By Da Zhigang

Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida began his visit to the Philippines and Malaysia on October 3. In the meantime, Japan has decided to provide coastal surveillance radars and other equipment to the Philippines under the framework of the Official Security Assistance (OSA). This is the first time that Japan provides defense equipment under the OSA framework, which is externally interpreted as a shift from the former Official Development Assistance (ODA) centering around the non-military fields to the OSA focusing on improving the security capabilities of recipient countries.

The so-called OSA framework is emphatically integrated into the National Security Strategy (NSS) revised by the Japanese government at the end of 2022. According to the Japanese side, the OSA conforms to the "Three Principles on Transfer of Defense Equipment and Technology", which is designed to elevate the military capabilities and security levels of recipient countries by providing military equipment for free and assisting in optimizing relevant infrastructure for the ally and partners' militaries of so-called common values. To this end, the Japanese 2023 fiscal year budgets include a separate provision of funds to aid the Philippines, Malaysia, Bangladesh and Fiji, which are identified as targeted recipients for the year. It is said that its 2024 budget will be expanded to cover Vietnam, Indonesia, Mongolia, Djibouti and other countries.

Japan's switch from ODA to OSA unveils the following strategic intentions of the country. First, it aims to improve the strategic counterbalance capacity toward regional powers. Many analysts believed that Kishida's visit to Southeast Asia targeted China explicitly or implicitly. For example, their strengthening defense assistance for targets in the East China Sea, South China Sea and even around the Taiwan Strait is obviously intended to restrict China's military and economic clout.

Second, it aims to stimulate the development of domestic military-industrial complex amidst the sluggish economic situation within the country. With the outbreak of the Russia-Ukraine conflict and even the new round of Palestinian-Israeli conflict, the significance of the military industry has been abruptly increased, and the ROK's strides towards becoming a major player in defense exports have also evoked envy within the Japanese military-industrial circle. Relying on the transition from ODA to OSA, Japan hopes that in tandem with balancing the geopolitical goals, it can also directly accelerate the substantial growth of the military industry and further drive the economic reviving, and even promote the export of armament and weapons.

Third, it aims to form multilateral geopolitical intervention capabilities. Knowing that it is difficult to cope with the changing geopolitical and security situation on its own, the Japanese politicians desire to establish a maritime defense system of ally and partners by supporting and strengthening the overseas security forces of Southeast Asian, South Asian and Pacific island countries, so as to enhance their ability to intervene in the situation of East China Sea, South China Sea and even the Indo-Pacific.

In addition, Japan's promotion of the transition from ODA to OSA also reveals the following changes in its foreign aid approaches.

First, it tends to deviate from the commitments to economic regionalism. By mainly following such a principle in economic diplomacy when implementing ODA assistance initiatives, Japan vigorously promoted the establishment of bilateral and multilateral trade mechanisms and had a strong sense of making appropriate concessions in some aspects including geo-security, which had been demonstrated by the enforcement of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership Treaty (RCEP) and the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP). But now, Japan is considering making adjustments and launching new national security strategies, and the invocation of OSA just manifests this tendency.

Second, it intends to establish the geo-security centrality policy. As the economic first mindset gradually fades away, Japan has seen raised awareness of geo-security-oriented approaches, continuous diffusion of national defense, economy, science and technology security, and the increasingly prominent defense purpose of the OSA contents. The first adoption of the OSA in the Philippines and the negotiation on the Reciprocal Access Agreement between the JSDF and the Philippine military indicate that the seamless linkage between foreign aid and security may become the core pivot of Japan's geo-security centrality policy in the future.

Third, it attaches importance to building a multilateral containment network based on foreign assistance. Different from addressing geopolitical contradictions through primary bilateral coordination methods and supplementary multilateral dialogue mechanisms employed earlier, as the geo-security centrality claim prevails in policy-making, Japan begins to place greater emphasis on multilateral containment networks and prevention mechanisms when dealing with affairs related to Northeast Asia, Southeast Asia, East China Sea, South China Sea and even the Indo-Pacific. The OSA's adoption in the Philippines and rapidly extending to other countries just exemplify the shift in focus.

Nevertheless, Japan's demonstration in the Philippines under the framework of OSA will undoubtedly bring certain negative impacts. First, it will bring in new factors of geopolitical tensions. The OSA military assistance will foment the Philippines' increasingly provocative maritime actions and may induce new geopolitical tensions and even confrontations with the expansion of the availability and scale. Second, it will intensify regional bilateral and multilateral conflicts. The successive introduction of OSA will lay more hidden risks to Southeast Asia and even the Asia-Pacific which have already faced numerous bilateral and multilateral conflicts and coveted by many extraterritorial forces. Third, it will stimulate arms races within the region. Although the destructive properties of some military equipment and the sensitiveness of civilian assistance in some infrastructure construction are treated ambiguously, the OSA framework is designed to export arms in a disguised way virtually. While enhancing the security capabilities of some countries, it will also trigger the security concerns of others and draw regional countries into passive arms races as a result of pursuing a certain equilibrium.

(The author is a researcher at the Institute of Northeast Asian Studies at Heilongjiang Provincial Academy of Social Sciences and chief specialist at the Institute of Northeast Asian Strategies)

Editor's note: Originally published on huanqiu.com, this article is translated from Chinese into English and edited by the China Military Online. The information and opinions in this article do not necessarily reflect the views of eng.chinamil.com.cn.