World War II seems increasingly remote as the 20th century ends, but parts of its legacy are more enduring than the results of the Cold War that followed.
Even now, the 1945 victors still grapple with the appropriate roles in international affairs of what the UN Charter called "enemy states." Although the winners eschewed a punitive peace, they did impose on Germany and Japan still-valid constitutional limits on the use of military force.
These limits are now particularly vexing, given both nations' enormous economic strengths and successful transitions to democracy after military occupation.
It is precisely the enormous disparity between their economic clout and their military weakness that catalyzes the debate, within Japan and Germany as well as among outsiders, about what their proper roles should be.
Are we perhaps afraid that democracy is not so well-rooted as it appears in both countries, and that militarism or fascism might emerge while we remain unsuspecting?
But, should "normal" countries not take as much responsibility for their own self-defense, and their collective obligations to their alliance partners, as their economies warrant?
From the perspective of their allies, many ask: are Germany and Japan "free riders," benefiting from the protection of US-led alliance systems without really bearing equitably in the burdens?
At least superficially, Germany appears to be the easier case and it certainly was when still divided between East and West.
Locked into both NATO and the European Union, Germany's scope for truly independent politico-military action appears to be insignificant.
The Warsaw Pact threat is history and no one now proclaims more loudly than Germans that they are "Europeans," and that the EU itself is "a state under construction" to replace traditional nation-states and the balance of power.
For many Germans, the real hope is that the role of military force in international affairs is fading, to be replaced by comfortable legal structures and institutions that will never again confront them with the hard choice between distasteful war and unsatisfactory peace.
Many in Japan share this aspiration that the inevitable competition among nations will be confined to the economic and political spheres. Unfortunately for both countries, and for their counterpart dreamers around the world, reality is not so comforting. Even the passing decade has been one of actual and potential conflict, starting with the Persian Gulf War, continuing through the emergence of two new nuclear states, Pakistan and India, and concluding with wars in the former Yugoslavia and Chechnya.
For Japan, the best reminder of the proximity of military conflict is just a few miles away on the divided Korean Peninsula.
North Korea's rogue regime has tested ballistic missiles that can reach every major Japanese city and no one discounts the possibility that the North has or soon will have nuclear warheads or other weapons of mass destruction for their delivery systems.
Not far away, Japan's former possession of Taiwan is locked in a tense confrontation with China and Taiwan's upcoming March 18 presidential election virtually guarantees continuing military posturings.
During Taiwan's last presidential election in 1996, China launched missiles and bellicose rhetoric in an unsuccessful attempt at voter intimidation.
Unlike Germany, not only does Japan abide in a substantially more threatening environment, it lacks a real framework of alliances in which to ground its ambitions and quiet its neighbors' fears and memories. For many reasons, these memories in South Korea, China and other parts of Asia are rawer than those in Europe.
The US-Japan alliance, including the enhanced Joint Defense Guidelines that the Japanese Diet has recently legislated and theater missile defense systems are thus an important stabilizing and reassuring factor in East Asia. But the new guidelines themselves are ambiguous on many key points, particularly involving hostilities around Taiwan, foreshadowing important debates to come in both Japan and the US.
In recent years, serious Japanese strategic thinkers like former Ambassador Hisahiko Okazaki have become much more public in discussing Japan's options.
Much of the concern motivating Japanese politicians in particular is the realization that China's economic reforms and the growing prospects of Korean reunification, combined with Japan's lengthy inability to recover fully from the collapse of the "bubble economy," mean that Japan's pre-eminence in Asia is no longer unquestioned.
These concerns explain in part Japan's willingness to enhance defense cooperation with the US, but also explain its consideration of more independent military capabilities.
John Bolton is a senior vice president of the American Enterprise Institution.
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