Justifying Japan’s Securitized ODA

Abstract: While the global foreign aid trend has shifted closer to security, the Development Assistance Committee prohibits donor countries from giving aid for military purposes or the donor countries’ security interests. Many scholars observed that several projects of Japan’s Official Development Assistance are, to a large extent, military aid or driven by national interests. In this paper, I answer the research question: How does Japan justify the maritime safety capability improvement ODA project for the Philippine Coast Guard? Guided by the concept of foreign aid as a foreign policy tool and the Copenhagen School’s securitization theory, I conducted a critical discourse analysis of 25 official documents from the Japanese government. I found that Japan utilizes a securitizing move as a means to justify its ODA project. Through the securitizing move, Japan motivated that the referent objects, including the Asia-/Indo-Pacific region and Japan, are facing existential threats, comprised of maritime risks and the disrespect to the rule of law in the region.