Japan and the U.S. in Asia: Cooperation and Contradictions

Abstract

At a time when the international situation has been seriously deteriorating and undergoing destabilization, Japan has been using its growing economic and technological potential to strengthen its position in Asia. Moreover, it has been increasingly active within the framework of U.S. strategy, which is designed to create a rigid structure of global confrontation with the USSR and to use conflicts and contradictions, particularly of Asian origin, for that purpose. Current Japanese foreign policy is dominated by two tendencies-to expand its political influence and, at the same time, to develop its military-political alliance with the United States. The Japanese government has been quite successful in following both because they have not yet come into conflict with one another. Moreover, Japanese diplomacy has been expertly using cooperation with the U.S. to expand its economic and political involvement in Asian affairs. At the same time, it is obvious that Japan's broad economic and political involvement in Asia carries a high potential for future conflicts between the U.S. and its Japanese partner in Asia. However, the tendency for cooperation has prevailed so far. During the past several years, the U.S. has gained certain advantages as a result of this cooperation. First, it has achieved greater Japanese involvement in U.S. strategy in Asia; second, it made Japan carry out diplomacy unfriendly to the USSR; third, Japan has been assured a greater military role in East Asia; and finally, the U.S. has succeeded in assuring greater Japanese economic aid to U.S. strategic partners in Asia, most of whom belong to the group of frontier states. However, an analysis of these four aspects of present U.S.-Japanese bilateral cooperation in Asia leads to the conclusion that their multipurpose cooperation is both conscious and forced. The U.S. is well aware of