Andrea Pressello - Japan and the shaping of post-Vietnam War Southeast Asia: Japanese diplomacy and the Cambodian conflict, 1978-1993

This book draws largely from the research I carried out as a doctoral student in the Security and International Studies Program at the National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies (GRIPS) in Tokyo. I am highly grateful to Professors Iwama Yoko, Michishita Narushige, Miyagi Taiz, and Nobori Amiko for their valuable guidance and comments on my research. My gratitude goes also to the anonymous reviewers for their useful inputs and suggestions. Professor Sud Sueos comments on part of my research at the 2011 Annual Convention of the Japan Association of International Relations have also been important for the realization of this work. Finally, I am indebted to the several diplomats, officials, politicians, and scholars who, both in Japan and overseas, have patiently answered my questions and shared their experiences and inspiring insights with me. I am solely responsible for the analyses and any factual errors of this book.

This book is derived in part from articles published in Japanese Studies on March 31, 2014 (available online: www.tandfonline.com/ http://dx.doi.org/ 10.1080/10371397.2014.886506), in Japan Forum on July 1, 2013 (available online: www.tandfonline.com/ http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09555803.2013.8 02368), and in Asian Studies Review on March 5, 2013 (available online: www. tandfonline.com/ http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10357823.2012.760531).

In this book, Japanese names are written according to the Japanese system of first indicating the last name and then the given name. The only exceptions are in the footnotes. The sources in Japanese language used in this book have been translated in English by the author.

The objective of this book is to clarify Japans role in the shaping of the post-Vietnam War order in Southeast Asia by examining its diplomacy on the Cambodian conflict (19781993), the main source of regional instability in those years. In the period after World War II, the Japanese considered Southeast Asia to be important in the process of rebuilding their economy and international role. The fact that Japan did not have diplomatic relations with the Peoples Republic of China until the early 1970s and had a difficult relationship with the Korean Peninsula increased the importance of Southeast Asian countries for the Japanese. This regions natural resources and markets were deemed attractive in Japan. When Tokyo began to provide official development assistance (ODA), a large part of it as well as increasingly of Japanese trade and investments went to Southeast Asia. During the 1970s, a growingly confident Japan, whose economy had by then become the second largest in the Free World, looked at Southeast Asia also as instrumental to enhance its international role by acting as a sort of representative of this region in the developed world. The fact that vital sea routes, through which oil from the Middle East was shipped to resource-scant Japan, were located in proximity of Southeast Asian waters further increased the strategic importance of this region, especially in the aftermath of the first oil shock of 1973. Realizing peace and stability in Southeast Asia became, therefore, one of the important issues for Japans foreign policy. However, the fluid regional environment during the 1970s complicated the realization of such an objective. The end of the war in Vietnam brought significant changes in Southeast Asia. A division was consolidated between the non-communist countries of ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) on the one hand which, during the 1970s, included Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, and Thailand and, on the other, the Indochinese communist regimes of Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam. After the rather traumatic experience of its participation in the Vietnamese conflict, the United States reduced its involvement and military presence in the region. This created room for the Soviet Union and China to increase their influence in Southeast Asia, a scenario that the Japanese expected to have adverse implications for Southeast Asias stability and for Tokyos interests in that region. With one of the driving forces being the objective of stopping such a scenario from materializing, Japan intensified efforts to promote development in Southeast Asia and cooperative and friendly relations between Indochinese and ASEAN countries; this was expected to strengthen their resilience and make them less vulnerable to external sources of destabilization. These objectives were central in the policy toward Southeast Asia that Japan formulated during the 1970s. One of its major articulations was contained in the speech that Prime Minister Fukuda Takeo delivered in Manila in August 1977, which became known as the Fukuda Doctrine. He made clear that Japan had no ambition to become a military power, and that it desired positive relations with Southeast Asian nations based on mutual trust and understanding. The third pillar of the speech enunciated Japans commitment to help realize peace and prosperity in Southeast Asia by supporting the development of the ASEAN countries and the establishment of peaceful and cooperative relations between them and the communist states of Indochina.