Japan S Economic Power And Security

Is Japan re-emerging as a normal, or even a great, military power in regional and global security affairs? This Adelphi Paper assesses the overall trajectory of Japan’s security policy over the last decade, and the impact of a changing Japanese military posture on the stability of East Asia. The paper examines Japan’s evolving security debate, set against the background of a shifting international environment and domestic policymaking system; the status of Japan’s national military capabilities and constitutional prohibitions; post-Cold War developments in the US Japan alliance; and Japan’s role in multilateral regional security dialogue, UN PKO, and US-led coalitions of the willing. It concludes that Japan is undoubtedly moving along the trajectory of becoming a more assertive military power, and that this trend has been accelerated post-9/11. Japan is unlikely, though, to channel its military power through greatly different frameworks than at present. Japan will opt for the enhanced, and probably inextricable, integration of its military capabilities into the US Japan alliance, rather than pursuing options for greater autonomy or multilateralism. Japan’s strengthened role as the defensive shield for the offensive sword of US power projection will only serve to bolster US military hegemony in East Asia and globally.

In this timely study, international scholars provide an in-depth exploration of the forces shaping the balance of power in the international political arena. The contributors examine the changing relationship between economic, military, and political bases of power as they define national security. Also detailed are U.S. hegemony and its subsequent decline as well as the rise of Japan as a world economic power. The capacity of Japan to play a leading role is examined as it, too, tries to adjust to a changed world.

After World War II, Japan reemerged in the arena of international relations as an almost exclusively economic power without military might or territorial ambitions. Within some thirty years it transformed itself from a semideveloped state to a technological superpower with an economy that today is the second largest in the free world, next only to the United States, accounting for over 10 percent of total global production. The management of a rapidly growing industrial state with little domestic supply of resources necessarily requires great skill in the difficult task of maintaining sufficient access to overseas markets to sustain internal economic activity. Not surprisingly, then, Japan's foreign relations from World War II to the present have been heavily conditioned by economic considerations. This collection of original articles investigates how the economic growth of Japan has affected the pattern of its foreign relations and where and to what extent economic principles have had to be compromised for political, legal, cultural, or ideological reasons. The contributors, experts on Japan's economy, politics, and foreign relations, analyze the state of Japan's foreign relations with North America, the EC, Oceania, the Soviet Union, COMECON, China, ASEAN, the Middle East, Latin America, Africa, Korea, and Taiwan, focusing on developments in the last seven years and predicting likely trends in the 1980s.

Japan seeks economic competitiveness vis-a-vis the West and economic dominance in Asia, but it mainly competes through cooperative use of economic resources, which facilitates realization of the goals of partner nations. This book studies Japan's balance between the United States and East Asia by focusing on the use of economic power - defense spending, consumption, and investment - to advance Japan's political and strategic as well as economic interests. It also investigates Japan's direct use of economic resources, namely, aid and sanctions, and by extension, discusses Japan's relations with the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and the Asian Development Bank.

Long constrained as a security actor by constitutional as well as external factors, Japan now increasingly is called to play a greater role in stabilizing both the Asia-Pacific region and the entire international system. Japan's Security Agenda explores the country's diplomatic, political, military, and economic concerns and policies within this new context.

This volume is dedicated to the memory of Klaus E. Knorr. Thisis fitting for a number of reasons. The collaborative work herewas done under the auspices of the Center of International Studiesat Princeton University, which Klaus Knorr directed from 1961until 1968. The concerns of this book are to analyze the relationshipsamong economic and military power and national security; to explorethe ways economic power and economic decline relate to internationalhegemony; and to examine our understanding of concepts such aspower, security, and burden-sharing. These concerns ranked highon Klaus Knorr's research agenda during his productive and fruitfullife.

An international team of ten specialists in Japanese and American foreign relations address the crucial question: what role should Japan play in international affairs? This question has not found a fully satisfactory answer since the forced opening to foreign contacts in the mid-nineteenth century. Having copied foreign models and achieved a series of stunning successes -- and some failures -- in many aspects of private and public life, Japan today stands at a pinnacle of economic power and affluence. Despite this, both economics and politics are undergoing major strains and changes during the 1990s, and the quest for true internationalization is fraught with problems and only partially fulfilled. This book is a joint project of the American University in Washington and Ritsumeikan University in Kyoto.