Japan – U.S. Relations under the Abe Doctrine: Shifting Policy in East Asia Regional Stability

Hendra Manurung

doi:10.32890/jis.13.2017.7984

Abstract

Reelection of Shinzo Abe as Prime Minister provides a favorable climate for both Donald Trump’s first presidential visit to Japan and an improvement of Chinese-Japanese-U.S. bilateral relations. In the 22 October 2017 ballot, Abe’s dominant Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and its coalition partner Komeito, secured a two-thirds majority in the House of Representatives, the lower house of Japan’s bicameral legislature. The coalition already holds a supermajority, required for amending the constitution, in the upper house. It justified Abe for calling the national elections a year earlier than needed to secure a public mandate for addressing the growing North Korean threat and to validate popular support for deepening national economic reforms, which have had recent success in boosting Japan’s growth rate and the stock market. Still the outcome gave Abe a mandate for his policies. However, his stewardship was unclear as several other factors contributed to LDP’s overwhelming victory. At the structural level, Japan’s first past the post-electoral system tends to amplify electoral wins in comparison to proportional representation systems. Abe’s foreign and security policies highly charged with ideological revisionism contain the potential to shift Japan onto a new international trajectory in East Asia. Its degree of articulation and energy makes for a doctrine capable of displacing the Yoshida Doctrine that has been Japan’s dominant grand strategy in the post-war period. Abe will remain pragmatic and not challenge the status quo. However, Abe has already begun to introduce radical policies that appear to transform national security, US-Japan alliance ties and relations with China and East Asia. The Abe Doctrine is dynamic but high risk. Abe’s revisionism contains fundamental contradictions that may ultimately limit national effectiveness.

Highlights

In December 2002, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s stunning return to power in a landslide election victory, and the consolidation of his leadership in a repeat victory in December Hendra Manurung2014, heralded the resurgence, for Japan, of a more assertive, high-profile and high-risk foreign and security policy
Abe’s status was as an arch revisionist ideologue, combined with the track record of his first administration in 2006 to 2007. It indicated that he would inevitably harbor intentions to shift Japan towards a more radical external agenda characterized by a defense posture less fettered by past anti-militaristic constraints, a more fully integrated US–Japan alliance and an emphasis on value-oriented diplomacy with East Asian states and beyond
The eventual conclusion is that the ‘Abe Doctrine’ is likely to riven with its own contradictions that rather than producing a new and clear strategic paradigm for Japan, or reverting back to the previous traditions of the Yoshida Doctrine, it reinforces an increasingly prominent and long-term trend in Japanese foreign policy characterized at various turns by unpredictability, obduracy and antagonism towards regional neighbors and even the US, or what might be termed as a new ‘Resentful Realism’

Summary

Introduction

In December 2002, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s stunning return to power in a landslide election victory, and the consolidation of his leadership in a repeat victory in December. Japanese government policy-makers have remained engaged in increasingly problematic attempts to deny Abe’s nationalist or even militarist bent and to stress continuities with past policies, whilst at the same time arguing that the prime minister’s challenging of taboos is essential for Japan to overcome its malaise in responding to external pressures from China and North Korea and expectations from the US and the international community for a wider commitment to global security Those critical of Abe have ramped up their arguments that he is intent on an irresponsible campaign of overturning post-war constraints on Japanese military power that will only worsen security relations with China and alienate South Korea and other East Asian partners. The eventual conclusion is that the ‘Abe Doctrine’ is likely to riven with its own contradictions that rather than producing a new and clear strategic paradigm for Japan, or reverting back to the previous traditions of the Yoshida Doctrine, it reinforces an increasingly prominent and long-term trend in Japanese foreign policy characterized at various turns by unpredictability, obduracy and antagonism towards regional neighbors and even the US, or what might be termed as a new ‘Resentful Realism’

Conclusion

Machiavelli’s Children