On April 18th, 2023, Mr. Ryo Hinata-Yamaguchi joined YCAPS members for a discussion of The East Asian Security Environment. Mr. Hinata-Yamaguchi began his talk with an overview of the current state-of-affairs in the East-Asian region. His introduction of the power struggle between China, North Korea, and Russia set the foundation for the rest of his speech. He then described the complexities of this power struggle by explaining recent trends in warfare. With more developments in strategies, operations, technologies, and tactics, warfare has become more complicated and irregular. This is concerning considering the amount of growing threats in the region.
The first threat he spoke about was China. With rapid military modernization and improving inter-agency coordination, it’s a growing geopolitical authority. North Korea, while weaker than China and Russia, serves as a nuclear threat under their new nuclear doctrine. Lastly, Russia serves as a major threat to the US and Japan. Their invasion of Ukraine raises the question of whether China or North Korea would eventually do the same thing. Because these countries all share a dissatisfaction with the status quo and a desire to change it, they have intimate relations and provide mutual assistance. This presents a few possible scenarios focusing around a “dual contingency” that Mr. Hinata-Yamaguchi recognized when participating in war games.
The first scenario was North Korea taking advantage of a Taiwan contingency. Next was China requesting that North Korea take provocative measures before attacking Taiwan. Lastly was China taking advantage of a contingency on the Korean Peninsula. However, looking at potential problems in these scenarios, these countries lack the capacity to deescalate, defend against attacks, and it could cause a humanitarian crisis. This begs the question of the likelihood of these situations taking place. Do the costs outweigh the benefits?
Having spoken about the threats in the region, he then turned his focus to the US-Japan Alliance and its developments. Japan has seen some major developments since the 2010s (2022 National Security Strategy, Defense Buildup Plan, etc.). Along with their strengthening defense capacity, their alliance with the US is strong and has seen better burden-sharing. They’ve also improved their networking with Australia, NATO, other southeast Asian states, etc… But even having this improving capacity, Japan still needs to focus on enhancing defense and deterrence. With an increasing amount of gray zone situations, they need to focus on intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance, as well as interoperability. He also stressed that they need to focus on the 4 C’s: clarity, consistency, credibility, and capacity. This will improve Japan’s readiness to combat the rising potential threats posed by Russia, China, and North Korea.
His talk came to a close with many fascinating questions from the seminar attendees. These included asking about evidence for the potential cooperation/coordination between China and North Korea, and when it would be advantageous given their capacities. Additionally, we talked about Russia’s end goal should these scenarios play out, and would Japan move towards Russia in an attempt to get back the disputed islands.
