ANALYSIS
November 18, 2007
Japan's new role in the world
As tensions grow with North Korea and the United States focuses on problems in the Middle East, Japan is quietly rearming.
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When you think of Japan, you likely think of Toyotas and Sony televisions---not battleships and standing armies. Japan has not been a significant military force in the world for decades.
Japan has one of the world’s largest economies, and technological capabilities that could transform it into a nuclear power overnight. But Japan’s post-World War II constitution contains a “no war” clause. Article 9 of the Japanese constitution reads “Aspiring sincerely to an international peace based on justice and order, the Japanese people forever renounce war as a sovereign right of the nation and the threat or use of force as means of settling international disputes.” This means that for the past sixty years it has been technically illegal for Japan to raise a military force capable of offensive warfare.
Article 9 is the handiwork of American Occupation officials who wrote Japan’s present constitution in the aftermath of World War II. Their objective, of course, was to assure that the specter of Japanese militarism would never again threaten Asia. Article 9 was also an attempt to cast Japan as a model pacifist state. This portion of the constitution was inspired by the Kellog-Briand Pact of 1927, which provided for “the renunciation of war as an instrument of national policy.”
While admirable as an ideal, the renunciation of the use of force as a worst-case option has a poor historical track record. Signed by sixty-two nations in 1928, the utopian Kellog-Briand Pact could not prevent the Second World War from erupting a little more than a decade later.
As the nations of Europe ultimately found Kellog-Briand to be an unworkable framework in the face of fascist aggression, so the Japanese are now struggling with Article 9. The Japanese are actively questioning the relevancy of the peace clause in the twenty-first century. They are also making changes on the ground. In 2005 the Japanese Defense Ministry began plans to overhaul and reorganize the nation’s military to make it more responsive to external threats by 2009. A majority of the Japanese public now supports the assertion that Japan needs to take more responsibility for its own defense needs. Newspaper editorials argue that it is time for Japan to become a futsuu no kuni (“normal country”). In an imperfect world, a “normal country” has to have an effective military.
The changing political reality has also been reflected in Japanese popular culture. Once taboo, movies that depict the Japanese war effort during World War II as heroic have gained a wide public acceptance. In 2005, a movie about the sailors of the doomed battleship Yamato struck a chord with Japanese moviegoers and politicians alike. These movies would not have been accepted in Japan thirty years ago---or perhaps even ten years ago. But Japan is in the midst of a transition that promises to radically change the nation’s role as a geopolitical actor.
What is driving the new attitude in Japan?
These changes are not occurring in a vacuum. Japan’s sudden willingness to consider a new military role in the world is driven by a series of factors, both internal and external:
The end of the Cold War
During the Cold War era that lasted from the late 1940s through 1989, Japan’s defense needs were assured by the U.S. military. In 1951 Japan and the United States signed a security treaty that provided for the placement of U.S. troops on Japanese soil for a period of ten years. The treaty was later updated by a security pact which made the arrangement more or less permanent.
The Cold War relationship between the U.S. and Japan was not without its ups and downs. American officials and taxpayers often complained that Japan was shirking its defense obligations while simultaneously pursuing predatory commercial policies. U.S. resentment over Japan’s “free ride” on defense were linked to perennial debates over the access that Japanese textile, steel, and automobile manufacturers enjoyed in the U.S. market. The Japanese, for their part, were ambivalent over the constant presence of a foreign army. During the Vietnam War, student protests over U.S. bases in Japan frequently became violent. And the occasional misbehavior of U.S. military personnel has always been fodder for the Japanese press.
For the most part, however, Japan and the United States were united by their mutual fear of the Soviet Union and international communism. The end of the Soviet threat and the rise of stateless Islamist terrorism have diverted American attention from the Pacific. The U.S. military is now stretched thin and focused on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. This makes America less capable of coming to Japan’s assistance in the event of a crisis.
A rising China
The Communist government in Beijing has never taken a completely friendly attitude toward Japan. Memories of Japanese atrocities in China during World War II continue to color Chinese attitudes. Moreover, as the principal powers of East Asia, Japan and China are natural competitors.
From the foundation of the People’s Republic of China in 1949 through the 1990s, Chinese territorial ambitions were limited. Mao Zedong’s enduring territorial aim was the liberation of Taiwan; and Taiwan long remained the central foreign policy concern of the Chinese leadership.
More recently, however, China has sought to assert itself beyond its traditional boundaries. Beijing has embarked on the construction of a deepwater navy, and upgraded many of its advanced weapon systems. Japan and China have ongoing disputes over the uninhabited Diaoyu Tai islands, and their respective territorial claims in the East China Sea.
North Korea
North Korea’s development of nuclear weapons greatly unnerved the Japanese, who endured two atom bomb attacks in the closing days of World War II. North Korea has developed missiles which are capable of striking major population centers in Japan.
Japan’s Defense Ministry has begun drills for “X-day,” the first day of a hypothetical war which pits the United States and Japan against North Korea. The Japanese know that their country would almost certainly become a target in the event of an all-out showdown between Washington and Pyongyang.
A resurgent Russia
After nearly two decades of preoccupation with its internal problems, Vladimir Putin’s Russia is displaying the old aggressiveness that traditionally marked Russian foreign policy under the czars and the communists. Japan and Russia have a dispute over the islands of Etorofu, Kunashiri, and Shikotan. These previously Japanese islands were occupied and seized by Soviet forces in 1945. Russia still administers the islands, but Japan claims them.
Competition between Russia and Japan is not new. In 1905 Japan became the first Asian power to defeat a Western nation when it bested czarist Russia in the Russo-Japanese War. There is plenty of ill will to go around on both sides. In public opinion polls, Russia consistently ranks as one of the most unpopular countries among Japanese citizens.
The memories of war are fading
Japan’s postwar reality was guided by a generation that directly experienced the horrors of World War II. In 2006 Shinzo Abe became the first Japanese Prime Minister who was born after World War II ended. Born in 1954, Abe spent his entire life in a Japan that was peaceful and prosperous.
Shinzo Abe expressed support for a wider interpretation of Article 9, and even suggested that a constitutional amendment might be in order. When North Korea conducted missile tests over the Sea of Japan in July 2006, Abe called on the United Nations Security Council to impose stiff sanctions on Kim Jong-il’s regime.
Abe has since been replaced by Yasuo Fukuda. Fukuda has continued calls for international pressure on North Korea, and an expanded role for the Japanese military.
Impact on U.S.-Japanese relations
Throughout most of the post-war era, the Japanese government rarely expressed public disagreements with Washington on major policy issues. But there is now evidence that Tokyo is willing to express its disagreement when its own interests are affected.
For example, Shinzo Abe was more emphatic than members of the Bush Administration when calling for sanctions against North Korea during the missile test crisis of the summer of 2006. Japan’s proximity to North Korea clearly made the problem more urgent for the Japanese. Likewise, Tokyo is anxious to secure the freedom of Japanese citizens who were kidnapped by Pyongyang during the 1970s and 1980s. Japan wants to include the kidnappings as part of the six-party talks that are primarily concerned with the North Korean nuclear stalemate. Washington views the kidnapping problem as less urgent, and likely to cloud the larger issue of nuclear weapons. Prime Minister Fukuda has insistently reminded Washington of Japan’s desire to move the kidnapped Japanese citizens closer to the top of the agenda.
While there are sure to be minor differences between Washington and Tokyo, Japan and the United States have basically the same foreign policy goals. Both countries are concerned about immediate threats from North Korea, and the longer term challenges posed by Russia and China. Both the United States and Japan are liberal, free-market democracies. It is difficult to imagine a realistic scenario that could place the U.S. and Japan in serious opposition. In the foreseeable future, there is much more to unite us than to divide us.
Moreover, a revitalized Japan could positively affect the balance of power in East Asia. Despite market reforms in Russia and China, both Beijing and Moscow have proven that they cannot necessarily be trusted. Putin and his Chinese counterparts have openly talked of an alliance to guard against “U.S. hegemony” in Asia. China still threatens Taiwan, and Russia has a long history of aggressive behavior in Eastern Europe.
With these factors to contend with, U.S. interests may be served by a militarily secure Japan that partially tilts the center of East Asian power away from China and Russia. Some might criticize this notion as a return to nineteenth-century geopolitics, in which peace was preserved by complex alliances of multiple nations. However, the bipolar world of the Cold War is clearly a thing of the past; and supranational bodies like the League of Nations and the United Nations have a mixed record when it comes to actually deterring aggression. Therefore, a Japan with a real military may be a necessary evil in the coming decades.
