Japan, Asian-Pacific Security, and the Case for Analytical Eclecticism

In recent years International Security has published a large number of articles and exchanges articulating the advantages and shortcomings of different analytical perspectives in international relations. ¹ Controversies about the merits of neoliberalism, con- structivism, rationalism, and realism have become an accepted part of both scholarly debate and graduate teaching.

Because the demand for academic spectacles continues to be strong, journal editors are not averse to committing their pages to polemics. International Security is no exception. The length of the first footnote of this article shows that the editors have made a truly exceptional effort to present all sides of various debates. This editorial policy, however, has its costs. Editors who publish grand paradigmatic debates have less space for other articles. More important, it is becoming increasingly difficult for scholars to disabuse their students of the notion that in international relations, paradigmatic clashes are what scholarship should be about rather than the disciplined analysis of empirical puzzles, as is true of other fields of political science and the social sciences more generally.

Given the substantial proportion of pages that International Security has devoted to grand debates in the last decade, it is our sense that the intellectual returns from these exchanges are diminishing sharply. Extolling, in the abstract, the virtues of a specific analytical perspective to the exclusion of others is intellectually less important than making sense of empirical anomalies and stripping notions of what is "natural" of their intuitive plausibility. With specific reference to Japanese and Asian-Pacific security affairs, this article argues against the privileging of parsimony that has become the hallmark of paradigmatic debates. The complex links between power, interest, and norms defy analytical capture by any one paradigm. They are made more intelligible by drawing selectively on different paradigms--that is, by analytical eclecticism, not parsimony.

We illustrate this general point with specific reference to Asia-Pacific, an area central to security affairs since the end of the Cold War. In the first section, we question briefly what is supposedly "natural" or "normal" about Japan. In the second section, we analyze the formal and informal bilateral and embryonic multilateral security arrangements that mark Japanese and Asian-Pacific security affairs. Next we argue that styles of analysis that focus exclusively on either material capabilities, institutional efficiencies, or norms and identities overlook key aspects of the evidence. We conclude with some general re- flections on the advantages and disadvantages of analytical eclecticism for understanding Japanese and Asian-Pacific security affairs.

What Is a "Natural" or "Normal" Japan?

To many observers, U.S.-Japan security arrangements and Japan's passive stance on issues of defense are unnatural, to be superseded sooner or later by an Asia ² freed from the shackles of U.S. primacy and a Japan no longer restrained by pacifism. We disagree on both empirical and analytical grounds. Based on the evidence, we argue that an eclectic theoretical approach finds that there is nothing "natural" about a multipolar world with U.S. primacy and nothing that is "normal" about a Japan without the institutional legacy of Hiroshima and defeat in World War II.

According to one group of Asia experts, the ongoing presence of U.S. forces in South Korea and Japan prohibits the restoration of a regional balance of power as the "natural" course of events in Asia-Pacific. Chalmers Johnson, for example, argues that U.S. policy has a stranglehold over Japan and regional that carries an exorbitant cost to both the United States and its regional partners. ³ Far better, Johnson argues, to recall the U.S. military and let Asians be in charge of Asia. With the end of the Cold War and the disintegration of the Soviet Union, the United States no longer needs its far-flung empire, military or otherwise. China's high-growth economy, the eventual reunification of North and South Korea, and a Japan that...