An Unequal Structure? “Layering” the US – Japan Relationship (original) (raw)
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States with shared interests and values may form a collective identity to enact their vision and achieve security objectives against those they view as threats. Similarly, US-Japan relations have progressed for a long, not just due to the dangers posed by China and North Korea but because of their shared values of democracy, human rights, peace, and global prosperity. They share the vision of a Free and Open Indo-Pacific by forming bilateral and multilateral alliances. The US and Japan are also engaged in strategic partnerships for traditional and non-traditional security in the region, including maritime, cyber, space, and energy. This paper, therefore, focuses on East Asia due to its vulnerable security architecture and explores how the US and Japan’s security cooperation strengthens regional security by sharing values and security concerns. It highlights that the potential of both states to form a collective identity may improve the security situation in East Asia. Bibliography...
2014
feeling among the core policymakers that it is inevitable to provide assistance for the United States, once the United States demands it. Once an external crisis occurs, or Washington does explicitly submit a list of requests, then, the latent role conceptions come up to the surface, making Japanese foreign policy response to U.S. demands flexible. 1.2 Three Caveats Concentration on the Reactive Behavior There are three caveats to the three main arguments. First, this dissertation does not argue that the reactive behavior covers all aspects of Japanese foreign policy. Particularly, we distinguish between behavioral and substantive aspects of Japanese foreign policy to concentrate more on the reactive behavior. Although we highlight the continuity in the Japanese peculiarity based on the observations of the reactive behavior, we do not want to disregard the empirical variations observed in the substance of Japanese foreign policy. In fact, the observations in this dissertation indeed found some variations in the substance: the amount of total assistance and the size of personnel (or military) assistance provided for the United States varied across our cases. In order to explain these variations, this dissertation suggests U.S. prior conceptions on the providing capacity of the allies as the main explanatory variable. We could observe some variations on the behavioral side, too. Within the limit of the reactive behavior, negotiators of the responding countries tried to maximize their national
Pacific Review, 2019
This paper analyses the evolution of Sino-Japanese rivalry in the security sphere concentrating on the Chinese perspective, and placing it within the wider context of complex interstate rivalry between China, Japan and the United States. From a theoretical viewpoint, this research contributes to the literature on interstate rivalry from multiparty perspective, which has been overlooked in existing research. China-Japan-US complex interstate rivalry includes elements of positional, spatial and ideological rivalry simultaneously. When rivalries mix two or more rivalry types, they become more difficult to resolve. The two broad trends of China's military build-up and deepening US-Japan alliance evolve in tandem intensifying rivalry dynamics and increasing positional elements of rivalry. There are many indications on various levels that for China, controlling Japan's international ambitions has become less important and more attention is paid to ways in which Japan helps the United States in reaching its objectives in Asia through their alliance agreement. The cases analysed to display complex interstate rivalry include the Taiwan question, territorial disputes in the East and South China Seas, and the North Korean nuclear issue.
Japan's security relations with China since 1989
2002
The Japanese-Chinese security relationship is one of the most important variables in the formation of a new strategic environment in the Asia-Pacific region which has not only regional but also global implications. The book investigates how and why since the 1990s China has turned in the Japanese perception from a benign neighbour to an ominous challenge, with implications not only for Japan's security, but also its economy, role in Asia and identity as the first developed Asian nation. Japan's reaction to this challenge has been a policy of engagement, which consists of political and economic enmeshment of China, hedged by political and military power balancing. The unique approach of this book is the use of an extended security concept to analyse this policy, which allows a better and more systematic understanding of its many inherent contradictions and conflicting dynamics, including the centrifugal forces arising from the Japan-China-US triangular relationship. Many contradictions of Japan's engagement policy arise from the overlap of military and political power-balancing tools which are part of containment as well as of engagement, a reality which is downplayed by Japan but not ignored by China. The complex nature of engagement explains the recent reinforcement of Japan's security cooperation with the US and Tokyo's efforts to increase the security dialogues with countries neighbouring China, such as Vietnam, Myanmar and the five Central Asian countries. The book raises the crucial question of whether Japan's political leadership, which is still preoccupied with finding a new political constellation and with overcoming a deep economic crisis, is able to handle such a complex policy in the face of an increasingly assertive China and a US alliance partner with strong swings between engaging and containing China's power.
Eurasia Border Review, 2011
Yoshifumi Nakai* Can China and Japan get along with each other? What are the implications of a downturn in China-Japan relations? What can we do to prevent these two great powers in Asia from a head on collision? These are all pertinent questions related to the stability of the region. The world today is full of turbulences. No one wishes to see a break out of a major conflict in our neighborhood. Dr. Richard Bush, director of the Center for Northeast Asian Policy Studies (CNAPS) at the Brookings Institution in Washington DC, tackles these challenging questions in his book and gives us a series of convincing scenarios. His credentials as a diplomat-scholar give the reader all the reason to trust his analysis on details of the specific events in China and Japan. Not only is he an area specialist on East Asia as he served almost five years as the chairman of the American Institute in Taiwan but also has the ability to switch to a bird's-eye view, which transcends national borders and domestic interests. In short, he approaches the issue from three different perspectives: the realist perspective, the area-specialist perspective, and the diplomatic policy proposal perspective. First, he explains the downturn in Sino-Japanese relations from the defensive realist perspective (p. 24). He finds that China and Japan fall in a security dilemma (p. 24), in which two actors have significant reasons to cooperate but whose relationship becomes dominated by mutual fear. Second, he adds some historical perspective. His view through the lens of history is indispensable because China and Japan view their security interactions through the lens of their historical experience (p. 29). Then, he brings in a third cut, that is, the analysis of the interactions on specific issues, such as, Taiwan, the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands, sea-lane defense, and the various defense guidelines and doctrines (p. 33). Such an analysis is indispensable for policy makers to initiate a new, and hopefully, better policy. General readers can appreciate his well-balanced analysis through a combination of the three major approaches in a single volume. I recommend this book to three groups of people. The first group constitutes the decision makers in China, the United States, and Japan. Those who have only limited time can begin reading from chapter 6, "Points of Proximity and Friction." Readers will learn quickly that in the East China Sea "there is some definite danger that strategic mistrust, military operations, and points of friction might lead to a clash" (p. 86). If you believe that such a clash is unlikely to happen, continue on to chapter 7, "Features of China's and Japan's Military Institutions." Bush concludes, after a comprehensive survey of the norms and operating procedures of the military institutions of China and Japan, that "neither China nor Japan is as pacific in its conduct of military * Yoshifumi Nakai is a professor at Gakushuin University in Tokyo, Japan.
The Globalisation of Japan's Defence and Security Policies
This dissertation examines contemporary globalisation’s influence on national security, taking as its case study Japan’s defence and security policy reforms of the past two decades. It takes a constructivist approach to develop a critical understanding of globalisation’s generic effects on security and applies it to Japan where, in addition to its direct effects, globalisation is shown to have two instrumental functions: first as an analytical frame for addressing change in the international security environment; and second as a ‘facilitating condition’ in a securitisation process, helping to justify changes in Japan’s security policy accompanying its expansion in spatial and operational dimensions. This thesis concludes that the influence of globalisation’s generic effects on security reform in Japan has been limited, and that the role played by the analytical function in steering the direction of reform has been weaker than recent policy instruments suggest. This is for two reasons: first, some of the conditions informing Japan’s security policy make it less susceptible to globalisation’s effects. Second, other effects of globalisation have been displaced and eclipsed by the advancement of a security reform agenda that precedes the recent surge of globalisation and has gained momentum from factors unrelated or only indirectly related to globalisation. In contrast to the weakness of globalisation’s effects and analytical function, globalisation as a concept is shown to have qualities making its rhetorical function particularly salient in justifying security policy reform and unlocking post-war ‘brakes’ on the ‘normalization’ or militarisation of Japan’s security policy. However, the potential influence of globalisation’s effects and functions are still greater than that seen in the reform process so far. This has applications beyond Japan, suggesting that this subject continues to merit further investigation.
Sino-Japanese Relations in the post-Cold War Era
The Asia-Pacific region has seen a remarkable transformative reconfiguration of power since the beginning of the 21 st century. The importance of the region in policy terms is best illustrated by the Obama administration's Pivot to Asia foreign policy declaration in 2010, marking the shift of political and economic gravitas from the Transatlantic to the Asia-Pacific region. The prominence of the region is compounded by the debate surrounding the rise of China and its implications for the stability of the regional and the international order. This debate is fed by the increase in defense spending and mounting nationalist rhetoric in the East Asian region. Matters are further complicated by the United States' presence in the region and its hub and spokes alliances with countries that are dependent on the U.S. security umbrella. It is argued by many scholars that the intense economic interdependence between China and Japan is not sufficient enough to preclude a military conflict between these countries.