Abstract:
This article examines whether the Asia-Pacific region’s geopolitical vicissitudes are causing Japan to ‘hedge’ against deepening uncertainty and risk through major strategic realignments or diversification of security and economic ties, as the original hedging literature would expect. It examines trends since 2009 in three domains fundamental to identifying whether shifts are underway in Japan’s strategic orientation vis-à-vis China: security policy (primary), trade/investment, and public opinion. Despite deepening uncertainty (and volatility), especially in ‘the Trump era’, this study finds negligible evidence of hedging behavior: e.g., realigning toward Beijing or adopting a ‘middle position’, much less developing any meaningful security ties with China. Rather, contemporary trends point in the opposite direction: Japan’s China strategy primarily centers on strengthening indigenous deterrence capabilities, bolstering the US–Japan alliance, and diversifying regional security ties beyond Beijing. Even the latter, somewhat paradoxically, aims to deepen ties with Washington and to keep it actively engaged in regional affairs. 1 Adam P. Liff is assistant professor of East Asian international relations at Indiana University’s Hamilton Lugar School of Global and International Studies (EALC Department), where he also directs the 21st Century Japan Politics and Society Initiative. For valuable input at earlier stages, the author owes particular thanks to John Ciorciari, Jürgen Haacke, John Hemmings, David Martin Jones, John McHugh, Kristin Vekasi, three anonymous reviewers, and participants in the September 2017 workshop “Hedging in International Politics” at the London School of Economics and Political Science, where an earlier version of this manuscript was presented. Liff, Adam P. “Unambivalent Alignment: Japan’s China Strategy” Intl Rltns of Asia‐Pacific 1 Dynamism, uncertainty, insecurity, and potential volatility are increasingly defining features of contemporary international relations of the Asia-Pacific. Major variables include China’s rapidly expanding power and influence, the region’s rapidly shifting geopolitical and geoeconomic terrain, North Korea’s rapidly advancing (thermo)nuclear and missile capabilities, and perceptions of America’s relative decline and ambivalence in Washington about its regional role. Meanwhile, references to a new ‘great power competition’ and ‘new Cold War’ between the United States—Japan’s sole security treaty ally—and China—Japan’s top trading partner— permeate discourse about regional affairs. As U.S.-China frictions worsen, Japan is on the front lines, if not in the middle—literally and figuratively. These basic dynamics, which powerfully shape Japan’s strategic environment, significantly predate 2016. Yet from Brexit to the U.S. presidential election, shocking and unanticipated developments since that year have heightened regional uncertainty and Japan’s insecurity. The Trump Administration’s ‘America First’ rhetoric and policies, in particular, have shaken global confidence, especially among U.S. allies. In Japan, ‘confidence in the U.S. president to do the right thing regarding world affairs’ plummeted by 54-percent following Donald Trump’s (2017) inauguration (Pew Research Center, 2017). Recent developments have also exacerbated inherent, decades-old ‘alliance dilemmas’ (Snyder, 1984). Saber-rattling vis-à-vis North Korea exemplifies entrapment risks for Tokyo, while Trump’s rhetoric, policies, transactionalist inclinations, and mercurial, abrupt and unilateral decision-making exacerbate longstanding fears of abandonment, even possible alliance ‘decoupling’ (Rapp-Hooper, 2017). During his first week, Trump unilaterally withdrew the U.S. from the twelve-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a principle element of the Obama Administration’s “rebalance” to the Asia-Pacific and an initiative on which Japanese Prime Minister Abe Shinzo (2012) spent significant political capital. Since then, Trump has demanded further concessions from Japan on bilateral trade balances and trade agreements, and imposed (or threatened) tariffs on Japan based on dubious ‘national security’ grounds. Though usually presenting a united front publicly, even Abe himself has candidly expressed concerns about a possible U.S.-Japan strategic disconnect. Of particular concern is a possible U.S.-North Korea ‘grand bargain’ that leaves Pyongyang’s existing nuclear stockpile and mediumand short-range missiles—which range Japan—intact (Associated Press, 2018). Major changes to Japan’s regional environment over the past decade-plus, which have only accelerated since 2016, have precipitated robust debates in Japan about its strategic future and the Liff, Adam P. “Unambivalent Alignment: Japan’s China Strategy” Intl Rltns of Asia‐Pacific 2 risks of the status quo. One prominent debate asks what policy shifts should be adopted in response to regional vicissitudes. It has included unprecedentedly mainstream discussion of several formerly taboo topics, such as collective self-defense, nuclear weapons, de facto offensive capabilities, a marine corps, a carrier embarking fighter jets, and long-range strike capabilities. Another area of discussion has intermittently broached a possible strategic realignment away from Washington. Since 2016, it has resurfaced. As one Japanese scholar recently opined, under Trump America’s ‘unpredictable diplomacy’ and ‘unstable governance’ weakens U.S. primacy, reduces bilateral trust, and ‘jeopardises the strategic calculations of partner states, spurring the need for fundamental shifts in alliance behavior’; meanwhile, ‘Escalation of unpredictability and uncertainty in relations with Washington leaves Japan with little choice but to review its tenuous relationship with China’ (Sahashi, 2017). For Japan’s leaders, U.S. TPP withdrawal, little or no advanced warning of steel and aluminum tariffs, and Trump’s abrupt, unilateral decisions to meet with Kim Jong-un and stop U.S.-South Korea ‘war games’ because they were ‘provocative’ and ‘cost too much’ have been jarring (Smith, 2018). One of Abe’s top foreign affairs advisors has argued that ‘the [U.S.-Japan] alliance has changed from one based on shared values to a transactional alliance,’ and predicted that the U.S.-North Korea summit ‘will serve as a trigger for the Japanese people to begin to realise that it is risky to leave Japan’s destiny to another country.’ (Gill, 2018) As two leading experts argue, ‘greater strategic independence’ vis-à-vis Washington finds increasing appeal in Tokyo as strategists question how long they can depend on the U.S. ‘for credible commitments to Japan’s defence and provision of regional stability’ (Samuels and Wallace, 2018). Even the Trump Administration’s own Director of National Intelligence has suggested that ‘US allies’ and partners’ uncertainty about the willingness and capability of the United States to maintain its international commitments may drive them to consider reorienting their policies [...] away from Washington.’ (Coats, 2018) This study examines whether recent developments—from increasingly volatile U.S.-China dynamics to changing power differentials and deepening concerns about Washington’s commitments—are in fact causing Japan to engage in strategic hedging and to adopt a more ambiguous alignment vis-à-vis Beijing and Washington. The most recent peer-reviewed academic study to directly engage this question using data inclusive of the post-2015 period argues that Japan is ‘not balancing against China’ but instead ‘has followed a middle course, adopting a hedging strategy coherent with its middle-power status’ (emphasis in original; Vidal and Pelegrín, 2018, Liff, Adam P. “Unambivalent Alignment: Japan’s China Strategy” Intl Rltns of Asia‐Pacific 3 194). Public discourse also often suggests a recalibration is underway (e.g., Cunningham, 2018; Pandey 2018). But is this really the case? Such claims run counter to recent studies of Japan’s behavior based on empirics through the mid-2010s arguing that Japan is balancing China (e.g., Hornung 2014; Koga 2016; Liff 2016; Koga 2017). Yet these earlier studies’ evidentiary bases predate 2016; as such, perhaps their analyses are out-of-date. Indeed, claims abound that regional circumstances (and Japan’s policies) have changed fundamentally since that year. Beyond China’s continued rapid economic and military expansion, additional widely-referenced indicators include the advent of the Trump administration; North Korea’s unprecedented 2017 intercontinental ballistic missile and thermonuclear tests and U.S.-North Korea saber-rattling; Beijing’s massive $100 billion Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, which has attracted 70-plus member countries (including major U.S. allies); and major Japanese national security reforms, many of which came online when major legislation went into effect in Spring 2016. If, as some scholars argue, rather than balancing vis-à-vis China Japan was in fact strategically ‘hedging’ and pursuing a ‘middle course’ between Beijing and Washington, there would be a theoretically compelling rationale. For starters, even in the best of times international anarchy, asymmetric/incomplete information, and the uncertainty of future commitments ensure that no state can be certain how its region’s geopolitics will evolve (Fearon, 1995). This logic appears particularly compelling in a period of rapidly shifting balances-of-power, to say nothing of when the leader of Japan’s sole treaty ally is transparently skeptical of U.S. alliances, free trade, international institutions, and other aspects of the very regional and global order that has underpinned Japan’s foreign policy orientation for seventy years. Furthermore, the hedging literature (see below) expects a ‘secondary state’ to hedge when conflictual dynamics exist between great powers, it has a potential divergence of security and economic interests, and there is significant
