Securitizing the TPP in Japan: Policymaking Structure and Discourse

Executive summary

This article attempts to measure and define the level of “securitization” of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) in Japanese national politics by analyzing both the structure of policymaking and the policy discourse on the TPP under the Abe administration until the October 2015 agreement reached in Atlanta.

Main argument

The TPP has been managed within the Japanese policymaking infrastructure largely as a trade policy issue, and references to its geopolitical and security aspects have been a relatively minor element of policy discourse. However, the content of public policy rhetoric on the TPP in arenas such as the Diet and its committees reveals widespread recognition of the geopolitical and security consequences of Japan joining the TPP. In this respect, as gauged from official rhetoric, Japan’s TPP policy exhibits some degree of securitization. Public comments suggest that Japanese political elites perceive the positive security externalities of the TPP as elements of multiple and mutually complementary balancing strategies against China.

Policy implications

• • The Abe government appears to recognize the TPP as an important agreement that supports not only Japan’s economic and trade interests but also its security and geopolitical interests in regional stability and order.

• • Public political discourse on the TPP suggests that the Abe government also views the TPP as an opportunity to help shape the rules of the emerging Asia-Pacific order in partnership with like-minded countries. Japan would prefer a rules-based order to a power-based one, which would favor China.

• • If China remains outside the TPP, Japan can leverage the agreement’s size and scope to limit or condition China’s trade influence in East Asia. Should China join the TPP, it will need to operate within a framework of rules that Japan helped create.

• • Japan’s TPP posture complements U.S. policy on the TPP as a trade framework that supports the strategic rebalance to the Asia-Pacific and U.S. trade leadership in the region.

Free trade agreements (FTA) are about a lot less than free trade and a lot more than only trade. No FTAs are completely devoid of geopolitical and security interests because states compete to create the most advantageous agreements for strategic reasons as well as for potential economic and trade benefits.¹ The security spin-offs from bilateral and regional FTAs in East Asia, and the strategic gains sought by states from these agreements, are the subject of a growing body of literature, which includes general analysis of the trade-security nexus in the region.²

Several recent developments have made the geopolitical and security dimensions of Japanese trade policy even more salient. First, two regional FTAs on the cusp of completion—the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP)—have emerged as alternative vehicles for advancing regional economic integration.³ These trade agreements have become the focus of Sino-U.S. competition for economic leadership in the Asia-Pacific, with China’s FTA strategy increasingly designed to counter U.S. support for the TPP. The United States views the TPP not only as a vehicle for establishing a U.S.-centered trade system that embraces a number of Asia-Pacific states but also as an instrument of economic engagement with Asia under the U.S. “rebalance toward Asia” strategy.⁴

Second, Japan is in the process of finalizing both regional trade agreements against a background of rising Sino-Japanese strategic rivalry, including escalating maritime and sovereignty disputes. Joining the TPP offers Japan the opportunity to play a role in shaping the emerging order in the Asia-Pacific in partnership with the United States and to use the trade pact as part of a multipronged strategic approach to managing security tensions with China. Along with diplomatic initiatives and revamped strategic relationships, the TPP could support attempts by the Abe administration to build a “network of support against a rising China” in which trade, diplomatic, and defense ties are inextricably enmeshed and mutually reinforcing.⁵

This article will attempt to measure the level of “securitization” of the TPP...