Separated by a common enemy

Already under consideration before North Korea's nuclear test last week, the LDP's push to include plans for an indigenous capability to strike North Korea to preempt an attack on Japan has picked up speed over the past week. On May 26th, Prime Minister Aso Taro reminded reporters that since 1955 preemptive self-defense has been considered legal. The same day a subcommittee of the defense division of the LDP's Policy Research Council approved a draft of proposals to include in this year's National Defense Program Guidelines (NDPG) that calls for preemptive strike capabilities, especially sea-launched cruise missiles. On the 28th, the prime minister once again asserted the legality of preemptive strikes, this time in proceedings in the Upper House Budget Committee.

In the midst of this debate, Mainichi called for a less passionate debate that acknowledges the risks associated with this step, including the feasibility of preemptive strikes against North Korea, the consequences for the US-Japan alliance, and the dangers of arms racing and security dilemmas in East Asia. I second Mainichi's concerns: there are a number of questions that advocates of preemptive strike capabilities have yet to answer, most notably the question of what independent Japanese strike capabilities add to US capabilities.

It now appears that the US government may be contributing to the debate over Japanese preemptive strike capabilities.

Speaking at the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore on Saturday, US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates delivered a message to Japanese and South Korean elites worried about the sturdiness of the US commitment to its East Asian allies:

The Republic of Korea and Japan have since become economic powerhouses with modern, well-trained and equipped armed forces. They are more willing and able to take responsibility for their own defense and assume responsibility for collective security beyond their shores. As a result, we are making adjustments in each country to maintain a posture that is more appropriate to that of a partner, as opposed to a patron. Still, though, a partner fully prepared and able to carry out all – I repeat, all – of our alliance obligations.

This message is ambiguous, welcoming greater allied contributions while reaffirming the US role in defending its allies, especially via extended nuclear deterrence, but Sankei's Komori Yoshisa believes that there is more to the story. The Obama administration, he writes in an ecstatic post at his blog (if two exclamation points are any indication), has signed off on preemptive strike capabilities. His evidence is derived from interviews of Gates and Wallace Gregson, assistant secretary of defense for Asian-Pacific affairs by Asahi's Washington correspondent Kato Yoichi in which both officials appear to accept Japan's having the ability to strike at threats outside its borders. Gates's statement is vague, premised on the notion of "If Japan decides" to acquire more offensive capabilities, i.e. practicing what he has preached about the US being a partner instead of a patron. Gregson, while also reluctant to comment on what is a domestic matter for Japan, was open to a new division of labor between the US and Japan.

I appreciate that the US officials are refraining from overt interference in Japan's internal political discussions, but I think that the US has reasons to be concerned about this shift. (I also think that Komori is fishing for US support for his position. But a pair of quotes in an Asahi article do not a new policy make.)

Apart from the aforementioned reasons for skepticism about Japan's acquiring autonomous strike capabilities, there is another reason why the US should be concerned about this debate in Japan.

Arguably one reason for the difference in US and Japanese approaches to North Korea — apart from geography, the abductees, and domestic politics — is the US alliance with South Korea. Japan's North Korea policy can be conceived solely in terms of Japanese national interests, defending Japanese lives and property from the rogue state next door. The US approach to North Korea is broader. Not only is the US concerned about the threat posed to the US by the possibility of the transfer of nuclear materials, but it is worried to a lesser extent about the durability of the global non-proliferation regime. And it is not only concerned about the threat to Japanese security, but South Korean security as well.

The conflicting demands of the US-South Korea and US-Japan alliances are a source of turbulence in the US-Japan alliance. The US, legally committed to the defense of South Korea, has to think carefully about its words and actions vis-à-vis North Korea — indeed, the US is deterred from launching a preventive and perhaps a preemptive war against North Korea due to the threat posed by North Korean conventional capabilities to Seoul. This lends an air of restraint to US pronouncements on North Korea. As Sam Roggeveen writes, it is possible to read Gates's speech in Singapore as outlining a containment policy in recognition of the considerable obstacles in the way of denuclearization. It also bears recalling the decision by the US government ruling out in advance an attempt to shoot down North Korea's test rocket. That decision has been interpreted by Japanese elites as evidence of the shakiness of the US defense commitment. Maybe so, but it may be more appropriate to view the US not as lacking commitment to Japan's defense but having concerns greater than Japan's defense.

Which is why the US (and South Korea) should be concerned about Japan's acquiring independent preemptive strike capabilities. Japan, not having any alliance relationship with South Korea, will have no reason to take South Korea's security into consideration in confronting North Korea. If the Japanese government detects an imminent launch — with the autonomous surveillance capabilities that conservatives also wanted included in the NDPG — it will be able to act solely on the basis of the direct threat posed by North Korea's missiles to the Japanese homeland. It will not have to consider whether launching a preemptive strike will lead North Korea, fearing a mortal threat to the DPRK regime or perhaps not being able to identify the source of an attack, to lash out against South Korea. Unconstrained by broader regional commitments, Japan could use its new capabilities for "offensive defense" and in the process trigger a broader regional crisis — not out of a lust for conquest, but simply out of a desire to defend itself from an external threat.

This may be an unlikely scenario: after all, it is not clear that the NDPG will include plans for preemptive capabilities, and even if strike capabilities make their way into Japan's defense plans, they may amount to nothing more than a token force. And Japan may not be able to gather the necessary intelligence for attacks against North Korea's mobile launchers.

However unlikely, South Korea ought to reach out to Japan in order to close the gap, in effect forcing Japan to think about broader regional security when it considers the threat posed by North Korea. In other words, it is necessary for South Korea (and the US) to undo the damage done when the Japanese government decided to make recovering the abductees the central goal of Japan's North Korea policy. That decision produced a Japan solipsistic in its approach to North Korea, inclined to view North Korea through its distinct lens, barely considering the perspectives from which other countries have struggled to manage North Korea.

It is encouraging that the US, Japan, and South Korea had their first ever defense ministerial meeting in Singapore Friday. If Japan is to acquire its own strike capabilities, it has to be prepared to wield them responsibly, considering the consequences that saber rattling, to say nothing of preemptive strikes could have for other countries in the region. Regional security and stability is a Japanese national interest, even without formal alliance commitments in East Asia. Realizing that, perhaps Japan's leaders will become more appreciative of US efforts to uphold regional security — especially the defense of South Korea —and less unnerved by US restraint, in turn lessening the need for independent capabilities.

Recommended book: The End of Alliances, Rajan Menon

If there is one affliction that is all too common in all places and times, it is "presentism." People latch on to reality as they know, and refuse to even conceive that another way of doing things might just be possible and even likely. Inertia governs humanity.

Rajan Menon's The End of Alliances (OUP, 2007) attempts to reimagine American foreign policy by suggesting that the postwar alliances between the US and Japan, Korea, and the countries of NATO will break down sooner or later — and that the end of alliances is a good thing.

He is quick to preempt two arguments that critics would fling in his direction immediately. First, the end of alliances does not mean the beginning of antagonistic relationships with former allies. He is talking about breaking down alliances in a strictly formal sense: the military ties, grounded in treaties and entailing forward-deployed US troops and joint commands. Moving beyond formal alliance cooperation does not preclude close and cordial relations, and in the case of Japan, it is not hard to see that the end of a formal military relationship could in fact make for healthier US-Japan relations.

Second, Menon takes care to note that parting ways with allies does not mean the US would necessarily become isolationist. Instead, he characterizes the change as being consistent with the record of paradigm shifts in the grand strategies of the great powers. Great powers respond to changing international conditions, or they cease to be great powers (or states altogether). The US, throughout its history, has had the luxury of a certain degree of insulation from international change and thus its grand-strategic paradigm has changed more infrequently than others, but when the international distribution of power shifts nothing is sacred, and the US has reconfigured its domestic institutions as well as its foreign policies (as it did from 1945 to 1950).

Japan, of course, is no stranger to paradigm shifts of its own: this is the essence of Kenneth Pyle's Japan Rising, which despite the title actually looks at how Japan has changed strategies in response to systemic change. Accordingly, I actually think the Japanese are better prepared to countenance life after the alliance. Even Japanese politicians and thinkers supportive of the alliance recognize that it is useful only as long as it serves Japanese national interests. That seems to be a common thread in each of the sections in Menon's book. Elites and publics in American allies are increasingly capable of seeing that an alliance with the US might in fact not serve their interests. The Bush administration in particular has sparked fears that being close to a US intent on transforming the Middle East could have serious consequences at home (the Spanish argument).

Meanwhile, there are limits to how far the allies are willing to transform their alliances with the US, despite the best efforts of governments since the end of the cold war. NATO's commitment in Afghanistan has been disappointing at best; Japan, for all the hyperbole lavished on its recent policy changes, still is a ways away from cooperating with the US at the same level as NATO; and the US-ROK alliance seems to be ahead of the others in approaching its demise, with US troops being withdrawn, command reverting to South Korea, and Seoul pursuing an independent course with Pyongyang. In some way, each US ally is going to hedge against US entrapment, whether by underspending on defense, pursuing close ties with third countries independent of the US, or publicly disagreeing with Washington. The question is how the US will respond, because in the past the US has given considerable latitude to its allies — the US-Japan alliance would not have lasted if that hadn't been the case. Menon argues that conditions are such that the US will no longer be so tolerant of dissension from its allies, regardless of which party is in power in Washington. With growing commitments around the world, the US will increasingly expect its allies to share the burden in some form.

The problem is that inertia remains a powerful force, and that even if alliances appear increasingly obsolete, policymakers will be unwilling or unable to take the steps necessary to dissolve them. For all the facts and logic Menon musters to support his argument, he still must contend with the desire to leave things unchanged and muddle through, or to take the Lampedusan road and change so that things stay the same. Depending on the results of Korea's forthcoming election, Korea too may end up on the same path, allied to the US, but increasingly in name only. In other words, rather than the end of alliances, we may see the hollowing out of alliances — but as Menon shows, that need not be a cause for alarm.