Redefining the U.S.-Japan Alliance: Tokyo's National Defense Program

Introduction Japan is starting to emerge as a major player in the international security affairs of the post-Cold War era. (1) With the approach of the half-century mark since the conclusion of the Second World War, Japan's postwar generation of leaders appears more confident than their predecessors about their country's potential contribution to global peace and stability. Evidence that Japan may be finding its footing as a great market democracy is extant in the recent report of a distinguished advisory commission reviewing Japan's National Defense Program Outline: "Japan should extricate itself from its security policy of the past that was, if anything, passive, and henceforth play an active role in shaping a new order." (2) The search for Japan's international security role, however, is not without consequences for the U.S.-Japan alliance. Ironically, the United States is trying to establish a special new relationship with Japan at the same time that a torrent of intellectual debate in Tokyo is questioning the longevity and vitality of the bilateral alliance. To be sure, as the United States and Japan enter the fourth decade of their postwar defense relationship, they have achieved unprecedented levels of bilateral cooperation. Japan pays more for U.S. forces, transfers more technology to the United States, engages in more joint training, and assumes more roles and missions within the alliance than at any other point in its history. However, in many ways this close relationship is only a superficial continuation of policy trajectories established during the Cold War. The reality is that today the U.S.-Japan alliance is on shakier ground than most will admit. One should not be misled by the fact that the Social Democratic Party (SDP) has ended its longstanding objection to the constitutionality of the alliance, and that U.S. trade negotiators are now careful to reassure everyone that economic friction with Japan is not intended to hurt the bilateral security relationship. (3) The problem is that all this is too reassuring. These boilerplate endorsements of the alliance may in fact insulate senior policy makers from the reality that the internal workings of the defense relationship are in need of more care and top-down leadership. There should be no mistaking the commitment of Japan's elites in government, business, and politics to the alliance with the United States as the centerpiece for Japan's future security. However, there are growing signs in Japan's policy planning of renewed attention to the United Nations, to regional multilateral mechanisms, and to stronger independent capabilities as means of hedging against possible U.S. withdrawal or fatigue. (4) All things being equal, the U.S.-Japan alliance is Japan's first choice, but there is a growing question about whether it should be the only choice. (5) Some in Japan appear to be questioning old taboos regarding force projection, arms exports and even nuclear weapons. (6) Bureaucrats in the Japan Defense Agency (JDA) and Ministry of Foreign Affairs are increasingly distracted from alliance concerns by other matters. In the 1980s, the best and the brightest worked on the alliance; now they work on peacekeeping, Asian relations, or planning a "well balanced" Japanese force structure. Momentum and energy in Japanese policy planning are flowing away from the alliance. In many cases the Japanese Government's apparent hedging strategy is based on miscalculations about U.S. intentions. The Department of Defense (DoD) focus on the Bottom-up Review, host nation support, the so-called Technology for Technology (TFT) initiative--which seeks to increase the flow of Japanese dual-use technology back to the United States--and joint cooperation on theater missile defense (TMD) all strike Japanese observers as examples of a superpower in decline, rather than a nation recalculating its security policy for a post-Cold War world. (7) Although by no means typical of contemporary Japanese opinion, one critic of U. …