Document created: 1 June 2004
Air University Review, September-October 1971

Relationship Between Japan and the United States

His Excellency Nobuhiko Ushiba 

Ambassador of Japan to the United States

The Japan of today is a nation that has renounced military force as an instrument of national policy, apart from the inherent right of self-defense. Japan is constitutionally prohibited from maintaining a war-making potential. This commitment, which dates from the Occupation under General of the Army Douglas MacArthur, has the deep support of the vast majority of the Japanese people.

Yet there is a seeming paradox to this kind of defense posture in a world where the survival of civilization depends on the precarious balance of enormous arsenals. The paradox seems even stranger when one realizes that Japan has now emerged as the third-ranking world power, in terms of national output, and may within a decade or so surpass the Soviet Union, to stand second only to the United States.

If at this point Japan is entitled to be considered a “superpower,” then it is only fair to ask what role a nonmilitary superpower can play in the world of the 1970s. This is a question I should like to explore, since it has great bearing on Japanese-American relations and on the future stability of the Asian-Pacific region. As U.S. Commander in Chief, President Nixon, said to my Prime Minister some sixteen months ago:

The Pacific and Asia is the area of the greatest promise and also of the greatest peril. Whether Asia and the Pacific become an area of peace or an area of devastation, for Asia and the world, will depend on what happens between the United States and Japan more than between any other nations in the world.

In covering my topic I shall touch first on the strategic environment in which Japan finds itself and explain certain assumptions about Asian-Pacific security which are widely shared among the Japanese people. Against this background, I shall then discuss the objectives and strategies of Japanese defense, economic and political policies for the 1970s, and their implications for the Japan-U.S. relationship.

Seen through Japanese eyes, the basic security equation in the western Pacific is a nu­clear triangle composed of the United States, the Soviet Union, and the People’s Republic of China. Japan lies directly within this triangle, as do divided Korea and the Republic of China on Taiwan. Avoidance of nuclear war in this area depends, obviously, on the stability of this triangular power balance.

Moreover, Japan is a small archipelago, no larger in area than California. Its population of over 100 million is crowded into coastal patches of land that are highly vulnerable targets to intermediate-range missiles from the Asian mainland, or to missiles launched from submarines.

Yet this vulnerable Japan, extremely poor in natural resources, depends on world trade for the survival of its industries. Japan’s trade lifelines pass through areas of potential conflict among the triangular powers—the Sea of Japan, Taiwan Strait, the South China Sea, the Straits of Malacca, and the Indian Ocean, as well as across the Pacific.

In this strategic environment it is understandable that the Japanese outlook on national security is quite different from that of a continent-size nuclear-armed power. Recognizing that their options are limited, the Japanese people have adopted three operating assumptions on which they base their security planning.

· The first of these assumptions is that Japan does not have the potential to influence militarily the present nuclear equation in the Asian Pacific. That is, the acquisition of nuclear weapons by Japan would add nothing to the stability of the existing nuclear triangle. Indeed, it could have an opposite, destabilizing effect, leading to an intensified arms race in the area. Therefore, for practical as well as constitutional reasons Japan has renounced nuclear weapons for its own use.

· The second widely held Japanese assumption is that the existing nuclear power balance in Asia will remain stable as long as the United States maintains a military presence—and credible nuclear deterrent—in the western Pacific. That is, we Japanese do not interpret the Nixon Doctrine as a formula for the withdrawal of American power from the Asian Pacific. We assume that the nuclear power balance—and the security of Japan from nuclear war—will continue to rest on the American deterrent. It is for this reason that my government favors continuing in force the Japan—U.S. Security Treaty, which places Japan under the American nuclear umbrella and provides the United States with forward military bases on Japanese soil.

Even with the triangle intact, nuclear war in Asia is still, of course, possible. The border conflict between China and the Soviet Union could escalate out of control, though this seems a remote possibility in light of the restraint both sides have exhibited throughout the period of the dispute.

A possibility with more dangerous and far-reaching consequences would be armed Chinese intervention in her peripheral countries as a rerun of the 1950 intervention in Korea. Again it is safe to assume that, in the light of historical experience, the countries concerned will exercise reasonable restraint to prevent miscalculation on the other side. It is also very much to be hoped that the Indochina conflict will continue to wind down and will in due course lend itself to settlement through negotiation.

Recognizing all these dangers, the Japanese people nonetheless assume that the most important factor in avoiding nuclear conflict in Asia is and will continue to be the U.S. deterrent as a visible presence in the area. Precipitous withdrawal of the United States from the western Pacific would, we believe, have very unsettling consequences and would drastically alter the strategic equation in which Japan finds itself.

· The third widely held Japanese assumption is that the most likely threats to the stability and security of the Asian Pacific are nonnuclear, in the form of subversion, indirect aggression, or clandestine provocation of “wars of national liberation.”

These are the most ambiguous threats to the peace, and the most difficult to counter, as we have seen in various parts of South and Southeast Asia, from Burma to Indochina. A disciplined and determined guerrilla force, well supplied or even reinforced by a hostile neighbor, is an elusive and persistent enemy for any government to face.

As the American experience in Vietnam has demonstrated, even the direct intervention of a powerful ally cannot by itself insure the success of a government under guerrilla siege. The essential ingredients for internal stability include a government that not only possesses adequate security forces but also enjoys sufficient popular support to be able to isolate the guerrillas from the mainstream of the population and thus control them. We may speculate that success of the “Vietnamization” program now under way will depend on both these factors—not simply on the combat effectiveness of the South Vietnamese armed forces but also on the ability of the South Vietnamese government to maintain broad public support and confidence.

This is the fundamental challenge throughout the developing world, the challenge of building a viable nation-state, with the economic, political, and other resources to meet popular aspirations. Where this has not been accomplished, or where it is happening too slowly, the country is fertile ground for internal or external subversion.

One of the most important provisions of the Nixon Doctrine, as I understand it, deals with this self-help principle. The doctrine reaffirms American treaty commitments and the role of the U.S. deterrent where massive or nuclear aggression is threatened. In cases of small-scale conventional aggression, however, or internal subversion, the doctrine indicates that the local government must accept full responsibility for its own security. Where appropriate, the United States may provide material assistance, but the human will and effort to survive can come only from those whose freedom and well-being are at stake.

The concept is wholly consistent with the Japanese outlook. The most likely threats to Asian peace and stability—the threats of subversion and “national liberation” wars—will diminish only as the nations of this area stabilize themselves economically and politically. This will, of course, take substantial outside help. Assistance in economic and social development is the one field of activity where the Japanese people believe they can make their most valuable contribution to peace-building in the Asian-Pacific.

Against this background, let us now explore Japanese policies for the 1970s in the areas of national defense and international economics and politics.

The Self-Defense Forces that Japan maintains operate within the three parameters: that our military capabilities are constitutionally limited to self-defense; that we reject nuclear armaments on both practical and constitutional grounds; and that our ultimate security rests on the U.S. deterrent, under Japan—U.S. mutual security arrangements.

The mission of the Japanese Self-Defense Forces is to defend the Japanese people and territory from direct or indirect aggression—or, more basically, to be strong enough to deter any such aggression. To accomplish this mission, Japan is currently spending about eight-tenths of one percent of its gross national product (GNP) to provide a compact, modern, all-volunteer defense establishment. Beginning in 1972, the Fourth Self-Defense Build-up Program will double these expenditures to $16 billion over a five-year period, or an average $3 billion a year.

The emphasis, under the new plan, will be on qualitative rather than quantitative improvements. For example, there will be virtually no increase in the current numerical strength of the ground forces, which will remain at 180,000 men. However, army mobility will be increased with armored personnel carriers, tanks, and helicopters. The maritime forces, or navy, will acquire high-speed rocket-armed hydrofoils, destroyers, and submarines for coastal defense. The air forces will replace their present F-86s with about a hundred F4EJ Phantom jets and will reach a planned strength of 900 aircraft, including 180 F-104J jets.

This will not give Japan, by 1976, a war-making potential or the capacity to conduct military operations beyond its own territories. It will insure Japan’s capacity to defend the home islands—and American bases on those islands, including Okinawa—from any plausible level of conventional attack.

I cannot emphasize too strongly the depth of this commitment, among the Japanese people, to an exclusively self-defense military capability. It is a commitment rooted in memories of the last war, formalized in our Constitution, and reinforced by awareness of our vulnerability in the present nuclear confrontation.

Yet I believe it is apparent that a competent and sophisticated Japanese self-defense capability is an important contribution to regional stability, in the sense called for in the Nixon Doctrine. Japan clearly accepts full responsibility for its own security at the nonnuclear level, within the framework of its mutual security arrangements with the United States.

Equally important, this defense posture will permit Japan to concentrate its energies and resources during this decade on those aspects of peace-building which the Japanese people feel best equipped to perform: promoting economic development and political stability in the developing areas of Asia. This may be viewed as planned peace-building: a constructive assault on the gravest threats to peace and stability in the region—poverty, malnutrition, disease, hunger, inadequate education, underdeveloped industry and trade, and the other conditions which promote internal discontent and invite external intervention and subversion.

As third-ranking world economic power, with global trading interests and a vital stake in world stability, Japan has the obligation to invest its economic strength in international development. This obligation has special significance in developing Asia, where Japan is the only modern industrial power. Thus, in the future as in the past, Japan will devote a substantial portion of its development assistance to east and southeast Asian countries.

Total Japanese aid to all developing countries has quadrupled, from about $300 million in 1964 to $1.25 billion in 1969. Aid levels will continue to increase until we reach, by 1975, an annual level of aid equivalent to one percent of Japan’s GNP. Since our GNP is growing at well over ten percent a year, this will mean approximately $4 billion in foreign aid in 1975—about the same as total American foreign aid today.

Plans also call for continuing improvements in the quality of Japanese foreign aid. The proportion of outright grants will increase, and loan terms will become more favorable. Greater emphasis is already being placed on the kinds of aid and technical assistance which contribute fundamentally to nation-building and social modernization and, there­fore, to political stability and regional security.

The level of Japanese aid channeled through multilateral agencies is also growing. For example, Japan was one of the organizers of the Asian Development Bank and is its principal source of capital. The Bank is an increasingly important instrument for preinvestment assistance to Asian countries in agriculture, fisheries, transportation, and communications. Similarly, Japan is a vigorous promoter of regional consultation and cooperation on economic development through such institutions as the Asian and Pacific Council and periodic Asian ministerial conferences on development.

Japan’s private sector has a vital partnership role in this national effort. Through direct investment, joint ventures, resource-development contracts, and training programs, Japanese companies are expanding domestic processing, manufacturing, and commerce as well as international trade throughout non-Communist Asia. Japanese business leaders, together with their counterparts in other Pacific nations, are contemplating setting up a multinational private investment corporation for Asia, to provide venture capital and technical and managerial assistance to local entrepreneurs in Asian countries.

There are, of course, political implications to economic activities on such a large scale, and we Japanese are acquiring some sensitivity in this regard. Nearly all the developing countries of Asia have recent memories of colonialism—Japanese as well as Western—and are jealous of their economic as well as political independence. We are learning the importance of a genuinely cooperative approach to our Asian partners, whether at government-to-government levels or in private-sector dealings. And out of our hard-earned experience we hope will emerge the channels for more effective regional cooperation in all areas of common concern.

Some degree of political consultation is taking place. In May 1970, for example, leaders of non-Communist Asia met in Djakarta to explore ways in which the states in the region could together contribute to a just and durable peace settlement in Indochina. The efforts begun there have yet to bear any fruit, but the habit of Asian political consultation is beginning to form. This is a healthy sign for the future, and it is a development which Japan will continue to encourage, in the interests of planned peace-building.

This brief summary of Japanese objectives and policies gives some idea of the constructive role a nonmilitary superpower can play in the turbulent world of the l970s. It will not be a decisive role in the maintenance of today’s precarious peace. It can be a very constructive role in making peace less precarious in the future.

Whether the world has any future will be determined primarily by the two nuclear-armed superpowers, and especially by the United States, whose steadfastness has been instrumental for a quarter-century in the prevention of general war. Japan, operating in nonmilitary spheres, hopes to make its principal contribution by helping to remove the most obvious causes of lesser wars, aggressions, and threats to the peace.

These policies have implications for Japanese-American relations.  Japan and the United States are allies, not merely by treaty but, more fundamentally, in spirit. Both our peoples are deeply committed to political democracy, and both have grown strong through the free-enterprise system. In many important respects, especially in this postwar period, the United States has provided a model for Japanese modernization. The forms of our development have remained uniquely Japanese, but our debt to America is considerable.

As our relationship has matured, we have become each other’s best overseas customers, building a two-way trade that has quadrupled every ten years and now exceeds $10 billion annually, both ways. American private investment in Japan has reached over $1 billion, and the ties between our two economies are daily growing stronger through technological exchanges and joint ventures as well as trade, investment, and tourism.

In so close and dynamic a relationship, occasional frictions are bound to occur. The recent list of differences includes the question of regulating Japanese (and other Asian) textile exports to the United States, as well as American complaints about Japanese protectionism and Japanese complaints—to a lesser degree but still real—about American protectionism. I do not mean to suggest that such problems are trivial, but it is important for us to remember that they are “normal.” That is to say, it is as natural for trading partners as for marriage partners to have disagreements and to need time and patience to work them out. Excessive passion, in either case, is a hindrance to reasoned negotiations.

What we must never lose sight of is the basic identity of interests that has made Japan and the United States partners in the first place. These interests include the mutually beneficial nature of our economic relationship, the complementary and mutually reinforcing nature of our security relationship, and, above all, the identity of our political objectives: of a more peaceful and better-ordered international system in which freedom can flourish.

In the words of poet Archibald MacLeish, “We are all riders on this planet earth together.” Among all those riders, Japan and the United States have developed a special relationship with great potential consequences for the kind of world we want our children to inherit. President Nixon gave eloquent expression to this a little over a year ago when he said:

Peace requires partnership,... the new partnership concept has been welcomed in Asia. We have developed an historic new basis for Japanese-American friendship and cooperation, which is the linchpin for peace in the Pacific.

Japan accepts its share of this common burden and is charting a new course never before attempted by a major world power. In October 1970 my Prime Minister described our aims to the United Nations General Assembly in these words:

World history has shown us that countries with great economic power were tempted to possess commensurate military forces. I should like, however, to make it clear that my country will use its economic power for the construction of world peace, and we have no intention whatever to use any major portion of our economic power for military purposes. It is the firm conviction of us, the Japanese people, based upon our invaluable historical experience that only through the defense of freedom, adherence to peace and the promotion of the prosperity and peace of the world, will it be possible for us to ensure the security and prosperity of our own country.

Washington, D.C.

His Excellency Nobuhiko Ushiba, Ambassador of Japan to the United States, is a graduate of the Faculty of Law, Tokyo Imperial University. He has served as attaché, Berlin; a secretary in the Treaties Bureau; Tokyo; Third Secretary of the Embassy, London, and Second Secretary, Germany. During World War II he was assigned to the Political Affairs Bureau, Tokyo. Rejoining the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 1954, he headed Japan’s first postwar government mission to the Soviet Union.  He has since been Counselor of Embassy, Rangoon; head of the Economic Affairs Bureau; and Ambassador to Canada. Ambassador Ushiba achieved the highest career post in the Foreign Service in 1967 as Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs.

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