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

The final factor that has led to the reemergence of the bilateral alliance is not one of geopolitics but of leadership. The relationship and personalities of Japanese Prime Minister Koizumi and US President Bush have been important factors in strengthening the cooperation between the two respective countries. Some have argued that the friendship between the two leaders is very similar to the friendship once shared by US President Ronald Reagan and Japanese Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone, a friendship once dubbed the “Ron-Yasu.” Former US Ambassador to Japan, Howard Baker, traveling with President Bush for a meeting with Prime Minister Koizumi in 2004, noted that, “[a]lmost instantly I could see that they got along well, and that they liked each other. There are a handful of ‘special relationships.’ Clearly the Bush-Koizumi relationship is one of them.”¹⁷ Although a series of security-related issues have brought the US and Japan closer together in the last decade, the extent to which the BushKoizumi friendship has also served to strengthen the bilateral alliance cannot go unmentioned.

Reformulating the Alliance for the 21^st  Century

It is clear that a number of factors in the last decade have served to merge the interests of the United States and Japan. Recently elected Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has joked that the dangerous security environment Japan now finds itself in has forced his country to be “mugged by reality.” While both countries clearly understand their interests and their desire to work with one another, the question remains: what direction should alliance transformation take? A report titled The US and Japan: Advancing Towards a Mature Partnership (2000), written by former US Undersecretary of State Richard Armitage, recommended that the alliance evolve from what had historically been a relationship of “burden sharing” to once based upon “power sharing.”  The report emphasized the “special relationship” between the United States and Britain as a model for the emerging bilateral alliance. However, as the report stipulated, in order to form a more “normal alliance” that could allow for the security cooperation necessary, the Constitutional prohibition placed on Japan’s right to collective self-defense must be lifted.

Article 9 of the US-drafted Japanese Constitution has historically been interpreted to forbid the engagement of Japanese forces in “collective self-defense.” Article 9 reads:

Aspiring sincerely to an international peace based on justice and order, the Japanese people forever renounce war as a sovereign right of the nation and the threat or use of force as means of settling international disputes. 2) In order to accomplish the aim of the preceding paragraph, land, sea, and air forces, as well as other war potential, will never be maintained. The right of belligerency of the state will not be recognized.¹⁸

Since 1991, public opinion in Japan has softened considerably with regards to the strict interpretation of Article 9. Since this time, Japan has allowed its Self-Defense Force (SDF) to participate in non-combat roles in a number of United Nations peacekeeping missions.¹⁹ For his part, Japanese Prime Minister Koizumi worked to revise Japan’s crisis response procedures within the 2001 Anti-Terror Legislation, allowing the SDF to operate outside of East Asia.²⁰ In October 2005 Japan’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) released its proposed draft revision of Article 9. The draft appears to allow Japan to participate in collective security arrangements, stating that the SDF “may act in international cooperation to ensure the international community’s peace and security.”²¹ Although there is disagreement over the LDP’s draft, a significant shift in the debate over Article 9 has ensued that is now situated around the proper way to revise the Constitution, rather than if revision should occur at all. Current Prime Minister Abe has also chosen to make the issue a centerpiece of his political platform. According to Abe, “Japanese society has faced major changes that could not be imagined at the time of the enactment of the Constitution,” and as a result, “ [a] bold review of Japan’s postwar regime and an in-depth discussion of the Constitution toward realizing a ‘new Japan’ would create a spirit for laying a new path to a new era.”²² In May 2007 the Japanese Diet approved a measure that will allow revisions to the Constitution to be considered. For this to occur however, it would require support from 2/3 of the Diet and a majority of the Japanese public.