The EU-Japan Security Dialogue: Invisible but Comprehensive by Olena Mykal (review)

With this volume, interested readers and scholars who want to know what the European Union and Japan have jointly discussed and done in nonmilitary security over the years now have a book they can consult. The EU-Japan Security Dialogue: Invisible but Comprehensive by Olena Mykal is without a doubt a valuable contribution to the analysis of EU-Japan relations in general and to bilateral security cooperation in particular. The book's theoretical and methodological framework is sound and understandable, and the author makes a significant effort to organize and present the state of the EU-Japan security relations. Mykal strives to embrace everything the EU and Japan have put on their bilateral (security) agenda since the late 1950s. She has also done a very good job of tracing the developments and events relevant to EU-Japan relations and security relations over the decades. It would not be an exaggeration to say that everything Brussels and Tokyo have ever discussed regarding security cooperation is included in this volume.

However, those who want to learn what exactly Brussels and Tokyo have done on the ground in general in nonmilitary security cooperation over the years and particularly since the adoption of the EU-Japan Action Plan in 2001 may find themselves disappointed. To be sure, the author somewhere in the chapters covers all the areas (nonproliferation, human trafficking, cooperation in Afghanistan, cooperation in Iraqi reconstruction, development aid, climate change, crisis management, etc.) Tokyo and Brussels have ever discussed or put on the working agenda of their annual summits. Unfortunately, scholars and analysts interested in EU-Japan security relations, who (like this reviewer) complain about the fact that neither Tokyo nor the EU on its websites provides scholars and analysts with sufficient information on joint security policies, are not given many details on aspects of EU-Japan nonmilitary security cooperation. And it is exactly that which would have been the real added value of a book on this topic: consideration of the details and problems of actual cooperation, showing the extent to which the EU and Japan are able to implement the kind of on-the-ground security cooperation suggested in the annual press releases from their summits. What the author could or indeed perhaps should have done to add value to our understanding of EU-Japan security cooperation in action was to choose a few areas in which Brussels and Tokyo do cooperate and detail issues such as what exactly they are doing, where the problems are, why they are not doing more, what the results are, etc. It is a shame, therefore, that the author has instead chosen to list areas of cooperation without added information on "operational details." A few case studies of EU-Japan security cooperation would have shed light on the modus operandi of EU-Japan security cooperation—for example, EU-Japan cooperation in Afghanistan. Such case studies would have added substance and value to the book and enabled the reader to assess whether EU-Japanese rhetoric on the scale and quality of their cooperation match the reality on the ground. The net result, in the view of this reviewer, is that the analysis of EU-Japan security cooperation presented here remains somewhat superficial.

Furthermore, the author frequently cites EU and Japanese officials when making conclusions about the importance of EU-Japan cooperation in international politics and security. Citing officials, official documents, statements, and joint declarations, which elaborate on the state and the future of EU-Japan security cooperation, may provide a certain angle but does not necessarily add to the credibility of any objective and critical analysis of bilateral EU-Japan security cooperation. In fact, citing EU and Japanese officials who announce that Brussels and Tokyo are made for mutual cooperation in regional and global security may even have the effect of undermining the credibility of the author's research. What else might one expect officials in Brussels and Tokyo involved in EU-Japan security relations to...