ABSTRACT
This chapter takes stock of the Japan-Australia “Special Strategic Partnership,” the first of its kind and exemplar of Tokyo’s new security alignments outside of the US alliance. It highlights the achievements in building the strategic partnership and how it is being reconfigured to serve as a mechanism to jointly confront the multifarious challenges of the “Indo-Pacific Century.” By analyzing three of the key issues targeted by the partnership – the rules-based order (RBO), non-traditional security (NTS) challenges, and regional architectures – it looks at how Tokyo and Canberra have worked in tandem to address these and possible avenues to enhance their cooperation going forward. It also raises the all-important “China factor” to discern how this specifically shapes the partnership itself. Based upon enduring shared interests and values, it concludes that the bilateral relationship has made impressive progress and will likely remain a key element of Japanese security activism going forward, even it if does not evolve into a fully-fledged defense alliance.
