The Australia-Japan Special Strategic Partnership

Introduction by Dr Michael J. Green

The United States Studies Centre is pleased to work with the Yokosuka Council on Asia Pacific Studies to publish this collection of agreements and joint statements that underpin the Japan-Australia Special Strategic Partnership.

The emergence of the Japan-Australia Special Strategic Partnership is one of the least understood and most consequential developments in the geopolitics of the Indo-Pacific today. In the Second World War, more Australians were killed by the Japanese bombing of Darwin than Americans were killed at Pearl Harbor. Yet today, Australians rank Japan as the country they most trust in the world and the Japanese government has defined Australia as its most important security partner in the region. In our own polling in 2022, we found that 60% of Australians said turning the Australia-Japan Special Strategic Partnership into a formal security treaty, like they each already have with the United States, would make their respective countries safer.

The Australia-Japan partnership is sometimes misunderstood as a hedge or alternative to the United States, but as the documents in this volume indicate, trilateral security cooperation with the United States is an indispensable pillar to the deepening Japan-Australia connection. Establishing the bilateral institutional framework for this special strategic partnership was challenging at first, but Japan and Australia have generated a robust and growing agenda, including Japan Self Defence Forces deploying regularly to Northern Australia and Australia’s recent decision to select Japan’s Mogami frigate for its Navy. The two governments are also developing approaches to everything from command and control to supply chain security based on shared lessons. The indirect but important beneficiaries of this close security partnership will be all the countries that lie in the increasingly contested waters between and around Australia and Japan.

Our research centre has “United States” in its first name but is committed to studying and advancing all the alliances and partnerships that reinforce a free and open Indo-Pacific. We have already produced extensive analysis and recommendations for the Australia-Japan-US trilateral security partnership. It had been our ambition to have a collection of key agreements and joint statements as an additional resource for policymakers, scholars, students, and journalists. Thanks to Michael M. Bosak and the Yokosuka Center for Asia Pacific Security Studies, with further editing and production by Paul Weeks, Mari Koeck and Jared Mondschein at the US Studies Centre, we are now able to offer that resource. Whether the reader is in the Australian Embassy in Tokyo, studying strategy at Keio University, or preparing to move from Nagoya to Perth to work on the Mogami, we hope you find it useful.