The WSJ reports,"Japan has long struggled to define its position in the world. Its two decade-long economic slump destroyed pretensions of becoming Asia's dominant power, while the rise of China dethroned Japan as the world's second-largest economy and raised the specter of a non-liberal hegemon of Asia. Now Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has embraced the role of regional counterweight to Beijing.
A primary plank of his policy is to rekindle Japanese relations with India. Mr. Abe was the main official guest at India's Republic Day in January. Tokyo and New Delhi agreed at that time to conduct bilateral naval exercises, and India has invited Japan to participate in the Malabar maritime exercises alongside the U.S. and Australia.
This revitalized cooperation has been embraced by new Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who seeks to build the countries' growing economic ties. Yet the true impetus is strategic, providing both Japan and India with a powerful partner on China's flank. Each has an interest in freedom of navigation and worries about Chinese designs on parts of its territory.
A second prong is to support Southeast Asian nations embroiled in disputes with China. Tokyo has given 10 patrol vessels to the Philippines to help prevent further Chinese seizure of Philippine territory or interference with administrative control over disputed shoals, and Vietnam will also receive Japanese-made ships as soon as they are built. Mr. Abe visited all 10 countries in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations last year and is pushing greater cooperation among Australia, the U.S. and Japan.
The Japanese leader is also redefining his country's broader security policies. He has unveiled plans to end the longstanding ban on "collective self-defense" so that Japanese military forces can aid friends under attack—and, most importantly, work more closely with the United States. Mr. Abe has stated that the alliance with Washington can be effective only if Japan is able to help defend U.S. ships and military personnel from attack by states like North Korea.
Public opposition to expanded military activities abroad may be Mr. Abe's greatest obstacle to making Japan a "normal nation," meaning one that removes onerous restrictions on using its military, even for peacekeeping purposes.
Mr. Abe has adopted the rhetorical tack of claiming that everything Japan does is to support international law. The implication, of course, is that China is undermining international law and norms of behavior—in contrast, for example, to Indonesia and the Philippines peacefully resolving their maritime border dispute, as Mr. Abe noted at the Shangri-La Dialogue. This variant on "naming and shaming" is designed to start isolating China throughout the region. Beijing often helps Mr. Abe make his case, as when Chinese fighter jets flew dangerously close to Japanese surveillance planes over the Senkaku Islands last week.
But if Japan's economy can grow with its geopolitical ambitions, Asia may have an alternative to Chinese hegemony—provided also that the U.S. stays engaged in the region to prevent Beijing from filling in any vacuum in great-power influence. The risks of antagonizing China are becoming more readily apparent, but Japan's most dynamic leader in a decade has decided that his country will no longer be a bystander to history".
