Securing Japan: Tokyo's Grand Strategy and the Future of East Asia (Cornell Studies in Security Affairs)

About this book

For the past sixty years the U.S. government has assumed that Japans security policies would reinforce American interests in Asia. The political and military profile of Asia is changing rapidly however. Koreas nuclear program Chinas rise and the relative decline of U.S. power have commanded strategic review in Tokyo just as these matters have in Washington. What is the next step for Japans security policy? Will confluence with U.S. interestsand the alliancesurvive intact? Will the policy be transformed? Or will Japan become more autonomous? Richard J. Samuels demonstrates that over the last decade a revisionist group of Japanese policymakers has consolidated power. The Koizumi government of the early 2000s took bold steps to position Japans military to play a global security role. It left its successor the Abe government to further define and legitimate Japans new grand strategy a project well under way-and vigorously contested both at home and in the region. Securing Japan begins by tracing the history of Japans grand strategyfrom the Meiji rulers who recognized the intimate connection between economic success and military advance to the Konoye consensus that led to Japans defeat in World War II and the postwar compact with the United States. Samuels shows how the ideological connections across these wars and agreements help explain todays debate. He then explores Japans recent strategic choices arguing that Japan will ultimately strike a balance between national strength and national autonomy a position that will allow it to exist securely without being either too dependent on the United States or too vulnerable to threats from China. Samuelss insights into Japanese history society and politics have been honed over a distinguished career and enriched by interviews with policymakers and original archival research. Securing Japan is a definitive assessment of Japanese security policy and its implications for the future of East Asia.