{"id":18146,"date":"2015-02-04T06:00:20","date_gmt":"2015-02-03T19:00:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?p=18146"},"modified":"2015-02-10T14:16:43","modified_gmt":"2015-02-10T03:16:43","slug":"japan-and-the-hostage-crisis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/japan-and-the-hostage-crisis\/","title":{"rendered":"Japan and the hostage crisis"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"It<\/a>Japan\u2019s discovering that being a \u2018normal\u2019 state in international relations isn\u2019t all beer and skittles. The brutal death of two Japanese hostages at the hands of Islamic State is, in an ugly back-handed way, confirmation of Abe\u2019s success in growing Japan\u2019s international role. Other players are increasingly seeing Japan as an international actor and have begun feeling out what sort of actor it is. Is it susceptible to coercive pressure against its citizens? Against its territorial claims? Will its international role be primarily that of a follower or a leader? When and how might it resort to use of force? Do remnants of the old \u2018Yoshida doctrine\u2019<\/a>\u2014named after post-WWII prime minister, Yoshida Shigeru\u2014still remain and, if so, in relation to which issues?<\/p>\n

Most of those questions don\u2019t have neat answers. Japan\u2019s confronting a problem of strategic identity. Since WWII it\u2019s lived principally on a strategic diet of an alliance relationship with the US coupled\u2014under the Yoshida doctrine\u2014with a low-profile role in international affairs. That doctrine didn\u2019t say Japan would be a recluse, but emphasised its international role as a merchant state and not a samurai one. That role could still have important strategic effects, including by helping other regional countries\u2014like Australia\u2014to grow their economies. But in the harder security realm, the Yoshida doctrine pulled Japan towards non-involvement; in particular, use of force was off the table. In the international response to Saddam Hussein\u2019s invasion of Kuwait, for example, Japan contributed a substantial sum of money towards the liberation effort\u2014but no troops.<\/p>\n

Now that the pace of change has begun to quicken in Asia, Japan seems to be heading towards a different identity: an alliance relationship with the US coupled with a higher-profile role for itself in international affairs. Japan\u2019s looking for a new strategic saddle-point where it can be less dependent on the US and\u2014simultaneously\u2014less vulnerable to the growth of Chinese power. With Australia now often touted as Japan\u2019s second strategic partner (after the US) and with a new strategic relationship blossoming between Tokyo and Delhi (possibly also including submarines<\/a>), plus a new level of engagement in collective security tasks, Japan\u2019s strategic identity is changing. Recent events in the Middle East, though, are stretching an already fraught consensus in a new and unexpected direction, requiring Japanese policymakers to contemplate a more proactive role against terrorist groups like IS, and not merely a more muscular regional presence.<\/p>\n

Part of Japan\u2019s strategic evolution seems to be an implicit understanding that use of force is no longer off the table. True, it\u2019s not clear whereabouts on the table it is\u2014probably not in response to the beheading of hostages, despite Abe\u2019s vow to retaliate<\/a> against their killers\u2014but it now seems to be there, somewhere, amongst the other options. Still, that\u2019s an exceptionally delicate topic for most Japanese; and Tokyo isn\u2019t rushing to deploy its soldiers into conflict situations.<\/p>\n

Will the deaths of the hostages prompt a renewed\u2014and possibly intensified\u2014debate about Japan\u2019s strategic identity? Probably. But, as Richard Samuels argued<\/a> back in 2007, that debate never really stopped in the 20th century. In recent decades it\u2019s swirled between what Samuels identifies as pacifists, Asianists, mercantilists, globalists, realists, neo-revisionists, and new autonomists. Each of those groups will probably have its own views about the hostage crisis, and about how Japan can best address the challenges that lie before it. While there\u2019s already a debate<\/a> within Japan about the extent to which Abe\u2019s policies\u2014and recent funding decisions\u2014might have incited IS\u2019s demands and actions, that\u2019s only the surface eddy of a much more important set of changes unfolding in the deep ocean currents of Japanese strategy. It\u2019s how those currents change that matters in the long run.<\/p>\n

The task for Shinzo Abe\u2014and his successors\u2014will be to guide his country through this transition in a moderate and non-alarming way. Over time, we might reasonably expect a new mainstream to coalesce around an evolved foreign and strategic policy doctrine. I expect that doctrine still to turn upon a liberal internationalist world-view, and don\u2019t believe that Japan, even after the hostage crisis, is about to slide backwards into a new period of \u2018small Japanism\u2019. The forces pulling Japan out into the world are stronger than those pushing it towards cocooning.<\/p>\n

Rod Lyon<\/em><\/a> is a fellow at ASPI and executive editor of\u00a0<\/em>The Strategist. Image courtesy of Flickr user Cook Jones<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Japan\u2019s discovering that being a \u2018normal\u2019 state in international relations isn\u2019t all beer and skittles. The brutal death of two Japanese hostages at the hands of Islamic State is, in an ugly back-handed way, confirmation …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":18148,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1010,894,191,993,135,207],"class_list":["post-18146","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general","tag-coalition-operations","tag-international-relations","tag-iraq","tag-isil","tag-japan","tag-world-war-ii"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nJapan and the hostage crisis | The Strategist<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/japan-and-the-hostage-crisis\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Japan and the hostage crisis | The Strategist\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Japan\u2019s discovering that being a \u2018normal\u2019 state in international relations isn\u2019t all beer and skittles. 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