Signing the US-Japan Treaty

U.S.-JAPAN ALLIANCE; PART I: The U.S.-Japan Treaty of Mutual Cooperation was signed in Washington fifty years ago this month. Few alliances last half a century. The fact that this one has, is a testament to its strength, but is also the result of East Asia's failure to develop stable post-WW II political and security relationships. It also reflects Japan's post-war political realities and it’s largely pacifist global role. In a new study, the American Enterprise Institute’s Michael Auslin reviews how the alliance should adapt itself to changes in both nations and throughout Asia if it is to survive. Part I looks at the history of what has often been called, “the most important bilateral relationship in the world bar none.”

Security-related issues regarding North Korea's nuclear-weapons program and China's growing military raise important political questions. And, the Obama and Hatoyama administrations must decide if the alliance remains a key element in their security strategies going forward or is an outdated relic of a bygone era.

ANNIVERSARY: The anniversary being celebrated this month is not for the first security treaty between Japan and the U.S. In 1951, upon conclusion of the San Francisco Peace Treaty that ended the American occupation of Japan, Washington and Tokyo signed a Bilateral Security Treaty that set the precedent for U.S. military forces to stay in Japan, "so as to deter armed attack" upon the country. The treaty went on to say, the U.S. held the "expectation that Japan will itself increasingly assume responsibility for its own defense against direct and indirect aggression."

Thus the template for postwar U.S.-Japan security cooperation was determined just as Japan regained sovereignty: U.S. forces in large numbers would remain in Japan on bases on the main islands and in U.S.-controlled Okinawa, while Washington would continually express hope that Japanese governments would rearm the country sufficiently for self-defense purposes.

CHALLENGES: The U.S. developed this new relationship with Japan due to global challenges, specifically the postwar emergence of a competition with the Soviet Union. Although it had been a bitter enemy for four years, Japan immediately became America's postwar strategic linchpin in the Pacific -- a position Japan's leadership acquiesced to in exchange for security guarantees and the freedom to focus scarce resources on rebuilding.

From a strategic perspective, the U.S. presence in Japan acted as a bulwark against Soviet expansion in Northeast Asia, and the alliance became the cornerstone of U.S. policy in Asia. The triumph of Mao’s Communist Party in 1949 and North Korea's invasion of South Korea in 1950 -- events that left Japan the only major non-Communist country in Northeast Asia -- cemented the importance to the U.S. of Japan as a Pacific partner.

The U.S. presence in Japan acted as a bulwark against Soviet expansion in Northeast Asia, and the alliance became the cornerstone of U.S. policy in Asia.

COMMON DANGER: By the time the U.S. and Japan renegotiated the security treaty in 1960, crises were emerging in Berlin, Cuba, and Indochina. Yet, the 1960 treaty largely followed the 1951 agreement in focusing primarily on Japan's defense and only secondarily on the issue of "international peace and security in the Far East." The core of the 1960 alliance commits both sides to "act to meet the common danger" of an armed attack against either, but with the caveat that each would so act "in accordance with its constitutional provisions and processes."

The Japanese decision to allow long-term U.S. bases on its soil, and the American willingness to maintain those bases, represented a fundamentally different U.S. presence in Asia. The permanent U.S. presence meant that Asia's overall development, both economic and political, and the role of Japan in promoting that development, became factors in U.S. global strategy.

COLD WAR: The battle over Europe may have been the centerpiece of the cold war, but the internationalist order President Truman created, and which his successors -- Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson -- continued, could not have succeeded without a resolute U.S. commitment to Asia. As a base of military operations during the Korean War, Japan allowed the U.S. Air Force and Navy to hold their presence on the war-torn peninsula and eventually struggle to a negotiated ceasefire.

These events proved to Washington policymakers that if the United States wished to maintain its regional presence and not surrender to what it believed to be a united Communist front between the Soviet Union and China, then Japan was the military key to holding Northeast Asia in the same way that the Philippines served to anchor the U.S. presence in Southeast Asia.

During these decades, however, Washington's security calculations ceased to be the sole strategic rationale for the alliance with Japan. During the 1960s, Japan's economic boom commenced, and the country's real gross domestic product grew at an annual rate of 8.9 percent. While growth slowed dramatically during the 1970s due to the oil shocks, by that time, Japan had become the world's key exporter of high-tech consumer goods, steel, ships, and automobiles

ECONOMIC GROWTH: In other words, Japan had become crucial to global economic growth and, increasingly, the health of the U.S. economy. From one perspective, then, the U.S.-Japan alliance became committed to defending Japan against any potential threat that could harm the new economic powerhouse.

And with the Soviet Union attempting to spread its influence in Southeast Asia, Japan's role as a northern bulwark against Communism was highlighted by its successful capitalist economy, which other modernizing nations, such as South Korea, Taiwan, and Singapore, were emulating as a model.