Australia-Japan treaty could 'ease US military burden' in Indo-Pacific amid China's rise

A landmark treaty signed between Australia and Japan on Thursday could pave the way for other Western powers to establish an active presence around Asia and the Pacific, analysts say, while increased defence activities between the two nations could lighten the military burden that Washington has been carrying in the region.

The two nations deepened their bilateral relationship after Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison and his Japanese counterpart Fumio Kishida signed the long-awaited Reciprocal Access Agreement (RAA) during a virtual summit which outlined the standing arrangements for militaries of both countries to conduct joint exercises and disaster relief operations.

Negotiations started in 2014, and the deal was agreed in principle in November 2020.

Do you have questions about the biggest topics and trends from around the world? Get the answers with SCMP Knowledge, our new platform of curated content with explainers, FAQs, analyses and infographics brought to you by our award-winning team.

The signed pact still needs to be ratified by both countries, but it is the first of its kind that Japan has struck with another nation since it signed the Status of Forces Agreement with the US more than 60 years ago.

Aside from the RAA and agreement to work together on security matters, the two leaders also agreed to strengthen economic security between their nations.

At the time of the signing, Morrison also announced a A$150 million (US$107 million) investment to develop and export clean hydrogen energy to Japan, as part of a commitment to reduce emissions under the Japan-Australia Partnership on Decarbonisation through Technology.

While much of the RAA was about defence, Morrison said Australia's relationship with Japan was "much more and much deeper than just about security issues".

"We can be completely interoperable between what we can do and how we deploy together. And I don't just mean in hostile circumstances. I mean also in the Indo-Pacific for humanitarian purposes where Japan is very active, as is Australia," Morrison said, referring to the region that centres the Indian Ocean as part of the US' strategy to engage with the Asia-Pacific.

"But what I would stress is this agreement is very, very unique in that Japan has no other reciprocal arrangement with any other country," he said, adding that it signalled the level of "trust between our two countries".

Indeed, the RAA was widely perceived as another effort to unite like-minded governments in the region to counter China's growing influence, but the RAA was also more than a defence pact as it also fostered cooperation in areas other than security, analysts said.

"It's important to remember that it is not a defence pact per se, but largely a border agreement that covers things like taxation and jurisdictional issues," said Bryce Wakefield, the national executive director of the Australian Institute of International Affairs and expert on East Asia and Japan.

"The agreement forms the basis for greater cooperation, while leaving the nature of that cooperation open to further development. And not all of that cooperation needs to be in the realm of national security."

In the first instance, the RAA offers a legal mechanism to protect Japanese and Australian forces when they enter each other's countries, a situation that had already occurred, for example, when Japan's defence forces were deployed to Australia to help fight its bush fires, Wakefield said.

But it could also set a "template" which other nations such as Britain could use to establish a presence in the region.

"There are other nations, most notably the UK, interested in establishing a presence in the region. The more nations that adhere to the rule of law in the region, the more you have such nations traversing through the South China Sea, the more we can bolster the rules-based international order," Wakefield said.

"Australia may well prove a sort of testing around the kind of template as to what's possible as well," he said. "And I think that's a really significant part of this agreement that is being left out by a lot of people, especially in Australia."

Ben Ascione, an assistant professor of international relations at Tokyo's Waseda University, said the agreement would help keep the US engaged in the Indo-Pacific region now that there were other countries sharing some of the military burden Washington had borne.

"It's about bolstering the capabilities of Japan and Australia in order to lessen the burden on the US and stepping up exercises both bilaterally and trilaterally," Ascione said.

It could also help Japan's case to join the "Five Eyes" intelligence-sharing agreement - consisting of the US, Britain, Australia, Canada and New Zealand - as it has long eyed becoming the sixth member, Ascione said, although Tokyo is aware there were concerns about Japan's poor reputation for protecting sensitive data.

China had bristled at the signing of the deal after Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said on Wednesday that the "Pacific Ocean can become a land of peace rather than waters in which people stir up trouble".

The reaction follows similar sentiments to Aukus, the trilateral security partnership between the US, Britain and Australia announced late last year that took the region by surprise.

But Wakefield said the RAA predated Aukus and was a long time coming. "China will look at it with some concern, but most governments in the region will be fairly sanguine about it," he said.

Donald Rothwell, a professor of international law at the Australian National University, agreed but said the deal also flagged another significance, notably, Japan's willingness to take a bigger stance and posture in the region.

"What is exceptional is that Japan is entering into such an agreement which is the first of its type other than the agreement it has with the US," he said. "As such, this is a major shift for Japan more so than for Australia, and demonstrates a more confident and robust approach that Japan is taking to cooperative military arrangements with regional and other partners."

The observers also said both Australia and Japan likely compromised on the key sticking point in the RAA, Japan's death penalty for Australian troops who commit serious crimes.

Ascione said both parties had likely agreed that Australian military personnel would not be subjected to the death penalty for incidents that occur while they were on duty, but they could potentially be sentenced to hang for incidents committed off duty as a civilian.

"It's a compromise and I think that both sides can live with that agreement," he said.

Wakefield said it was also probable the government of Japan would give due consideration on a "case-by-case basis".

"It's important to note that the death penalty in Japan is applied rather flexibly, and courts can be sensitive to political considerations," he said.

"It's almost a certainty that an Australian soldier serving under the agreement would never receive the death penalty, just as no American soldier serving under the US-Japan Status of Forces Agreement has received capital punishment from Japan, even in those cases where they have committed horrific crimes."

This article originally appeared on the South China Morning Post (SCMP).

Copyright (c) 2022. South China Morning Post Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved.