Japan's Grand Strategy

The strategic transformation of Europe and the multiple crises in the Soviet Union will profoundly change Japan's security environment. The retrenchment of Soviet forces confronting NATO has given new political meaning to the Soviet forces facing Japan.

As Soviet territory spans half the globe, America and its allies confront in Asia the same adversary as in the center of Germany. Communism's collapse in Eastern Europe, and its decomposition in the Soviet republics, is likely to undermine rulers in Pyongyang, Hanoi and Beijing. Before long, Mikhail Gorbachev may launch arms control initiatives aimed at Japanese and U.S. forces in the Pacific, perhaps even by opening negotiations on the return of Japan's Northern Territories.

Japan's security strategy is still shaped and circumscribed by its alliance with the United States. Soon, however, the purpose and nature of that alliance will be affected by the changes in Europe. The need to adjust the American-Japanese alliance to the changing global strategic environment comes at a time when Washington and Tokyo are also negotiating stubborn economic issues. This fact makes it all the more important that each nation understand how the alliance serves its own long-term interests. In the past a broad consensus in Japan supported America's global policy of containment and valued the alliance as a protective shield against Soviet encroachment. These simple strategic concepts may still have merit, but soon will not suffice.

The time has come for Japan to develop a sense of purpose for contributing to a peaceful world on a scope commensurate with its enormous economic and technological strength. Japan needs a grand strategy consonant with its self-image as a humanistic, democratic and peaceful nation, and a strategy able to win broad support among the Japanese people. To this end, the geographic horizon of Japan's defense policy must expand beyond the region of the Japanese islands.