Search

How does America's greater focus on Asia impact the security policies of Japan and Australia? How does it change the nature of the Japan-US-Australia security partnership? This paper attempts to answer these questions by looking at Japanese and Australian responses to the Obama Administration's new security policy toward Asia called “rebalancing.” After examining them, it argues that the regional allied response to America's new security posture has generated greater momentum for both allies to collaborate in wider areas in a more timely and effective way than before. It concludes asserting that, in the era of rebalance, Japan, the United States, and Australia have not only deepened their existing cooperation, but also have expanded potential areas of cooperation toward a more “dynamic” partnership. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Australia occupies a uniquely strong position in Japan's evolving security partnerships. The two countries' bilateral alliances with the United States, their common desire for U.S. commitment to and presence in the Asia-Pacific region, their common desire to foster regional multilateral security institutions for the purpose of disciplining China through inclusion, and their limited but significant capabilities to respond to security problems beyond the region have caused the two countries to nurture enhanced ties. Although this bilateral partnership has been more closely associated with trilateral cooperation including the United States between 2005 and 2008 (rather than with regional multilateralism), the expanding scope of Australia-Japan cooperation mostly encompasses nontraditional security areas, such as law enforcement, counterterrorism, and humanitarian relief operations. This approach seeks a middle ground between exclusive U.S.-Japan-Australia trilateralism and all-inclusive regional multilateralism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reports on the realism of the Garnaut Report as applicable to Australian foreign policy. The change in the Australian government's priorities of its foreign policies is characterized by two themes - the contraction in the area of application of external policy to its own region and the need for greater 'self-reliance within alliance' and the integration of a range of economic concerns notably in its international trade practices. It mentions the trans-Pacific economic tension that occurred between the United States and Japan where the latter's rapid economic growth affects the value of the dollar, a surge in US inflation and interest rates, and trade imbalance. The article concludes that the pluralist defense of the multilateral order of the Garnaut Report should be devalued.