Blowback, Second Edition: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire

The notion that the main thrust of the security treaty was to defend against Chinese expansionism, or to “contain” China, or to provide a platform from which the United States could intervene militarily in the Taiwan Strait to defend Taiwan, Japan’s former colony, from attack by mainland China is a very embarrassing and dangerous one for Japan. In Japan’s own peace treaty with China ending World War II, Japan clearly acknowledged Taiwan as a part of China. Chinese leaders regularly remind Japan that enlarging the scope of the security treaty to include Taiwan directly violates commitments Japan has long made to China.

The Japanese public (and even the conservative ruling party) do not in any case believe that their country is threatened by China. It is widely accepted that Taiwan’s highly modern defense forces effectively deter any form of military takeover by the mainland. For the public, given what Japan did in China during World War II, a serious conflict with that nation over Taiwan is unthinkable. The Japanese also applaud the evolution of the previously revolutionary People’s Republic from its emphasis on opposition to its former imperialist oppressors to domestic development through commerce with them. Japan’s policy is to do everything in its power to adjust to the reemergence of China on the world stage. It also appreciates that China, while resurgent, still has only a gross domestic product of $560 billion, compared to Japan’s $5 trillion and the United States’ $7.2 trillion; a defense budget of $31.7 billion, compared to Japan’s $47 billion and the United States’ $263.9 billion; and perhaps as many as 149 strategic nuclear weapons, compared to the United States’ 7,150.

In polls, the Japanese public has repeatedly expressed a greater concern about oscillations in U.S. policy toward China than about anything China has done or has the capability to do to Japan. Given the large military expeditionary forces the United States maintains in Japan, the real fear is that increased American belligerence toward China might invite Chinese retaliation against the bases in Japan. This is one reason why former Japanese prime minister Morihiro Hosokawa advocates maintaining the Japanese-American alliance while eliminating permanent U.S. forces from Japanese territory.³⁴

The Japanese, too, have the ability to defend themselves from any likely nonnuclear threat to their security. With the second largest navy in the Pacific, more destroyers than the United States, and 120 F-15 fighter interceptors, Japan is quite capable of meeting any challenge that might arise, including one to its merchant fleet. Shunji Taoka, the military correspondent for the Asahi newspaper, argues that Japan has long been fully capable of supplying its own air, naval, and ground defenses and need rely on the United States only for its “nuclear umbrella.” According to Taoka, if the United States withdrew its forces, Japan would not need to add anything further to its defense expenditures in order to maintain its security.³⁵

If, then, American troops are not in Japan to defend Japan, could they be there to contain it? Is their role that of an “honorable watchdog” (gobanken-sama), as many conservative Japanese politicians have contended in the postwar years? The most famous expression of this came from Lt. Gen. Henry C. Stackpole, commander of the 3rd Marine Division in Okinawa, in a 1990 interview with the Washington Post.³⁶ His forces, he claimed, were like a “cap in the bottle,” preventing the monster of revived Japanese militarism from jumping out and, as in the first half of the twentieth century, threatening other East Asian countries. Versions of this view are often seen in the American press; a typical example also from the Post: “Neighboring countries, with a particularly vivid memory of Japanese aggression during World War II, also worry that if the U.S. withdrew its troops, Japan would almost certainly build up its own military power.”³⁷