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| Image: Flickr User - Official U.S. Navy Page |
By Jeffrey W. Hornung
The new defense guidelines have the potential to mark a new era in the U.S-Japan alliance.
All eyes were on Washington last week, for the visit by Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. One of the focal points was a document that altered security ties between the U.S. and Japan. On Monday, the two countries released new guidelines for defense cooperation, outlining the general framework and policy direction for the roles and missions of the two countries’ militaries. This new document lays out a vision for the alliance that is rooted in bilateralism but is global in scope. Importantly, Japan has emerged as a willing partner in many roles it once considered taboo. Together, this translates into a stronger alliance with broader functions and geographical scope. To quote U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter, the updated guidelines will “transform the U.S.-Japan alliance.”
The U.S.-Japan defense guidelines had become antiquated. First written in 1978, they specified the alliance division of labor during the Cold War in defense of Japan. The fall of the Berlin Wall meant the logic and assumptions behind them no longer held, as multipolarity replaced Cold War bipolarity and America’s brief unipolar moment. As the Soviet threat to Japan evaporated, broader regional concerns over the Taiwan Strait or renewed conflict on the Korean Peninsula emerged. The allies recognized that their relationship was not adapted to this post-Cold War security environment, as there was no operative framework for Japan to support the U.S. in these scenarios. This led to their revision in 1997.
A similar logic drove the current revision. The two allies have expanded their security cooperation over the past eighteen years in ways that were not spelled out in the 1997 revisions. This includes refueling missions in Afghanistan, anti-piracy missions off Somalia, and ballistic missile defense in Japan. Importantly, the regional security challenges of 2015 are very different from those of 1997, with China’s pursuit of anti-access and area denial capabilities and salami-slicing activities in the maritime domain topping the list of current security concerns. Japan and the U.S. needed to upgrade their relationship to better respond to today’s challenges, basing it on the reality of nearly two decades of policy changes and operational experiences. A number of important changes stand out.
Read the full story at The Diplomat