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31. Japan's reconceptualization of national security: the impact of globalization

Author:
Bhubhindar Singh and Philip Shetler-Jones
Publication Date:
09-2011
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Relations of the Asia-Pacific
Institution:
Japan Association of International Relations
Abstract:
Japan has steadily extended its military reach from a domestic zone of defense against territorial invasion in the late 1950s, through regional security policy in the late 1970s to what has now become a globally scaled military role. This re-expansion is perceived by some as evidence of revived militaristic ambitions, and by others as subservience to the US global strategy. However, taking the cue from Japan's 2004 National Defence Programme Guideline (New Taikō), this paper assesses the role globalization has played in this territorial expansion. The impact of globalization is evident in the double expansion of Japan's national security conception in geographical terms and self-defense forces roles in global security. These 'expansions' are studied through two key elements of globalization – the deterritorialization of complex relations of interdependence between states (security globality) and the inter-penetrating nature of these relations blur the boundary between foreign and domestic spaces (intermestic space).
Topic:
Globalization
Political Geography:
United States and Japan

32. Cooperation, Competition, and the Search for Community: Asia's New Multilateralism

Author:
Sheldon W. Simon
Publication Date:
09-2011
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Relations of the Asia-Pacific
Institution:
Japan Association of International Relations
Abstract:
A successful edited volume not only requires that the editors recruit qualified specialists for each chapter but also that those editors integrate the separate analyses so that the book displays a coherence beyond the sum of its individual parts. Michael Green and Bates Gill have succeeded admirably on both dimensions: enlisting renowned Asian country specialists and experts on the various types of cooperation that characterize Asian multilateralism. Moreover, their Introduction illuminates how these types relate to one another. Over the past 45 years, Asia has experienced a plethora of multilateral political, economic, and security arrangements – some long-lived and well-institutionalized (ASEAN) and others formed to deal with a specific situation such as the Core Group that provided aid to those countries devastated by the December 2004 tsunami. There is considerable overlap in states ' memberships among these bodies, though they tend to group in a Southeast Asian-led formation centered in ASEAN and a Northeast Asian coterie dealing with North Korea in the Six-Party Talks. An additional transnational dimension may be found in nontraditional security such as infectious diseases, criminal and terrorist activities, piracy and human trafficking, all of which cross national boundaries and are generally seen by Asian states as susceptible to cooperative action. Traditional, hard security concerns – territorial disputes, historical animosities, and resource conflicts – on the other hand, though discussed in a number of multilateral settings, produce a great deal of rhetoric but very little resolution. Another concern, especially for great powers such as the United States and India, is whether East Asian multilateral groups will be inclusive or exclusive – trans-Pacific or Asia only.
Topic:
Economics, Globalization, and National Security
Political Geography:
United States, Japan, and Asia

33. Rethinking Japanese Public Opinion and Security: From Pacifism to Realism?

Author:
Wilhelm M. Vosse
Publication Date:
09-2011
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Relations of the Asia-Pacific
Institution:
Japan Association of International Relations
Abstract:
Until the Japanese government's decision to participate in the so-called war on terror by first sending maritime self-defense force (SDF) ships to refueling missions in the Indian Ocean in 2001, and then by dispatching ground self-defense force troops to Southern Iraq, the overall view of Japanese security policy had been that it was constrained by article 9 as well as strong public support for perhaps pacifist attitudes. However, these developments and, so it seemed, fundamental changes in Japanese security posture after 9/11 have been taken as evidence that either antimilitarism was vanning, or that the Japanese government, particularly under Prime Minister Koizumi, had been successful in convincing the Japanese public that it was the time for a fundamental shift in Japan's security policy (Green, 2001; Hughes, 2009; Samuels, 2007). This book challenges this assumption and tries to prove that public opinion is not only stable, but also rational, and that it does continue to constrain Japanese government security policy decisions.
Topic:
Security and Government
Political Geography:
Japan, Iraq, and India

34. The absence of non-western IR theory in Asia reconsidered

Author:
Ching-Chang Chen
Publication Date:
01-2011
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Relations of the Asia-Pacific
Institution:
Japan Association of International Relations
Abstract:
This paper critically examines an ongoing debate in International Relations (IR) as to why there is apparently no non-Western IR theory in Asia and what should be done to 'mitigate' that situation. Its central contention is that simply calling for greater incorporation of ideas from the non-West and contributions by non-Western scholars from local 'vantage points' does not make IR more global or democratic, for that would do little to transform the discipline's Eurocentric epistemological foundations. Re-envisioning IR in Asia is not about discovering or producing as many 'indigenous' national schools of IR as possible, but about reorienting IR itself towards a post-Western era that does not reinforce the hegemony of the West within (and without) the discipline. Otherwise, even if local scholars could succeed in crafting a 'Chinese (or Indian, Japanese, Korean, etc.) School', it would be no more than constructing a 'derivative discourse' of Western modernist social science.
Topic:
International Relations
Political Geography:
Japan, India, Asia, and Korea

35. The origin of trilateralism? The US–Japan–Australia security relations in the 1990s

Author:
Tomohiko Satake
Publication Date:
01-2011
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Relations of the Asia-Pacific
Institution:
Japan Association of International Relations
Abstract:
This paper analyzes US–Japan–Australia security relations in the 1990s. Since the establishment of the Trilateral Strategic Dialogue (TSD) in 2005, there have been a growing number of studies which focus on the TSD or bilateral security relations between Japan and Australia (Terada, 2006; Williams and Newman, 2006; Tow et al., 2007; The National Bureau of Asian Research, 2008). The announcement of the Joint Security Declaration between Japan and Australia in 2006 also received wide attention from researchers interested in the security policies of each country or Asia-Pacific security in general ( Bisley, 2006; Sato, 2008; Cook and Shearer, 2009). These studies focus mainly on the current development of US–Japan–Australia or Japan–Australia security relations in various dimensions, such as peacekeeping, non-proliferation, disaster relief, and other forms of multilateral cooperation. In particular, many studies emphasize that Japanese and Australian contributions to the US-led 'global war on terror' significantly upgraded their respective alliance relations, leading to the creation of the TSD (Jain and Bruni, 2006; Wolton, 2006). In comparison, few studies exclusively focus on security relations between the three countries in the 1990s.
Topic:
Bilateral Relations
Political Geography:
Japan and Australia

36. Japan's alliance diversification: a comparative analysis of the Indian and Australian strategic partnerships

Author:
Thomas S. Wilkins
Publication Date:
01-2011
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Relations of the Asia-Pacific
Institution:
Japan Association of International Relations
Abstract:
As part of its movement toward 'normal country' status, Japan has begun to engage in a policy of alliance/alignment restructuring and diversification. This is a twin-track policy – the reconfiguration of existing allied relationships and the creation of new cooperative bilateral links. In recent years, Tokyo has deepened its ties with the United States and Australia on the one hand, while cultivating new partners such as India, as well as several Southeast Asian states. This article examines the nature and dynamics of two of the most important new strategic partnerships: India and Australia. Through a comparative analysis, it seeks to account for their formation, structure, and prospects using a specifically designed model of 'strategic partnership' drawn from Organizational Theories literature. It concludes that these strategic partnerships represent a major platform of a more robust and comprehensive security policy on the part of Japan, forged in response to a shifting international environment in the Asia-Pacific region.
Topic:
Climate Change
Political Geography:
United States, Japan, India, Australia, Tokyo, Southeast Asia, and Asia-Pacific

37. Nishida Kitaro and Japan's interwar foreign policy: war involvement and culturalist political discourse

Author:
Kosuke Shimizu
Publication Date:
01-2011
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Relations of the Asia-Pacific
Institution:
Japan Association of International Relations
Abstract:
Takashi Inoguchi once stated that Japan's international relations theory is characterized by its exclusive disciplinary orientation toward constructivism. Nishida Kitaro is widely recognized as one of such constructivists. In this article, I argue that Nishida's theory of world history was based on the perception of subjectivity of contradiction, and was thus exclusively culture-oriented. By emphasizing cultural aspects, he tried to disturb the coherence and consistency of the colonialist discourse on which the dominant regime of Japan of the time was entirely reliant. However, because Nishida's theory of world history completely lacked the recognition of the material relations of the colonizer and the colonized, as a direct consequence of his understanding of the term 'culture', his attempts were unrealized.
Topic:
International Relations and Culture
Political Geography:
Japan

38. The Search for Reconciliation: Sino-Japanese and German-Polish Relations since World War II

Author:
Yoko Iwama
Publication Date:
01-2011
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Relations of the Asia-Pacific
Institution:
Japan Association of International Relations
Abstract:
Yinan He adds yet another book on the subject of post-war reconciliation. The aim of her book is to examine the validity of two theories, that of standard realist theory of international relations, and that of 'national mythmaking theory', in explaining the process and outcome of reconciliation between countries. For this purpose, she examines two post-World War II cases, Sino-Japanese and (West) German-Polish relations. In the end, Yinan He wishes to establish why reconciliation is achieved in some cases and not in others.
Topic:
International Relations
Political Geography:
Japan, China, Germany, and Tokyo

39. Introduction

Author:
G. John Ikenberry and Takashi Inoguchi
Publication Date:
09-2010
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Relations of the Asia-Pacific
Institution:
Japan Association of International Relations
Abstract:
Over the last half century, the United States has been a dominating presence in East Asia. In the shadow of the Cold War, a regional order took shape organized around an array of bilateral alliances and an open trade system – all tied to the United States. In this American-led regional hegemonic order, the United States provided security through security agreements and the forward deployment of its forces while it supported the expansion and integration of East Asian countries in the context of an open multilateral world economy. The United States–Japan alliance was the cornerstone of this regional order. In the background, the East Asian region was nested within the wider Cold War-era American-led Western order. After the Cold War ended, this Pax Americana was extended outward throughout the globe. Alliances, free trade, multilateral institutions, democratic community, and American hegemony all went together.
Political Geography:
United States, Japan, and East Asia

40. The politics of coordination and miscoordination in the post-Cold War United States–Japan alliance: from a Japanese perspective

Author:
Motoshi Suzuki
Publication Date:
09-2010
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Relations of the Asia-Pacific
Institution:
Japan Association of International Relations
Abstract:
Alliance coordination involves a multiplicity of equilibria, the resolution of which depends on institutions and knowledge known as focal-point effects. Since the end of the Cold War, the alliance has expanded its missions despite difficult coordination problems by taking advantage of multiple focal factors. Although common threat perceptions have continued to serve as a central focal factor, other factors, such as shared democratic values and international norms, have been used to legitimate the alliance's missions that are beyond what the perceived threats could justify. To be a viable focal factor, common threat perceptions, democratic values, and international norms need to be backed up by the causal knowledge that alliance coordination has stabilizing, confidence-building, and legitimating effects on regional and international security, respectively. More recently, however, the allies' perceptions are becoming more complex and divergent, putting increasing pressures on the other factors for maintaining and expanding the missions. Although democratic values and international norms could generate diversionary effects in broadening Japan's policy horizon, this need not be feared insofar as it contributes to the alliance's basic goal.
Political Geography:
United States and Japan