If Japan joins Aukus, will China, Russia, North Korea make a Rucndprk? (And will Seoul sign up to JauSKus?)

To Russian international relations scholar Artyom Lukin, it's only a matter of time before Aukus - the military partnership between Australia, Britain and the United States - grows to include US security ally Japan and becomes Jaukus.

The emergence of Jaukus would strengthen Washington's aim of countering China's growing reach in the Indo-Pacific region, but it might also prompt the creation of Rucndprk, comprising Russia, China and North Korea, said Lukin in a paper published in December by the Honolulu-based Pacific Forum think tank.

"De facto, it is already there, informally, and a formal linkage may be in the works, despite US officials' claims to the contrary. Tokyo has consistently signalled that it would not stand aloof in a contingency over Taiwan, and it has been more vocal in recent months," wrote Lukin, who is from Russia's Far Eastern Federal University in Vladivostok.

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.

He said Jaukus would primarily be a naval partnership as a war between China and Jaukus countries would be fought primarily at sea.

Asked if Lukin's predicted alphabet soup of alliances would become reality, other analysts were divided.

Some agreed Japan was likely to drift towards the Anglo-Saxon grouping, others thought it was unlikely to enter a formal alliance as Tokyo would not want to upset relations with Beijing.

"The official foreign policy of Japan is to hedge its bets. On the one hand, it will continue to operate closely with the US in military joint operations and so on, but it would hedge this closer relationship with Washington by also continuing to deepen economic engagements with China," said Alan Chong, an associate professor at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS) in Singapore.

As for Rucndprk, many analysts said that while China and Russia would continue to grow closer, they would stop short of a formal alliance.

Lukin, though, argued that North Korea was another strategic player in the North Pacific as its geoeconomic dependence on China and its "anti-Americanism", made it a "suitable candidate for a Sino-centric alliance network".

In recent weeks, Japan has strengthened ties with the US, its main security ally, and also Australia, Britain and France.

Tokyo has conducted military drills with Washington aimed at bolstering cooperation and joint capacity especially in dealing with contingencies and drawn up a draft plan for a joint operation in case of a Taiwan emergency.

This month, Japan and Australia signed a defence deal that will allow for more naval war games and aviation exercises.

Last month, Japan and Britain signed a memorandum of cooperation to develop an engine demonstrator capable of powering sixth-generation fighter jets and to collaborate in other technological areas.

Last July, Japan's Maritime Self-Defence Force took part in an aerial exercise with the French navy off New Caledonia, a French territory comprising dozens of islands in the South Pacific.

When contacted by This Week in Asia, Lukin said it was hard to say when Jaukus would become a formal arrangement, adding that Tokyo would "not hurry to formalise Jaukus for now, so as not to antagonise China".

"However, if Japan comes to the conclusion that the military threat from China continues to grow, Jaukus might become a formal treaty within the next five to seven years," Lukin said.

Jagannath Panda, a research fellow at the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses in New Delhi, said that while Japan had welcomed Aukus as a sign that major powers were strengthening their engagement in the region, Jaukus was not likely to be formalised.

The chief goal of Aukus was to transfer nuclear-powered submarine technology to Australia, something that Japan had not welcomed, Panda said.

"The use of nuclear propulsion technology for military purposes is a controversial move in Japan," he said.

Due to strong public opposition, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida has expressed unwillingness to pursue nuclear submarines.

According to the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, Canberra's bid to develop a fleet of nuclear-powered submarines will cost more than US$80 billion and take decades in the "most complex" project the country has ever embarked on.

Instead of becoming a formal member, Tokyo was likely to work with Aukus on "ad hoc or issues-based cooperation" in areas like critical technologies and further maritime integration, such as in the patrolling of the South China Sea, Panda said.

Amid tensions over Chinese live-fire drills in the East China Sea and military incursions in the Taiwan Strait, Japan's efforts to move closer to the Western camp have not been lost on China.

Zhang Xin, an associate professor at East China Normal University's School of Politics and International Studies, said the possibility of Japan joining Aukus was real, although much depended on where it was headed and to what extent it might update its mandate.

Relative to the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue or Quad - an alliance comprising the US, Japan, Australia and India - Aukus' mandate had been "more vague and limited", Zhang said, adding that the Quad had expanded and deepened its organisational build-up and areas for cooperation.

"In contrast, Aukus is obviously lagging behind ... Japan may be more interested in furthering its role in the Quad than Aukus," Zhang added.

In recent months, the Quad has intensified its security and economic ties as tensions with China rise, and has expanded areas of cooperation to include vaccine diplomacy, emerging technology, cyberspace and infrastructure coordination.

Chong from RSIS said Japan would not wish to unnecessarily upset relations with Beijing as Chinese factories had continued to supply semi-finished materials for Japanese manufacturers during the coronavirus pandemic.

"Notwithstanding the current lockdowns in a few cities, China has been exceptionally good at keeping the supply chains operating near normal, and Japan depends on that to keep its economy afloat," Chong said.

Acknowledging that North Korea was "a very difficult partner", Lukin said Pyongyang might provide some value to a China-led anti-US coalition in the Pacific region, in exchange for China's economic support.

"In particular, North Korea could agree to give the Chinese military access to its Sea of Japan coast that directly faces Japan," Lukin said.

Panda from the Manohar Parrikar Institute said that a Russia-China-North Korea alliance had previously been proposed by Chinese experts as a response to the US-Japan-South Korea alliance and could now emerge as a counter to Aukus.

Apart from their respective friendship treaties with North Korea, both China and Russia had been growing closer and in recent months had pursued deeper ties in nuclear and space technology and in conducting maritime drills, Panda said.

"Considering their already strong ties, and more importantly, their shared distrust and contentious ties with US and the West, a Rucndprk alliance is very much a possibility," Panda said, adding that the partnership was driven less by a shared ideology and vision, and more by necessity to combat a shared perceived threat.

"It is also worth noting that China far outweighs both Russia and North Korea in economic terms and influence within the region, making any potential alliance inherently unbalanced," Panda added.

Mark N. Katz, a government and politics professor at George Mason University, said neither Russia nor China would be willing to enter a formal alliance with each other against the US.

"Each is happy that the other has confrontational relations with the US, as that means neither is likely to work with the US against the other," Katz said, adding that neither was likely to become involved in each other's conflicts with America or its allies.

Even though China and Russia had been edging closer to a de facto military alliance in recent months, East China Normal University's Zhang said that there was no formal military alliance.

"Both the Chinese and Russian states have been advocating the idea that closer Sino-Russian ties represent a new type of major power relations, beyond the traditional, American-type of military alliance," Zhang said, referring to the sort of alliance where members are often obliged to come to each other's defence in the event of an attack.

In November, in view of increased US aerial activity near Russian borders, the Russian and Chinese defence ministries agreed to expand cooperation through strategic exercises and joint patrols in the Asia-Pacific, including the Sea of Japan and the East China Sea.

The idea of South Korea joining Aukus in either its current or expanded format was seen as even less likely, even though candidates for the presidential elections in March have talked tough on defence.

Lee Jae-myung, the ruling Democratic Party's candidate, said he would seek US support for South Korea to have its own nuclear-powered submarines.

Yoon Seok-youl, the conservative opposition People Power Party's candidate, has vowed to align Seoul with Washington, ditching the policy of "strategic ambiguity" that South Korea has used previously to balance its relationship with China and the US.

Jae Jeok Park, an associate professor at Hankuk University of Foreign Studies in Seoul, said even if Yoon won the election, South Korea would not fully swing into the American orbit.

"South Korea needs China's cooperation to deal with North Korea, even a conservative government would not fully estrange China," Park said, noting that China is South Korea's largest trade partner.

Lukin said South Korea was unlikely to join as it did not view China as an overriding threat, nor did it want to anger China by joining an anti-Beijing coalition.

"South Korea has complicated relations with Japan, making it politically difficult for any president to join an alliance with Japanese participation," Lukin added.

In recent years, relations between South Korea and Japan have strained over issues ranging from trade disagreements, wartime sex crimes and territorial disputes.

Jacob Stokes, an Indo-Pacific Security Programme fellow at the Washington-based Centre for a New American Security think tank, said Washington would take seriously any request from Seoul for military technologies that the latter saw as vital to its security.

"But it is likely that other capabilities would take precedence given the cost, technological complexity, and non-proliferation safeguards concerns raised by nuclear-powered submarines," Stokes said.

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

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