That Japan provided critical assistance to Southeast Asia during crises over the past decade was a claim made by Dr Surin Pitsuwan, the ASEAN Secretary General-Designate during his keynote speech at the Shangri-La Hotel, Singapore last Saturday to mark the 30th Anniversary of the Fukuda Doctrine.

At the Roundtable organised by the East Asian Institute, National University of Singapore and the Japan Institute of International Affairs (JIIA), Dr Surin recalled the key tenets of the Doctrine enunciated by then Prime Minister Takeo Fukuda (father of current Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda) in Manila in August 1977 after a grand tour of five ASEAN countries and Burma (a non-ASEAN member then).

They were, that Japan rejected the role of a military power and was resolved to contribute to the peace and prosperity of Southeast Asia. In concert, the Fukuda Doctrine sought a “heart-to-heart relationship” with the region and sought to prevent a polarised Southeast Asia by acting as a bridge between the non-communist ASEAN states and communist Indochinese states.

The Fukuda Doctrine has been the official blueprint of Tokyo’s foreign policy principles underpinning its relations with Southeast Asia since 1977. Then Prime Minister Takeo Fukuda and the Asian Bureau of the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs proposed a new paradigm for Tokyo’s relations with Southeast Asia after the violent and shocking anti-Japanese riots which erupted in Bangkok and Jakarta when Prime Minister Kakuei Tanaka visited the region in 1974. Separately, Japanese policymakers sought to develop a more active diplomatic role for Japan against the geopolitical backdrop of US withdrawal from Indochina in 1975 which threatened to lead to an emerging power vacuum in Southeast Asia. The genesis of this initiative was to move Japan to play a more active and constructive role in Southeast Asia beyond that of an “economic animal”.

Among the crises in which Japan has provided assistance to Southeast Asia since were - a financial package of US$80 billion to East Asia when it was reeling from the 1997-98 Asian Financial Crisis; political mediation in July 1997 when Cambodia was on the verge of a civil war between the two co-Prime Ministers, Hun Sen and Prince Ranariddh; the deployment of a thousand troops for humanitarian relief in the aftermath the 2004 tsunami catastrophe in Aceh, Indonesia; and finally, assistance - both financial and manpower -to UN peacekeeping operations in East Timor.

According to Dr Surin, he (when Foreign Minister of Thailand) and then Foreign Affairs Secretary Domingo Siazon of the Philippines informally informed Yukio Satoh (then Japanese ambassador to the United Nations and presently President of JIIA) that ASEAN states have the “heart but not the means” to participate in the UN peacekeeping effort in East Timor. A precondition from Jakarta to accept Australian troops in East Timor was the inclusion of peacekeepers from ASEAN. Siazon asked for US$50 million and Satoh, after consulting Tokyo, retuned shortly with a more generous offer of US$100 million to support ASEAN peacekeeping. Japan also dispatched its Self Defense Forces to East Timor to assist in the UN peacekeeping effort.

For Surin, Tokyo’s assistance to Southeast Asia during critical junctures over the last decade represented a clear manifestation of the “heart-to-heart” relationship enunciated by the Fukuda Doctrine and a commitment to support the viability of ASEAN. While the Fukuda Doctrine has been embraced by both Japan and Southeast Asia during the last three decades, is it still relevant in the years ahead?

When Sino-Japanese relations were strained by then Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi stubborn insistence to visit the Yasukuni Shrine, Yasuo Fukuda extended an intriguing proposal that called for a “New Fukuda Doctrine” for Japan to seek a historical reconciliation with its Northeast Asian neighbors. He implied that Japan should seek a “heart-to-heart” relationship not only with Southeast Asia, but also with China and Korea for peace and stability in East Asia. With this context in mind, the point needs to be made that a nascent East Asian Community is just a pipe dream without a historical reconciliation between Beijing and Tokyo.

That Yasuo Fukuda has become Japanese Prime Minister is a golden opportunity to revise and launch a “Fukuda Doctrine Mark II” that should define a different era and a region that faces new challenges. Promising areas of regional cooperation include: environmental cooperation especially climate change, the sharing of experiences and joint training of ASEAN and Japanese police and troops for UN peacekeeping, and regional peace-building in areas which suffer from conflict such as Aceh, East Timor and Mindanao. Rather than being recipients of Japanese ODA (Official Developmental Aid), Southeast Asia should then graduate and inevitably become an equal partner alongside Japan in addressing regional and global problems.

However, the key obstacle to a larger Japanese diplomatic role is not the great powers of the US and China. Although Beijing earlier opposed a permanent seat for Tokyo on the United Nations Security Council, and Washington blocked Japanese co-leadership in the Mahathir-proposed East Asian Economic Caucus and the Japanese proposal of an Asian Monetary Fund during the Asian Financial Crisis, the key impediment to a larger international role originates within the political gridlock of Japanese domestic politics.

It is difficult to conceive of a revised Fukuda Doctrine and herald new diplomatic initiatives when the ruling Liberal Democratic Party cannot even renew legislation to permit the Japanese navy to continue assisting multinational forces in the Indian Ocean. Moreover, any attempts to launch a new Fukuda Doctrine today will also be overshadowed by domestic political uncertainties.

Whether the LDP can broker a deal with the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ), the main opposition party, to pass a new legislation for the navy’s redeployment to the Indian Ocean; the controversy over a grand ruling coalition between the LDP and the DPJ; and a possible realignment of Japanese domestic politics if Ozawa Ichiro, who offered to resign as President of the DPJ after the uproar within his party over the grand coalition proposal, were to leave the main opposition party with his followers. Simply put, Japan needs to set its own house in order before it can articulate a New Fukuda Doctrine. If Japanese domestic politics are an absolute mess, no one can believe that Tokyo has the energy and staying power to promote new diplomatic initiatives abroad when its top leaders are preoccupied by domestic political upheaval and survival.

If Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda can forge a compromise with the opposition over new legislation to permit the navy’s redeployment in the Indian Ocean, and secure a more stable framework for domestic politics and policymaking, it would be the most propitious time to launch Fukuda Doctrine, Mark II. The idealistic “heart-to-heart” framework of a revamped Fukuda Doctrine for a new era will likely be warmly welcomed not only by Southeast Asia, but China and Korea too. In this regard, the non-militaristic and cooperative norms of the envisaged Fukuda Doctrine  will buttress a nascent East Asian Community.