Maritime Power

Abstract This chapter analyses maritime security and territorial integrity, which have been vital themes for Japan’s Indo–Pacific grand strategy. These issues are traditionally important, as Japan’s economic prosperity depends on its freedom of navigation at sea while its territorial sovereignty is still contested with China (Senkaku/Diaoyu), Korea (Takeshima/Dokto), and Russia (the Northern Territories). Although the Cold War bipolar structure and US unipolarity in the early post-Cold War period contributed to containing these tensions, China’s rising maritime power in the 21st century fueled their resurgence. By the late 2000s, Tokyo realized that the Cold War deterrence mechanism had become less effective, as the global financial crisis weakened the US socio-economic fabric and as China’s encroachment in both the East and South China Seas became more frequent. The 2010 collision near the Senkaku Islands between Japanese coast guard ships and a Chinese fishery boat was the critical event that narrowed Japan’s policy options and shifted Japan’s security strategy with its new National Defense Programme Guidelines (NDPG) in 2010. With the intensification of tensions over the Senkakus following the 2012 “nationalization” incident, in Abe’s second term, Tokyo formulated a new national security strategy, aimed at competing with China more proactively through a two-pronged means. One is through enhanced maritime territorial defense capabilities by the Japan Coast Guard and Maritime Self-Defense Force in collaboration with the US, and the other is actively supporting the existing maritime order, including freedom of navigation and overflight and maritime international law.