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Quad or Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, a group of four democracies, the US, India, Japan, and Australia, was first proposed in 2007 by Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in his 'confluence of two seas' speech that subsequently embarked on the path to the foundation of the group. Quad perceives China's economic growth, which enables her to transform the world order as a threat and aims at containing the growing Chinese assertiveness in the Indo-Pacific region. The Malabar naval exercises in the Indian Ocean by the Quad members were one such exercise. This paper, aims to analyze the formation of Quad and will contemplate whether the group is causing confrontation or stability in the Asia-Pacific and Indo-Pacific regions. The paper will also assess that the Quad is designed to counter China's growing influence in the Asia-pacific and Indo-pacific regions. Containing China is likely to create a confrontation in the region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The existing critical literature constructs Smart Cities (SC) as sites of technocratic governance, hidden within a socio-technically imagined utopian discourse that originated in the "Global North" but has already deeply penetrated the "Global South". The substantial inflow of SC-related foreign investment into emerging Asian countries, such as Thailand, has motivated this paper to shed new light on the extensive nature of investment in the region. The authors have chosen to examine a SC project supported by Japanese Official Development Assistance in Bangkok's Bang Sue district. This case study enables them to investigate the SC concept within the broader context of international politico-economic power struggles, particularly between Thailand and Japan in the realm of international cooperation. Using the concept of strategy, this study conceptualises the establishment of Smart Cities as each nation's approach to advancing both national economic interests and international security. The examination of the policy history of SC conception in Thailand and Japan reveals diverse motivations behind these initiatives. Thailand seeks to shift its economic weight to the digital and knowledge sectors, while Japan targets economic and security enhancements in the Indo-Pacific region. Despite the common strategy of developing SC infrastructure in the Bang Sue area, the analysis identified nuanced differences in their goals. Further scrutiny of project documents revealed: 1) strategic distancing within the project, 2) technocratic traits within the project process, and 3) the role of socio-technical utopian discourse beyond ideology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Structural realists might reasonably predict that foreign policy elites in countries like Japan and Australia would view China's economic and military rise as a potential threat and seek to balance against it. However, the actual policy behaviour of Japanese and Australian policy elites has been quite complex—pushing forward at times, hesitating at others and generally uncertain if an explicit counter-coalition against China through bilateral security cooperation is the right policy path. Why is this? This paper explains the puzzle by focusing on the perceptions of policy-makers regarding the risk of provoking China; entrapment with the other; and entrapment with the United States. The paper demonstrates how policy-makers' concerns regarding entrapment or abandonment related to their mutual US ally—as well as concerns about potentially provoking China—have had an instrumental effect on the degree to which Japan and Australia have strengthened their security commitments to each other. While the rise of China—and the relative decline of US power—has shaped the overall direction of Japan–Australia security ties, such structural imperatives are of course also complicated by how domestic actors think about the tactical aspects of understanding and surviving these structural features. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In contemporary international security, some powers try to challenge the status quo through gradual, sub-threshold expansion without resorting to the explicit use of force. Examples of such sub-threshold challenges can be seen in the East China Sea, the South China Sea, and Eastern Europe. They are now referred to as 'gray zone' or 'hybrid threat'. For a long time deterrence theory, a core component of strategic studies, has largely neglected such sub-threshold challenges. The exceptional part of that is empirical school's findings, including fait accompli, limited probe, and controlled pressure. They perfectly match with the current threats and help developing conceptual framework to deter these kind of threats. Based on these findings, this paper attempted to illustrate three principles for gray zone deterrence: combination of deterrence by denial and deterrence by punishment, mobilization of the whole government assets, and keeping open the window to escalation and analyze, Japan's efforts to develop conceptual framework for gray zone deterrence. Since Japan's efforts to develop conceptual framework of gray zone deterrence dates further back than other part of the world, as the National Defense Program Guidelines (NDPG) of 2010, a case study on Japan would provide useful insights for gray zone deterrence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Having passed successive legislation in the past two decades to expand its use of the Japan Self Defense Force (JSDF), Japan has emerged from its post-war ‘pacifist’ shackles to assume a range of security roles that are typically associated with so-called ‘normal nations’. This article addresses how these have been crystallized in the form of an indefinitely-termed overseas base on the Horn of Africa, in Djibouti. Careful examination of pertaining Diet minutes, media discourse and government ministry papers suggests that the risks identified with this facility’s realization and status have been fundamentally recalibrated, allowing its presence and operational diversification to go largely unnoticed and unopposed - both domestically and overseas - despite representing a seemingly radical departure from common sense interpretations of Japan’s antimilitarist constitution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Japan is on the verge of what would be a dramatic shift in defense posture. The 'spear and shield' structure of the US–Japan alliance, at the center of its security policy for most of the postwar era, is being revamped by a move toward autonomous defense. Why would a country confined to a largely passive and Americanocentrist posture for more than half a century suddenly change course? I argue that autonomy is for Japan the only way out of an unprecedented 'entrapment-abandonment dilemma': any attempt to prevent defection by the United States in the face of an increasingly assertive China heightens to an unacceptable level the risk of Japan being dragged into a US-led conflict in the Korean Peninsula, and vice versa. Japan's ability to wield the spear would likely have destabilizing consequences for the whole Asia-Pacific region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article offers an alternative perspective of Japan's international human security diplomacy concerning the underlying motivations that has caused Japan to pursue its international human security diplomacy in such proactive and aggressive manner. So far Japan's involvement in the international human security initiatives had only been examined separately in the literature, with not much attention been given towards it linkage with Japan's relentless efforts and restraints throughout the decades towards becoming a normal state. This article argues that when Japan's involvement in international human security is studied together with its underlying ambition of becoming a normal state, the approach can no longer be solely understood as Japan's effort to compensate the imbalances between its reactive international political posture and its significant status as the world's third-biggest economy. Instead, this involvement should be examined from the perspective of Japan's own national security requirements. Most importantly, it should be examined alongside Japan's effort to strategically participate, contribute, and gain greater autonomy in the international political sphere under its envisioned status as a normal country. From this perspective, the motivation behind Japan's persistence and aggressive pursuit of its international human security diplomacy becomes clearer under Prime Minister Abe's "proactive contribution to peace". It implies a shift in Japan's security identity from a 'peace state' to an 'international state' that sees Japan playing a more active role in responding to the structural changes of the international security environment. In particular, it corresponds with Japan's effort under the Abe administration to inculcate worldwide awareness that becoming a "normal state" is a prerequisite for Japan to collaborate with the international community and contribute effectively towards sustainable world peace and stability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article addresses the question of how spatial difference manifests itself in International Relations discourses in an effort to theorize difference in international politics. In doing so, we focus on the concept of security in particular and demonstrate a paradox in its conceptualization. Despite the aspiration to capture global diversity, contemporary security discourses largely leave out the moment of subjectification in knowledge-construction. Rather, a form of subjectivity construction is promoted in these discourses, which is reliant on the other. In contrast, this article considers the unsynthesizable cognitive void between the self and the other through the work of the Japanese political scientist Maruyama Masao and his basso ostinato concept. By drafting it as a heuristic device to avoid the potential of determinism for which basso ostinato was criticized, we apply it to the concept of comprehensive security with the intention to demonstrate that ostensibly similar concepts can have different meanings in different times and spaces. In doing so, we aim to transcend the resulting misunderstandings that obstruct International Relations scholarship from contributing to what Amitav Acharya calls ‘Global IR’. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on significant changes to Japan's defense policies under the administration of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who is behind the initiative for the country's return as a "first-tier" power and the vision for a U.S. - Japan "Alliance of Hope." Topics discussed include efforts to reform the geographical and substantive scope of Japan's Self-Defense Forces (JSDF) before the Abe administration, changes made in the country's security policy since Abe's return in 2012 including the National Security Strategy and an updated National Defense Program Guidelines and the truth behind concerns over Japan's return to militarism and threat to regional peace and stability under Abe's leadership.