Realigning Priorities: The U.S.-Japan Alliance and the Future of ...

t h e I n s t i t u t e f o r F o r e i g n P o l i c y A n a ly s i s
symbols remain intact, but others are changing and seem
less visible. High-ranking U.S. officials have disparaged the
future viability of technology supporting the nuclear umbrella
during the RRW debate, and the number of forwarddeployed
U.S. troops in South Korea and Japan is declining.
The Pentagon talks more about stability operations
and counterinsurgency as core missions for the military,
while it lists “deterring conflict” as only the fourth of five
objectives in the 2008 National Defense Strategy.
Some Japanese defense planners fear that Washington
is distracted by conflict in the Middle East and Central
Asia, viewing everything through a prism of hunkereddown
homeland defense. The reality is quite different,
and an interesting dichotomy has developed whereby an
American visitor to Tokyo can hear worry about a U.S.
pullback, and the same week in Beijing listen to concern
about America’s build-up in the region!
Objectively speaking, overall the United States is increasing
its military capabilities in the Asia-Pacific region,
not pulling back. This mild build-up is actually one of the
many objectives of its global repositioning of forces in response
to a perceived shifting of “the global
community’s ‘center of gravity’ [toward] the
Asia-Pacific region.” The build-up is hard to
quantify, however, as it relies mostly on less
visible measures such as upgrading equipment,
more frequent and longer rotational deployments (of
F-22s, B-2s, SSGNs, among other assets), access agreements
with partners in the region to broaden deployment flexibility
in times of crisis, and similar incremental moves.
Taken together, all of these improvements suggest that
external balancing vis-à-vis North Korea and China has actually
been achieved to some degree, even if those in Japan
who worry about America’s security commitments do not
realize it. Part of the reason for this is that as old symbols
of deterrence are phased out, they are being replaced with
a diffuse range of more capable (but only vaguely understood)
assets, oftentimes deployed from farther away. The
assurance effect is less concrete and immediate, though
the deterrence effect might actually be stronger, given the
flexibility of use. The problem is that the relationship of
these new assets to specific deterrence scenarios involving
the alliance has not been explored adequately.
Through continued explanation and consultations
with Japan (beyond ad hoc briefings), many of America’s
2 A good example of bilateral
interagency cooperation
is the chemical,
biological, radiological,
and nuclear (CBRN) defense
working group.
regional posture adjustments described in this report
should reassure Japan in the short term. Still, the United
States is also reaching the limit of what it can invest
in East Asian security, and longer-term questions remain
about how deterrence is expected to function in the alliance.
Part of this challenge can be addressed through the
current bilateral dialogue focused on base realignment in
Japan and alliance transformation (which includes a reassessment
of the allies’ roles, missions, and capabilities, or
RMC). The rest of the challenge might require a new forum
for bilateral dialogue and policy making, which we
discuss later.
The roadmap for realignment and the RMC discussions
stem directly from the allies’ articulation in 2005 of common
strategic objectives, and these are valuable tools for
strengthening deterrence and transforming the alliance
for the future. Closer command relationships, more joint
training opportunities, and new forms of interagency cooperation
on security issues will enhance interoperability
and build confidence that new threats can be deterred and
defeated. 2 The problem with this process has been that,
despite agreeing on common objectives, each country has
different priorities within that list; this is why a realignment
of priorities will be as important as realigning forces.
If this cannot be accomplished, then the common objectives
are not truly common, and the alliance will lose
its relevance.
Japan’s preferred option will be to stay with the alliance,
since this is likely to be the most efficient and reliable way
to preserve security. Japan could lose confidence in the alliance,
however, if threats rise and/or U.S. attention wanes.
Even though U.S. policy makers will likely hear about any
lack of Japanese confidence through direct bilateral conversations,
a more dependable gauge of the seriousness
of Japan’s concerns will be watching what Japan actually
does, and not just listening to what it says. Our project
identified possible indicators that could alert Washington
to changes in Japanese attitudes regarding perceived
threats, the durability of the U.S.-Japan alliance, and the
credibility of extended deterrence (discussed in chapter
3). These indicators could include new policy statements,
legal interpretations, bureaucratic reorganizations, funding
shifts, diplomatic initiatives, and investments in new
capabilities with military applications, among other possibilities.
Such developments could indicate a degree of
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The U.S.-Japan Alliance and the Future of Extended Deterrence