EVENTS

Date:	Monday, April 4, 2005
Time:	10:00 AM -- 12:00 PM
Location:	Wohlstetter Conference Center, Twelfth Floor, AEI 1150 Seventeenth Street, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20036

April 2005

The Revitalization of the U.S.-Japan Alliance: An American, Japanese, Chinese, and Australian Perspective

On February 19, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld met with their Japanese counterparts to adopt a joint statement on common strategic objectives and defense cooperation. At this meeting, the United States and Japan clearly stated their common interests in the de-nuclearization of North Korea and the peaceful resolution of the Taiwan Strait dispute, while calling on China to improve its military transparency. The joint statement also pledged the United States and Japan to strengthen their defense ties and work to induce China to play a constructive role in Asia. Does this joint statement presage a period of intensified strategic cooperation between the United States and Japan? What will be the implications of U.S.-Japanese cooperation on ballistic missile defense research and development? What role can the United States expect Japan to play in the event of a conflict over the Korean Peninsula or the Taiwan Strait? What measures should the governments of the United States and Japan adopt to sustain a new era of strategic cooperation? These and other questions were discussed at an April 4 AEI conference.

Dan Blumenthal
AEI

In February, Secretaries Rice and Rumsfeld met with their Japanese counterparts to adopt a “2+2” statement on strategic objectives and cooperation. This meeting was the culmination of policy reviews in both countries on how to strengthen the alliance. Controversy over the statement has focused on its call for a peaceful resolution of the Taiwan Strait issue and an improvement in Chinese military transparency. The statement was also an effort to frame agreement on a broad range of issues, including U.S. force restructuring, missile defense cooperation, and a greater role for Japan in regional and international security.

Nobukatsu Kanehara
Embassy of Japan

The strategic background of the meeting reflects five points. The first two are historic trends in East Asia; the second two are a pair of drivers for ongoing change in Asia; and the final one is the major factor in U.S.-Japanese relations today.

The first historic trend in East Asia is globalization and industrialization, which has only reached Asia in the past 150 years and has exploded since the end of the Second World War and Cold War. Today, China is emerging as a globalized, industrial society. The second trend is the progress of democracy in East Asia, which is not always as apparent as economic growth, but is even more impressive. Since the end of the Cold War, democracy has exploded in East Asia, but China is an important exception.

The first strategic driver that will shape Asia in the twenty-first century is Japan’s return to the international stage. After the Japanese Empire was dismantled, Japan joined the community of free nations and emerged as a pacifistic, democratic society. Today, Japan is reasserting itself as a responsible actor in the international security system through participation in peacekeeping, operations in the global war on terror, support of the United States in contingencies in the area surrounding Japan, and relief operations after the December 2004 tsunami. In sum, Japan is a major proponent of stability in Asia and a major beneficiary of the status quo maintained by cooperation with the United States. The second strategic driver is the rise of China, in which Beijing must decide whether or not to engage in the world’s current economic order or to rebel against the status quo. China is already reaping tremendous benefits from economic freedom but will go through a difficult mid-term period as it modernizes. The near-term challenge will be to navigate the growth of the People’s Liberation Army, a surge in Chinese nationalism, and a painful domestic transition as the benefits of economic growth are distributed more widely through society. If we can manage these three challenges, China will emerge as a cooperative member and beneficiary of the status quo.

The future of the U.S.-Japan alliance will depend on cooperation to achieve enhanced stability, democracy, and economic growth in the region. The U.S.-Japan alliance should go through a transformation in order to realize more coordination, cooperation, and sharing of resources in the event that the alliance is called upon to act in a crisis. Also, as the alliance operates between the Indian Ocean and the Sea of Japan, it will be necessary for us to develop our capabilities for coalition operations to address a wide variety of situations, not just war.

Andrew Shearer
Embassy of Australia

The Australian alliance and the Japanese alliance have been traditionally seen as the southern and northern anchors of the U.S. security system in Asia. That model is no longer valid, as anchors are passive actors, and in the new arrangements, we will play more active roles.

The radical changes in Japanese security policy and the U.S.-Japan alliance have realized a profound move from an asymmetric alliance to one based on reciprocity and the development of complementary capabilities and operational integration. The scope of the U.S.-Japan alliance has also developed, and there is now a much less ambiguous articulation of Japan’s national security interests. Australia has also been a key partner in Japan’s increased deployment activities in this process, including those to Cambodia in 1993, East Timor in 1999, and now to Iraq since 2004.

This trend will continue, particularly as the cooperative development of missile defense between the United States and Japan will drive defense cooperation in a wide range of areas, including command and control, intelligence, and industry.

From Australia’s perspective, we have also shifted to a global interpretation of our alliance with the United States and are developing a range of capabilities that are categorized as “expeditionary” or “niche,” and will allow us to operate in global trouble spots in cooperation with the United States.

Australia is also developing a stronger relationship with Japan. We have long supported Japan’s desire to take on a broader global role, including a seat on the United Nations Security Council. Australia played a major role in facilitating Japan’s early peacekeeping operations, and today is providing a secure environment for their Self Defense Forces troops in Iraq. At the prospective level, Japan and Australia have great potential to collaborate on such issues as sea lane surveillance and defense, as well as missile defense.

These trends and the transformation of both bilateral alliances are of tremendous importance, but the conditions are not yet present for these developments to result in the creation of a regional, multilateral security framework. However, the United States, Japan and Australia should work to operationalize the ongoing deputy minister-level trilateral strategic dialogue to address such issues as collaboration on the Proliferation Security Initiative, intelligence sharing, defense industrial research and development, and missile defense.

Balbina Y. Hwang
Heritage Foundation

There were three sources for the February 2+2 meeting. First, President George W. Bush and his senior Japan advisers worked effectively to establish strong personal relations with their Japanese counterparts. Second, national relations have been effective because the Bush administration shifted relations an economic focus to a more balanced treatment of economic and security issues. At the international level, both the United States and Japan are finally coming to terms with their relationship after the end of the Cold War.

But it is not clear whether the U.S.-Japan alliance can deal with the new threats of terrorism or the perennial crises on the Korean Peninsula and Taiwan Strait. Throughout the Cold War, Japan never addressed or resolved a host of legacy issues--its history, the role of its military, or its constitution. Since the Gulf War, Japan has attempted to address these issues through a combination of domestic and diplomatic maneuvers, but it has not yet been tested.

The true test will be how the U.S.-Japan alliance responds to North Korea, which has challenged Japanese security through its 1998 missile launch and more recent incursions by spy boats. These scares have revealed the weaknesses in the ability of the United States and Japan to cooperate in the event of a war on the Korea Peninsula. Indeed, Washington still fears that a confrontation with North Korea will damage the U.S.-Japan alliance, although it has been over a decade since the 1994 showdown first demonstrated this risk.

The good news is that the U.S.-Japan alliance is in a far better position today than it was a decade ago. The Global Defense Posture Review has allowed the United States to assign a leadership role to its alliance partners and therefore strengthen the ability of Japan to act as a responsible party within our security relationship.

Lanxin Xiang
Graduate Institute of International Relations

Other speakers have focused on certainties and optimism, but the Chinese side is focused on uncertainties and confusion after the 2+2 statement. I want to address: how the Chinese government views Japanese nationalism, the role of the U.S.-Japan alliance in the containment of China, and whether or not the United States considers it wise to promote the deterioration of Sino-Japanese relations.

The Chinese government is probably not completely clear on the answers to these questions. This uncertainty reflects the fact that because Chinese domestic politics are always bordering on confusion, the same is consequently true in its foreign policy. So we should not assume that we are always going to see a rational, unambiguous trend in Chinese foreign policy.

With regard to the question of the competing nationalist campaigns in the two countries, one major problem is that the two countries really do not understand each other as well as many Westerners think they do. One example is the Yasukuni Shrine issue, where Chinese do not understand that when Japanese worship the spirits of their ancestors that died in war, they seek to sooth their souls, not to emulate them. This is a complicated matter of national culture, and one that both sides should work to explain. Nationalistic conflict also reflects domestic realpolitik, as the governments use aggrieved nationalism to bolster their own support.

It is not clear whether U.S.-Japanese cooperation on Taiwan will be an effective means to contain China’s growth as a great power. It may be, but we should at least be intellectually honest and admit that the Untied States is pursuing a policy of containment, whether or not we believe that is the right policy.

The United States should reevaluate whether or not it wishes to promote Sino-Japanese competition. China and Japan are currently in a state of Edwardian competition, similar to that between pre-World War I Britain and Imperial Germany. Neither country is willing to compromise on the issues it considers most important, while each uses unimportant initiatives in an effort to shift blame. This dynamic creates a dangerous process that the United States should ameliorate, not aggravate.

Lastly, we should ask what role the European Union can play in the East Asian security system. While the United States has been opposed to any role for the European Union, I think that we may need the EU to play a larger role in moderating China’s rise, even at the cost of creating an international regime of containment against China.

AEI research assistant Chris Griffin prepared this summary.