IISS-JIIA Tokyo Conference Summary
On 1-3 June, IISS and the Japan Institute for International Affairs convened the second IISS-JIIA Tokyo Conference. Held at the International House in Tokyo, the forum brought together 50 scholars, senior policymakers, military officials and journalist from ten countries to exchange views on the theme of ‘Global strategic challenges as played out in Asia’.
The conference featured keynote dinner addresses from Japanese Foreign Minister Hirofumi Nakasone and from Minister of Defence Yasukazu Hamada as well as a special luncheon presentation by US Deputy Secretary of State James Steinberg.
In the opening plenary session, Dr. Linda Yueh, Fellow in Economics at Oxford University and Ambassador Robert Blackwill, Senior Fellow at the RAND Corporation, led a debate on the impact of the global financial crisis on domestic and regional stability in both the economic and political realms. While several participants noted that it may be some time before the full effects are known, others predicted that the crisis would not significantly change the existing order.
A second session discussed Asian and transatlantic approaches toward ‘resetting’ the relationship with Russia, with presentations by Ambassador Richard Burt, Managing Director at McLarty Associates; Prof Alexander Lukin, Head of the Center for East Asian Studies at Moscow State Institute of International Relations; and Nobukatsu Kanehara, Deputy Director-General for Europe at the Japanese Foreign Ministry. It was argued, inter alia, that economic performance would shape Russian policies, and that US alliance systems in both Europe and Asia and shared value systems would remain crucial to managing relations with a still very distrustful Russia.
A third session, on ‘the nuclear abolition debate and its impact on Asia’, included presentations by Professor Brahma Chellaney from the Centre for Policy Research in New Delhi and Ambassador Tetsuya Endo, JIIA Senior Associate Fellow. The discussion centred on the challenges that North Korea and Pakistan present to the goal of a nuclear-weapons-free world, and how the US and its allies could reduce the salience of nuclear weapons in revival of the disarmament process without reducing the credibility of extended deterrence.
The fourth session on ‘ensuring the freedom and safety of navigation’ was chaired by Masahiro Akiyama, chairman of the Ocean Policy Research Foundation, which helped fund the conference. Presentations by French Vice Admiral Gerard Valin, Joint Forces Commander in the Indian Ocean, Indian Vice Admiral D. K. Joshi, Deputy Chief of Naval Staff, and Professor Hugh White from the Australian National University examined issues ranging from the practical problems of combating Somalian piracy to the wider political-strategic aspects of maritime cooperation.
Professors Fumiaki Kubo from the University of Tokyo and Kent Calder from Johns Hopkins University led off the fifth session on ‘Asia and the Obama administration: who shapes the agenda?’ and assessed how the stalemate in Japanese politics affects the relationship. Noting that agenda setting tends to be crisis-driven, participants circled back to the need for careful management of the North Korea challenge.
In the final session, Yukio Okamoto President of Okamoto Associates and Professor Liru Cui, President of the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations, led a discussion of the triangular set of relationships involving the US, Japan and China. Questions were raised regarding the rise of China as a global and multi-faceted power and the potential collision course between its view of territorial waters and the US long-standing perception of freedom of the seas. It was suggested that while the US-Japan relationship is by far the strongest, China is the most important variable for each of the other two nations.
