Edited by Ashley J. Tellis, Mercy Kuo, and Andrew Marble

Transcription

1 Edited by Ashley J. Tellis, Mercy Kuo, and Andrew Marble Country Studies Japan: Divided Government, Diminished Resources T.J. Pempel restrictions on use: This PDF is provided for the use of authorized recipients only. For specific terms of use, please contact To purchase the print volume Strategic Asia : Challenges and Choices in which this chapter appears please visit < or contact 1215 Fourth Avenue, Suite 1600 Seattle, Washington USA

2 executive summary This chapter assesses the last eight years of Japanese security policy and U.S.- Japan relations and draws implications for the next U.S. administration. main argument: Having historically relied on U.S. extended deterrence, Japan has also pursued comprehensive security, integrating military concerns with attention to economic, food, and other nontraditional security arenas. During the era of the Bush and Koizumi administrations, Japan expanded the country s military capabilities as well as cooperation with the U.S. Japan s major military concerns are China and the DPRK. Domestic politics and Japan s comprehensive views of security continue to direct Japan away from rapid increases in security posture. policy implications: If the U.S. can ensure confirmed denuclearization of the DPRK while coordinating with Japan on abductees and missiles, Japan will be less likely to lose trust in the U.S. or move radically to enhance the country s military capabilities. If the U.S. maintains positive relations with both China and Japan, the temptation for either state to view the other as a threat will be reduced. If divided government continues in Japan, the country will be less likely to embrace enhanced military roles and missions, and even minor security issues will be politicized. If the U.S. and Japan can cooperate on security issues in a division of labor that includes non-military activities such as global warming, disaster relief, and pandemics, the two states will build greater harmony into the relationship. This harmony may also then benefit the military relationship.

3 Japan Japan: Divided Government, Diminished Resources T.J. Pempel The relationship between Japan and the United States has given Washington its most important and dependable East Asian partner for over 50 years. Episodic disagreements and the inherent asymmetries in the relationship have not impeded a mutually beneficial security, economic, and diplomatic partnership. Although future cooperation and close ties remain a common goal of Tokyo and Washington, Japanese policymakers face new global and regional challenges at the very time when the domestic political and economic resources they need to confront these challenges have been weakened by economic sluggishness and a divided government. Numerous challenges now present themselves to the governments of both countries and more will surely face the incoming U.S administration. In dealing with these challenges, the new administration will likely find Japan to be a less unified partner than Washington might want, particularly on military cooperation. Other areas such as global warming, disaster relief, and nontraditional security provide more favorable opportunities for future cooperation. How the new U.S. government chooses to see these challenges as frustrations or as opportunities will go a long way toward either improving or weakening the bilateral partnership. This chapter assesses the last eight years of Japanese security policy and U.S.-Japan relations and draws policy implications for the next U.S. administration. After first providing an overview of Japanese grand strategy, T.J. Pempel is Professor of Political Science at the University of California Berkeley. He can be reached at <pempel@berkeley.edu>. The author would like to thank Christopher W. Hughes, Peter J. Katzenstein, Ellis S. Krauss, Robert M. (Skipp) Orr, Richard Samuels, Steven Vogel, and two anonymous reviewers for helpful comments. Any remaining factual or judgmental errors remain the author s own.

4 108 Strategic Asia the chapter examines bilateral military ties under the Bush and Koizumi administrations and analyzes Japan s two main security concerns, the Democratic People s Republic of Korea (DPRK) and China. The chapter then addresses the current ability of Japan to be responsive to any new security challenges, given a divided government and diminished resources. Finally, the chapter identifies the major issues in the bilateral relationship that will confront the next U.S. administration and examines the implications of these issues for U.S. policy. Japanese Grand Strategy and Core National Objectives For the past 60 years the template mapping Japanese grand strategy was the so-called Yoshida Doctrine. 1 This doctrine engineered by Prime Minister Yoshida Shigeru soon after World War II and bearing conspicuous residues even today anchored Japan s military security in a close bilateral relationship with the United States while keeping military expenditures religiously close to 1% of GNP and freeing public resources for enhanced economic development. Non-military routes provided the path to greater national autonomy. The beneficial consequences for Japan were military security and the world s second largest economy. The large numbers of U.S. military forces permanently stationed on Japanese soil have been a reliable keystone in the U.S. arc of bases stretching from the Aleutians through Korea and Japan and further south through Australia and Diego Garcia. The robust U.S. military presence in Japan has fostered U.S. global strategy and, in combination with Japan s limited military expenditures, reduced fears across Asia of either a regional power vacuum or a potential Japanese military resurgence. Japanese security policies have nevertheless been the subject of intense domestic political debate for most of the postwar years. Until the early 1990s a vigorous political left and a palpable public disposition toward pacifism as well as preponderant domestic norms helped Japan s conservative mainstream keep tight limits on military activities and expenditures despite periodic U.S. and domestic pressures to the contrary. 2 Meanwhile, local governments frequently impeded national initiatives, particularly on military and basing issues. 1 Kenneth B. Pyle, Japan Rising: The Resurgence of Japanese Power and Purpose (New York: Public Affairs, 2007), chap Peter J. Katzenstein, Cultural Norms and National Security: Police and Military in Postwar Japan (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1996); and Peter J. Katzenstein, Rethinking Japanese Security: Internal and External Dimensions (Oxford: Routledge, 2008).

5 Pempel Japan 109 Facing the classic alliance dilemma of entanglement versus abandonment, Japan s ruling conservatives have shown more fear of abandonment than of unwanted enmeshment in U.S. military activities. Yet Tokyo has hedged against over-reliance on Japan s military links with the United States. Thus, while the United States has traditionally defined security primarily in military terms, Japan has self-consciously pursued comprehensive security (sogo anzen hosho). Resource poor and late to industrialize, Japan has continually confronted a gnawing dependency on foreign imports of raw materials and an inescapable vulnerability to economic shocks from abroad. 3 Formally articulated by Prime Minister Ohira Masayoshi in 1980, comprehensive security initially centered on Japan s need to cope not only with military threats but also with a range of economic, environmental, food, energy, pandemic, and illegal drug challenges. Japan s 1996 National Defense Program Outline (NDPO) furthered this theme. 4 Geographic proximity is a vital first line in Japan s security planning. Japan s central concern has been warding off threats and improving ties to the rest of the Asian region; Tokyo s greatest asset in advancing this agenda has been the country s economic and technological prowess. From the 1950s into the early 1990s the combination of Japanese foreign aid, investment monies, and the regional production networks of private Japanese companies were the catalyst for the East Asian economic miracle. Japan also pursued a multidimensional approach to security through cooperative, multilateral frameworks within Asia that included the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum (APEC), the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF), ASEAN +3, and the East Asia Summit (EAS) as well as regionally focused cooperation in a host of nontraditional security areas such as global warming and human security. The result was a strategy of bilateralism plus. 5 In the process of establishing this multidimensional approach, Tokyo bolstered Japan s regional security and economic fortunes and enhanced the country s claim as putative regional leader. At the height of Japan s economic success, Tokyo believed Japan could shape its strategic environment from a position of leadership within Asia without having to 3 Kenneth B. Pyle and Eric Heginbotham, Japan, in Strategic Asia : Power and Purpose, ed. Richard J. Ellings and Aaron L. Friedberg (Seattle: The National Bureau of Asian Research, 2001), Pyle and Heginbotham, Japan, Christopher W. Hughes and Akiko Fukushima, U.S.-Japan Security Relations: Toward Bilateralism Plus? in Beyond Bilateralism: U.S.-Japan Relations in the New Asia-Pacific, ed. Ellis S. Krauss and T.J. Pempel (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004),