Giulio Pugliese

This book is about Japan-China power politics in the military, economic and propaganda domains. The post-2012 standoff over the disputed Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands has unveiled the antagonistic quality to Sino-Japanese relations, with an important addition: a massive information war that has cemented the two states' rivalry. Under the Xi and Abe administrations, China and Japan insisted on their moral position as benign and peaceful powers, and portrayed the neighbor as an aggressive revisionist. By highlighting great power rivalry, this study makes a theoretical contribution in favor of the power politics behind Sino-Japanese identities. The work is multidisciplinary in spirit and aims to speak both to academics and to general readers who might be curious of understanding this fascinating --if worrisome-- facet of Sino-Japanese relations. In turn, the assessment of the diplomatic, economic and identity clash between the world's second and third wealthiest states provides a window in understanding the international politics of the Asia-Pacific in the early 21st Century. This book is an invaluable resource for scholars, Area Studies and Political Science students and policymakers alike.

Are populist governments harbingers of foreign policy disruption? The foreign policy of western Europe's first all-out populist coalition government constitutes a good window to address this question. Italy's ‘Yellow–Green’ government's decision to embrace China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) in 2019 has been understood as an important rupture from Italy's traditional Euro-Atlantic foreign policy. On the basis of substantial empirical research, especially elite interviews and official documentation, this article finds instead continuity with previous administrations' overtures to Beijing, including non-opposition from the EU and active engagement by the bureaucratic establishment. This article makes a contribution to the study of populism and foreign policy by positing that political marketing constitutes the key intervening variable that accounts for populist governments' rhetorical differentiation to local electorate and international counterparts alike. The Italian case demonstrates that populist ‘ruptures’ may well be about style and electioneering tactics, over substance and policy strategy. Considering the still growing number of governments that decide to sign into the BRI, most lately that of Argentina, policy-makers and observers ought to assess to what extent these are real commitments, or rather a smokescreen of marketing practices that does not change the relationship between China and the target country in any substantial manner.

Like elsewhere, the COVID-19 pandemic caused substantial disruptions in Japan. While generous fiscal spending mitigated the pandemic's economic fallout, and Japan is poised in 2021 to rebound from its year-on year 4.8% fall in GDP, there was significant political fallout in 2020. The postponement of the Olympic Games, the Abe government's perceived inability to tackle the pandemic, and the (re)surfacing of political scandals led to Japan's longest-serving Prime Minister popularity plummeting. The re-emergence of Abe's health problems then precipitated his abrupt resignation. This ushered in the premiership of Suga Yoshihide, who promised to enact structural reforms and ambitious digitalization and environmental programmes, while also promising to continue significant elements of Abe's policy agenda. Internationally, COVID-19 accelerated US-China tensions and, in connection to that, China's regional assertiveness. This perceived assertiveness as well as China's political involution and human rights violations in Hong Kong and Xinjiang, in turn, hardened the Japanese government's position vis-à-vis Beijing. This happened despite Abe's early 2020 efforts towards hosting a state visit by the Chinese president. Instead, the year instead ended with a «Quad» meeting at the ministerial level, hosted in Tokyo, rather than an entente with China. At the same time, Japan deepened its «Indo-Pacific» engagement with important European nations as well as the European Union itself. It did so while doubling down on economic security initiatives that strengthened supply chain resiliency and provided telecommunication alternatives to Chinese initiatives, thereby restraining Chinese strategic

Italy’s engagement with China, aptly represented by the Belt and Road Initiative Memorandum of Understanding signed in March 2019, is premised on continuity and on Rome’s economic calculations in the trade and investment agendas. Scraping the surface of populist Eurosceptic posturing, the engagement has hardly been at the detriment of the European Union’s China agenda. Yet, in light of the United States’ pushback against China and the growing fatigue following the COVID-19 (coronavirus disease 2019) pandemic, Italy–China relations have quietly, but steadily, cooled.

The implications of the pandemic for US-China relations are relevant for global peace and prosperity, well beyond the Asia-Pacific. Rather than joining forces against the pandemic, COVID-19  is among the factors that have widened the rift between the United States and China, bringing bilateral relations to their lowest level since Nixon and Kissinger’s overtures in 1971. In fact, US-China zero-sum interactions across the geopolitical, economic, technological and political domains have spiralled towards a dangerous race to the bottom. While it is too early to declare a US-China “Cold War”, China’s assertiveness and the US maximalist pushback are working in lockstep to reify the Cold War trope past the 2020 US presidential elections.

In what ways are Japanese foreign and security policies changing? How far will these changes go? Will they result in a policy posture that breaks from the post-1945 approach as originally designed by Prime Minister Yoshida Shigeru? This special issue presents six articles that address these questions. They tackle the relationship between recent changes in Japanese domestic policy institutions and Japanese diplomatic and security practice. In this introduction, we outline the significance of the essays’ findings and propose a methodological shift in the interpretation of Japanese policy. We make the case that Japan’s approach to diplomatic and security affairs under Abe is evidence of the emergence of a ‘Realpolitik Japan’. From this perspective, we argue that values and political ideology have translated into practical choices that make the question of the ‘break with the post-1945’ approach less relevant to understand the significance of political change.

This year-in-review essay highlights the Abe administration's attempts at defining its "Free and Open Indo-Pacific" grand strategic vision with like-minded parties. It assesses Japan's engagement with states that have demonstrated active interest in the concept: the United States, Australia, India, France and the United Kingdom. The essay underscores the tension between Trump's extortionist and transactional instincts and the need for the US to engage multilaterally in the region, but also suggests that China has softened its stance towards Japan in light of a more confrontational US China policy. The essay will open with an assessment of Japanese domestic politics and the Abe administration's economic agenda, because domestic stability has allowed Abe's signature foreign policy initiatives. Abe consolidated power as he secured his third term as LDP president, despite a string of political scandals. Along with his aspirations for a powerful and prosperous Japan, he implemented structural reforms of the labour market including new caps on overtime work and a new immigration law that potentially opened Japan's doors to low-and high-skilled workers. In the year under review, and in line with his administration's Free and Open Indo-Pacific vision, Abe issued new defence guidelines that have set Japan further on track towards an active military role. The guidelines outline measures to enhance Japan's capabilities in «cross-domain operations» in cyber, space and electromagnetic warfare and a comprehensive modernization of conventional defence equipment which includes new missile systems, advanced fighter jets and aircraft carrier capabilities in direct response to China's military rise. Finally, Abe confirmed his determination to revise Japan's war-renouncing constitution, however unlikely the attainment of that goal is, at least in the near future and in the face of persistent popular opposition.

This article argues that the assertive Chinese and Japanese foreign and security stances of the Xi Jinping and Abe Shinzō administrations have resulted in a government-led renaissance of their respective identity politics, one qualified by top-down, adversarial nationalism. Aided by the nation-state’s communication firepower, the two governments have instrumentally insisted upon antagonistic discourses —
with domestic and foreign audiences in mind. This article does not deny the many bottom-up sources of Chinese and Japanese nationalism already discovered by constructivist scholars, but introduces rather a different perspective on identity construction in Japan and China. On the basis of an array of primary sources, this article argues that the logic of Sino–Japanese identity politics has been increasingly rooted in the neoclassical realism of Sino–Japanese confrontation. Within the
broader structural picture of great power competition, the Chinese and Japanese elite have engaged in a more assertive foreign policy aimed at territorial defense. Central governments enjoy leverage in defining the perimeters of discourse-making, and the nationalistic Abe and Xi administrations have mobilized public opinion following the 2012 crisis surrounding the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands standoff.

This article assesses the stability of the Abe administration in the face of a rapidly changing international environment. Important displays of historical reconciliation testified to the toning down of Prime Minister Abe Shinzō’s revisionism, thus feeding into international and domestic stability. At the same time, continued maritime contestation in the South China Sea followed the July 12 award of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea’s arbitration tribunal. Moreover, China’s renewed assertiveness around the disputed Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands and the election of Donald Trump as US President were key factors in making stormy the waters, where Abe had to navigate. Yet, Japan remained a beacon of political stability amidst the surrounding confusion, as proven by the July 10 Upper House elections. This article provides an account of Japan in 2016 through the prism of the above listed developments. In so doing, it details the Abe administration’s political stability in the context of the Japanese government’s foreign policy initiatives, in particular in the history and maritime domains.

This article highlights the Realist underpinnings of US-China-Japan relations. Washington’s quest for primacy in the Asia-Pacific framed Tokyo’s China policy throughout the early post-Cold War period; after all, US global power projection also rested on its capacity to influence key regional allies such as Japan. Yet growing US fatigue for military intervention abroad coincided with a changing East Asian power balance premised on China’s military and economic rise. On the basis of a Structural Realist analysis, this article argues that Japan hardened its security stance by the mid-2000s. Following the 2012 Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands standoff, Chinese assertiveness and a forceful Japanese response revealed a new reality in US-Japan alliance politics: Washington policymakers would now restrain some of Japan’s more assertive security initiatives and nationalistic displays. While detailing the evolution of US-China-Japan relations, this article disputes the likelihood of a US-China conflict of Tokyo’s making thanks to sustained US leverage over Japan.

This article reassesses the 2006 and, tentatively, the 2014 reset in Sino-Japanese relations to argue in favour of an increasingly state-centric understanding of Japanese diplomacy. By making use of a narrative account and a variety of primary sources—including personal memoirs, elite interviews, participatory observation, and leaked State Department cables—this article finds that Abe Shinzō's foreign policy confidante, Yachi Shōtarō, embodied the unmatched influence of government actors in Japan's political landscape. The article provides a close-up portrait of Yachi, with an emphasis on his preference for geopolitics, strategy, and secret diplomacy. Yachi and the institutional apparatus he represented sought détente with Japan's main strategic adversary, while pushing for geopolitical initiatives that targeted China. The article concludes by arguing that the Abe administration's insistence on, and institutionalized practice of, conducting public affairs in secret will likely further strengthen the role of the nation-state and of government actors in Japan, also in light of growing geopolitical tensions in East Asia.

This article reassesses the 2006 and, tentatively, the 2014 reset in Sino- Japanese relations to argue in favour of an increasingly state-centric understanding of Japanese diplomacy. By making use of a narrative account and a variety of primary sources—including personal memoirs, elite interviews, participatory observation, and leaked State Department cables—this article finds that Abe Shinzō's foreign policy confidante, Yachi Shōtarō, embodied the unmatched influence of government actors in Japan's political landscape. The article provides a close-up portrait of Yachi, with an emphasis on his preference for geopolitics, strategy, and secret diplomacy. Yachi and the institutional apparatus he represented sought détente with Japan's main strategic adversary, while pushing for geopolitical initiatives that targeted China. The article concludes by arguing that the Abe administration's insistence on, and institutionalized practice of, conducting public affairs in secret will likely further strengthen the role of the nation-state and of government actors in Japan, also in light of growing geopolitical tensions in East Asia.

This essay focuses on the mounting geopolitical tensions around the South China Sea so as to gauge Japan's growing assertiveness in foreign and security policy there. It defines regional strategic interaction in 2015 along the lines of a «game of go» (known as go or igo in Japan, and as weiqi in China): China calmed the situation in the East China Sea in the face of Japan's economic and military-diplomatic pushback, but it has refocused its energies to building massive constructions on disputed coral reefs and rocks in the South China Sea's Spratly Islands. Key events of 2015 hinted at the insufficiently noted drivers behind Tokyo's response to Chinese actions in the South China Sea. This study argues that the new US-Japan security guidelines and the Abe government's security laws have sown the seeds for a progressive institutionalization of Japan's higher military profile, because these norms granted the United States leverage vis-à-vis Japan. Finally, the essay analyzes the state of Sino-Japanese relations throughout 2015 to find little-appreciated conciliatory overtures that nonetheless clashed with progressively heightened military and constabulary activities. In that spirit, it analyzes the 14 August Abe Statement and accompanying exegesis in order to stress the Janus-face quality to the Sino-Japanese cold peace. In conclusion, the essay pits the logic of power politics against liberal theories of international relations to find that international economic initiatives in 2015 clearly favored strategic and geopolitical imperatives over economic considerations. The essay concludes with an assessment of regional stability, finding mounting turbulence in the short-to-medium term.

This article operationalizes Japanese leadership in foreign and security policy, specifically the Abe administrations’ consistent China balancing. It will do so to dispel instances of Premier-centered diplomacy and posit that Abe's diplomatic agenda has rested on a ‘hybrid’ policy-making authority, where the leverage enjoyed by the Prime Minister's office (the Kantei) rested on little-appreciated politicized personnel appointments and demotions within the bureaucratic apparatus, specifically the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Moreover, successful Japanese leadership has functioned especially when operating within the scope of the US strategic framework towards East Asia. While structural constraints, such as the ever-present influence of the USA and bureaucratic coordination, may constrain options, effective leadership in foreign policy-making can indeed make a difference within those boundaries.

The China-Japan standoff over the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands has unleashed a top-down information war that has cemented the two governments’ positions over their territorial
dispute. Under the Abe administration, Tokyo has stood up to an assertive China and drummed up nationalistic narratives of a virtuous Japanese “Self ” (“us”) pitted against an aberrant and aggressive Chinese “Other” (“them”). It has done so along a markedly realist logic in order to (1) cement domestic resolve in direct response to China’s assertiveness and heated rhetoric; and (2) legitimize a swift passage of the contested security bills to enhance deterrence. Yet, while Japanese popular anxieties have echoed top-down instrumentalist narratives of an assertive China, they have also signaled a clear fear of entanglement in provocations of Tokyo’s making. This paper will provide evidence of the Japanese government’s active reconstruction of China’s assertiveness in the public discourse—with an eye on the realpolitik of Sino-Japanese relations. It concludes that the Japanese government needs also to cater more to grassroots sensitivities, something that has been a clear limit to Abe’s security agenda.

This multidisciplinary and critical essay introduces the nature of the ongoing Japan-China spat over the contested Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands by emphasizing the interplay between recent Sino-Japanese history and the broader undercurrents of power politics. It analyzes the evolution of the Japanese government’s foreign and security strategy in 2014, tracing back the origins of this strategy not just to Abe’s and Yachi Shōtarō’s worldviews, but also to their past responses to and encounters with Beijing. In this spirit the article analyzes Abe’s foreign policy and major security reforms. 
Secondly, the article introduces an extensive and original analysis of the Japanese government’s increased international and domestic public relations efforts vis-à-vis China, partly in reaction to Beijing’s own attacks on Japan. Here I also provocatively claim that the Japanese “governmental-institutional-media complex” deliberately facilitated an increasingly hostile tone towards China.
Finally, the last section briefly assesses the significance of Japan and China’s negotiated parallel statements, which paved the way to the November 2014 Abe-Xi APEC meeting, and addresses the tenability of a Sino-Japanese “cold peace” in light of the previous insights.

The December 2012 Lower House elections decreed the comeback to Japan’s political center-stage of Abe Shinzō, son of a former Foreign Minister, and grandson of controversial Prime Minister Kishi Nobusuke, a prominent player in both pre- and post-war Japan. Abe’s fascination for his maternal grandfather points at the importance of blood and pedigree in Japan as well as the marked importance of strong personality behind the Japanese government’s economic and foreign policy initiatives. This article highlights the role of personality in policy-making and the marked consistency and learning experience between the first and second Abe governments, respectively in 2006-2007 and 2012-2013 in particular. It highlights the role of deeply trusted “diplomatic brains” (gaikō burēn) or diplomatic éminence grise, such as Yachi Shōtarō, Nobukatsu Kanehara and, to a lesser extent, Okazaki Hisahiko, who share Abe’s worldviews and inferences on Japan’s foreign and security policy. It finds that in 2012 and 2013 Abe appointed the same core foreign policy team to key positions in Kantei and, subsequently, to the newly-created National Security Council. P.M. Abe has consistently prioritized the security and geo-political implications of China’s rise, with an ill-concealed belief that balancing strategies would also mollify Beijing’s posture vis-à-vis Japan. Apart from analyzing and discussing the results of these policies, the article posits that the insistence on the quantitative easing and neo-Keynesian measures of Abenomics point not only at Abe’s recognition of his personal failure as Prime Minister in 2006-2007, but also at the willingness to inflate the domestic economy vis-à-vis perceived Chinese coercive economic diplomacy against Japan. Abe’s strategy thus upgraded the China-Japan military and political standoff over the disputed Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands to an economic game of chicken as well.

Since the end of the Cold War, the issues of historical burdens and animosities surrounding the visits to the Yasukuni Shrine, as well as violent anti-Japan demonstrations in China, became the source of heated discussions and contributed to the freezing of political relations between Japan and China. The demise of the USSR as a strategic concern and the end of bipolarity facilitated the resurgence of what is believed to be the main reason behind Sino-Japanese animosities: nationalism. The resurgence of nationalistic narratives in the last twenty years is an international phenomenon. Indeed, there are important common structural and domestic factors leading to renewed animosities around the world as well as in Japan and China.
However, there are distinctive traits of the two countries’ respective new nationalistic waves, as Chinese neo-nationalism can be studied as an evolution from the old top-down pattern of anti-Japanese sentiment starting with the elite and trickling down to a bottom-up one. Japanese neo-nationalism, on the contrary, may be studied as a mostly top-down mindset, largely confined to parts of the conservative elite where nationalistic narratives are understood also as a means to move away from the deeply-rooted anti-militaristic ethos.
Chinese leaders’ domestic support also depends on their foreign policy towards Japan. They are easily under substantial pressure when making deals with their Japanese counterparts, who, on the contrary, have a relatively free hand on their China policy, but are unable to rally domestic support towards a decisively more pro-active international posture. The paper attempts to dissect the two nationalisms and understand how their respective active and reactive  dynamics affect bilateral relations.

Il Sud-Est asiatico è un'area geografica di grande importanza per il Giappone. Dal punto di vista economico, l' ASEAN è il principale partner commerciale di Tokyo dopo la Cina e gli Stati Uniti, nonché uno dei centri nevralgici delle catene globali del valore per fornitori e reti di imprese giapponesi. Negli ultimi anni, come ha dimostrato il recente summit bilaterale tra il Giappone e l' ASEAN, l'attenzione nipponica verso la regione è suscitata dalla volontà di controbilanciare la presenza cinese nelle reti infrastrutturali e dalla necessità di incrementare le relazioni politiche e culturali.

Following the opening salvos of U.S. tariffs on solar panels and washing machines, the Trump administration may now also push for a more muscular China policy, to the benefit of Japan’s dealings with China. Make no mistake: while Japan and China relations show signs of a minor détente in the making, this year will witness continued strategic rivalry and the fleshing out of opposing visions of regional, if not global, order. Leaders and their personality have no small role in 21st Century power politics.

Il documento approvato dal Consiglio dell’UE a favore di un impegno nell’IndoPacifico è un segnale politico che si inserisce appieno nel solco tracciato dalla Strategia UE-Cina del marzo 2019, che esplicita dinamiche competitive sul fronte economico, nonché una rivalità sistemica tra i due attori. La pandemia ha rafforzato questa tendenza. Detto ciò, logiche cooperative e inclusive della Cina permangono nella visione europea dell’Indo-Pacifico.

Perché un consesso informale di discussione su aspetti di sicurezza marittima tra alti funzionari e, da un anno a questa parte, capi politici di quattro potenze navali sta assumendo una maggiore rilevanza su temi quali le tecnologie emergenti? Perché si sente parlare sempre più spesso di un allargamento del Quad, in maniera permanente o con collaborazioni ad hoc? Questo saggio ricostruisce le tappe del processo che ha portato all’ ascesa e alla morte prematura del Quad (Parte I). Segue un’analisi dei dieci anni di stallo del  Quad, stallo che non ha precluso una maggiore cooperazione a livello bilaterale in materia di sicurezza, spianando la strada al Quad 2.0 con la presidenza Trump (Parte II). Infine, si valutano le prospettive future del Quad tenendo in particolare considerazione le domande di cui sopra e la volontà dell’amministrazione Biden di infondere nuova linfa nel dialogo di sicurezza quadrilaterale: che futuro per il Quad 3.0? (Parte III).