Japan and Australia are new best security buddies with PM Tony Abbott signing off on a program of enhanced security and defence cooperation during his visit to Tokyo in early April.
Considering Australia and Japan signed a joint declaration on broad-ranging security cooperation in March 2007 and progress to now has not been at all obvious, prospects of a move to US-type defence engagement should not be expected too soon.
It's not that stuff isn't happening. It's just that Japan has to tread warily lest it upset its entrenched anti-military constituency and further aggravate China and others convinced Japan has never properly acknowledged its blood-drenched history and could just be heading back down the road to militarism.
The joint statement from Tony Abbott's summit with Japanese PM Shinzo Abe says Australia and Japan will elevate the bilateral defence and security relationship to a new level, building on the 2007 agreement which mandated extensive cooperation on counter-terrorism, law enforcement, border security, maritime and aviation security and much more. That would involve exchanges of personnel, joint exercises and training and coordination of activities.
The latest agreement promises, well, more of the same, with a couple of modest advances.
We'll do some joint research on marine hydrodynamics (submarines?) as an initial area of science and technology cooperation. A Japanese warship will participate in the commemoration of the departure of the first convoy of Australian troops heading off to Europe, just as occurred in 1914.
So how about Japanese and Australian soldiers working side by side on operations? Not a problem for benign missions such as disaster relief. But for anything involving the slightest risk of gunfire, we might well be better off sharing the trenches with just about anyone else.
That's because Japan's pacifist constitution imposes especially restrictive rules of engagement (ROE) on deployed troops, allowing them to defend themselves but no-one else, not allies, civilians or even Japanese citizens in peril.
Some history: Australia played a role in what seemed at the time to be Japan's renaissance as a nation willing to shoulder some of the burden of global security it had until then sub-contracted to the US.
That was the Japanese Iraq Reconstruction and Support Group, an engineering and construction taskforce of 600, deployed into southern Iraq between February 2004 and July 2006. Considering the US had under-written Japan's security since 1945, it was payback time in a period when the US needed all the foreign flags it could muster for its unpopular foray into Iraq.
So new and different was this mission for Japan that it needed special enabling legislation which, however you looked at it, sat uneasily with Japan's constitution in which the Japanese people forever renounced war, military forces and any form of state belligerency.
This mission was deeply unpopular in Japan and the administration of PM Junichiro Koizumi sure wasn't about to court any risk whatsoever. Japan stipulated the safest bit of Iraq it could find. Thanks in part to the presence of 1000 Dutch troops, it settled on Samawah, the capital of Al Muthanna Province, a mostly Shiite area remote from the burgeoning insurgency in the Sunni triangle around Baghdad.
Likely Iraqi Kurdistan would have been just as safe but Al Muthanna had the advantage of easy overland access from Kuwait.
The Japanese deployed with real guns and live ammunition but saddled with restrictive ROE designed to ensure they did not resort to lethal force except in the most dire of emergencies. In practice, that meant they had to almost entirely rely on other people providing on-ground security. And that's where we came in.
With the Dutch force planning to withdraw, John Howard acceded to requests from Japan and Britain to supply a replacement force.
This was actually quite opportune for us.
After a substantial contribution in 2003 - special forces, warships and a squadron of Hornets - Australian involvement in Iraq had dwindled right when the conflict was really heating up. By agreeing to look after the Japanese, albeit with a modest force of 450 in a low risk area, we could truthfully declare we were doing our bit.
Had Japan not requested our support, harder to resist requests could just as easily have come from the US for a battalion group to assist in the Sunni triangle or from Britain for a bit of help in Basra.
The Australian and Japanese mission in southern Iraq was completely successful. The Japanese group did some useful work, although nothing that couldn't have been done by contractors or other nations carrying less baggage. Australian forces kept them safe, though mostly the Japanese forces managed that themselves, retreating to deep bunkers in their base at the first sign of trouble.
Japanese soldiers never needed to test their ROE by shooting anyone. Reportedly just two shots were fired, both unauthorised discharges.
However, the Japanese force was always beholden to the will of their political masters and that was at best pretty shaky. The moment a united Iraqi government was formed in May 2006, following the December 2005 elections, Japan was gone. Australian stayed to June 2008.
So did this pioneering mission lead Japan to embark on a succession of new missions, deploying capable troops with robust rules of engagement? Hardly. When Southern Sudan recently erupted into violence, Japan's 200-member engineering task group, this time protected by Rwandan troops, headed back to camp.
Again the problem was restrictive ROE as interpreted through Article 9 of the Japanese constitution.
In a multinational mission such as a peacekeeping operation, it's hardly tenable for one nation to be barred from participating in what's termed collective defence.
This has big ramifications should there be a shooting war involving China or North Korea. For example, a Japanese Aegis cruiser could defend itself against incoming missiles but not legally participate in collective defence of US or Australian or other vessels in the same taskgroup.
Successive Japanese governments have acknowledged their hands are constitutionally tied. In late May Abe proposed a reinterpretation of the law to permit greater latitude for Japanese troops. For the US this is important. As its relative power in the Asia-Pacific declines, it hardly needs to be carting non-paying passengers.
But not for nothing has this been termed a legal quagmire. The Iraq mission was even challenged in Japan’s courts and found to be retrospectively unconstitutional. Don't expect this to be resolved any time soon.
