The US-Japan Alliance

Balancing Soft and Hard Power in East Asia

David Arase, Tsuneo Akaha

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781135238575
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politik & Internationale Beziehungen
• Subtopic: Politik

Japan's use of Soft power in its international politics is as yet understudied. Soft power presents as many challenges as promises. This book explores the way Japan uses soft power in its relationship with the US, its Asian neighbours and Europe and aims to contribute to a deeper understanding of the role of soft power in international relations.

Hard power, on the other hand, is more tangible and has received far greater scholarly scrutiny than soft power. However, as this collection makes clear, hard power has its limitations and counterproductive consequences as an instrument of policy. This book makes it clear that hard power alone will not provide Japan with the peace and security it desires. A smart balancing or mixture of hard and soft power is required.

Is Japan up to this challenge? While this book cannot give a definitive answer to this question, the excellent line-up of contributors present their best analyses of the effectiveness of Japan's current attempt at balancing the two components of national power in meeting its bilateral and multilateral security challenges.

The US-Japan Alliance is suitable for upper undergraduates, postgraduates and academics in International Politics, Political Science, Security studies and Japanese studies.

Winner of The Masayoshi Ohira Memorial Special Prize, 2011.

Part I

Japan and the US—Japan alliance

1 “Soft” power, interests and identity

The future of the US-Japan alliance

Philip Meeks

Introduction: Machiavelli’s soft power dilemmas

This chapter will analyze briefly several different elements of both soft power and security alliances in the case of the United States and Japan since World War II. The dilemma of Machiavelli’s prince was about the power of fear versus the power of respect and affection, in other words, about the value of hard versus soft power. Machiavelli sided with future realists that fear was more important and hence the need for maximum hard power. But Machiavelli didn’t expound on what it would take to be the world’s greatest power, its hegemon. He also had little to say about alliances, their motivations and to what extent soft power can enhance the mutual loyalty and cohesion between two asymmetric partners. He might have concluded that the more power a kingdom desires, the more necessary it is to make its rivals fear it.

Soft power depends upon respect and admiration which is especially rare in a world of cultural diversity of values and action styles. Soft power assumes at least some minimal mutual peace and trust among most nations. It may only flourish when fear and threats are minimal. Realists believe in both the reality and preference of fear or economic compensation rather than respect and trust. For them, soft power is only a luxury except in a soft world, which the human one is clearly not. But soft power advocates also know that a softer world is a threat to those whose interests thrive under assumptions of fear and mistrust. In a softer world, alliances would thrive on mutual trust, not mutual fears of threat or needs to balance power. In this analytical context, “soft power” is defined as getting other nations or political actors to do things they otherwise wouldn’t do because of the respect and/or admiration one has (regardless of military or economic strength). As will be discussed later, “soft” power is rarely achieved without considerable economic resources.

Twenty years ago, there was alarm about Japan’s growing economic power coupled with the collapse of the Soviet military threat. Some American authors predicted that Japan would strive to replace Russia as the second most powerful global military power and challenge United States economic hegemony. Little was it realized that Japan would experience a decade of economic recession as the United States rebounded with its best decade of economic growth since the 1960s. Those who played up the Japanese challenge were too alarmist and those who played down the Japanese threat were more prophetic.¹

Rarely have scholars had the occasion to coin a term that is almost exclusively associated with their writing. Elsewhere in this volume the origins and nuances of the concept of soft power are examined in great detail. Joseph Nye Jr. starts his seminal book, Soft Power, with an age-old definition of power.

[P]ower is the ability to influence the behavior of others to get the outcomes one wants. But there are several ways to affect the behavior of others. You can coerce them with threats; you can induce them with payments; or you can attract and co-opt them to want what you want.²

The most commonly examined dimension is soft power’s broad multicultural appeal. The influence of both American and Japanese popular culture, films, art, music, food and sports is well documented, and the success of its automobiles, computers, audio and video equipment is proven by sales figures. The appeal across diverse cultures for diverse and higher quality consumer goods has produced substantial soft power appeal for both the United States and Japan. China’s growing soft power appeal seems to be based on substantially lower costs for acceptably lower quality goods. Their soft power is based on an economic formula for higher incomes and more consumer goods, which brought down Soviet socialism far more effectively than the threat of thousands of dangerous nuclear weapons.

Another dimension of economic soft power is persuasion without external threats or incentives. Japan’s ability to build economic relations based on the neo-liberal model has dispelled charges of Japanese colonial and neo-colonial strategies of forced exploitation. The neo-liberal approach, and the environmental impact of Japanese trade and investment are not without vocal critics about severe local costs but these are probably more accepted by a more diverse world polity than ever before.

Nye identifies aid, bribes, payments and sanctions as the primary instruments of economic hard power.³ They are different in his opinion because they are coercive or based on material inducements. Certainly the seizure of foreign bank accounts fits anyone’s definition of “hard” economic power. However, economic boycotts are coercive but recent history shows that these sanctions take a very long time to work and usually are unable to achieve universal compliance. Some other country will openly or covertly evade a boycott to gain the enhanced benefit of trade in these circumstances. It may be that the threat is more effective than the actual use of economic sanctions.

So we confront a dilemma — is hard power “hard” if it can never be used except under the most extreme circumstances? Nothing could be seen as more “hard” than nuclear weapons, but are they most effective when used? Would the world ever “excuse” Iran or North Korea for using nuclear weapons if they were invaded by the United States or any other country? Without a general sense of legitimacy, a massive, unilateral use of hard power — military or economic — can create a diplomatic backlash that few countries can afford for very long. Ironically weak and poor countries may have a greater incentive to use hard power because they have very little to lose. The more hard power a country has, the more likely it is that it will have to resort to soft power tactics unless it is willing to pay a very high price both internationally and domestically.

Economic inducements violate strict interpretations of soft power and yet fall far short of the hard power of military coercion. The generosity of a lender to poor countries will substantially improve its image, other things being equal. Japan received great attention for its “yen diplomacy” in the 1980s by becoming the world’s top aid donor. But some of the shine was tarnished by economic strings tied to this aid. This added to the general disillusionment with aid in the US experience. Token amounts of Japanese aid were given to the poorest countries, such as reforestation grants to Haiti and African countries. They were much appreciated but usually accomplished little more than slowing down the descent into misery in these areas.

Overall this seems to leave economic power in the middle ground of the continuum of power from hard to soft rather than clearly on the side of hard power. Inducements of various sorts may only help to tip the balance in negotiating differences rather than constitute real coercion. As many observers have remarked, soft power probably cannot exist without some hard power but economic power may be a more effective means of increasing soft power over time.⁴

Clearly, hard military power has become increasingly expensive in both economic and soft power terms. World military expenditure in 2006 was estimated at $1.2 trillion in current prices. This constitutes an increase of 3.5 per cent in real terms since 2005 and an increase of 39 per cent since its lowest total of $834 billion in 1998 (see Table 1.1)

In constant 2005 dollars, the United States spent $7.7 trillion from 1992 to 2006, which was 16.1 percent more than the next ten largest spenders combined and represented about 42 percent of the world’s total military expenditures. For the same time period, this averages out at a little over 4 percent of US GDP, which intuitively seems quite modest but is almost a third greater than the percentage of GDP spent by Britain or France and 316 percent greater than Japan. Predictably, military spending by the United States has increased in the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks, from $345 billion in 2001 to $529 billion in 2006, an increase of 53.3 percent. These expenditures have rapidly increased the national debt.

Table 1.2 shows US military aid before and after the 9/11 attacks. Not surprisingly, Israel leads the list with nearly $10 billion in military aid for the years 1999–2001 and a little over $9 billion for the years 2002–4, totaling $18.9 billion for the six-year period. Egypt came in second with 12.1 billion for 1999–2004 with roughly the same amounts before and after the terrorist bombings. By contrast, the amounts for third- and fourth-place Pakistan and Jordan

Table 1.1 Military expenditures and % GDP 1992–2006 (*2005 US $ mil)

Def Exp *	1992–2006
% of GDP	Avg Annual % GDP
Saudi Arabia	11.18
Russia	5.73
US	4.08
U.K.	3.10
S. Korea	2.97
France	2.96
India	2.94
China	2.04
Italy	2.00
Germany	1.82
Japan	0.98

Source: SIPRI Yearbooks, various years

Table 1.2 U.S. Military aid before and after 9/11 (US $mil)

Country	1999–2001	2002–2004	Total 99–04
1. Israel	9,823	9,094	18,918
2. Egypt	6,122	6,025	12,148
3. Pakistan	9	4,152	4,161
4. Jordan	981	2,670	3,651
5. Colombia	1,529	2,048	3,598
6. Afghanistan	8	2,663	2,671
7. Turkey	5	1,324	1,330
8. West Bank & Gaza	630	271	901
9. Peru	263	445	709
10. Bolivia	281	320	602

Source: “Collateral Damage,” Center for Public Integrity, 2007. (www.publicintegrity. org/militaryaid/World.aspx).

respectively jumped dramatically. Pakistan received nearly all of its $4.1 billion after ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• The Nissan Institute Routledge
• Full Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of tables
• List of contributors
• Series editor's preface
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction: soft power, hard power, Japan, and the US-Japan Alliance
• PART I Japan and the US-Japan alliance
• PART II Major powers' views of Japan and the US-Japan alliance
• Conclusion
• Index