The ghost of Shinzo Abe looms large over Japan’s LDP election | East Asia Forum

The Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) will elect its next president and Japan’s next prime minister on 27 September 2024. Nine candidates have presented their policy ideas throughout the leadership race, and the most recent polling shows Shigeru Ishiba with a three-point lead over Sanae Takaichi and seventeen points in front of Shinjiro Koizumi.

One question is whether the next leader will differ from their predecessors on foreign policy and other issues, especially Shinzo Abe. Debates between the candidates have shown that whoever becomes the next Japanese leader will frame their main policies consistently with Abe’s legacy — a combination of external and internal balancing.

There is strong consensus among the front runners on issues including solidifying the US–Japan alliance, expanding and enhancing security partnerships with like-minded states, engaging the Global South and promoting a free, open and rules-based Indo-Pacific region. No serious contenders for LDP leadership are challenging the security policy reforms of the Abe administration. Kishida’s reforms, many of which Abe strived to achieve, such as increasing the defence budget, the defence industrial refurbishment and introducing arms exports, official security assistance and economic security measures will also carry over to the next government.

Ishiba has proposed one original idea — a multilateral security agreement that would create a parallel in Asia with NATO and bring reform to the status of forces agreement with the United States. While some observers were quick to label Ishiba the ‘Japanese de Gaulle’ because of these ideas — which would also require amending the constitution — the Asian NATO idea attracted few supporters in Tokyo and Washington.

The idea may be more viable in the long-term, but it is a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Ishiba stands in contrast to this with Takaichi, labelled as an ultra-conservative, who adheres to a more realistic view that keeps the United States engaged in a free and open Indo-Pacific.

Another important foreign policy issue for Japan’s next prime minister is the relationship with China. During the LDP race, tensions between Japan and China grew after the murder of a 10-year-old Japanese boy on a street in Shenzhen, China, on 18 September. Months earlier, Beijing’s top diplomat in Tokyo suggested Japan would be ‘dragged into the fire’ if it backed Taiwanese independence. China also continues to violate Japanese territory around the Senkaku Islands.

Given seemingly permanent negative public opinion towards China as well as the security environment around Japan, serious candidates for LDP office in Japan have little incentive to back positions that are sympathetic to or supportive of China.

Some connect the chilly Japan–China relationship to Abe’s foreign policy legacy. But Abe was a pragmatic leader who sought the stabilisation of bilateral relations by balancing deterrence and engagement. Japan under its next prime minister will most likely seek to deter China’s maritime expansion while keeping open communication channels with Beijing, both to avoid miscalculations and to maintain economic relations. This is what the Abe government did as well — supporting the Belt and Road Initiative, enhancing bilateral communication and inviting Chinese President Xi Jinping to Japan, without a visit ever eventuating

The LDP frontrunners are also aligned with Abe’s views as an idealist on Taiwan. Like Abe, Ishiba and Takaichi, and possibly Taro Kono regard a Taiwan contingency as a Japanese contingency and believe the United States should abandon ambiguity over Taiwan.

In addition to his Asian NATO idea, Ishiba told Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te just before entering the party leadership race that he supports a coalition of democracies. During one debate, Takaichi said a Taiwan contingency would be a potentially survival-threatening situation that could trigger the right of collective self-defence, while Ishiba said that the situation would ‘at the very least’ be a situation that will have an important influence that requires Japan’s Self-Defense Forces to provide logistical support.

Kono, for his part, supports collective deterrence against China. He has pointed out that increasing Japanese defence spending alone will not deter China’s military expansion and that economic sanctions might be necessary. His decision in the past to cancel Aegis Ashore, a US missile defence system, invited questions about the soundness of his other campaign proposals, such as acquiring nuclear-powered submarines and deploying them between the East China Sea and the Pacific. The latter proposal is out of sync with Japan’s cooperation under AUKUS Pillar II.

As the election approaches, the LDP candidates’ positions are not set in stone, and any of them may advocate more pragmatism or change their positions entirely. Abe himself went back and forth on foreign policy issues. Although the next party leader will face internal and resource constraints that will likely prevent them from fully realising whatever their stated goals, the spectre of Abe the pragmatist or Abe the idealist will loom large over their policy choices.

Ryosuke Hanada is PhD candidate in the Department of Security Studies and Criminology at Macquarie University.