Will Japan Stand in Splendid Isolation?

QUESTION ASKED:

 Will Japan Stand in Splendid Isolation?

A man of the right, Abe has always stated that his mission was to make Japan a full-fledged sovereign state, free of the vestiges of wartime defeat, like Article 9 of the Japanese constitution, which banned war as an instrument of Japanese foreign policy. Moving away from the U.S. alliance was not, however, one of his priorities. Rather, his strategy has been to use the alliance with the United States to rearm Japan and enable its military to play a greater regional role in containing China, which is the key aim of Japan’s grand strategy.
Now, suddenly, owing to the unpredictable nature of democratic politics in its key allies, Abe and the Japanese elite are being forced to confront fundamental issues that had long been decided by Washington: Tokyo’s relationships with China, Korea, Russia, and Southeast Asia.
For Japan’s elite, it was humiliating to be a semi-sovereign state. But it had its benefits. Among them was Japan’s being able to become an economic superpower in the four decades since the end of the war, partly because it invested very little in defense. And it was comfortable. When things went right, like the U.S.-China rapprochement in the 1970s, Japan could share in the benefits. When things went wrong, like the war in Vietnam, Washington was there to blame, even as Japanese businesses made money from the war.
The Japanese are beginning to realize that being fully sovereign means dealing with headaches for which someone else had to take prime responsibility for over 70 years.

A while back, when asked what the future might hold for aging Japan, I joked, “Picture a giant nursing home, guarded by those Sentinel robots from The Matrix.”
That might end up being more true than amusing.

10Posted at 7:37 am by Stephen Green