Monday 26 November 2018
6:00pm – 7:00pm

Japan’s New Security Partnerships

Drinks reception: 7:00pm – 8:00pm

13/14 Cornwall Terrace, Outer Circle (entrance facing Regent's Park), London NW1 4QP

Organised by the Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation

Edited by Wilhelm M. Vosse and Paul Midford

Published by Manchester University Press

After decades of solely relying on the United States for its national security needs, Japan has begun to actively develop and deepen its security ties with a growing number of countries and actors in the Asia-Pacific region and Europe, a development that has further intensified under the Shinzo Abe administration.

In this talk, Professor Wilhelm Vosse and Professor Paul Midford introduced the edited volume, Japan’s New Security Partnerships. The book provides a comprehensive analysis of the motives and objectives from both the Japanese and the partner-countries’ perspectives and asks what this might mean for the security architecture in the Asia-Pacific region, and what lessons can be learned for security cooperation more broadly. It examines in detail Japan’s partnerships with Australia, India, countries and multilateral security fora in East Asia, as well as with the EU and some of its member states.

Since the mid-2000s under LDP and DPJ administrations, bilateral security partnerships accelerated and today go beyond non-traditional security issue areas and extend far into traditional security and military affairs, including the exchange and joint acquisition of military hardware, military exercises, and capacity building. It is argued that these developments will have wide ranging implications for the security architecture in the Asia-Pacific, all of which are explored in this collection.

Five copies of the book were on sale for £30 (RRP £75).

About the contributors

Professor Wilhelm Vosse

Professor Wilhelm Vosse is Professor of Political Science and International Relations at the International Christian University in Tokyo, where he also serves as Director of the Social Science Research Institute. He holds a PhD in Political Science from the University of Hanover, Germany, and held visiting researcher positions at the Nissan Institute of Japanese Studies, University of Oxford, and at the Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies, Harvard University. His most current research projects deal with Japan’s new security partnerships, especially Japan’s cooperation with the EU and NATO in the counter-piracy missions and currently in cybersecurity. He published numerous book chapters and journal articles and has co-edited four books, of which the most recent are Japan’s New Security Partnerships (2018); and Governing Insecurity in Japan. The Domestic Discourse and Policy Response (2014).

Professor Paul Midford

Professor Paul Midford is Professor and director of the Japan Program, at the Norwegian University for Science and Technology in Trondheim. He received his PhD in Political Science from Columbia University in 2001. His research interests include Japanese foreign and defence policies, the impact of public opinion on policy, renewable energy and energy security, and East Asian security and multilateralism. He has published over a dozen book chapters and has co-edited three books. Midford is the author of Rethinking Japanese Public Opinion and Security: From Pacifism to Realism? (2011) and the co-author of The Japanese Ground Self-Defense Force: Search for Legitimacy (2017).