Converging Interests and Shared Values: The U.S.-Japan Bilateral Alliance Enters the 21 st Century

New Security Environment

After reaching its lowest point in fifty years, the US-Japan alliance began to recover during the late 1990s, as Japan found itself facing a number of emerging threats. First, Japanese concern over China’s military build-up continued to intensify. This culminated in March 1996, when China attempted to intimidate Taiwan by test-firing ballistic missiles off the Taiwanese coast. As American Enterprise Institute Resident Fellow Dan Blumenthal notes, following this incident, “Japanese policymakers had to face the fact that China was serious about developing capabilities to fight a war with the United States over Taiwan.”¹⁰ Not only did Japanese defense planners have to begin planning for potential evacuations of the tens of thousands of Japanese who live in Taiwan, but also serious consideration now had to be given to what the Japanese role might be in such a conflict.¹¹

Second, in August 1998 Japan suffered another shock when North Korea fired a Taepodong 1 missile over mainland Japan. In addition to embarrassing Japan for its lackluster preparedness and underestimation of North Korean military capabilities, the incident forced the country to question its strategic position within an unpredictable East Asian region. Patrick Cronin of the U.S. Institute of Peace in Washington noted at the time that, “[t]he alarm bells have gone off in Japan. The Japanese have felt again their sense of vulnerability.”¹² Following the incident, pressure on the Japanese government over the Okinawa issue subsided as the Japanese people again recognized the strategic importance of the US military presence. Furthermore, a debate ensued within Japan that ultimately led to the launching of its very first spy satellite and the partnering with the US to build a missile defense shield.¹³

Converging Interests 

Since the turn of the century, both Japan and the US have come to recognize their converging interests and the importance of reconstructing their alliance to meet the many challenges found in the complicated Asian strategic environment. Following the attacks of September 11, 2001, Japan, under the leadership of Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, made the decision to take on a greater strategic role internationally. James Schoff of The Institute for Foreign Policy Analysis writes that “Japan [placed] a primacy on the bilateral alliance at the expense of other foreign policy initiatives and [allowed] the alliance to expand internationally.”14 Japan assisted the US during Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan, not only with financial expenditures, as in the past, but also with a contingent of support ships and AEGIS destroyers to help protect and refuel coalitions ships operating in the Indian Ocean. Prime Minister Koizumi also took the even more controversial step of supporting Operation Iraqi Freedom by dispatching troops to assist in noncombatant, reconstruction roles. This move signified to many that Japan had chosen to place an emphasis on the alliance, even if an international consensus did not support US action.¹⁵

During the second North Korean nuclear crisis in the winter of 2002-2003, Japan again chose to stand by the US. When Pyongyang was found to have cheated on the 1994 Agreed Framework deal, which prohibited the DPRK from enriching plutonium, tensions on the Korean Peninsula were once again heightened. Unlike in 1994, Japan chose this time to stand with the United States at the United Nations and during the following months when the framework for the Six-Party Talks was established. During the talks, Japan depended on the US to keep its two main concerns on the agenda – the North Korean medium-range No-Dong missiles and the abduction of thirteen Japanese citizens by North Korea since the 1970s.

Japan has also recognized the potential challenges posed by a strengthening China and looked to the US as its best means to counter this threat. Over the last decade, China has spent considerable resources expanding its military capacity: 700 short-range missiles have been aimed at Taiwan; a modernizing Navy with diesel and nuclear submarines; and fourth-generation aircraft purchased from Russia. In an unprecedented move, Japan’s National Defense Program Guidelines (NDPG), approved in 2004, took the step of recognizing China as a security problem: “China […] is attempting to expand its sphere of maritime activity while driving the modernization of its nuclear and missile forces as well as naval and air forces. Japan needs to pay attention to these trends.”¹⁶ Both the US Quadrennial Defense Review (2006) and Global Posture Review (2004) also levied similar concerns over China’s military buildup.