My answers to several questions from Ellis:

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?"

PM: Historically, especially with regard to the Cold War examples Ellis cites, I would largely agree with what he wrote (although trade with China during the Cultural revolution was really tiny).

"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?"

I have been talking about US relative decline, not absolute decline, although relative decline is the most common kind and the kind that generally matters. Is Russian military power today absolutely less than in the Soviet era? In many ways certainly yes, but in other ways its military power is no less and actually more in absolute terms. With the US now moving to cut its defense budget significantly, there is a good chance that we will see US military capabilities decline absolutely in some ways, although to the extent that the defense budget can be stretched and used more effectively, any absolute decline might be minimal.

"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?"

If we really are talking about relative decline, then I am not sure "US decline" is the right term. How about:
"belief in the rest of the world (especially the other great powers) to continually lagging behind the US." I would prefer focusing on empirical reality. For probably most of the post-war period the US was a declining power relatively, punctuated by periods of relative rise. Again, I prefer to focus on distinct scenarios rather than forecast which is more likely.
The scenario that most economists sketch out of Chinese growth slowly declining from 10-9% down to 7-8% and then 5-6% over the next 5 years plus, with the US continuing to bump along at 2-3% seems plausible enough that it deserves to be considered in its own right.
Perhaps another scenario in which the US closes the growth gap with China needs to be considered as well (although it is rare for any developed economy, including the US, to outgrow or even match a newly emerging economy for any prolonged period of time, unless the later suffers a huge calamity).

One more point about US relative decline: to some extent the US did reverse this in the 1980s, but it did so in no small part by internalizing Paul Kennedy's admonitions about avoiding imperial overstretch, lessons it forgot about during the past decade. In other words, there may well be a trade-off between US economic recovery and investing to remain the military hegemon (especially as much of this money is borrowed).
If we compare the current situation to the Cold War, in one important respect the US occupies the Soviet position while China occupies the US position: during the Cold War the Soviets spent twice as much of their GDP on defense as the US, a fact that contributed greatly to their decline. Today, the shoe is on the other foot: the US spends twice as much of its GDP on defense as China (based on CIA GDP data and SIPRI defense spending data).

In some ways China does have a more powerful military than the former Soviet Union (e.g. ballistic missiles that can outrace missile interceptors), in other ways not. Of course, China's strategic position is very different from the former Soviet Union's or the US position in that China is not a global power and not likely to become so for some time (i.e. more than a decade in the future). That also means that China can concentrate its power in East Asia, and this does offer it some advantages in terms of being to concentrate its resources in one theater.

"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."

Who is more dependent on who depends on the scenario, and most importantly on what the US objective is. If the US goal is territorial defense, then the answer is that the US does not depend nearly as much on Japan as Japan does on it. If the US goal is global military hegemony then I do not see much difference in the degree of dependence, certainly not enough to affect bargaining over a single US base in Japan.

Best Regards,

Paul Midford