After five years, Japan\u2019s National Security Council has established institutional weight in determining the country’s security priorities.<\/b>
\nAuthor: Adam P Liff, Indiana University
On 4 December 2018, Japan\u2019s National Security Council (NSC) marks its fifth anniversary. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe\u2019s administration established the NSC after a decades-long reform movement aimed at strengthening the prime minister\u2019s office and addressing perceived weaknesses of previous national security institutions. Its creation was, and remains, a big deal. Leading experts on Japan\u2019s foreign policy have deemed it \u2018the most ambitious reorganization of Japan\u2019s foreign and security policy apparatus since the end of World War II\u2019.
Over the past half-decade, the NSC has come to play a central role in shaping Japan\u2019s strategic trajectory that has attracted so much global attention in the Abe era. Though its existence and structure hardly make for eye-grabbing headlines, appreciating the NSC\u2019s behind-the-scenes role is crucial to understanding some of Japan\u2019s major policy decisions in the past five years, as well as how the country plans to cope with current and future challenges.
The NSC facilitates top-down decision making on national security issues, deeper integration and inter-agency coordination for strategic planning and crisis management, and a more robust, political demand-driven intelligence cycle. It is designed to be a Cabinet-based \u2018control tower\u2019 for national security decision making. The council also serves longer-term efforts by Japan\u2019s leaders to expand and strengthen the \u2018 prime ministerial executive \u2019 at the expense of its historically powerful bureaucracy.
Though established under Abe, the NSC was the culmination of longer-term trends. Critics had recognised institutional deficiencies for decades. The NSC\u2019s immediate predecessor, the Security Council, was judged to be insufficient to handle increasingly severe and diverse security challenges requiring more effective \u2018whole-of-government\u2019 decision making, planning, intelligence gathering and assessment.
Salient drivers on the eve of the NSC\u2019s establishment included the March 2011 \u2018triple disaster\u2019 in Tohoku, a January 2013 hostage crisis involving Japanese citizens in Algeria, North Korea\u2019s repeated nuclear weapons \u00a0and ballistic missile tests, and grey zone challenges such as China\u2019s provocative operational assertion of its sovereignty claim to the Senkaku\/Diaoyu Islands after September 2012. Considering the difficulty of responding to these diverse crises, Japan\u2019s leaders judged that an institution better suited to formulate and carry out a more proactive, comprehensive and \u2018whole-of-government\u2019 strategy was a national security imperative.
Thus, the NSC\u2019s establishment was motivated by a desire to more flexibly and independently cope with a rapidly changing, increasingly complex and ever more uncertain security environment in East Asia and beyond. It was also based on an understanding of national security that recognises the importance of threats beyond traditional military or defence affairs such as cyber technology, space, finance, and man-made and natural disasters (such as 3\/11).
The NSC\u2019s most significant institutional innovation is its core Four-Minister Meeting comprised of the prime minister, chief cabinet secretary and ministers of defence and foreign affairs. Meetings of these national security principals can be expanded as needed \u2014 usually through the Nine-Minister Meeting framework inherited from the NSC\u2019s predecessor or the Emergency Situation Minister Meeting. The NSC\u00a0 met 48 times in 2016 and 46 times in 2017 \u2014 a rate dwarfing that of analogous meetings in the pre-NSC era.
The National Security Secretariat (NSS) provides support to the NSC. The NSS was established in 2014 and staffed primarily with career civil servants from the ministries of foreign affairs and defence, as well as officers from Japan\u2019s Self-Defense Forces. It is organised into three regional and three functional teams addressing policy integration, crisis management, information and intelligence sharing, coordinating with foreign counterparts and ad hoc project support.
Together with the NSS, the NSC has become the nexus for major decisions and draft legislation defining Japan\u2019s foreign policy and security posture. This includes Japan\u2019s 2013 National Security Strategy, the controversial July 2014 reinterpretation of Article 9 of Japan\u2019s \u2018Peace Constitution\u2019 to enable limited exercise of collective self-defence, and a major package of security legislation to support this reinterpretation passed in September 2015. The NSC and the NSS also play a key diplomatic function by serving as the Cabinet-based contact point for foreign governments.
While it appears to be functioning well to date, the NSC\u2019s longer-term significance will hinge on its future form and function, especially after Abe and his inaugural NSS secretary-general, close advisor and retired career diplomat Shotaro Yachi, are no longer running the show. Japan\u2019s 2013 National Security Strategy \u2014 its first-ever \u2014 as well as the NSS\u2019s ability to cooperate with Japan\u2019s historically powerful ministries and agencies, are two other important variables to watch.
The NSC has proved to be one of Japan\u2019s most significant institutional reforms in decades. It is also the key achievement of the Abe administration\u2019s ambitious agenda to strengthen political leadership of Japan\u2019s national security decision making. Japan\u2019s leaders face an increasingly complex, challenging, and fast-evolving regional security environment. Time will tell if the NSC is up to the challenge.
Adam P Liff is Assistant Professor of East Asian International Relations at the Hamilton Lugar School of Global and International Studies, Indiana University. He is also a Nonresident Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution.
This article is based on a more in-depth analysis first published here \u00a0 in the peer-reviewed academic journal Japanese Studies.<\/p>\n