Old Habits, New Times: Challenges to Japanese-American Security Relations

Old Habits, New Times Challenges to Japanese-American Security Relations I T h e U.S.-Japanese alliance faces the most critical challenge since its inception a generation ago, a challenge of adaptation, redefinition, and restructuring. The backdrop to this development is the increasing instability and volatility of the security environment in East Asia. Whether the alliance will remain viable and effective depends entirely upon how this challenge is met. The situation is all the more serious because, despite the popular presumption among the Japanese and the Americans alike that their relations are close and intimate, the Japanese-American tie is not a “special relationship” in the sense of the AngleAmerican tie. Japan and the United States share neither a common civilization and history nor similar culture and experience; rather, their relations are built upon the dispassionate calculus of their respective national interests. The alliance is confronted by three distinct dangers that in recent years have become increasingly critical although not widely recognized. These are, first, Japan’s own extraordinary ambiguity regarding the fundamental purpose and requirements of its alliance with the United States; second, the post-Vietnam American tendency toward abrupt and unpredictable shifts of policy; and, third, the emergence in Japan of a potentially volatile public climate with respect to national security issues. The first is keenly felt by the United States; the second is feared by Japan; but the third is yet to be sufficiently understood by either nation. Japanese Ambivalence About a Military Alliance In the immediate aftermath of the Reagan-Suzuki summit in the spring of 1981, Japan’s continuing ambiguity about the purpose and requirements of its alliance with the United States surfaced once again. The summit provoked a domestic dispute in Japan over two fundamental issues: whether the alliance was military in purpose, and whether it was linked to security contingencies outside of the area immediately surrounding Japan. Taketsugu Tsurutani is Professor of Political Science at Washington State University. Interitationni Seccwit!/, Fall 1982 (Vol. 7, No. 2) 0162-2889/82/010175-11$02.50/0 01982by the President and Fellows of Harvard College and of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology 175 International Security I 176 The first of these issues was raised by the language that issued from the summit: did the Reagan-Suzuki joint communique really mean what it clearly said? What did it mean to use the word “alliance” in describing the basic relations between the two nations? And what were the implications of a communique that urged ”an appropriate division of roles” in defending Japan and in ensuring stability in East Asia? Even before his return to Japan to face opposition charges of military collusion with the United States, Prime Minister Zenko Suzuki began to defend himself by contending that the word “alliance” had no military significance and that the phrase “an appropriate division of roles” did not mean that Japan would rapidly increase its defense spending or expand its military responsibility under the bilateral security arrangement. But the political pressures unleashed by the summit created tensions within the Japanese government and led to the resignation of the foreign minister. For Suzuki’s interpretation (which he reiterated with increasing vehemence on his return to Tokyo) was a tenuous one, at best. After all, the defense of Japan (and the security situation in East Asia) has been for three decades the central concern of the Japanese-American relationship. The existing bilateral security pact, originally concluded in 1951and revised in 1960, is nothing if not an instrument of military alliance. No amount of semantic hairsplitting could change this basic fact. (Some Japanese officials even attempted to explain away the Japanese-American tie as an “alliance relationship” in an absurdly contrived contradistinction to an “alliance.”) The bilateral security arrangement that has evolved under the pact specifies a division of labor between the two nations on security as well as on matters of bilateral coordination in intelligence , logistics, and operations; and the Japanese government provides a significant proportion of the cost of maintaining the United States Forces in Japan (USFJ).If this is not a military alliance, what is? “An appropriate division of roles” between the two nations in the defense of Japan and...