Japan’s New Diplomacy Towards ASEAN Under Abe’s Five Principles

Abstract

The strategic goals of Japan’s New Diplomacy towards ASEAN were first introduced by former Prime Minister Abe Shinzo in 2013. This paper examines Japan’s new strategy under Abe’s five principles, also analyzes the patterns and challenges for Japan. Since the increasing of ASEAN’s development, Japan has consistently maintained various cooperation with ASEAN, starts from economic to political security cooperation. Japan and ASEAN have been maintaining a good partnership since the establishment of Fukuda Doctrine. The thesis of this paper is that as Japan's involvement in ASEAN grows, it intends to preserve the status quo in the South China Sea. China’s claim on the nine-dash area which clashed with the claim from some of ASEAN countries has turned its behavior in an assertive way. It threatened those ASEAN countries that relatively lack on military capabilities. Thus, Japan intends to support Southeast Asian countries security building to protect the region from the change of status quo and contain China’s assertive actions. Japan’s intention is very clear since the stable region could benefit Japan positively in the future to exert greater influence. During Abe’s administration, Japan seemed to implement different strategy on its partnership with Southeast Asian countries. Although this partnership received positive reactions from Southeast Asian countries, there are some challenges and potential limitations of Japan’s new policy. It will also be explained by looking into the patterns of engagement with different groups that are consisted of Southeast Asian countries.