I was appalled by some arguments and proposals made by Dore and Midford about the rise of China, the end of the US-Japan alliance and the dismantling of NPT.

Rise of China:

Here, the ‘realist’ view of power transition based on ‘relative gain’ is obvious, such as the periodic rise and fall of the great powers. But the current era is quite different from the Cold War period and the period before then and Paul Kennedy proved to be wrong in his naïve and uninformed prediction of the rise of Japan.
This kind of historical analysis and some historical analogies proposed by Dore are so crude and anachronistic, given the great transformations of international politics and socio-economy after World War II (especially after the end of the Cold War).

The main problem of this realist view is its simplistic assumption that greater economic power of a country will lead to its militaristic rise and eventually the emergence of a new hegemon. However, it is not just about economic competitiveness and military capability that count. There are also other elements such as ‘soft power’. For example, China lacks ideological appeal to the international community, which would be necessary for any rising power to possess if it wants to justify its hegemonic status in this contemporary era of globalisation. The US had (and still has to a lesser
extent) this ideological appeal such as ‘freedom’ and ‘democracy’ (even if it was often ‘tatemae’ and George W. Bush tarnished US image to a significant extent, which led to greater hostility and negative feelings towards the US). In contrast, China is a de facto pseudo-capitalistic one-party dictatorship and does not have any ideological power that can be appealing to the international community. Even in its domestic politics, China has struggled to unite its own people after the loss of Communism as an appealing ideology and has had to depend on its growing nationalism instead. Although the US is likely to reduce its military capacity and economic power in relative terms, it will still grow in absolute terms and remain as one of the most powerful players in the international politics and economy. In addition, automatic assumption of China’s rise may prove to be wrong sometime later, as the Chinese economy has its own problems such as the existence of a huge amount of non-performing loans held by banks and a large number of inefficient SOEs. If Chinese economic growth decelerates, China’s relative gain to the US may not be as large as expected and even an economic and political turmoil may ensue. We should not forget that predictions of the rise of Japan proved to be wrong.

Finally, there is no sufficient recognition in the realist circle of the importance of ‘economic interdependence’ between China and Japan. War is much less likely between these countries because of vital economic interests for them, which could be disrupted only with disastrous consequences that would not benefit them at all.

US-Japan alliance:

The proposals (or ‘fresh thinking’?) by Dore and Midford (and Menon who was referred to by Midford) such as the termination of the US-Japan alliance and a nuclear Japan are very unrealistic and even dangerous.
It is very unrealistic, considering the anti-militarist sentiment among many Japan people and international outcries that are very likely to ensue (not just from China and Korea but from the whole international community). It would also be extremely costly to dismantle deeply institutionalised security mechanisms such as the US-Japan alliance. In fact, their proposals sound very similar to those made by ‘extreme’
right-wing Japanese. If ordinary Japanese people hear these proposals, most of them would probably think these proposals were made by extreme right-wings and just ignore them. Such ideas as ‘alliance with China based on a balance-of-power strategy’ and ‘Chinese benevolence’ sound very unrealistic and show insufficient understanding of the history of the Sino-Japanese relationship. The statements such as ‘Japan needs courage to ask itself whether the US-Japan alliance best serves its interests’ and ‘the LDP and Yomiuri maintained their cowards reaction’ could be made only by those who would not face any serious consequences with the end of alliance unlike many Japanese people. In addition, the statements such as ‘Japan can have its own nuclear arsenal after entering alliance with China’ and ‘Due to Japanese growing military capacity, the US-Japan alliance would be unnecessary’ only show their lack of recognition of importance of public opinion among Japanese people and again the likely outcries from the international community. The revision of Article 9 would be very difficult too. It is politically too costly and most Japanese people are much more concerned with other domestic issues such as the increasing poverty and inequality. If the situation in East Asia changed and the US would not be able to provide reliable protection of Japan, which is unlikely to happen at least in the foreseeable future, Japan could still maintain alliance with the US as long as it is useful to some extent and at the same time deepen its commitment to regional multilateral institutions without dismantling the US-Japan alliance and opting for a nuclear option.
Despite being a creation of the Cold War, the US-Japan alliance is still relevant and important to the US, Japan, China and other East Asian countries for different reasons, including its usefulness to contain ‘Japanese nationalists’. Contrary to Menon’s statement that Japanese nationalists are hardly militarists, they could still be dangerous, as can be seen in their denial of Japan’s war crimes in the second Sino-Japanese War and the Pacific War. Menon’s arguments often lack deep understanding of Japanese political history (Does he read any Japanese documents?).

NPT:

Dore proposes a new regime ‘that does not prevent any nation from possessing nuclear weapons but makes it less likely to use them’. I wonder which policymakers would give serious attention to such a proposal. It is obvious that any kind of proposal that would allow any country to possess nuclear weapons will be utterly rejected immediately and receive harsh criticisms from the international community (including ordinary people). Or people just would not waste time and give any serious thought about it. They would just ignore it as something ridiculous and irrelevant. Does Dore really think this kind of proposal will be accepted by the international community?

As for Japan’s serious pride deficiency, it is not about pride but is based on progressive (not
conservative) Japanese people’s deep regret of the atrocities the pre-war militarist government inflicted on both Japanese and Asian people (including some Western prisoners of war in Asia). Again, this way of ‘pride’ thinking is very similar to Japanese nationalistic and often militaristic right-wings (if it may be a common thing among some international relations circles). It is very ironic to hear this kind of statement from the people of countries which suffered from Japanese expansionism and atrocities before and during the Pacific War.

Dore describes three things foreign policies should do.
Although this is understandable, it also comes from a narrow perspective which is only concerned with national interests. There is no international perspective such as the avoidance of conflict by international negotiation, which is a daily custom in the real-world foreign diplomacy.

Dore argues that ‘Japanese leaders should have the guts and clout to make a spectacular withdrawal from NPT and propose a better alternative control regime’. However, this will never happen, given its utter impracticability and the strong norm of ‘nuclear ban and non-proliferation’ among many Japanese people and around the world. Especially Japanese politicians but also probably all politicians in the world lack ‘leadership’ to propose this kind of proposal. It seems that there is no better or practical alternative to NPT for the moment, even if it is not perfect and often serves the interests of the nations that already possess nuclear weapons.

Finally, in addition to Japan’s unique position as the only country which suffered atomic bombs, I wonder if Dore’s strong ‘pro-Japanese’ bias (easily found in some of his works and phrases such as Japanese (and Germans) as nice guys and the US as bad guys) makes him have an idea of ‘Japan as the possible saviour’ in this ‘anarchic’ international politics. I have to say that the realities of Japan are very different (not all things Japanese are good and some quite horrible). It is important to have a balanced perspective.

Hiro Watanabe

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Dr. Hiroaki Richard Watanabe, D.Phil. Oxford Lecturer, School of East Asian Studies, University of Sheffield

http://www.shef.ac.uk/seas/staff/japanese/watanabe.html
http://www.wreac.org/people/WREAC-People/Core-Researche
rs/Watanabe%2C-Hiroaki-Richard/details