Are the US and Japan ready for a more equal, mature security partnership? Signs are increasingly pointing to "yes" although both sides still seem more comfortable paying lip service to this concept than to actually pursuing it.
In the past, bilateral strategic dialogue all too often took the form of Washington pronouncing its "strategic wisdom" which Japanese officials then politely accepted. The two sides have always been capable of heated debate on technical and tactical (as well as economic) issues. But, when it came to grand strategy, traditionally it was a one-sided
dialogue.
This is changing. When Japanese officials call for more strategic dialogue today, they actually mean it. This came through loud and clear during the March 2000 US-Japan San Francisco Security Seminar, an annual gathering of current and former officials and security analysts from the US and Japan. While few participants argued that the relationship was in trouble, one common lament was the lack of real dialogue on the issues that matter most.
The most obvious of these is the prospects for conflict across the Taiwan Strait. Realistically speaking, Japan would not have the luxury of sitting this one out if hostilities erupted and the US choose to intervene; at a minimum, Japanese political and logistical support would certainly be expected. Japan has a vital stake in how Washington deals with Beijing, both on a day-to-day basis and especially during times of crisis. Yet, from a Japanese perspective, US consultation on its China policy is severely lacking.
There are a host of other issues where greater strategic dialogue is needed. What is the future role of US forces and bases in Asia, especially if and when Korean Peninsula tensions are reduced? How can Japan most effectively and least provocatively contribute to enhanced regional security? How can both sides more effectively cooperate on a wide variety of global issues ranging from non-proliferation and disarmament to environmental threats to regional economic recovery and stability?
The list goes on and on! The issues, for the most part, are not new. What is new is an increased Japanese willingness, if not a sense of urgency, to debate them.
A variety of factors have contributed to this increased Japanese willingness to enter into a strategic debate. In part, it reflects attitudinal changes associated with Japan's gradual yet steady quest to be seen as a more "normal" nation.
Related to, and helping to drive this is generational change. The emerging post-war generation of Japanese officials and parliamentarians are not as burdened with the past as their fathers and grandfathers. They do not deny Japan's early 20th century history. But, they do refuse to be personally branded by events that happened long before they were born. While lectures about the past from bitter neighbors caused their fathers to offer more and more apologies (and to write bigger and bigger checks), this generation considers such comments as insulting, especially when they come from countries like China that have benefited greatly in recent years from Japanese largess.
There is another, more troubling, reason the Japanese are insisting on more strategic dialogue -- they increasingly doubt Washington's strategic wisdom. US inconsistencies and the perceived trend toward US unilateralism have Japan worried.
Does the US still share Japan's commitment to arms control and disarmament and global non-proliferation?
Does anyone in Washington care what a unilateral US rejection of the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty means to Japan?
Will the US Congress push America (and Japan) into a new Cold War, this time with China (or with an increasingly alienated Russia)?
Will the current or next US administration resist the dual temptation of viewing Beijing either as its enemy or its strategic partner and instead follow Japan's model of more open-eyed constructive but cautious engagement?
Will the Congress or future administration mandate a more confrontational policy toward North Korea just as Pyongyang, in the eyes of many Japanese, appears ready to cautiously emerge from its self-imposed shell?
Washington appears both more capable and more willing to take actions unilaterally that can profoundly affect Japan's national security interests. Tokyo has finally figured out that it needs to at least try to insert its voice as issues that seriously impact its future are being debated.
There is, of course, an equally important companion question: If Japan speaks out, will anyone listen? Is Washington ready for a meaningful (ie, potentially contentious) strategic dialogue with Japan?
Again signs tentatively point to yes. Within the current administration, at least among those who focus on Asia, there appears to be a genuine desire for a more reasoned debate on these issues. Many are as interested as their Japanese counterparts in seeing the US answer the above questions correctly.
Those responsible for alliance maintenance have long believed that the impact on "America's most important bilateral relationship, bar none" should be an essential element in any Washington debate over core security issues. (How far up the Clinton/Gore administration's chain of command this thinking prevails remains to be seen, however.)
On the Republican side, Ambassador Richard Armitage's call, at the San Francisco Security Seminar, for a "new covenant" between the US and Japan is even more encouraging. Armitage, a former assistant secretary of defense and current member of George W. Bush's advisory team, envisions this covenant as encompassing economic and financial as well as geopolitical and security issues. It represents, he said, a vital step in developing a "mature security partnership."
The time has clearly come to begin the strategic dialogue. The challenge for Japan, amid the noise of the American presidential campaign, is to shout loud enough to be heard.
It then behooves Washington to listen.
Ralph A. Cossa is executive director of the Pacific Forum CSIS in Honolulu [pacforum@lava.net], a non-profit, foreign policy research institute affiliated with the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington, DC and is senior editor of "Comparative Connections," a new quarterly electronic journal focused on Asia-Pacific bilateral relationships [www.csis.org/pacfor/ccejournal.html].
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