| Summary/Abstract |
This paper examines Japanese unity of Overseas Despatch Operation (ODO) actors, laws, and operational aspects, interaction with state and institutional actors, ‘4C’ functional regional engagement and concepts of partnership, and Japan’s United Nations Peace Operations-Humanitarian Assistance Disaster Relief Operations (UNPO-HADRO) nexus. Japanese cooperation for dual liberal-international peace and realist security goals within increasing regional strategic competition and nationalist antipathy is examined, particularly in Japan’s ‘poor neighbourhood’. The paper questions why, despite undoubted expertise, Japan has not emerged as a regional UNPO-HADRO development leader, and whether Japanese UNPO-HADRO and ‘pro-active pacifism’ approaches are utilising UNPO-HADRO for Asia-regional strategic competition purposes? Japanese ODO have played important functional engagement, value sharing, and institutional socialisation roles, with integrated legal-civil–military holistic approaches providing models for others and foundations for partnerships. However, despite specialist capacity-building knowledge transfer efforts Asian disquiet remains concerning cooperation and partnership. Japan remains highly risk-averse, raising questions regarding its dependability, and ‘HADRO-CIMIC superpower-aspirations’, or bridging-actor role between Indo-Pacific and ‘Northern-Developed’ practitioners, can be evaluated by Japan’s modest present UNPO actor status. Japanese leadership and initiative is limited by its neighborhood and attendant institutions, but also by its self-perceived identity shaped by historical, alliance, and leadership challenges to manage relative decline.
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