Just a couple of questions to Paul Midford about his last post in response to Rick Katz:

PM: The psychological dependence of many Japanese elites on the US is not at all comparable with what we find in other East Asian countries. Others, most notably ASEAN, and even South Korea, are more willing to navigate between the US and China, playing the two off each other for their own advantage, rather than proclaiming total dependence on one or the other.

EK: Doesn't what you write here underplay how Japanese elites have and still play the US off other major powers to gain some degree of autonomy? While Japan couldn't do that directly with the USSR, indirectly wasn't the Yoshida Doctrine a way to maintain a margin of autonomy from the US and not give in to the pressures for full rearmaments? Wasn't trading with China during its radical phase another manifestation of that? Isn't the "dual hedge" (whether completely successful or not) a way for Japan to not become both economically and militarily dependent on the US?

On the perception of US decline:
I am a bit puzzled by this belief that has suddenly become the accepted common wisdom around the world. It wasn't that long ago that the debate in the world was whether the US was really a "hyper-power" (the phrase of a French policymaker), as after the cold war the ONLY major international power? Suddenly the US is in decline? As this started prior to the economic collapse of 2008, I've always wondered what the empirical evidence for this is? Yes, the US is cutting its military budget but what we don't know is if that will lead to a real decline in the effectiveness of projecting military power. The US is shifting resources like its aircraft carriers from the Atlantic to the Pacific, so it may be using those resources differently as the Iraq intervention winds down. There is no doubt that there is a RELATIVE decline in US military power compared to China but is that the same as an absolute decline? Also what is the comparison to, even relatively? Is China any more powerful militarily than the former Soviet Union? Finally, I have seen this belief about US decline before--in the 1970s you may recall when that was the buzz around the world and among political elites everywhere. 20 years later we were calling it a hyperpower. Paul is correct: the future is unknowable, but then that applies to the belief in US decline too, no?

By the way, I agree with Paul that Japanese elites have often underestimated U.S. dependence on Japan to maintain its political, military, and economic position in the Pacific. But the question is not whether the US is also dependent on Japan (it is a mutual interdependence after all) but which is more dependent on the other and in this case I think perhaps most would conclude Japan is more dependent on the US militarily now than the US on Japan.
Best regards,
Ellis
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Ellis S. Krauss, Professor,
School of International Relations and Pacific Studies University of California, San Diego