Are Shared Values Valuable? Liberal Democracy and Human Rights among AUKUS and its Future Membership*
| Published date | 01 September 2023 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/00207020231201575 |
| Author | Yui Nishimura,Atsushi Tago |
| Date | 01 September 2023 |
| Subject Matter | Scholarly Essays |
Are Shared Values Valuable?
Liberal Democracy and
Human Rights among
AUKUS and its Future
Membership*
Yui Nishimura
Department of Political Science, Rice University, Houston, TX, USA
Atsushi Tago
School of Political Science and Economics, Waseda University,
Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo, Japan
Abstract
Do shared values make a military partnership attractive to potential member
countries and strengthen perceptions of that partnership’s deterrent effects? While
military cooperation attracts potential members through strategic benefits such as
military capabilities, recent security cooperation initiatives like AUKUS emphasize
liberal democratic values and human rights as their core values. This study focuses
on Japan as a potential member of AUKUS in the Indo-Pacific region and explores
how the Japanese public evaluates Japan’s future participation in AUKUS and the
agreement’s anticipated deterrence effects. The results indicate that emphasizing lib-
eral democratic values does not boost support for AUKUS or reinforce a belief in the
agreement’s ability to deter potential enemies. However, the findings highlight the
connection between support for security cooperation and the expansion of member-
ship, irrespective of regime types. In particular, the domestic audience exhibits selec-
tive attitudes towards South Korea, a democratic government that should be an
*This paper was presented at “AUKUS Among Democracies: One Year Later,”a workshop held at the
University of Ottawa on 3 October 2022. We thank Ashley Leeds, Amoz Hor, and Srdjan Vucetic for
providing helpful comments.
Corresponding author:
Yui Nishimura, Department of Political Science, Rice University, 6100 Main St, Houston, TX, 77005, USA.
Email: nishimura@rice.edu
Scholarly Essay
International Journal
2023, Vol. 78(3) 394–416
© The Author(s) 2023
Article reuse guidelines:
sagepub.com/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/00207020231201575
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important candidate for partnership. These findings suggest a cynical view among
third-party audiences regarding the efficacy of shared values in security cooperation,
as well as a double standard among the Japanese in shaping new security cooperation
in the region.
Keywords
alliance, AUKUS, QUAD, Japan, shared-values, human rights, survey experiment
Introduction
Do shared values make a military partnership attractive to potential member countries
and reinforce an agreement’s deterrent effects? This question is particularly relevant to
recent security partnerships, such as AUKUS (Australia-UK-US) or the Quad
(Quadrilateral Security Dialogue). Although these new security arrangements were
created to deter China and Russia in the Indo-Pacific region, Russia’s unexpected mil-
itary invasion of Ukraine further highlighted the significance of democratic allies.
In fact, public statements regarding AUKUS underscored the importance of shared
values of liberal democracy, such as human rights, to maintain international
rules-based order as well as achieve goals with regional partners.
1
The key question
there is whether these shared core values influence the reliability of the partnership
as well as the perceived strength of its deterrence.
Past studies have revealed that human rights violations and other humanitarian
crises can drive public sentiment in support of military operations
2
and foreign
policy decisions, broadly.
3
However, the impact of values or norms on security coop-
eration is still limited. One relevant study by Chu et al.
4
demonstrates that the rhetoric
of shared values increases support for alliances with countries holding similar values.
Although this study provides important insight on the influence of shared-value rhe-
toric, it is still not clear how outside members of a security arrangement evaluate
such rhetoric vis-à-vis their status as members of the broad liberal democracy wing
when confronting potential threats.
1. TheWhite House, “Joint leaders statement on AUKUS,”13 March 2023, https://www.whitehouse.gov/
briefing-room/statements-releases/2023/03/13/joint-leaders-statement-o n-aukus-2/ (accessed 22 May
2023).
2. Sarah Kreps and Sarah Maxey, “Mechanisms of morality: Sources of support for humanitarian inter-
vention,”Jounal of Conflict Resolution 62, no. 8 (2018): 1814–1842; Michael R. Tomz and Jessica
L. Weeks, “Human rights and public support for war,”The Journal of Politics 82, no. 1 (2020): 182–
194.
3. Joshua D. Kertzer, Kathleen E. Powers, Brian C. Rathbun, and Ravi Iyer, “Moral support: How moral
values shape foreign policy attitudes,”The Journal of Politics 76, no. 3 (2014): 825–840.
4. Jonathan A. Chu, Jiyoung Ko, and Adam Liu, “Commanding support: Values and interests in the rhe-
toric of alliance politics,”International Interactions 47, no. 3, (2021): 477–503.
Nishimura and Tago 395
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