Japan's Reluctant Realism: Foreign Policy Challenges in an Era of Uncertain Power

Michael Green reviews recent Japanese foreign policy initiatives in East Asia and makes a plea for active U.S. engagement with Japan in building a common approach to the region. An academic audience might find this argument puzzling: other things being equal, why wouldn't the United States want to engage its main Asian ally in regional matters? To understand the provenance of this book, one has to note the author's professional background and the ongoing policy debates in Washington.

After earning his Ph.D. at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) in Washington, Green worked as a Japan analyst for the Pentagon's Institute for Defense Analysis, and then moved to the Council on Foreign Relations. With this career start in the world of the foreign policy establishment, he remained fully engaged in various government, private think tank, and international conference circuits. He now serves on the staff of the National Security Council (NSC) in the George W. Bush administration's White House because of his expertise in managing current concerns in U.S.-Japan relations.

Green's argument for a policy of partnering with Japan in regional affairs comes at least partly in response to the "Japan-passing" school of thought inside the Beltway. According to Japan-passers, even under the steady rule of the U.S.-sponsored Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), Japan was a reluctant ally, unwilling or unable to fully meet U.S. expectations despite the strongest U.S. pressures. This perception spread during the "Japan-bashing" period from the mid-1980s to the early 1990s when the United States threatened, cajoled, and sanctioned Japan in an unsuccessful effort to get it to decisively reform its economy. In this view, since the demise of the LDP in 1993 and the onset of political paralysis, there has been even less reason to expect a responsive Japan. At the same time, Japan seems to be in steady economic and demographic decline. So Japan-passers argue that Japan will be increasingly irrelevant, especially in comparison with the dynamic rise of China. Thus, Japan-passers argue, the United States should ignore Japan and spend effort in engaging others who actively seek change in the region. This approach (or nonapproach) to Japan reached its zenith in the summer of 1998 when President Bill Clinton spoke of a Sino-U.S. "strategic partnership" during an extended visit to China. Significantly, Clinton neither stopped in Japan nor mentioned even once the U.S.-Japan alliance in the course of his journey.

The swing of the pendulum of U.S. attention from Japan to China during the 1990s is not all that surprising. Green does not note the historical pattern of relations between the United States and Japan and China, but it bears mentioning that the United States alternately courted one and at the expense of the other throughout the twentieth century. Suffice it to say that there may be deeper strategic dynamic behind the insensitive U.S. treatment of Japan than Green describes in his case studies. Interestingly, there was a return swing of the pendulum at the end of the 1990s just as Green finished this book. The new Bush administration reversed Clinton's priorities and took a hard, confrontational line toward China while again embracing Japan as the key U.S. ally in East Asia. This was fortuitous because it opened the door for Green to enter the NSC staff and help the Bush administration repair and upgrade defense and foreign policy cooperation with Japan.

Although he does not spell out the above-mentioned Japan-passer argument, Green counters this view in the first two chapters of the book by arguing that the United States should not take Japan for granted. Green summarizes Japan's domestic political, economic, and social problems, but presents them as possible stimuli for renovation and change. To back this interpretation, he notes a new restless assertiveness in the tone of Japanese debates over policy toward other countries. He also mentions Japan's abiding strengths and potential for radical shifts in outward orientation.

In the first chapter, he explains how the national consensus in Japan is slowly shifting toward what he calls a "reluctant realism" in its approach to the outside world. One might quibble about his chosen terminology. After all, foreign policy realism refers to a logically derived program of independent behavior based on clear assumptions about how the world works and what principles should guide action. What Green describes in Japan falls short of this. But he correctly calls attention to trends that may move Japan in this direction. These include Japan's growing anxiety about Chinese and North Korean military capabilities and intentions, the demise of left-wing utopian idealism, the current spread of cost-benefit thinking in foreign affairs, the fiscal inability to continue "checkbook diplomacy," and growing acceptance of Japan as a limited military power (i.e., within the framework of UN collective security and the U.S. alliance). He points to key domestic factors such as the rise of a new generation of leadership, bureaucratic malaise, and domestic political realignment to explain these trends. External regional events and circumstances, such as Chinese and North Korean missile firings, are also invoked as explantion. But he does not explore the vital role of the United States in all this, both as an instigator of change inside Japan and as the shaper of Japan's regional environment. As someone directly involved at this level, he might have interesting things to say about this critically important variable, but instead elides this discussion. In the second chapter, he reviews the changes in key domestic institutions that have a role in the conduct of Japanese foreign policy. This discussion is cogent, if somewhat brief.

For his case studies in the book, Green devotes a chapter to each of the following areas: Japan relations with China, with the Korean peninsula, with the former Soviet Union, and with Southeast Asia; Japan in regional multilateral forums; and Japan's response to the Asian financial crisis. These are well worth reading for the concise, well-informed narratives they offer about Japanese attempts to take initiatives in each of these areas during the 1990s. Each chapter ends predictably with the same conclusion: the United States needs to engage Japan more fully in dialogue. To illustrate this pattern, the following excerpts are taken from the closing paragraphs of the first three case studies (relations with China, the Korean peninsula, and the former Soviet Union): "each side [the United States and Japan] should be working harder to coordinate approaches" (p. 109); "Japan's attention to its security interests on the peninsula has clearly increased, and U.S. diplomacy ignores these at its own risk" (p. 144); and "Tokyo's new Eurasia diplomacy could form part of a much stronger U.S. policy toward Russia" (p. 166).

In a nutshell, Green wants to show how Japan's desire to become more independent and assertive in its regional setting played out during the 1990s. He points out that these Japanese initiatives either went unnoticed or, even worse, were unceremoniously shot down by a United States irked by unwanted Japanese interference in its own agendas. Green argues that in the former case, the United States risks losing control of Japanese and regional agendas, while in the latter case, it causes Japan to lose face and erodes the basis for the alliance.

Nonetheless, Green argues that Japan's desire for a leadership role in the region is not diminished-it will only grow stronger with time, and Japan will continue to develop initiatives with or without the United States. Green would prefer that Japan develop a regional leadership role with U.S. advice and consent. The key to this happening is policy consultation and coordination before either side makes an initiative. What is needed is a U.S. effort to engage Japan systematically. If the United States subcontracts certain roles to Japan, then Japan will have an outlet for regional initiative that will satisfy its desire for a higher leadership profile within the confines of U.S. global strategy.

Standing back from this argument, it is clear Japan's foreign policy is viewed primarily in relation to U.S. regional and global interests. It is not treated as an independent topic of intrinsic interest. From his tone, the author understands and is sympathetic toward Japan, but he seems mainly driven by a desire to harness Japan to better serve U.S. agendas. Academic concerns such as Japan's puzzling passivity and anomalous dependence on the United States, the roots of anti-U.S. sentiment in Japan, the continuing difficulty Japan has in truly normalizing relations with its neighbors, or the fundamental principles that will guide Japanese foreign policy are not the focus of attention. Instead, the book squarely addresses the question of what is to be done with Japan in the here-and-now if the United States is intent on running global affairs. It goes without saying that this kind of intellectual effort has been a key part of the development of Japanese studies in the United States. But it also must be said that the values and aims embodied in this kind of project are increasingly called into question in academic circles. Nevertheless, this book will have much value for U.S. government officials and policy analysts, and will be useful reading for academics interested in U.S.-Japan relations.