Author's Response: How Japan Balances Strategy and Constraint

[ 204 ] asia policy constitutional prohibitions that mean that the United States will always come back and ask for more each time. Japan’s sphere of autonomy is thus shrinking. Japan has also entered into projects, such as BMD, creating technological, industrial, tactical, strategic, and political linkages to the United States that pin Japan down by the tail. Finally, when the United States decides to put its big paws down firmly, Japan is likely to become trapped underneath them. We see this in Iran, where Japan has worked overtime to maintain autonomy but ultimately knows it must cede to demands for U.S. economic pressure on Iran. I argue that we may also see Japan cede to U.S. pressure on North Korea and possibly even Taiwan. Hence, my analysis differs from that of Samuels; while I see Japan seeking tohedge,Tokyo’soptionsareshrinkingratherthanwidening.Samuelsprovides a masterful analysis; the fact that there is so much to discuss is a reflection of its sheer quality and depth. Samuel’s and Pyle’s works will be central texts in any debate on Japan’s security policy for years to come. But, to mix metaphors further, my main critique is that I am dubious that Japan can instrumentalize the Goldilocks scenario. If we follow the tale through, we might recall that feeling she had it just right, Goldilocks fell complacently into a deep sleep, only to be jolted awake by the three bears coming home, and then she ran out of the door screaming uncontrollably into the wild forest. Are North Korea, China, and Russia perhaps the three bears in this analogy, and is the United States the only safe haven to which Japan can run?  Author’s Response: How Japan Balances Strategy and Constraint Richard J. Samuels There is only one thing more flattering for an academic than having one’s work read and responded to thoughtfully by one’s peers. That would be to have one’s work paired with that of a colleague as towering as Ken Pyle. Richard J. Samuels is the Ford International Professor of Political Science and Director of the Center for International Studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is also the Founding Director of the MIT Japan Program and in 2001 became Chairman of the Japan-U.S. Friendship Commission. In addition, he is a member of the Asia Policy Editorial Board. He is available at . [ 205 ] book review roundtable • japan rising & securing japan I am twice blessed and very grateful to the authors for participating in this roundtable. Three themes run through the comments that are directed specifically to Securing Japan. The first, raised by both Mike Mochizuki and Christopher Hughes, is the limitations of the Goldilocks metaphor to describe changes in the balance of Japanese security preferences. On my analysis both of the domestic security discourse and of the strategic options under construction, I posited that Japanese strategists were likely to begin worrying more about entanglement in U.S. misadventures and less about the Yoshida-era constraints that limited their predecessors. I suggested this would result in a new national strategic equilibrium, which a more muscular Japan further distancing itself from the United States. Greater strength and independence will define, I maintained, the successor to the Yoshida Doctrine—the fourth national security consensus in modern Japanese history. Mochizuki and Hughes both doubt that Japan created such options for itself. In a particularly fetching turn, Hughes reminds us that Goldilocks actually fled the house when the bears came home. In fact, when I last spoke at the University of Washington, Ken Pyle himself raised the very same question—Wouldn’t the Goldilocks solution depend upon the nature of China’s rise? Well, yes it would. I did not state this as unequivocally in the book, though I wish I had: all bets are off if China’s rise is aggressive. While there is still no obvious, robust alternative to the U.S. alliance for Japanese strategists, much lies beneath the U.S.-Japan bear hug. Hughes makes the point most sharply. He sees an increasingly entangled alliance further entrapping and confounding Japaneseplanners.HughsdisagreeswithmyviewthattheJapanesearecreating options, insisting that Tokyo is creating further dependence instead. Yet as I...