Paper for ASEAN and the Regional Dynamic of Northeast Asia

Name : Maria Firani Rosari

NPM : 0706291331

US-Japan Alliance and the Regional Dynamic of Northeast Asia

This paper is going to analyze the correlation between US-Japan alliance and the
regional dynamic of Northeast Asia. Does the alliance play a pivotal role in shaping the regional
dynamic of Northeast Asia? Do United States and Japan use this alliance to balance against
China especially in Taiwan issue? In the first place, there will be an introduction about the
history of US-Japan alliance and the strategic environment in Northeast Asia. Secondly, there
will be an explanation about the alliance formation and the balance of threat as the theoretical
framework. Thirdly, there will be an analysis on several facts about the alliance’s influence to
the region and what is the significance of this alliance in creating a stable region in Northeast
Asia?

Introduction

The US-Japan alliance, formed in the US occupation of Japan after its defeat in World
War II, provides a platform for US military readiness in Asia. Under the Treaty of Mutual
Cooperation and Security, about 53.000 US troops are stationed in Japan and have the exclusive
use of 80 facilities throughout the archipelago.1 At the beginning, this alliance was made to
contain Japan’s military power so that Japan can’t conduct the same war like World War II at the
future. However, the changing strategic environment of Northeast Asia, such as China’s rising
power, North Korean nuclear issue, Taiwan issue, global war on terrorism, and some territorial
disputes among North Asian states, stimulates some improvements on US-Japan alliance.
Besides, US has many security interests at stake in Asia, such as preserving stability among great
powers, preserving the safety of the sea-lanes of communication (SLOCs) throughout East and
Southeast Asia, maintaining an American leadership role in regional and global institution,
peaceful resolution of the division of the Korean Peninsula, peaceful resolution of the Chinese-
Taiwanese conflict that upholds democracy and economic freedom, avoiding the proliferation of
1
According to U.S. military figures, about 39,000 U.S. military personnel are stationed
onshore and about 14,000
floats in Japan. Source: U.S. Forces Japan at http://www.usfj.mil/welcome.html accessed on
22 Desember 2009, pk. 04.05

1
weapons of mass destruction (WMD), and ensuring the independence of Indochina and
Southeast Asia.2 We can’t deny that there’s an inevitable rivalry between China and Japan, as the
two of the biggest economies in the world, also because of their historical sentiments and their
territorial disputes. China’s rising in economy and its militarization, at some point, strengthen the
US-Japan alliance.

As the two largest economies in the world with democratic systems and shared values,
the United States and Japan are becoming increasingly dependent on one another both
economically and politically. Together, both countries account for approximately 33.5 percent of
the world economy3 and about 28 percent of total official development assistance (ODA).4 Japan
also holds an important role in international economic system for its role as the second-largest
donor to the United Nations, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and the
Asian Development Bank.5 Japan has become a positive model for the economic development,
democratic principles, and global cooperation. In Japan, there’s a concern that United States will
dedicate more time to the relationship with China. The growing presence of China as a regional
and world power makes the strengthening of US-China relationship unavoidable and Japan see
this as a threat to its security, however Japan won’t be able to fight in war with China without US
help, so that Japan intends to keep its alliance with the US.

China is more sensitive on the subject of Taiwan than any other issue, China’s leader
fear that the post-Cold War US-Japan alliance aims to separate Taiwan from China. Neither
United States nor Japan wants Taiwan united with a potentially hostile PRC, because access to
Taiwan’s ports would enormously boost China’s effort to establish a deep-water navy.6 China’s

2
Richard J. Samuels and Christopher P. Twomey, “The Eagle Eyes the Pacific: American
Foreign Policy Options in East Asia after the Cold War” in Michael J. Green and Patrick M.
Cronin (eds.), The US-Japan Alliance : Past, Present, and Future, (New York: Council on
Foreign Relations Press, 1999), hal. 5
3
World Development Indicators Database 2007, World Bank,
http://siteresources.worldbank.org/DATASTATISTICS/Resources/GDP.pdf accessed on 22
Desember 2009 pk. 20.08
4
Development Aggregate Aid Statistics: ODA by Donor, Organization for Economic Co-
operation and Development (OECD), April,4, 2008 accessed from
http://stats.oecd.org/wbos/Index.aspx?DatasetCode=ODA_DONOR on 22 Desember 2009
pk. 23.44
5
Richard L. Armitage and Joseph S. Nye, The US-Japan Alliance. Getting Asia Right through
2020 (CSIS Report, February 2007), hal 20.
6
This theme surfaced in interviews with Tokyo University professor Tanaka Akihito (February
20, 2001), National Defense Academy president Nishihara Masashi (February 27, 2001), and
Asahi Shimbun chief diplomatic correspondent Funabashi Yoichi (May 17, 2001).

2
high growth rate and its power projection to seek greater influence beyond its borders become
challenges to US and Japan strategic interests in the Northeast Asian region. In this paper, the
writer’s argument is acknowledging that there’s a changing role of US-Japan alliance, today,
since China and Japan increasingly view each other as a hostile, even threatening states, this
alliance is used by both Japan and US to balance China’s power in the region. Security in
Northeast Asia is seen as a zero sum game, when US-Japan alliance becomes stronger, there’s a
security dilemma occurs because China sees this alliance as a threat to its security. Furthermore,
the dynamic of US-Japan-China relations affect other states’ behavior in the region such as North
Korea, Republic of Korea, and Taiwan. We can conclude upfront that stability in Northeast Asia
will rest on the quality of US-Japan-China relations, and even though US is closely allied with
Japan, it should encourage good relations among all three and in order to create stability in the
region, the presence of US-Japan alliance is important to contain China’s influence.

Theoretical Framework

Neorealist theory advanced by Kenneth Waltz ignored human nature and focused on
the effects of the international system. For Waltz, the international system consisted of a number
of great powers, each seeking to survive, and because the system is anarchic, each state has to
survive on its own. Alliances are most commonly viewed as a response to threats, when entering
an alliance, states may either balance (ally in opposition to the principal source of danger) or
bandwagon (ally with the state that poses the major threat).7 State will choose to balance for a
main reason that states risk their own survival if they fail to curb a potential hegemon before it
becomes too strong.8 Because balancing is more accurately viewed as a response to threats, it is
important to consider all the factors that will affect the level of threat that will affect the level of
threat that states may pose. Those factors are: aggregate power, proximity, offensive capability,
and offensive intentions.9 First, the greater a state’s total resources (population, industrial and
military capability, technology), the greater a potential threat it can pose to others. Second,
because the ability to project power declines with distance, states that are nearby pose a greater
threat than those that far away. Third, states with large offensive capabilities are more likely to
provoke alliance than those who are either militarily weak or capable only of defending. In short,

7
Stephen M. Walt, “Alliance Formation and the Balance of World Power” in International
Security Journal, Vol. 9 No. 4 (Spring, 1985), hal. 4
8
Ibid. hal 6.
9
Ibid. hal 9.

3
the more aggressive or expansionist a state appears, the more likely it is to trigger an opposing.
There’s a difference between balance of power theory and balance of threat theory, balance of
threat see that the more powerful the state, and the more aggressive its intentions are perceived to
be, the more likely it is to attract the counter-balancing efforts of other. 10 When Waltz said that
balance of power is about the disparity of power capabilities, Walt see there’s another factor that
provoke the alliance, it’s the strategic intentions and aggressiveness which are perceived as a
threat. Walt argues that balancing is more common than bandwagoning because an alignment
that preserves most of a state’s freedom of action is preferable to accepting subordination under a
potential hegemon, because intentions can change and perceptions are unreliable, it is safer to
balance against potential threats than to hope that strong states will remain benevolent.11 There
are three types of balancing, they are hard balancing, soft balancing and asymmetric balancing.
Hard balancing reflects the traditional realist approach of forming and maintaining open military
alliances to balance a strong state or to forestall the rise of power or a threatening state. 12
Meanwhile soft balancing involves tacit non-offensive coalition building to neutralize a rising or
potentially threatening power and the asymmetric balancing encompasses inter-state level
interactions and state versus non-states interactions.13 There’s also a term of external balancing
which is primarily the formation of alliances as blocking coalitions against a prospective
aggressor, but it also includes territorial compensations or partitions for the purpose of
redistributing the sources of power and if necessary, threats of force, intervention and even war.14
The writer argue that the US-Japan alliance is both hard balancing and external balancing against
China who is perceived as a threat because of its aggressive intentions toward its navy activities
and its power projection on Taiwan crisis and also several territorial disputes in East China Sea.
According to Walt, the nature of a state’s domestic political system is a crucial factor in
determining whether a state appears threatening to others. Walt sees balancing as a condition
where a superpower chooses its partner as a response of threat from other regional power.15 That
is what US trying to do after Cold War in the Northeast Asian region, US as a superpower
choose Japan as its partner to balance China’s power in the region.
10
Stephen M. Walt, The Origin of Alliances (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1987)
11
Stephen M. Walt, “Alliance Formation and the Balance of World Power” Op. cit. hal. 8, 15.
12
T. V. Paul, James J. Wirtz, and Michel Fortmann, et.al., Balance of Power. Theory and
Practice in the 21st Century (California: Stanford University Press, 2004), hal. 31
13
Ibid. hal 31-33
14
Ibid. hal 52
15
Stephen M. Walt, Origin of Alliances, Op. cit. hal. 25-32.

4
 After Cold War, China’s behavior in the Northeast Asian region can be assumed as an
offensive realism behavior. Offensive realism’s main claim is that as a state gains in relative
power, its grand strategic interests expand.16 First, state’s interests expand as their relative power
increases because capabilities drive intentions, moreover, an increase in a state’s relative power
not only cause an expansion of its external interests and security requirements. Secondly, when a
state expand its interest as its power increases, because the anarchic nature of international
politics, it makes every states in the region become insecure. In terms of China-Japan-US
relations, China is the one who is capable to fulfill the criteria of being the next hegemon in the
region and also posses those four factors (aggregate power, proximity, offensive capability, and
offensive intentions) that stimulate an inevitably transformations of the US-Japan alliance.
Moreover, United States and Japan see China’s rising power as a common threat that will
produce imbalances in the region and also disrupts the regional stability.

Analysis

This chapter begins with an argument that there’s a changing interests in US-Japan
alliance after Cold War. In the beginning the alliance aims to guarantee Japan’s defense, also to
make sure that Japan won’t build its military power through article 9 where Japan can only
develop Self Defense Forces with a limited armaments. After Cold War, there’s a several
changes in US-Japan alliance, it’s because the emergence of some important issues in regional
like China’s rising, North Korean nuclear, Taiwan crisis, and also some territorial disputes
between China and Japan in East China Sea. Due to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001,
US reinforced the notion of the US-Japan alliance as one of the central partnerships of US
foreign policy, particularly in Asia.17 Under the leadership of former Prime Minister Koizumi,
the Japanese legislature passed anti-terrorism legislation that allowed Japan to dispatch refueling
tankers to the Indian Ocean to support US-led operations in Afghanistan and in February 2004,
Japan sent over 600 military personnel to Iraq to assist in reconstruction activities, the first time
Japan had sent soldiers overseas without an international mandate since World War II. 18 US and

16
T. V. Paul, James J. Wirtz, and Michel Fortmann, et.al., Op. cit. hal. 126
17
Emma Chanlett-Avery and Weston S. Konishi, “The Changing US-Japan Alliance:
Implications for US Interests” in CRS Report for Congress (Congressional Research Service,
23 Juli 2009), hal. 7.
18
Ibid. hal 7.

5
Japan also agree to build theatre missile defense in Japan as a implication of the North Korean
missile test in 1998, 2006, 2009, and also Chinese nuclear capabilities.19

China’s rising become one of several reasons that changes US-Japan alliance interests.
The US believes that the presence of the US military in the region serves as a deterrent against
potentially hostile states as well as helping to maintain regional peace and stability. However,
China does not accept this rational for the US forward military presence. China has warned
against American hegemonic leadership, and has charged that the New Guidelines for the US-
Japan security alliance, the potential development and the deployment of TMD systems, and the
US’ handling of the Korean Peninsula issue, are the source of the instability in Northeast Asia
region. In its July 1998 Defense White Paper, the Beijing government stated that hegemony and
power politics are still primary threats to world peace and stability. 20 Taiwan security issues are
the major differences between Chinese and US governments that could lead the whole region
into a devastating conflict. China sees that TMD is used by US and Japan to defend against
China’s own M-9 and M-11 mobile short-range ballistic missiles at bases close to the Taiwan
Straits.21

According to the New Guidelines for the US-Japan security alliance, this alliance is still
based on the idea of collective self-defense, a strategic plan for combining the strength and
resolve of Asia-Pacific’s two power countries to preserve the peace and security of the region
(status quo of the region), and now in 2009 with the new elected Prime Minister, Yukio
Hatoyama, there’s a significant increase of the Japan’s role to the alliance. Before, it was simply
a provider of a military base for American forces advance troops, now, it provides support for
American military actions. Any state that is not satisfied with the status quo order, arrangement,
or power distribution status is referred to as a non-status quo state. Currently, China and North
Korea are both believed to be non-status quo states to varying degrees. Particularly China, there
are some important facts that prove China as a significant threat for the regional stability.
According to Walt’s first factor, aggregate power, China’s population is the largest in the world
(1.338.612.968), its GDP is the third compare to the world (US$7.992 trillion), its industrial
19
Ibid. hal 9.
20
Defense White Paper, State Council, Beijing, July 1998. See http://www.china.org.cn
accessed on 22 Desember 2009 pk. 21.14
21
See Secretary of Defense Report to the Congress, Select Military Capabilities of the
People's Republic of China (Report to Congress Pursuant to FY99 Appropriations Bill, 1
February 1999).

6
production growth rate is 9.3 % in 2008, and its military expenditures is 4.3 % of GDP in 2006. 22
Also by 1991, China had achieved dominance over mainland East Asia, except for the South
Korea.23 Even though China dominates mainland East Asia, the US dominates maritime East
Asia, and Chinese aircraft cannot challenge American aircraft in any theatre, it’s because Beijing
still continue to rely on Russia’s 1970’s generation Su-27 and Su-30 aircraft as the backbone of
its early 21st-century air force.24

China’s aggressive behavior successfully creates insecurity among states in Northeast

Asian region. This aggressive behavior is shown by some facts of territorial disputes with Japan
such as territorial disputes in Senkaku-Shoto islands and territorial line in East China Sea. 25
Following the 1989 Tiananmen massacre, China sped up its plan to modernize its army, and in
the 1992 People’s Congress passed the National Sovereignty Law, drawing the entire South
China Sea into the reach of China’s territorial sovereignty and in 1995, China followed up by
occupying Mischief Reef. Its nuclear test the same year reminded regional countries that China
can conduct nuclear war with any states, and the 1996 Taiwan missile crisis was a performance
verging on war. Those facts of China’s aggressive behavior combined with the offensive
capability and offensive intentions will inevitably disrupt the regional stability. China offensive
intentions and its ability to provoke US-Japan also can be seen when in November 2007, China
had deployed between 990 and 1070 CSS-6 and CSS-7 short range ballistic missiles (SRBM) to
garrisons opposite Taiwan.26 China also acquires large numbers of highly accurate cruise
missiles, such as DH-10 land attack cruise missile (LACM, Russian SS-N-22 supersonic anti
ship cruise missiles. China also show that she wants to challenge US maritime power by
acquiring twelve Russian built Kilo class diesel electric submarines which are armed with II-
class guided missile destroyers (DDG). China is also modernizing its longer-range ballistic
missile force by adding more survivable systems. Most notably, the DF-31 and longer range DF-
31A are now being deployed to units within the second artillery corps.27
22
China’s basic facts accessed from https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-
factbook/geos/ch.html on 22 Desember 2009 pk. 20.06
23
T. V. Paul, James J. Wirtz, and Michel Fortmann, et.al., Op. cit. hal 287
24
Paul H. B. Godwin, “PLA Doctrine, Strategy, and Capabilities Toward 2000”, in China
Quarterly 146 (June, 1996), hal. 443.
25
China’s basic facts accessed from https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-
factbook/geos/ch.html on 22 Desember 2009 pk. 20.04
26
“Military Power of the People’s Republic of China” A Report to Congress, Pursuant to the
National Defense Authorization Act, Fiscal Year 2000.
27
Ibid. hal 13

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 China realize that its maritime power needs to be enhanced, until 2008, China’s naval
forces include 74 principal combatants, 57 attack submarines, 55 medium and heavy amphibious
ships, and 49 coastal missile patrol craft. China also bought two new SHANG-class (type 093)
nuclear powered attack submarines (SSN).28 From those data above, we can see that China has an
offensive intention to extend its maritime power and the disagreements that remain with Japan
over maritime claims in the East China Sea and with several Southeast Asia claimants to all or
parts of the Spratly and Paracel Islands in the South China Sea could lead to renewed tension in
these area. Instability on the Korean Peninsula likewise could produce a regional crisis in which
China would face a choice between diplomatic or military responses. Advanced destroyers and
submarines reflect China’s desire to protect and advance its maritime interests up to and beyond
the Taiwan. Potential expeditionary forces are improving with the introduction of new
equipment, better unit-level tactics, and greater coordination of joint operations. Based on those
facts, US-Japan alliance has an important rule to maintain regional stability. Japan will need US
military power if Japan has no choice but to conduct war or conflict with China and US also need
Japan to contain China in order to strengthen its position in Northeast Asian region, and also to
prevent or as a preemptive action before China challenges US’ global hegemony. Furthermore,
US and Japan need to enhance maritime cooperation between US navy and MSDF (Japanese
Maritime Self-Defense Forces) which aims to cooperate in preventing anti-submarine warfare
and securitizing SLOCs.29 Afterward, United States and Japan behavior can be predicted, Japan’s
role in the alliance will be increasing in order to strengthen the alliance. For conclusion, the
primary interest of the US and Japan is that the status quo is in fact maintained in the region. The
strategic triangle formed by China, Japan, and the United States is an important factor
influencing Asia-Pacific Security and the US-Japan need to be strengthened to contain China’s
power projection and create stability in the region.

Words: 3.344

28
Ibid. hal 14
29
Emma Chanlett-Avery dan Weston S. Konishi, Op. cit. hal 14.