Chapter Five: The Asian balance of power: a comparison with European precedents

Abstract

Strategic links between Japan and Europe during the Cold War were limited. During this period the IISS helped bridge the gap between the two, exposing its membership base to the international affairs of Asia and Japan and providing Japanses scholars, strategists and diplomats with a platform from which to amplify their voices in the West. Analyses by these experts often appeared in IISS publications, but the Institute also gained key insights through its well-established conferences and lecture series. These initiatives illuminated Japanese strategic thinking and perspectives on contemporary critical issues in Japan’s and Asia’s foreign, security and defence policy.

This Adelphi book, through its collection of earlier analysis, helps the reader to understand the evolution of Japanese strategic thought from the 1960s until today, and shines a light on the continuities and changes in this thinking. New, original analysis of the material seeks to identify areas where such thinking was prescient and remains relevant to the contemporary strategic environment, and other areas where predictions failed or assumptions were proved wrong. These new essays were also informed by interviews of Japanese senior scholars and diplomats who spent time with the IISS. This book seeks to frame, educate and guide strategic thinking on the most pressing issues of today, both in and outside Japan and Asia, and will be of great interest to analysts, practitioners and students of international affairs.

Notes

1 Even this was not quite a military encounter in the conventional sense, but rather a military suppression of a city-based insurgency.

2 In terms of the distribution of total votes cast and seats held in the House of Representatives, in January 1967 the relative strength of the two opposing forces was 66.1 per cent (325 seats) for the conservatives, as against 24.5 per cent (115) for the progressives. The conservative Liberal Democratic Party, in power all through the period, while being able to retain a comfortable majority, has been steadily receding from the position of a two-thirds majority which is needed for taking decisions on such important issues as the revision of the Constitution. On the other hand, the support for the Japanese Socialist Party, which is the single largest opposition representing the socialist, neutralist, and pacifist segment of the population, has been almost constant: 27.56 per cent (145 seats) in 1960, 29.03 per cent (145 seats) in 1963, and 28 per cent (141 seats) in 1967.

3 National income per capita in 1966 was about $870.

4 Namely, the Ministerial Conference for the Development of South-East Asia (April); the meeting of the creditor nations of Indonesia (September ); the inauguration of the Asian Development Bank, to which Japan subscribed $200 million (November ); and the South-East Asian Conference for Agricultural Development (December ).

5 Address delivered by Foreign Minister T. Miki in Tokyo on 22 May to a meeting of businessmen (Asahi Shimbun, 23 May 1967).

6 Japanese-Australian Joint Communiqué, 17 January 1967, and Japanese-Australian Joint Communiqué, 20 January 1967.

7 Australia, Japan, Laos, Malaysia, New Zealand, the Philippines, South Korea, South Vietnam, and Thailand.

8 Asahi Shimbun, 5 July 1967 (evening edn.).

9 Ibid.

10 This view is also shared by the Japanese Socialist Party.

11 Asahi Shimbun, 26 April 1967. At this conference Indonesia participated as a full member, while Cambodia remained an observer, as in the first conference.

12 The whole problem of Japan’s relations with Communist China is excellently dealt with by Shigeharu Matsumoto, ‘Japan and China: Domestic and Foreign Influences on Japan’s Policy’, in A. M. Halpern, ed., Policies Toward China: Views from Six Continents (New York, Toronto, London: McGraw-Hill, 1965).

13 Article 10 of the Treaty of Mutual Co-operation and Security between Japan and the United States reads: ‘After the Treaty has been in force for ten years, either Party may give notice to the other Party of its intention to terminate the Treaty, in which case the Treaty shall terminate one year after such notice has been given’.

14 Interim Report of the LDP National Security Studies Council, 22 June 1966.

15 Private Proposal drafted by Z. Kosaka, Vice-Chairman, LDP Foreign Affairs Studies Council, 26 July 1967.

16 DSP, ‘Our Basic Policy for National Security and Defence’, 19 May 1966.

17 ‘KMP’s Attitude Towards Japan’s National Security: Our Plan (Interim)’, 14 July 1966.

18 JSP, ‘Our Basic Policy Concerning National Security and Defence’, 14 May 1966.

19 ‘Neutralization and International Guarantee’, Akahata (‘Red Flag’), 1 September 1966.

20 Ministry of Foreign Affairs, ‘On the Attitudes of Japan Towards a Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty’, which was used as the basis of consultations with leaders of the three opposition parties which took place on 15 April 1967. All three parties, JSP, DSP, and KMP, seem to accept the view that the conclusion of a treaty is desirable, in consistence with their traditional attitudes of opposition to the nuclear weapons of all nations. JCP, however, is utterly against it, as it was to the test-ban treaty of 1963.

21 An address given at the Foreign Correspondents Club in Tokyo, 29 September 1965. He pointed out that ‘the conflict now going on in Asia employs both conventional and primitive weapons. The problem still is to have men and weapons in a forward position, from which they can move quickly to prevent threatened aggression or to stem actual invasion of free nations’. He also listed various requirements which the Ryukyu Islands satisfied: ‘(1) freedom to move troops and equipment without delay; (2) freedom to stockpile equipment which may be necessary to deter aggression and to help stem actual invasion; (3) freedom to dispatch troops, equipment, aircraft, and ships to any area which the United States has pledged to assist in preserving its national integrity; and (4) freedom to provide logistical support to United States forces, wherever they may be required to operate in pursuance of our treaty’.

22 It is reported that this line of argument was developed by the Japanese Foreign Office representative at the 6th Japan-US Informal Consultative Meeting, which was held in May 1967, when the Asian-Pacific Economic Sphere scheme was discussed. Asahi Shimbun, 25 May 1967.

23 Foreign Minister’s address before a meeting of the Naigai Josei Chōsa Kai (the Council for National and International Affairs) in Tokyo on 13 April, reported by Asahi Shimbun, 14 April 1967.

24 Ibid.

25 AP (Washington); Asahi Shimbun, 4 March 1967.

26 The failure of the Japanese Socialist Party in the January 1967 general election has been partly attributed to the success of Liberal Democratic Party propaganda which criticized the pro-Maoist tendency of the JSP.

27 As a matter of fact, it was reported that Secretary-General Miyamoto of the JCP, during his stay in Peking in the spring of 1966, had a collision with the Chinese Communist Party on this subject. He is understood to have insisted that

a Sino-American war could be avoided, and that revolution by force did not fit Japanese conditions, while the Chinese demanded that the JCP revise its platform and adapt more militant tactics because the war was inevitable. Asahi Shimbun, 23 February 1967.

28 On 17 September, in San Francisco, Mr McNamara repeated this judgment, though phrasing it in a slightly different manner.

29 Junnosuke Kishida, ‘Chinese Nuclear Development’, Japan Quarterly, Vol. XIV (April–June 1967), No. 2.

30 Early February 1967, reprinted in Survival, June 1967.