Japanese Security Policy: A Time for Strategy

Japanese Security Policy A Time for Strategy Hisahiko Okazaki F o r more than 30 years, Japanese security debates were essentially contests between supporters and opponents of the U.S.-Japanese Security Treaty, the opponents of which advocated unarmed neutrality. These debates have now almost ended. Opinion polls indicate popular support for U.S.-Japanese security arrangements and appreciation of their military significance for the security of Japan. Even Japan’s socialists, traditionally supporters of unarmed neutrality, now claim that they would not immediately threaten the existence of the SelfDefense Forces (SDF)or the Security Treaty if they came to power. During the long period in which the security debates took this form, however, discussion of Japanese defense policy rarely went beyond the primarily diplomatic question of whether to support the Security Treaty and almost never addressed the question of Japanese strategy. The sterility of strategic thought in Japan certainly reflects domestic constraints that exist in post-war Japan, particularly the abhorrence of anything military as a tool of its external policy, even including Japanese security policy. But it is also the product of the international situation in the post-war world, especially in East Asia. Until very recently, the United States maintained a clear overall superiority over the Soviet Union. In East Asia, the Soviets do not possess the same conventional ground force superiority as they possess in Europe. Certainly the Soviet Union has maintained a large ground force in the Far East, but its potential threat to Japan is limited by its modest amphibious landing capabilities.What matters most to the security of Japan is the air and naval balances, which are the fields where the United States long maintained a clear superiority. In such a military environment, nothing more was required of Japanese strategic thought than the simple endorsement of the U.S.-Japan Security A similar version of this paper was published in the Program on U.S.-Japan Relations, Annual Report, 1981-82 (Cambridge, Mass.: Center for International Affairs, Harvard University, 1982). The opinions expressed herein are those of the author alone and in no way represent an official view of the Japanesegovernment. Hisahiko Okazaki, formerly Director-General for Foreign Relations of the Japan Defense Agency, is a Minister of the Japan Embassy in Washington, D.C. This article was written while the author was a Visiting Scholar at Harvard University. Internatioizal Security, Fall 1982 (Vol. 7, No. 2) 0162-28891821010188-10 $02.50/0 01982by the President and Fellows of Harvard College and of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 188 Iupunese Security Policy 1 189 Treaty. Japanese strategy consisted of the notion that because Japan is allied with the strongest power in the world, no country would dare to threaten its security as long as the alliance is credible. This reasoning made possible the typical attitude of the average Japanese citizen toward defense: leave the main responsibility to the United States, build up Japan’sforces to the extent necessary to satisfy the Americans, and concentrate on economic recovery. Moreover, since Japanese defense capability was generally seen as a relatively insignificant factor in the military balance in East Asia, domestic advocates of a stronger Japanese defense capability had difficulty finding a rationale for the desired increases. They often had to rely upon abstract or ideological ideas, such as the argument that ”a country should be defended by the hand of its own people.” Also, since Japan has no history of fighting a war under democracy, these conceptual arguments sometimes tended, whether consciously or unconsciously, to reflect their antecedents in Japan’s pre-war tradition. Therefore, an increase of one yen in the defense budget or one person in the SDF could be labeled by the opposition as a right-wing or militarist tendency. Furthermore, for much of the post-war period, Japan’s primary security concern was more the stability of the domestic scene, which was still recovering from the destruction of the war and based on shaky economic and social conditions, than the external threat, which was effectivelydeterred by the U.S. alliance. The main concern of the government, therefore, was to achieve a consensus of the people on the defense issue as a...