Japan Taking Steps to Ensure Its Independence

Don’t look now but Japan is developing a more independent military capability just in case its alliance with the United States should someday fall apart.

That is the blunt conclusion drawn by the U.S. intelligence community in two reports over the last three months. These soberly written studies say that Japan is now “hedging its bets” by strengthening its security ties to the United States while preparing for a time when Japan may stand on its own.

These American intelligence findings are remarkable because they run contrary to the usual, sleep-inducing bromides about Japan that have been repeated over the years by American presidents, the State Department and U.S. ambassadors in Tokyo.

The standard American line is that the military alliance between Japan and the United States can and will endure for as long as anyone can imagine. Typically, when Japanese Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi visited Washington last May, President Clinton spoke of “our partnership for the new century.”

Contrast Clinton’s breezy certainty with the observations of the U.S. intelligence community. After listing other wrenching changes that could reshape the future of East Asia, such as the collapse of North Korea or a war between China and Taiwan, one of the intelligence studies asserts:

“An abrupt shift in Japan’s role and posture is also possible. Japan has a history of changing directions fairly quickly and dramatically. The right stimulus could generate a reorientation in Japan’s approach to the U.S., the region and to national security.”

These two intelligence reports, which are unclassified, were written by the National Intelligence Council, the umbrella organization that coordinates the analytic work of the CIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency and other U.S. intelligence shops.

The Intelligence Council has conducted two conferences in recent months on trends in Japan and in Northeast Asia, each time bringing together intelligence analysts, U.S. government officials, scholars and other experts from outside the government. The council distributed its summaries of the conclusions to specialists on Asia.

The most important finding was that there is “new strategic uncertainty” in Japan. One council report says that Japan is unsure “whether its importance to the U.S. is waning and whether U.S. and Japanese security interests are diverging.”

Underlying these changes in Japan were the events of the fateful summer of 1998.

First, Clinton chose to visit China for eight days without stopping in Japan--thus reinforcing Japanese fears that Washington cares much more about China than about Japan. Second, North Korea fired a new missile over Japanese airspace. Tokyo thought that “the U.S. reaction to this major security shock [was] rather nonchalant,” notes one of the intelligence studies.

The intelligence study lists deeper, broader causes as well. A prolonged economic slump has caused Japan to suffer a “loss of prestige and influence,” the report says. And the 50-year dominance of Japan’s Liberal Democratic Party is disintegrating.

Japan’s desire for greater autonomy from the United States shows up in a number of ways, the intelligence study found. Most important, Japan recently decided to develop its own independent reconnaissance satellites for intelligence-gathering, refusing to rely on U.S. satellites that would be much cheaper. It is also seeking other new military hardware, such as aerial refueling capability for its jet fighters.

According to some experts, Japan’s foreign policy has become more assertive. Obuchi refused to give in to Chinese pressure to make a new apology for Japan’s role in World War II. Last spring, Japan fired warning shots and actively pursued two North Korean ships that had ventured into Japanese waters.

The Intelligence Council report points out that Obuchi’s government decided that the economic summit of the world’s leading industrial nations would take place in Okinawa next June “contrary to the desire of the U.S.,” which worries that such an event could rekindle past tensions over American military bases in Okinawa.

The question remains, of course, whether these changes in Japan are for the better.

Some Americans worry about the resurgence of Japanese nationalism or militarism. The Japanese parliament has just granted formal legal status to its flag and anthem, casting aside past inhibitions on such assertions of patriotism. Japanese voters elected ardent nationalist Shintiro Ishihara to be governor of Tokyo prefecture last spring.

Yet such U.S. fears seem excessive. What we are witnessing is nothing more than an end to Japan’s nearly helpless Cold War dependence on the United States to protect its security.

“From the U.S. point of view, the days when we treated Japan like a defense protectorate are over,” says Mike Mochizuki, a Japan expert at the Brookings Institution.

Japan finally is acting like a normal country that can conduct its own foreign policy and defense. That’s an extremely significant change, and one that Americans should notice.