Japan–India Security Relations in the Changing Power Configuration

Abstract

Increasing challenges inthe 21st century, particularly the rise of China, which keeps beefing up maritime military capability, serve as the push factor that leads Japan and India to enhance their relations towards strategic and global partnership. Specifically, the two nations are of China’s assertiveness in territorial disputes in the East China Sea and the South China Sea, as well as Beijing’s attempts to expand its sphere of influence into the Indian Ocean particularly through Myanmar and Pakistan.Accordingly, the increasing Japan–India cooperation can be explained by “structural realism” and “balance of threat.” Owing to the changing international power configuration in which China is becoming much stronger both economically and militarily, Japan and India have to strengthen their security cooperation, as the two regional powers that have potentials to balance China. Meanwhile, the two nations also bandwagon with the United States and Australia, as the countries that adhere to universal valuesespecially in terms of democracy, in order to balance and undermine China’s influence in the region.