Japan's Rise and Its Alliance with the United States

[ 196 ] asia policy however, then the international structure in Asia would have changed so fundamentally that the strategic break with the past that Pyle posits Japan making might finally occur. One wonders if under such conditions Samuels’ Goldilocks dynamic would still operate enabling Japan to forge a new strategic consensus that gets it “just right” rather than pursue a pathological course as the country did during the 1930s. Put differently, Pyle may not be wrong about the possibility of an abrupt strategic shift; he may just be premature. If the era of U.S. preeminence and engagement in the AsiaPacific were to come to an end, however, Pyle’s book does not provide much guidance for what the substance of Japan’s new strategy is likely to be— except to say that it will be different from the Yoshida Doctrine.  Japan’s Rise and Its Alliance with the United States Ming Wan Japan is rising. The timely books written by Pyle and Samuels each shed light on this important development in world politics, a momentous change that has been overshadowed by China’s rise. One needs to be selective when reviewing two rich and nuanced books under any circumstances; fortunately, as part of a panel, this review can afford to be even more selective in coverage. U.S. analysis of Japanese foreign policy often reflects a sense of tension between a long-held desire for Japan to play a larger security role within the framework of the U.S.-Japan alliance, on the one hand, and unease concerning a lack of clear understanding of Japan’s intentions, on the other hand. At the beginning of his book Pyle makes the statement, “Drawing Japan into a more active role in its global strategy is a major objective of U.S. policy,” immediately followed by the observation that “Despite more than a century of alliance experience, American understanding of Japanese character, motivation, and purpose remains shaky” (p. 3). Is the United States flying blind then? Ming Wanis Professor of Government and Politics and Director of Global Affairs Program at George Mason University. He is the author of Sino-Japanese Relations: Interaction, Logic, and Transformation (2006) and The Political Economy of East Asia: Striving for Wealth and Power (forthcoming, October 2007). He can be reached at . [ 197 ] book review roundtable • japan rising & securing japan Pyle’s and Samuels’ books go a long way toward helping us decipher Japanese purpose and strategy. Pyle provides a sweeping review of Japanese foreign policy behavior. He begins with a succinct discussion of Japan operatingmostlyindependentlyintheChineseworldorderofthepremodern period. Japan sought to centralize its domestic institutions by following the model of the Chinese system during the seventh and eighth centuries more because of a sense of threat from China and Korea than out of awe for Chinese civilization (pp. 34–36). A historian by training, Pyle deftly discusses the forces of history and patterns of Japanese behavior over time. He emphasizes six such patterns of behavior in Japanese foreign policy: attentiveness to power, lack of universal ideals, adaptation and accommodation, autonomy and regional hegemony, emulation, and status seeking (pp. 42–65). Pyle detects a particular theme running through Japanese foreign policy, namely the dominant role played by Japan’s conservative elite class who for the past 150 years “was rarely satisfied with the distribution of world power.” Driven by their distrust of other nations, this elite “has consistently manifested an impulse to maximize Japan’s share of world power” (p. 44). One may infer from Pyle’s analysis that Japan is unlikely to make a sudden move hostile to the international system so long as U.S. efforts to ensure the stability of the international order do not hurt Japanese interests. After all, Japan has chosen to side with the strong—which is now the United States (p. 44). Pyle cautions, however, that Japan’s rise has major implications for the alliance, which will not evolve into one similar to that between the United States and Great Britain because Japan “is motivated by different imperatives, values, traditions, and practices” (p. 368). Put simply, Japan has its own agenda and does not wish to be hostage to U.S. security policy. In...