Japan's security relations with China since 1989

Pacific Review, 2019

This paper analyses the evolution of Sino-Japanese rivalry in the security sphere concentrating on the Chinese perspective, and placing it within the wider context of complex interstate rivalry between China, Japan and the United States. From a theoretical viewpoint, this research contributes to the literature on interstate rivalry from multiparty perspective, which has been overlooked in existing research. China-Japan-US complex interstate rivalry includes elements of positional, spatial and ideological rivalry simultaneously. When rivalries mix two or more rivalry types, they become more difficult to resolve. The two broad trends of China's military build-up and deepening US-Japan alliance evolve in tandem intensifying rivalry dynamics and increasing positional elements of rivalry. There are many indications on various levels that for China, controlling Japan's international ambitions has become less important and more attention is paid to ways in which Japan helps the United States in reaching its objectives in Asia through their alliance agreement. The cases analysed to display complex interstate rivalry include the Taiwan question, territorial disputes in the East and South China Seas, and the North Korean nuclear issue.

Pacific Focus, 2011

Japan–China relations in the 2000s have seen both significant tensions, notably during the term of Koizumi Junichiro, and marked improvement in the post‐Koizumi period. This article analyzes the way external and domestic factors in both countries have influenced the political and security dimension of the bilateral relationship. It also assesses the extent of the underlying tensions and the prospects of long‐term stability in Sino–Japanese relations.The article argues that structural changes and a shifting balance of power in East Asia have led to strategic divergences and security dilemma dynamics in the bilateral relations. Additionally, the rise of conservatism in Japan under Koizumi and China's use of the “history card” exacerbated mutual distrust and contributed to souring ties in the first half of the 2000s. While the bilateral relations have stabilized in the post‐Koizumi era, with the political leaders of both countries emphasizing mutual engagement and alleviation of th...

2006

The United States seeks to engage Japan and China in building a peaceful international order at the regional and global levels. The Bush administration has articulated two conceptual approaches to this challenge, one centered on Japan and the other on China. The first approach, associated with former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, emphasizes Japan's potential role as a global partner. Armitage begins with the U.S.-Japan partnership and works outward to the regional and global levels, emphasizing shared values and democracy as the foundation of the alliance. This vision highlights Japan's potential regional and global contributions, while viewing China as a possible challenge to regional order. The second approach, associated with Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick, emphasizes China's potential as a responsible stakeholder in the international system. Zoellick starts with China's global significance and works inward to consider that nation's impact on regional security and its future domestic political evolution. This vision highlights shared U.S. and Chinese interests and managing disputes within a larger cooperative framework. The chief concern is about China acting as a free-rider that gradually undermines the existing international and regional order. The 2006 U.S. National Security Strategy combines elements of both approaches to international and regional order in articulating a "hedge strategy" toward China. This essay highlights some conceptual and policy questions that arise from efforts to integrate the Armitage and Zoellick approaches to Asia.

This article highlights the Realist underpinnings of US-China-Japan relations. Washington’s quest for primacy in the Asia-Pacific framed Tokyo’s China policy throughout the early post-Cold War period; after all, US global power projection also rested on its capacity to influence key regional allies such as Japan. Yet growing US fatigue for military intervention abroad coincided with a changing East Asian power balance premised on China’s military and economic rise. On the basis of a Structural Realist analysis, this article argues that Japan hardened its security stance by the mid-2000s. Following the 2012 Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands standoff, Chinese assertiveness and a forceful Japanese response revealed a new reality in US-Japan alliance politics: Washington policymakers would now restrain some of Japan’s more assertive security initiatives and nationalistic displays. While detailing the evolution of US-China-Japan relations, this article disputes the likelihood of a US-China conflict of Tokyo’s making thanks to sustained US leverage over Japan.

Asia & the Pacific Policy Studies, 2018

Japan's security policy has changed dramatically in recent years. The country balances harder against China, and its armed forces are increasingly autonomous from their American counterparts. What explains Japan's growing autonomy and balancing tendency after decades of relative apathy? I argue that this new strategic orientation results from unprecedented doubts about the effectiveness of its traditional security policy amidst an unstable China-U.S.-Japan triangular relationship. Tokyo is increasingly uncertain about American security commitments in the face of a more assertive China. As both the alliance with the United States and the accommodation of China are becoming unsuitable strategies for guaranteeing national security, Japan reverts to a more autonomous and resolute posture. Japan's new security policy will have important consequences for the triangular relationship.

Margalla Papers

States with shared interests and values may form a collective identity to enact their vision and achieve security objectives against those they view as threats. Similarly, US-Japan relations have progressed for a long, not just due to the dangers posed by China and North Korea but because of their shared values of democracy, human rights, peace, and global prosperity. They share the vision of a Free and Open Indo-Pacific by forming bilateral and multilateral alliances. The US and Japan are also engaged in strategic partnerships for traditional and non-traditional security in the region, including maritime, cyber, space, and energy. This paper, therefore, focuses on East Asia due to its vulnerable security architecture and explores how the US and Japan’s security cooperation strengthens regional security by sharing values and security concerns. It highlights that the potential of both states to form a collective identity may improve the security situation in East Asia. Bibliography...

2020

Indeed, since the end of WWII, the region has been characterized by US hegemony. As both a promoter of neoliberal reform and as the key strategic actor in the East Asian Region, the impact of US power has been considerable. However, in the post-Cold war era, the Asia-Pacific’s emerging powers are beginning to translate their prosperity into military power, with profound implications for regional stability and military alliances. This new trend is best illustrated if one examines China’s rising military power and Japan’s willingness to return to a normal nation. In such a context, the relationships between the two regional powers, Japan and China, and the established hegemonic power, the United States, appear crucial. Japan’s desire to no longer be a political pygmy has been leading Tokyo to rethink its fifty year alliance with the United States. As for China, its political and military rise is perceived by the US as a sign of revisionism which directly threatens Washington’s strateg...

International Studies Review, 2018

This article argues that the concept of “hedging” should be understood in the context of the “balancing-bandwagoning” spectrum within the “balance of power” theory, in which hedging is located between balancing and bandwagoning as the state's third strategic choice. Although polarity— unipolar, bipolar, and multipolar—largely determines the likelihood of hedging behavior, during a period of power shift, strategic uncertainty emerges. States, particularly secondary powers, attempt to calculate the risk of balancing, bandwagoning, and hedging, adopting an optimal strategy. To identify states’ strategic behavior, it is important to first examine their economic and military capabilities, and if these indicators are not decisive enough to identify balancing, bandwagoning, or hedging behavior, diplomatic factors should be taken into account, although those are a relatively weaker indicator. The use of this conceptual framework reveals that Japan's foreign policy behavior has not involved “hedging” vis-à-vis China; instead, Japan's behavior is consistently associated with “balancing” against the risks of China's rise. In addition, while Japan's behavior vis-à-vis the United States is considered to be bandwagoning, Japan made political efforts to strengthen its own military capabilities—internal balancing—which began in the 2010s when Japan relaxed its political constraints on use of its military. This behavior also aimed both to illustrate Japan's efforts related to alliance burden-sharing and to enhance its external balancing with the United States. Yet, the periods from 1997 to 2005 and from 2010 on represent an aberration because Japan engaged one type of hedging—security hedging—vis-à-vis the risk of US commitment reduction to East Asia. In this sense, while concurring with the realists’ argument that Japan's current behavior is characterized as balancing, the argument differs from that of realists who believe that Japan's policy shift to balancing toward China only began with China's rise in the late 2000s or 2010s.

Korean Journal of Defense Analysis, 2009

This article is written against the backdrop of widely discussed changes inJapanese foreign security policy in the 2000s * changes often attributed to anintensifying North Korea threat and growing rivalry with China. EmployingWalt’s notion of ‘‘threat’’ (in effect, offensive power plus aggressive intentions),the thesis of this article is that China and North Korea could be construed asincreasingly threatening to Japan. The antithesis is that changes in Japaneseforeign security policy have rather taken place within the context of a publicdiscourse that has increasingly framed China and North Korea as ‘‘threats.’’ Thearticle demonstrates that, while Chinese military capability has burgeoned in thepast decade, North Korea has experienced something like military stagnation.Moreover, although both actors have histories of foreign aggression, theirrespective official discourses lack aggressive intentions vis-a`-vis Japan. The articlealso demonstrates that while Japanese government sources have kept framingNorth Korea as a threat or a grave security concern, China has merely beendepicted as ‘‘in need of further attention.’’ To understand these ambivalentresults, the article introduces the synthesizing idea that a North Korean ‘‘threat’’ might serve as a ‘‘perfect excuse’’ for changing Japanese foreign security policy inthe face of what could obviously be construed as a more pressing China threat.

The Journal of Asian Studies, 2005

China, the European Union and Global Governance

The US-Japan alliance, based on the 1951 bilateral Security Treaty, is one of Washington's main military partnerships that comprise America's "hub and spoke" security system in East Asia. As a product of the Cold War's bipolarity, the security arrangements between Tokyo and Washington served a purpose to deter the communist threat and expansion. However, the structural changes in East Asia after 1989 necessitated a redefinition of the alliance's strategic rationale. Those changes included the disappearance of the common enemy of the Soviet Union, the emergence of new security challenges, notably related to the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK or North Korea) nuclear developments, and, last but not least, China's rise and consolidation of its status as a major power in East Asia. In order to respond to the altered regional and global security environment, Tokyo and Washington needed to reconsider the Cold War division of allies' roles whereby the US was committed to Japan's defence, while Japan provided only bases and hostnation support to the US military forces. 1 Since the mid-1990s, the bilateral alliance has been redefined, and its scope now includes both regional and global dimensions. The US-Japan security ties saw a period of unprecedented deepening during the term of former Japanese Prime Minister Koizumi Junichiro (2001-2006), with Tokyo becoming an even stronger supporter of the American-led regional security order. Beijing, however, saw the consolidation of the alliance as directed at China and hence seeking to constrain its rising power in East Asia, notably by having impact on the Taiwan issue. The deterioration in Sino-Japanese ties under Koizumi reinforced the security dilemma between the bilateral alliance and the PRC, as well as Beijing's perception of Tokyo as a major tool in Washington's strategy of maintaining its primacy in East Asia. However, several new trends have emerged in the relations between Japan, China and the US in the post-Koizumi era and since Barack Obama became US President in 2009. These include stabilisation in Sino-Japanese ties, Tokyo's pro-Asia diplomacy under Prime Minister Hatoyama Yukio (2009-present), and America's increased focus on nontraditional security issues and multilateral engagement of East Asia under Obama. This paper examines the post-Cold War dynamics between the US-Japan alliance and China, and assesses its impact on the evolving security order in East Asia. It also explores the potential for the EU to strengthen its security engagement with the region, especially in the context of the recent trend in East Asia towards multilateral cooperation on non-traditional issues. The paper first analyses the strengthening of the US-Japan alliance and Japan's so-called security "normalisation", especially accentuated during Koizumi's term in office, before focusing on the manifestation in East Asia of strategic mistrust and security dilemma between Tokyo and 1 This division of tasks was based on Articles 5 and 6, respectively, of the revised 1960 Security Treaty. 2 Washington, and Beijing. The discussion then explores recent trends of engagement and cooperation by looking at the Sino-Japanese relations post-Koizumi, Hatoyama's diplomatic priorities and Obama's East Asia approach. Finally, the paper examines the primary components of the evolving security order and outlines the EU's involvement. It concludes by arguing that while the US-led security system continues to be a main provider for East Asian stability, it is increasingly complemented by regional multilateralism in non-traditional security areas, which opens up the way for Europe's strengthened engagement with the region. Alliance Enhancement and Japan's Security "Normalisation" A series of external pressures in the 1990s served as a catalyst for a redefinition of the US-Japan alliance and Japan's security policy. The 1994 North Korean nuclear crisis exposed the lack of military operability of the alliance, while the 1996 Taiwan Strait Crisis and the 1998 North Korean missile launch over Japan further heightened Tokyo's regional threat perceptions. The Japan-US response to these developments was the revision in 1997 of the bilateral Defence Guidelines, which committed Japan's Self-Defence Forces (SDF) to extend non-combat rear-area support to the US military during regional security crises. The result was a broadening of the alliance's scope from a narrow focus on Japan's defence, which was its primary focus during the Cold War, to include regional contingencies. Ambiguously defined in the guidelines as "situations in areas surrounding Japan", the new strategic rationale for Tokyo and Washington was to tackle "latent, unspecified sources of instability" in East Asia. 2 As will be discussed later in the paper, this definition led to apprehensions in Beijing regarding the potential inclusion of a Taiwan conflict in the remit of US-Japan security cooperation, signalling also that "Tokyo moved from protégé to partner" 3 of Washington. It was, however, in the wake of 9/11 and during the term of Prime Minister Koizumi that the strategic convergence of Tokyo and Washington on traditional security issues became more accentuated. By strengthening its defence ties with the US, expanding SDF overseas missions and modernising its military capabilities, Japan under Koizumi not only became a more reliable ally to America, arguably exceeding the expectations of the George W. Bush administration (2001-2009), but also increasingly came to be seen by a number of analysts as moving towards security "normalisation". 4 Indeed, Koizumi, a strong advocate of Japan's more robust foreign policy,

World Economy and International Relations, 2014

The article is devoted to the current situation in the Sino-Japanese dispute over Senkaku/Diaoyutai Islands, as well as to its implications for the policy of Tokyo in the national security field. The paper analyzes historical and legal arguments of the parties and shows that one of the main obstacles in resolving the conflict lies in the sphere of national prestige. Possible responses to the challenges Japan faces in connection with the aggravation of the Senkaku problem are observed in three areas: strengthening the security treaty with the United States, the resolution of the conflict within the bilateral framework with China and the diversification of Japan’s own security policy.

Bilateral Perspectives on Regional Security: Australia, Japan and the Asia Pacific Region, 2012

Critical AND Radical Geographies OF THE Social, …