Japan-Australia Security Relations and the rise of China: Pursuing “Bilateral-Plus” Approaches

Japan-Australia security relations have been visibly growing for the past six years since the landmark Joint Declaration on Security Cooperation was announced in March 2007. Although many scholars point out that the rise of China is a key driving force for this emerging security partnership, there is no updated, comprehensive and detailed study which focuses on the question of how and why Japan-Australia cooperation especially since 2007 can be related to their joint approaches to China. In answering this question this paper makes the case that Japan-Australia joint approaches towards China should be understood in a broader perspective beyond the bilateral context if one aspires to understand the nature of their security relations. Such broader perspectives can be termed as “bilateral-plus” approaches in which Japan and Australia seek to embed their bilateral cooperation into a wider formula of their trilateral cooperation with the U.S., and their regional multilateral efforts.