Japan is distancing itself from the US and affirming its own foreign policy. Is this the start of a new political order?
As Yukiya Amano, a Japanese, takes over the Director General’s post in the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), what should have been actually a booster shot for America’s fight against renegade nuclear loose cannon countries like Iran and North Korea has become more of a hanging question, with policy circles undecided on whether America actually supports Amano or not – in fact, the question is, does America support Japan anymore or not? The immediate provocation goes back to an article published in Washington Post on October 22, 2009, where a US State Department official was quoted radically stating, “The hardest thing right now [for America] is not China, it’s Japan.”
For a country which has been a staunch ally of US for more than a sixty years and for a country which still calls its armed forces as self defence force, thanks to the stigma of the 2nd World War and the restrictions imposed on it by the Security Council, one might ordinarily find it difficult to gauge as to what might have provoked such a change of heart among the US officials. The growing Chinese military and economic prowess and its hush-hush global ambitions are known to many. But is Japan, the country with the second largest economy in the world and one which till now has deliberately never leveraged its economic prowess for military ambitions, about to change?
To understand the changing paradigm of this relationship, one has to take into account the fact that one of the key aspects of the Japan-US relationship was and is the Japan-US Security Treaty. This treaty signed in 1951 and coming into force in 1952, though going through several reforms, continues to be the pillar of bondage between the world’s top two economies. With changing times, the end of Cold War and a phoenix like rise of China, this relationship too was supposed to go for a change for the positive. In Asia, US had always consistently seen Japan as not only a trusted ally but one which would be of great help to contain China both economically and military. The massive US military base in the Southern Japanese islands of Okinawa, being in the proximity of Taiwan and China, essentially works as a safety valve to keep China and others on leash.
As Yukiya Amano, a Japanese, takes over the Director General’s post in the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), what should have been actually a booster shot for America’s fight against renegade nuclear loose cannon countries like Iran and North Korea has become more of a hanging question, with policy circles undecided on whether America actually supports Amano or not – in fact, the question is, does America support Japan anymore or not? The immediate provocation goes back to an article published in Washington Post on October 22, 2009, where a US State Department official was quoted radically stating, “The hardest thing right now [for America] is not China, it’s Japan.”
For a country which has been a staunch ally of US for more than a sixty years and for a country which still calls its armed forces as self defence force, thanks to the stigma of the 2nd World War and the restrictions imposed on it by the Security Council, one might ordinarily find it difficult to gauge as to what might have provoked such a change of heart among the US officials. The growing Chinese military and economic prowess and its hush-hush global ambitions are known to many. But is Japan, the country with the second largest economy in the world and one which till now has deliberately never leveraged its economic prowess for military ambitions, about to change?
To understand the changing paradigm of this relationship, one has to take into account the fact that one of the key aspects of the Japan-US relationship was and is the Japan-US Security Treaty. This treaty signed in 1951 and coming into force in 1952, though going through several reforms, continues to be the pillar of bondage between the world’s top two economies. With changing times, the end of Cold War and a phoenix like rise of China, this relationship too was supposed to go for a change for the positive. In Asia, US had always consistently seen Japan as not only a trusted ally but one which would be of great help to contain China both economically and military. The massive US military base in the Southern Japanese islands of Okinawa, being in the proximity of Taiwan and China, essentially works as a safety valve to keep China and others on leash.
