Japan wants our help to get in on Five Eyes
A former Japanese ambassador to Australia pushes for Australian support for his country to be admitted to the Five Eyes network.
Former Japanese ambassador to Australia Sumio Kusaka has pushed for Australian support for his country to be admitted to the West’s “Five Eyes” intelligence-sharing network and for Taiwan’s inclusion in the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal.
Amid plans for Scott Morrison to visit Tokyo later this year, Mr Kusaka is calling for a new era of co-operation to help counter an “aggressive and bullying China” and respond to the US retreat from global governance.
In a piece commissioned by Asialink at the University of Melbourne and published in The Australian, Mr Kusaka says Japan and Australia — already “special strategic partners” — must strengthen the regional order amid the fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic by promoting trade, sharing intelligence, and working with like-minded partners to “find a path for peaceful coexistence with China”.
“How can Japan and Australia best ride out this global upheaval?” Mr Kusaka writes. “In many ways, they are natural partners. It is natural and desirable for them to co-operate more closely in the face of this turmoil and try to shape the regional environment in accord with their national interests. Those interests appear to be very similar and aligned, if not identical.”
While US President Donald Trump has “alienated foreign allies” while “entrenching foes”, Mr Kusaka says there is “huge potential” for Australia and Japan to work together to improve the Indo-Pacific’s economic and strategic order.
“For instance, Japan and Australia could join forces to help meet infrastructure needs of less-developed nations in the Indo-Pacific, helping China understand those nations need not rely solely on its Belt and Road Initiative to improve their infrastructure,” he says.
“Japan and Australia should promote a free and open Indo-Pacific in collaboration with the US, India and ASEAN countries. Broadening our wings further to include like-minded nations such as the UK and France would be an effective and practical way to curb China’s dangerous ambitions.”
Mr Kusaka says Australia and Japan could work even more closely if Japan was allowed to join the US, Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand in the Five Eyes intelligence alliance, a role it has increasingly sought.
“As Six Eyes, our nations could co-ordinate their policies much more effectively and with better results,” he writes.
Mr Kusaka says Australia and Japan should seek to strengthen the TPP by urging the US to join under a Biden administration, and potentially expand it by “inviting Taiwan to join as an economic jurisdiction — the same basis on which it was able to become a member of APEC”.
“We would want Taiwan to join before China, which would seek to block Taiwan’s membership,” he writes.
Mr Kusaka takes aim at China’s “unacceptable claims of sovereignty” in the East and South China seas, its “abusive national security law” in Hong Kong, and its “threatening military behaviour towards Taiwan”.
“China seems determined to become a hegemon in the Asia-Pacific region,” he says.
“One way or another, we must find a path for peaceful coexistence with China. Japan and Australia working more closely together, as natural partners, can make a big contribution to achieving that and a free and prosperous Indo-Pacific.”
The call comes days after Foreign Minister Marise Payne met with her Japanese, Indian and US counterparts in Tokyo for Quadrilateral Security Dialogue talks.
After the meeting, Senator Payne said the Quad members were determined to “support a region of resilient and sovereign states”, and strengthen the rules-based international order.
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo went further, calling for the Quad to be developed into a “true security framework”.
Japan has long sought membership of the exclusive Five Eyes intelligence-sharing network, but Western intelligence agencies are understood to remain sceptical about their Japanese counterparts’ ability to keep the most secret of secrets that are shared among the alliance’s members.
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