Historian and media commentator James Curran is wrong to suggest we should fear that closer defence ties with Japan could drag Australia into a conflict with China, as he argued in the Australian Financial Review on 27 April.
On the contrary, Australia’s acquisition of Japan’s upgraded Mogami-class frigates, and the wider uplift of bilateral relations that was unveiled during Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s visit this week, help deter China from starting a regional war.
Takaichi views the US as indispensable for countering China’s military build-up and coercive tactics. She wants to calibrate Japan’s important economic relationship with China against the threat it poses, including Beijing’s willingness to use trade as a weapon. This should resonate with Australians, who have also endured Beijing’s embargoes.
Australia’s greater distance from China nurtures the illusion that Canberra has more strategic leeway for nimble middle-power statecraft than Japan does. It doesn’t. The Chinese Communist Party’s vision for a Sino-centric regional order would steamroll Australian democracy and sovereignty, just as it would Japan’s.
The surest way to deter Beijing from instigating a regional conflict in pursuit of its vision is for Japan, Australia and others in the region to forge closer partnerships. Any US administration will be more inclined to help allies that are helping themselves.
Thankfully, this is the approach Australia took in its 2026 National Defence Strategy (NDS), which correctly states that ‘any effective balance of military power’ in the Indo-Pacific requires the United States, while also advocating for load-bearing partnerships with other countries to develop Australia’s self-reliance. The NDS describes Japan as an indispensable partner in pursuing this aim.
Takaichi’s visit has shown that defence has not crowded out other aspects of the bilateral relationship. One of the main outcomes was a joint declaration on economic security, which highlighted that mutual trust and shared values underpinned our joint prosperity.
Part of the declaration addressed sectors such as food, where the vulnerability of supply chains has been highlighted by the closure of the Strait of Hormuz. A complementary joint statement added details about cooperation on energy security. Demonstrating that Australia and Japan can withstand pressure on strategic chokepoints and help the region do the same deters Beijing from attempting something similar in Indo-Pacific waterways.
Takaichi and Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese also announced deeper collaboration in key sectors with dual civilian and military applications, such as AI and space. Australia, backed by Japanese investment, could play a pivotal role in breaking Beijing’s stranglehold on processed critical minerals and other vital inputs to these technologies.
Under the comprehensive supply-chain model that Tokyo is promoting, cooperation is also needed to address Beijing’s practice of setting below-market prices for finished products, such as electric vehicles, thereby manipulating demand and stifling investment by foreign rivals.
Looking ahead, changes the Japanese parliament is currently debating could allow the Japan Bank for International Cooperation, a government-backed lender, to underwrite strategic projects, even if it risks losing money. That echoes reforms already made to Export Finance Australia. It promises broader opportunities for co-investment in infrastructure across the Pacific and Southeast Asia, improving the region’s resilience by providing recipient countries with options beyond Beijing’s strings-attached largesse.
To understand how the bilateral relationship got to this point requires a clearer historical account than Curran provides.
Tokyo did not lead Canberra naively into the quasi-alliance we now have. As veteran journalist Graeme Dobell has chronicled, former prime minister John Howard recognised Japan’s potential as a bilateral strategic partner beyond trilateral arrangements with the US. Some officials were also making this case within the government, including Andrew Shearer, Australia’s current ambassador to Tokyo, who was an intelligence analyst working on Japan at the time. In fact, Canberra is probably still slightly in front of Tokyo in seeking to turn the quasi-alliance into a formal one.
The upward trajectory of bilateral relations has been accompanied by marked improvements in Australian and regional attitudes to Japan. These have facilitated the expansion of Japan’s security assistance to countries such as Papua New Guinea. Several countries, including New Zealand and Indonesia, are considering following Australia to acquire the Mogami frigate.
This has been achieved despite China’s best efforts to spread disinformation throughout the region about Tokyo’s supposedly imperialist intentions. Thankfully, Canberra is resisting these wedge tactics. Asked about the relationship with Japan while in Beijing last week, Foreign Minister Penny Wong said it contributes to regional peace and stability.
Takaichi’s visit and the 50th anniversary of the 1976 Nara Treaty should be milestones, rather than the high watermark, in bilateral relations. It’s possible that both sides could become full treaty allies in future, as they currently are with the US. Beijing’s propagandists would scream, of course. That just means that deterrence is working.
This is a lightly edited version of an article originally published in the Australian Financial Review.