For nearly a quarter-century the military balance in the Pacific rested on the clearly perceived parameters of the cold war, namely parallel Soviet and Chinese anti-imperialism and American containment policies which compelled the smaller states to align themselves with one or other of the opposing blocs. One of the more beneficial Nixon shocks reopened the traditional American 'Open Door* policy toward China. This single move granted the United States important diplomatic initiative in the Far East, shifted the fulcrum of political and military attention from southeast Asia to the northwest Pacific, and destroyed the main pillar of Moscow's Asian policy which rested on indefinite ChineseAmerican animosity. This realignment of the Pacific power configuration also raised fundamental questions about the future military balance in this theatre. The purpose of this essay is to analyse the present military postures of the principal actors and to develop several questions about future problems. An assessment of comparative military strengths and strategies must be predicated upon presumptions of political policy and orientation. Let us turn first therefore to some assumptions about the political Dositions of the various national actors in the Pacific region.

The Military Balance

A significant post-Cold War development in Japan???s politics has been the rise of a group of hawkish security elites with substantial political and institutional influence. A common scholarly and popular narrative that has accompanied this development is that the younger generation in Japan is more open to the pursuit of security on the basis of realpolitik attitudes in particular, and that this will lead to the Japanese government abandoning its postwar antimilitarist security orientation. By systematically examining these claims, this study evaluates whether generational change will become a salient factor that will challenge Japan???s traditional antimilitarism and drive radical change in Japan???s security policy orientation. Members of the Heisei social generation, born between 1965 and 1989, are the core focus of this study. Members of this Heisei cohort witnessed significant change in Japan???s foreign and domestic policy environments during their formative years when political socialisation is likely to have the greatest impact upon attitude formation. Using the concept of militant internationalismas an analytical framework, this study evaluates quantitative data on public attitudes and primary interview data to identify any notable overlap in attitudes towards national security between the Heisei cohort and Japan???s hawkish security elites. This study rejects the militant internationalist characterisation by showing that the Heisei public cohort continues to support military restraints on Japan???s security policy and military posture. The analysis of attitudes does reveal, nevertheless, that antimilitarism is no longer an appropriate descriptive label to apply to the contemporary security identity embraced by the Heisei cohort. The assumption of Japanese having an instinctive aversion to the use of military tools for maintaining Japan???s security no longer holds, particularly in relation to the Heisei elite cohort. In deepening the analysis, this study does show, however, that a distinctive but evolved anti-war peace nation identity is still salient among both the Heisei public and elite cohorts. Such an identity will continue to play a notable role in restraining Japan???s evolution as a military actor in regional and global affairs, particularly in regards to Japan being able to use force inside the territory of other nations.

The Evolution of the Japanese Strategic Imagination and Generation Change: A Generationally-Focused Analysis of Public and Elite Attitudes towards War and Peace in Japan

For the last four decades Sino-Japanese relations have been characterized by steadily growing economic and sociocultural interactions. Yet, greater interdependence has developed in tandem with bila ...

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Rethinking Japan's China Policy: Japan as an Accommodator in the Rise of China, 1978-2011

Looking at China's foreign policy, this book focuses on the Confucian-based need of Chinese leaders to present themselves as the supreme moral rectifiers of the world order. Shih outlines the diplomatic principles cherished by the Chinese - socialism, antihegemonism, peaceful coexistence, statism, and isolationism - and explores how each has been applied in the past 40 years. He argues, for example, that China's policy toward the Soviet Union was aimed primarily at shaming the Soviets for their betrayal of socialism; its US policy demonstrates China's anti-imperialist integrity; its Japan policy blames the Japanese for a failed Asiatic brotherhood; and its Third World policy is intended to be a model for emulation. The application of these principles has enabled Beijing always to find a moral niche in world affairs; the seeming contradiction among the principles has been ignored, because the need to clarify China's moral role outweighs other national interests. This study of China's foreign affairs also challenges the realist calculation of national interests, one couched purely in terms of military balance or economic development.

China's just world : the morality of Chinese foreign policy

: Current trends indicate that China will have more global impact the next 20 years than any other country. The engine driving China's rise is an economy that appears to grow double-digits annually. The global financial crisis and China's huge cash reserves endow it with front-row seats in world affairs. Chinese leaders wax eloquently about China's peaceful rise as a global power. Yet China's actions around the world tell a much different story - one of unfair trade, piracy, counterfeiting, organized crime, environmental degradation, one-sided foreign affairs, cyber attacks, and wartime defense spending. China's intentions are difficult to gauge due to its lack of transparency, especially militarily. This SRP examines China's evolutionary military and space transformation and its implications for the United States and Northeast Asia. Additionally, it recommends U.S. policy changes and other actions to help shape China's peaceful rise while maintaining U.S. national security, forging effective alliances, and furthering national interests.

China's Military and Space Transformation: Implications for U.S. and Northeast-Asia

China's status-quo-oriented post-Cold-War grand strategy of promoting cooperative security and multipolarity on the basis of the UN system is not applied in Northeast Asia. China's definition of its interests in Northeast Asia runs up against those promoted by the US alliance system, and no common political framework exists to encourage Beijing and Washington to adopt definitions that correspond to global rules of proper state conduct. Scholars and policymakers often base their analyses of Northeast Asian strategic uncertainty on the assumption that China applies its grand strategy in Northeast Asia as elsewhere, but that the regional context makes successful implementation difficult. This article instead argues that China has persuaded the international community that Northeast Asia is a region where special rules apply, justifying that Chinese policies towards Taiwan, Japan and the Korean peninsula are exempt from the principles of state conduct underpinning China's global grand strategy.

Liselotte Odgaard

Papers

Chinese Northeast Asia policies and the tragedy of Northeast Asia's security architecture