Overestimating the “Power Shift”: The US Role in the Failure of the Democratic Party of Japan’s “Asia Pivot”

Abstract

In 2009 the Democratic Party of Japan came to power with a new foreign policy tailored to the regional and global power shift from the United States to China: a more equal relationship with the United States and improved relations with Japan’s Asian neighbours. Within nine months the new Prime Minister Hatoyama Yukio resigned and the foreign policy shift was jettisoned by his successors. Conventional explanations cite the weak leadership of Hatoyama, the inexperience of his party, and the lack of realism behind proposed policy shift itself as key factors in the failure of the policy shift. This article provides an alternative perspective. Drawing on the power literature in International Relations, and in particular the concept of discursive power, it demonstrates how Washington turned the Futenma base relocation and other issues into a major crisis in Japan-United States relations in order to discredit Hatoyama and the policy shift. What was a modest and pragmatic policy shift was narrated as a grave threat to very cornerstone of post-war Japanese security: the security treaty. By focusing on discursive power, the article argues that talk of a ‘power shift’ is premature and is based on an unsophisticated understanding of power. (Less)