Japan’s Alliance after the Cold War

Abstract

This book has sought to illustrate the existence of a potentially fatal flaw at the heart of Japan’s alliance with the United States. The perpetuation of the notion that the alliance is based upon an identity of interest continues to belie the reality of parallel, and increasingly divergent, respective national interests. Tensions arise from the dysfunction between superstructural myth and substructural power relations. These tensions, unable to find release during the era of the United States’ inordinate fear of communism, were offered amelioration with the collapse of the Soviet Union and end of the Cold War. These dramatic events provided an opportunity for the anti-Soviet alliance mythology to be laid to rest, intra-alliance structural power relations to be recognised and a new, more mature and equal relationship to be developed. Yet by the mid-1990s this moment of opportunity was in danger of being lost. Political tension between the allies increased. The Soviet threat to the allies was replaced by North Korea and a potential for renewed Russian expansionism. Finally, the redefinition of security in economic terms threatened simply to reinforce existing tensions.