Japan-India Joint Security Declaration: Towards an Asia-wide Security Architecture?

Extract

As Japan and India move toward bilateral security cooperation, it is not surprising that Prime Ministers AsÅ▯ TarÅ▯ and Manmohan Singh have vigorously denied that the arrangements were aimed at counterbalancing China. But will Beijing read it in this way?

Japan's revised ODA Charter, a 2003 revision of the original 1991 set of principles governing Japan's Overseas Development Assistance, proscribes aid to countries producing weapons of mass destruction. Thus it is all the more perplexing that in September this year, Japan joined the 45-nation Nuclear Suppliers Group, which controls the export and sale of nuclear technology, to approve a waiver on trade with India. In joining the Washington consensus on this issue, Prime Minister AsÅ▯ is obviously moving into uncharted waters if he is seen as abandoning Japan's non-nuclear principles and pandering to Japanese companies eager for a slice of India's nuclear energy market. It is worth recalling that India's failure to ratify the NPT continues to raise public hackles in Japan, just as Prime Minister Hashimoto RyutarÅ▯ suspended all but humanitarian aid to India in response to India's nuclear tests conducted in May 1998.