After Shinzo Abe: Where to for Australia’s quasi-alliance with Japan?

Recommendable! A well written review of the influential Shinzo Abe!

"... Abe pushed for a stronger, more autonomous Japan rather than a comfortable Japan declining gently into middle-power ease.

Comfortable Japan would cuddle the peace of its pacifist strain, no longer wanting to serve as the US’s unsinkable aircraft carrier. The US–Japan alliance would fade as Tokyo decided the cost of resisting Beijing was too high. A Sinocentric future would be portrayed as Japan turning back to Asia.

One Abe-era change that fits either the strong or the comfortable narrative is the decision to drop Western name order and return to Asian tradition, putting the surname first. ...

Abe’s influence touched much that matters in Canberra:

1. Japan has risen to become a defence partner for Australia on par with New Zealand and Britain. The quasi-alliance has deepened and Japan now sits on the second tier, with the traditional Anglo allies, below the peak where the US resides as the paramount ally.
2. Japan and Australia were the first countries to place the Indo-Pacific atop their foreign policies in a new regional construct. A more conventional Japanese leader wouldn’t have overturned Tokyo’s old Asia–Pacific frame.
3. The trilateral (Australia, Japan and the US) has been strengthened, making the linkage between the US–Japan and US–Australia alliances.
4. The Quad (Australia, India, Japan and the US) was reborn; the second Quad foreign ministers’ meeting happens today in Tokyo.
5. Australia pondered buying its new submarine from Japan as a crowning expression of the small ‘a’ alliance. As PM, Tony Abbott went close to delivering Option J for our ‘strong ally’ Japan, but the Canberra system and the Liberal Party jibed.
6. In 2014, Abe signed a free-trade agreement with Australia in Canberra. He was instrumental in saving the Trans-Pacific Partnership after US President Donald Trump pulled out—a TPP without the US could only exist with Japan at its heart. The Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership is set to redraw the economic and strategic map of the Indo-Pacific."

After Abe: Where to for Australia’s quasi-alliance with Japan? | The Strategist