Foreign oil and defence policy in Japan

Duck of Minerva team-member Bill Petti of asked me about my thesis recently. I directed him to an initial stab I made in a post on Japanese dependency on foreign oil. I have since gone through the proposal stages and pared down the topic to something doable. It is widely recognized that Japanese foreign/defence policy has been going through a transformation. I suspect that one influence on this change could be energy dependency. Energy security policy can be forged by many sections of government but I intend to focus on the newly-anointed Ministry of Defense and investigate whether it has had a voice in the recent New Energy Policy, and what its thinking is on the issue. In general, I am going to attempt to answer the following questions:

1. Does energy security influence Japan’s changing national security policy?
2. If so, in what capacity?
3. Is the planning active or reactive?
4. What are the major hurdles for the military to overcome?
5. What is Japan likely to do in the near to mid term in solving this problem?

I plan to do this in three acts — typical of War Studies it will be a mixture of history, polisci/IR theory and hard analysis.

The Story
This is basically the history section, introducing the background of the topic. I would like to outline the Japanese oil industry, discuss some of the vulnerabilities and historical choices made during such events as World War II, the oil crisis of ‘73 and Desert Storm. I have not decided whether I should present this section chronologically or based on themes.

The Theory
The need to ensure Japan’s energy security (the lifeblood of the economy), safeguarding its sources and passageways to Japan, directly conflicts Japan’s pacifist constitutional framework. Furthermore, Japan’s relationship with its neighbours doesn’t make it any easier. This has all sorts of consequences for IR theory. Balancing selfish needs with internationalist notions of cooperation will make up the meat of this section.

The Analysis
The final section will organize the topics into a matrix to show the Knowns, Unknowns and Presumeds. I will be dissecting the internal debate from the perspectives of various models (Rational Actor Model, Organizational Process Model, the Governmental Politics Model) and using other techniques such as Delphic analysis to project a number of future scenarios.

In a nutshell, this is what has been busying me over the past couple of months and what I will obsess about until October when I do my thesis defense. If this results in an overabundance of posts on Japan and energy issues (or a lack of posting at all) I apologize. That’s why there are three of us, chances are one of us is effectively keeping you from actually accomplishing any work.