Photo/Illutration A Japanese official hands over ships to the Fiji coast guard provided under the Official Security Assistance framework. (Provided by Foreign Ministry)

The government has clearly laid out its stance of strategically utilizing official development assistance to improve national and economic security.

The proper role of development cooperation is to improve the autonomy of the recipient nation as well as the social welfare of its citizens to promote stability in the international order.

The government may be losing sight of that starting point in its prioritizing of short-term benefits.

In a foreign policy speech given in May in Vietnam, Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi said to achieve a free and open Indo-Pacific region, national security cooperation was indispensable.

She expressed her intention to not only use the Official Security Assistance framework to provide direct support to other militaries, but to also strengthen utilization of ODA in the national security field.

In submitting its budget request for the next fiscal year, the Foreign Ministry said it plans to “establish an international environment conducive to national interests,” and asked for a total of 760.1 billion yen ($4.9 billion) for the ODA program, which, in principle, is non-military support.

The money would be spent on projects related to economic security such as improving infrastructure through the laying of underwater cables and strengthening the supply chain as well as providing support to the coast guards of other nations to improve their capabilities.

The figure is about a 30-percent increase over the 581.4 billion yen combined total of the initial and supplementary budgets for the past fiscal year.

Until 2000, Japan was the largest provider of support in the world for 10 consecutive years.

But due to subsequent economic stagnation and the increasingly serious fiscal condition, the overall government ODA spending in the past fiscal year was about half of the peak year of fiscal 1997.

Last year’s preliminary amount places Japan fourth behind Germany, the United States and Britain.

Japan only provides about half of the U.N. goal of spending 0.7 percent of gross national income on development assistance.

With the United States turning increasingly inward, the Trump administration dismantled the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).

The international community would welcome Japan supplementing the support from the United States by increasing its support for a wider range of private-sector overseas support projects.

Three years ago, Japan began the OSA framework to make possible support to foreign militaries that were basically not covered by the ODA program.

OSA provides defense equipment and related items free of charge to the militaries of like-minded nations.

The program has now spread to cover 11 nations, including the Philippines and Malaysia, in a clear expression of trying to counter China’s arms buildup and maritime advances.

In the first year, 2 billion yen was set aside for OSA, but in the latest budget request the figure increased to 18.1 billion yen and could further expand during the final budget compilation process at year-end.

As such, there should be no further effort to use ODA as a subcontracting element in national security.

Through construction of roads and harbors, spending on education and public health as well as fostering human resources, the private sector of the recipient nation will improve and contribute to stability there.

That, in turn, would lead to regional peace and prosperity, which in the long run would benefit Japan.

Turning excessively to national security will only weaken Japan’s soft power as a pacifist nation.

--The Asahi Shimbun, Sept. 7

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