Eastasiaforum.org

U.S.-JAPAN ALLIANCE; PART II: The U.S.-Japan Treaty of Mutual Cooperation was signed in Washington fifty years ago. Few alliances last half a century. The fact that this one has, is a testament to its strength. In a new study, the American Enterprise Institute reviews how the alliance has adapted itself to change since the Second World War. Part II looks at how the alliance has adjusted to take into account China’s emergence and the Korean nuclear thereat and still managed to maintain its relevance.

With the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the cold war ended, and along with it, much of the preceding decades' rationale for the U.S.-Japan alliance disappeared. Under leader Deng Xiaoping, China fully embarked on a domestic-growth plan that put a premium on trade relations and economic liberalization, all of which benefited Japanese andU.S. companies that rushed in to do business with China. While the Clinton administration saw China as a "strategic partner," believing that economic relations would be sufficient for preserving peace in Asia, security specialists increasingly saw post–cold war stability as fragile and lacking the bonds of trust among Asian states that would allow them to solve serious disputes among themselves.

CHINA: Indeed, as the decade wore on, China emerged more clearly as a potential security threat when it began upgrading its military, including its strategic missile corps, although, in general, the People's Liberation Army was very underdeveloped.

In 1996, however, China fired ballistic missiles off the coast of Taiwan in an attempt to intimidate the island's pro-democracy voters before a presidential election. In response, the U.S. sent two aircraft-carrier battle groups into the Taiwan Strait in a clear message to Beijing not to upset regional stability or pressure Taiwan into accommodatingChina.

Neither Washington nor Tokyo wants to see trade and political relations with China deteriorate, but both naturally question why Beijing continues to build such powerful military capabilities.

NORTH KOREA: At the same time, the Kim family regime in North Korea commenced a two-decades-long effort to develop nuclear power and eventually obtain atomic weapons. The U.S. was drawn further into East Asia's underlying instability, as several crises throughout the decade brought Washington and Pyongyang to the brink of a military clash, particularly in 1993.

The Korean crises demonstrated to both U.S. and Japanese officials that despite the alliance, the two countries were not realistically prepared to act together in cases of regional conflict. Due in part to this realization and to China's new power, as well as to the rape of an Okinawan schoolgirl by a group of U.S. Marines in 1995, the two allies agreed in 1996 to reform the alliance.

GUIDELINES: This culminated in the 1997 revised U.S.-Japan Defense Guidelines. Through negotiations with the Clinton administration, the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) was revised, and Tokyo agreed to take greater responsibility for its own defense by playing a more active role in supporting U.S. troops engaged in operations in areas surrounding Japan.

Events over the next years only highlighted the new challenges facing the alliance and the need for more joint cooperation. In 1998, Pyongyang launched a Taepodong ballistic missile over Japanese territory, signaling Japan's vulnerability to such weapons of mass destruction and providing further impetus for defense modernization.

The Japan Defense Agency immediately began working with the U.S. Department of Defense to upgrade Japan's missile-defense capabilities. For its part, the U.S. agreed not only to license Japanese production of advanced antiballistic missile systems, but also to increase the sharing of intelligence and to station more U.S. Navy Aegis–equipped destroyers outfitted with missile defenses in Japanese waters.

INVIOLABILITY: Yet restrictions on collective self-defense, as well as the general inviolability of Article 9 of the Japanese constitution, continued to limit the amount of joint planning the allies could do and raised concerns in Washington that Japan would employ its military in a crisis only under narrow circumstances.

An unexpected test of the U.S.-Japan alliance came with the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Japan's new Prime Minister, Junichiro Koizumi, quickly moved to support President George W. Bush's war on al Qaeda and the Taliban and later in the invasion of Iraq. Japan dispatched Self-Defense Forces (SDF)--including Air Maritime SDF--to Iraq,Afghanistan, and the Indian Ocean in a variety of support and logistical roles.

This appeared to mark a decisive break from Tokyo's traditional unwillingness to become involved in global security crises. Koizumi's actions were in stark contrast with what had happened in 1991, when Japan's government, under Prime Minister Kaifu Toshiki, refused to provide support for the first Gulf War (Operation Desert Storm).

GROUNDWORK: Some of the groundwork for Koizumi's new approach had been laid even before the 2000 U.S. election, when a panel of U.S.-Japan experts led by Richard Armitage and Joseph Nye published a report on the future of the U.S.-Japan alliance. The panel was in close contact with Japanese counterparts and provided a road map for alliance relations that fit the preferences of Koizumi and other Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) leaders like Shinzo Abe.

Still, the impetus for Koizumi's action came primarily from his own belief that Japan needed to adopt a more global role and from his political willingness to push through the Diet the various Special Measures Laws that would allow Japan to dispatch noncombatant SDF to the Middle East.

RETRENCHEMENT: Over the next half-decade, Japan's SDF would be engaged in one operation or another, even after both Koizumi and Abe had left office. Yet Abe's sudden resignation after barely a year in office signaled the beginning of a retrenchment of Japanese security operations abroad.

Abe came to power with an ambitious program for reforming Japan's national security mechanisms in ways that would allow Japan to participate even more fully with U.S.forces and, thus, expand the scope of the alliance along the lines envisioned by the Armitage-Nye report. Among his goals were a revision of Article 9, the creation of a Japanese National Security Council, increased military budgets, and a more centralized intelligence organization.

Abe's resignation and the succession of Yasuo Fukuda, a compromise LDP premier elected after Abe's departure, halted all of these plans. For the next two years, a weakened LDP had no ability or will to discuss the future of the alliance with the U.S.