In its modern history, Japan has twice allowed its foreign policy to become unbalanced and skewed away from realist principles that anchor its national security. In the era of pre-war militarism, Japan allowed its preoccupation with the security threat associated with the Korean Peninsula to lead it into a policy of predatory colonialism which ultimately ended in a world war it had no chance of winning. In the post-war era, Japan has allowed its national security outlook to become excessively dependent on protection from the United States, leading to entrapment by a hegemonic power that is both declining and increasingly unstable in its domestic and foreign policy outlook.
The Trump era has demonstrated that the epoch where Western allies can depend on the benevolence and altruism of administrations in Washington has come to a close. The lessons of the Trump era may be masked for Japanese conservatives by the blinders of deference and undue admiration for Republicans in the US, but it cannot be doubted that the transactional and highly personalised foreign policy of the Trump administration destabilised the foundations of East Asian security. Trump’s desire for cheap foreign policy victories led to impulsive diplomatic moves vis-à-vis North Korea which created military vulnerabilities for South Korea, and his isolationist impulses left both Japan and South Korea scrambling to appease so that American troop numbers would not be drawn down as threatened.
Now that the Trump era has come to a close, Japan is at a crossroads in its foreign policy. Clear-eyed analysis suggests that Japan has become too dependent on the American security guarantee, a situation that leaves it vulnerable to entrapment (and therefore abandonment) by an unstable superpower. The post-war ‘peace’ constitution leaves Japan limited in its ability to shape its own security environment. But conservative politicians advocating revision of the constitution are generally oblivious to the real lessons of defeat in WWII. And relations with South Korea, vital for Japan’s security, are at a historic low and the important of the Korean Peninsula for Japan is widely forgotten. It is past time for a re-evaluation and new beginnings.
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