to the rest of the EU, but which is now seemingly pulling up the drawbridge. While a future bilateral Japan–UK trade deal will be possible, the outcome of the Brexit negotiations may disadvantage Japanese companies currently invested in the UK, relative to their previous status. At the same time, the successful completion and ratification of the new EU–Japan Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) may disadvantage the UK, as Japanese firms increasingly turn to the EU as an alternative, attractive destination for FDI, or simply find that they can export more to the EU market directly from Japan.
Officials and academics in Japan are already starting to discount the UK’s influence not only in Europe, but also with the US and internationally. The profound sense of disillusionment with the UK that has taken hold since the Brexit vote gives weight to the argument that Japan should look towards Germany as an alternative first-tier partner both within Europe and globally. At a time when Tokyo is interested in diversifying its regional and global partners beyond the US – to include not only the UK and Germany, but also France, Australia and India – UK policymakers cannot afford to take the bilateral relationship for granted.
One driver of a closer relationship may come as a result of both countries’ changing relationship with the US. The Trump administration appears to be taking a predatory approach to the UK’s current discomfort over Brexit, looking to prise the UK away from the EU regulatory orbit and into that of the US. This comes at a time when UK leaders are struggling to manage the fallout from the Trump administration’s actions in withdrawing the US from the Paris Agreement on Climate Change and the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) with Iran, formally recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and moving the US embassy there from Tel Aviv, as well as its support for populist, anti-EU parties in Italy, Hungary and Poland. Ironically, in this context, the UK may find itself cooperating more – rather than less – closely with its Western European neighbours on foreign and security policy after Brexit.
While the UK has upheld regional security in Europe for the past 70 years, now Japan, under Abe, is gradually but steadily evolving to become an upholder of Asia-Pacific security, in the context of its rapidly changing and symbolically important commitment to collective self-defence – and especially since September 2015, when changes were enacted to Japan’s security legislation to enable a broader interpretation of the country’s right to ‘collective self-defence’.16
Historically, Japan has tended to follow rather than advise, or seek to limit, US actions internationally. Now, despite his early (and ultimately unsuccessful) attempts at using flattery to win favour with Trump, Abe appears to be pursuing a more balanced bilateral relationship. As one indicator, Abe and other Japanese officials have sought to highlight the benefits of Japanese-sponsored infrastructure investment in the US, while responding relatively cautiously to US pressure to establish a new bilateral trade agreement, anxious as Tokyo is to avoid having to make politically costly liberalization concessions in Japan’s agricultural sector.17 Meanwhile, Japan has ramped up its engagement across Asia, whether through ‘minilateral’ partnerships with India and Australia, which were begun, respectively, in 2006 and 2007;18 through strengthened trilateral initiatives (Japan–China–South Korea); or through new security partnerships and training exercises with a number of Southeast Asian countries, including the ASEAN Regional Forum. Japan has also succeeded in relaunching the TPP, following the US withdrawal, as the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP).
In addition, Japan is seeking to position itself individually in more international debates, such as over measures to counter sea piracy and promote stability in the Horn of Africa – Japan’s first permanent overseas navy base was opened in Djibouti in 2017 – and on the future of nuclear non-proliferation. In particular, its long-standing oil interests in Iran19 have given rise to strong diplomatic and political ties, which, as in the UK but not the US, are currently focused on keeping the JCPOA alive. In 2017, the Institute for International Policy Studies proposed that the Japanese government might request that it be a party to the P5+1 framework in the event that the US embarked on a revision of its policy towards Iran.20
Japan’s reinvigorated focus on its Asian neighbourhood stands in contrast to the UK’s protracted process of separation from the EU, which may leave it with a weaker regional role. Yet Brexit, in combination with the behaviours of the Trump administration, may also create new opportunities for the UK–Japan bilateral relationship. Just as Japan is raising its international profile, the UK will have to embark on a concerted effort to sustain its global relevance; the success of this endeavour will depend, to a large part, on the strength of its bilateral relations with international partners, such as Japan, that share its commitment to a rules-based international order.
Deepening the bilateral relationship in this fluid environment will require more than rhetorical diplomacy, especially on the UK side. Both the UK and Japan need to develop concrete opportunities for working more closely together – and particularly to offset the risks implicit in the ‘America First’-led nationalism of the Trump administration.
In response to the changing context, bilateral defence and security relations have strengthened latterly. Recent examples include joint training of special operations forces; joint participation in counter-piracy operations off Somalia; coordinated defence training missions in Senegal, and past participation in significant peacekeeping operations in South Sudan; the visit by four British Typhoon fighters to Japan in October 2016 to take part in joint exercises with Japan’s Self-Defense Forces (SDF); and joint military exercises in October 2018, the first of their kind to take place in Japan. Security cooperation is also extending into the area of defence research, with an ongoing programme to develop a Joint New Air-to-Air Missile (JNAAM). Furthermore, the UK and Japanese navies partnered with their French and US counterparts in 2017 on joint military drills in the Western Pacific. There is also talk of Japan potentially joining the Five Eyes agreement,21 the signals intelligence cooperation agreement with Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the UK and the US.
Looking ahead, there are three priority areas for the UK and Japan. The first is to support the structures and processes of a strong, rules-based multilateral order – one that, ideally, sustains this order via effective institutions. Japan has been a UN member since 1956, and has regularly served, often in politically influential roles, as a non-permanent member of the Security Council.22 It has long had ambitions to reform and expand the Security Council and to acquire a permanent seat – a position that UK governments have consistently supported in recent years.
Now, in a context in which the US may no longer feel compelled to uphold international rules via broad-based institutions like the UN or the World Trade Organization (WTO), the UK and Japan, along with Canada and like-minded European partners Germany, France and Italy, need to form a united caucus in more informal groupings such as the G7 and G20 to advocate for deepening the rule of law and increasing transparency within the global economy. The OECD may also play its part, developing norms and processes to bring G20 and G7 initiatives to fruition.
Reflecting their separate but close economic relationships with China, the UK and Japan might also work together to help deepen China’s stakes in more open, well-regulated and governed global markets. They could leverage their leadership roles in the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank (ADB), for example, in order to work within and with the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB – of which the UK is a founding member, although Japan has not yet joined) to support high-quality and sustainable infrastructure projects across Asia.23
There is no shortage of other specific areas where UK–Japanese cooperation could help to make the international system more resilient to the challenges and opportunities of the global interdependence agenda. These include environmental protection, deployment of renewable and sustainable energy, pandemic preparedness, standards for managing cyberspace, and supporting the rapid provision of humanitarian assistance to vulnerable countries and communities.
There will also be questions to resolve. Should both governments choose to advocate and promote democratic reforms around the world? For the foreseeable future, each is likely to be selective in this area, not least given the imperative for the UK to open up new market opportunities post-Brexit, and Japan’s tendency to favour promoting political stability and securing economic opportunities.24 The more likely joint priority, therefore, will be to deepen trade with emerging and developing countries, while helping to strengthen their administrative capabilities, market practices and social capacities in areas such as health and education.
A second priority area for joint cooperation is in tackling the heightened insecurity in Japan’s Asia-Pacific neighbourhood. This remains the priority for Japan; and the UK, as a major trading nation as well as a long-standing ally of Japan, would regard a significant deterioration in Asian security as damaging to its interests. The most immediate threat has been from North Korea and its combined programme of nuclear weapons testing and investment in ever more sophisticated, powerful and diverse missile capabilities. Breakthrough summits in 2018 – first, in April, between North Korea’s leader Chairman Kim Jong-un and South Korea’s President Moon Jae-in, and then between Trump and Kim in Singapore in June – offered the prospect of a marked improvement in ties between North Korea and the US and other regional actors. However, the high hopes of the Singapore declaration have yet to be realized, and have now been set back by the failure of the Trump–Kim summit in Hanoi in February 2019. A number of international actors, including both Japan and the UK, remain sceptical – or at the very least cautious – about assuming that past progress will translate into comprehensive, verifiable and irreversible (nuclear) disarmament (CVID). If talks between Washington and Pyongyang continue to stall, there may be a return to a more rigorous sanctions regime and the renewed application of pressure on North Korea, necessitating once again close coordination between the US and its allies.
A reversion to a stand-off with North Korea, especially given recent signs that it may be expanding rather than reducing its missile testing regime, may provide further incentives for the UK and Japan to cooperate in addressing this challenge. There are more than 40,000 Japanese and nearly 8,000 UK civilians residing in South Korea,25 with no immediately apparent evacuation strategy in place should a conflict break out. The UK and Japanese governments could plan jointly for evacuation, as discussed at past meetings of the UK–Japan 21st Century Group.
Although Tokyo has refused for now to normalize its relations with Pyongyang, the UK has maintained formal diplomatic ties with North Korea since 2000. This experience provides opportunities for greater information-sharing, at one end of the spectrum, while coordinating on initiatives to try to open up the country, such as through the new BBC Korean language service.
Beyond these areas of pragmatic cooperation lies the more strategic but equally vexed issue of China’s claims to the Spratly and Paracel islands in the South China Sea, and to the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands in the East China Sea. As a permanent member of the UN Security Council and of the Five Powers Defence Arrangements,26 the UK cannot ignore China’s decision to reject the 2016 international tribunal ruling that its actions in the South China Sea are in violation of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). However, the extent of the UK’s involvement in deterring more aggressive moves by China to secure its claims will be dependent on the position taken by the US, as the principal military power and UK ally in the region. President Trump and former US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson were clear that they would come to Japan’s aid should China undertake any aggressive steps vis-à-vis the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands. Tillerson’s successor, Mike Pompeo, along with senior US Department of Defense officials, has consistently underlined the US commitment to protecting Japan’s territorial possessions in the East China Sea under the provisions of Article V of the US–Japan Mutual Security Treaty. However, they have been more ambiguous about how to confront China’s action in the South China Sea, beyond sustaining their operations to ensure freedom of navigation.
The probability of continued tensions between China and the US, exacerbated by the retaliatory trade war that has played out since 2018, creates a new urgency for Japan and the UK to explore avenues for cooperation in the region
The probability of continued tensions between China and the US, exacerbated by the retaliatory trade war that has played out since 2018, creates a new urgency for Japan and the UK to explore avenues for cooperation in the region. The UK undertook its own freedom of navigation operations through the South China Sea in 2018, and has increased its security cooperation with Australia. There could be options for additional minilateral regional consultation mechanisms linking Japan and the UK with Australia, New Zealand, South Korea and India. There might also be specific reasons for the UK and Japan to coordinate with the regional major powers in trilateral or quadrilateral combinations, such as UK–Japan–US, UK–India–Japan, or UK–Japan–US–Australia.
It also makes sense to deepen bilateral defence cooperation. At the December 2017 ‘two plus two’ meeting, the UK and Japan agreed a three-year defence cooperation plan – an issue that had also been discussed during May’s visit to Japan a few months earlier.27 Military planners could also prepare together for security contingencies, such as a flare-up in the South China Sea or an aggressive act by North Korea.
Third, there is economic cooperation. Japanese investment in the UK economy will continue to be essential for a successful, post-Brexit Britain. The degree to which Japanese companies decide to reduce, sustain or increase their commitment will depend on the quality of the agreement the UK secures with the EU27 in the coming years. Even if the UK does secure an orderly withdrawal that allows for a close future economic relationship, its departure from the EU will inevitably entail new frictions in the flow of goods and services between the two. But these frictions need not mean a fundamental migration of Japanese investment from the UK to continental Europe, as long as the UK government makes a concerted effort to invest more in education, in research and development and in infrastructure, and provided it ensures that UK-based companies do not encounter increased obstacles to bringing talented non-British workers into the country when necessary.
An important question for the future is whether the UK can in turn help to boost the Japanese economy. One area where the UK’s experience can be brought to bear is in Japan’s efforts to deliver the third arrow of structural reform and deregulation under ‘Abenomics’.28 Abe has already taken real risks here, especially in the agricultural sector, but particularly in the absence of a TPP that includes the US, promoting deregulation of other sectors of the economy will bring additional challenges. A way to help move these reforms forward could be a post-Brexit comprehensive bilateral trade agreement between the UK and Japan that includes service sectors not covered in the EU–Japan agreement, and in which the UK can capitalize on its role as one of the world’s leading service markets and exporters. Similarly, UK involvement in CPTPP, as the May government has suggested, could give a further boost to the partnership’s agenda for modernizing its members’ regulatory infrastructure.29
The UK might also help upgrade Japan’s relatively underperforming university sector. Overall, declining enrolment in Japanese universities as a result of societal ageing could serve as a driver for greater educational engagement between the UK and Japan. This is especially applicable in areas of joint scientific research, given the significant risk of British exclusion from some EU research programmes after Brexit. For example, Japan and the UK could integrate their expertise in robotics to help Japan adapt to the needs of its ageing society, and to enable the UK to enhance its current low levels of labour productivity.
Does, then, the combination of the changed international environment and these three areas of potential enhanced bilateral cooperation – on sustaining international order and security and a strong bilateral economic relationship – add up to a forward-looking UK–Japan global agenda? Currently, the idea of a ‘Global Britain’ – one that remains globally engaged and at least as open to international trade and investment after Brexit as before – has close parallels with the idea of a ‘proactive Japan’ – a Japan that is committed to playing a more forward-leaning role on the regional and world stages. Both countries want to be internationalist, to look beyond the oceans that surround them, rather than being fixated about their neighbourhoods, even though these neighbourhoods are increasingly unstable and demand their attention. Both countries are therefore being pulled in two directions.
A key challenge will be whether the two countries can avoid building what might be (or might be perceived to be) principally a defensive bilateral partnership – i.e. one in which each counts on the other to try to hold on to its past international status and advantages within an increasingly competitive and multipolar international system. The fact is that Japan and the UK both benefit enormously from the rules-based order that has defined the post-war era, and which has encompassed the major as well as the smaller powers. As the pressures of globalization intensify – despite the rise in international competition – protecting and promoting a rules-based order becomes even more important. Doing so proactively together should therefore form the core of any future global partnership between Japan and the UK.
For this UK–Japan partnership to be truly viable, however, both countries will need to ensure that they are working from a strong national economic, political and social platform. Both have enormously complex domestic economic agendas. The UK must ensure that its post-Brexit relationship with the EU does not worsen long-standing social and regional divisions or undermine growth and prosperity nationwide. Abe must kick-start sustainable growth in Japan, despite resistance to structural reform, a rapidly ageing society and a heavy domestic burden of debt. These are serious challenges. But for both the UK and Japan, domestic success will be inextricably linked with their international policies and ambitions. And in this sense, the leaders of both countries will have a better chance of navigating to a more prosperous and secure future if they do so in partnership, where and whenever it makes most sense.
