“In 2009, Japan began to engage in cybersecurity capacity-building assistance in Southeast Asia.” This article discusses the motivations behind why the Japanese chose to have done so, specifically citing three plausible motivations. “The first was to strengthen its economic security, either by promoting its own cybersecurity firms or by reducing risks to its supply chain and the regional infrastructure upon which its firms relied. The second was to strengthen diplomatic and security ties with Southeast Asia in the face of a rising China. The third was to promote norms regarding the use of cyberspace in line with its newly-declared “values oriented diplomacy”.” The article notes that the examination of assistance (the degree to which assistance was given, and the nature of it) in the beginning years through government media and documents, Japan was found to have engaged in capacity-building assistance with ASEAN member-states within the cybersecurity domain. This was likely done to maintain an economically-stable environment for their own firms. “This is evidence that, despite reforms made in Japan during the 2000s meant to encourage the use of foreign aid to pursue wider geopolitical goals, in some areas economic security continued to be a major driver of Japanese foreign aid.” The article also finds that traditional security concerns are not the driving motivation behind cybersecurity capacity-building assistance through security cooperation.
