Japan Is Back:Why Tokyo's New Assertiveness Is Good for Washington

Only after a decade of drift did Japan find its bearings again under Koizumi and Abe, both scions of anti-Yoshida political families. Koizumi attacked the power base of the old guard of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party and fostered the restructuring needed to get the economy back on track. He also broke new ground by dispatching the Self-Defense Forces to the Indian Ocean and Iraq as part of a more robust security policy and a closer partnership with the United States. Since becoming prime minister in September 2006, Abe has elevated the Japan Defense Agency to the level of a ministry and announced his intention to revise Article 9. Both leaders have enjoyed broad support for this new direction among the political elite -- which includes Yoshida's grandson Taro Aso, who now serves as Abe's foreign minister.

Pyle concludes his history by predicting that Japan will continue to recalibrate its national power to accommodate a changing international environment. He correctly notes that Japan still has not come to terms with the legacy of World War II or made the hard choices necessary to sustain economic growth over the long haul (such as revamping immigration policy and reforming the agricultural sector). But the bottom line is clear: Japan has begun tapping into new sources of strength in order to remain a key player in Asia, just as it has many times before.

BALANCING BEIJING

Pyle's rich history offers an important corrective for those who believe that the future of Asian security can be assured through a bipolar U.S.-Chinese concert of power. Although increasingly aligned with the United States because of growing uncertainty about its external environment, Japan is an independent variable, and the Japanese elite will come to its own conclusions about how to safeguard Japan's interests. A positive U.S.-Chinese relationship is in Japan's national interest, but excessive U.S. accommodation of Chinese power at Japan's expense will lead to increased hedging by Tokyo and a less predictable Asian security environment. To give Japan the confidence to combine its already close economic ties with China with a similarly stable strategic relationship, Washington should base its engagement with Beijing on a close alliance with Tokyo. Pyle makes this point in a more understated way, noting that "successful coordination of engagement policies with Japan will require great sensitivity to the dynamics of Sino-Japanese relations."

Pyle's analysis also provides an indirect but powerful counterpoint to the belief that Japan's development of nuclear weapons is inevitable in the wake of North Korea's nuclear test last October. It is true that some senior Japanese politicians now muse openly about developing nuclear weapons, but the same politicians and their predecessors also privately -- and sometimes not so privately -- ruminated about possessing a nuclear deterrent during the Cold War. Japan's leaders are looking at North Korea's nuclear test within the context of Japan's overall national power. Japan's power assets include a strong alliance with the United States, the extended U.S. nuclear deterrent, domestic political cohesion, and regional economic relationships -- all of which would be put at risk by a unilateral nuclear weapons program. The Japanese are not about to slide toward nuclear armament -- so long as Washington remains attentive to the credibility of its own nuclear umbrella and to its strategic commitment to Tokyo.

As strong as Pyle's overall argument about the elements of continuity in Japan's current strategic posture is, he neglects some important aspects of Japan's new foreign policy style. After decades of pursuing relationships primarily for commercial reasons, Japan is now pursuing many of its international relationships with the geostrategic aim of balancing China's influence. Abe has embraced a new partnership with India and is actively discussing a formal security treaty with Australia. Despite Singaporean elder statesman Lee Kuan Yew's famous warning to Washington that encouraging Japan to play a larger security role is like giving a former alcoholic a rum bonbon, Singapore is now at the forefront of efforts to expand Japan's political and security role in Southeast Asia; Indonesia, Vietnam, and Thailand have followed suit. None of these nations -- including Japan -- is interested in "containing" China's rise, but all are engaged in a curious mix of balancing and bandwagoning, and Tokyo is beginning to take advantage of that game.

Japan's approach to regionalism is also undergoing important changes that merit attention. When Japanese leaders were trying to protect their domestic economic structure from U.S. pressure, it made sense for Tokyo to pursue a regional order based on Asian economic exceptionalism. Such a stance served as a buffer against the dictates of the International Monetary Fund and the U.S. Treasury Department. Today, however, China's lack of transparency and weak rule of law present a far greater threat to Japan's resurgent economy than the so-called Washington consensus. As Asian leaders debate the formation of new multilateral institutions such as the East Asian Community, Japan is engaged in an intense contest with China to determine what the new institutions are to be based on: preserving Asian exceptionalism, as Beijing now argues, or pursuing a common set of values rooted in democracy and the rule of law, as Tokyo contends. The advocacy of democracy and the rule of law as a cornerstone of Japan's foreign policy seems inconsistent with Pyle's point that Japanese elites have always eschewed transcendent Western norms. But it is entirely consistent with his argument that Japan's leaders are adept at adopting the tools that best help them enhance their influence and shape their security environment at any given time.

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