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Japan needs some sort of insurance policy or fallback position beyond relying on others to voluntarily treat Japan moderately well. Accordingly, mainstream policy elites have supported implicitly posing to others the possibility that if Japan is pushed too hard it will turn itself, albeit reluctantly, into a major, nuclear-armed, military and techno-industrial great power.
Japan can transform itself in ways which will both deny success to a military attacker and destabilize the economies of those who act badly toward it. In order to live on a tolerable basis as a pacific, trading state, Japan must in international perception and reality have credible options to act in non-pacific and economically nationalist ways while reassuring others that it would prefer not to use those options. Otherwise, Japan for the long run risks three bad outcomes: (a) international isolation by seeming unimportant or uncooperative with others; (b) international hostility by seeming either to pose an immediate danger or being so weak as to be a "patsy" susceptible to foreign blackmail; or (c) international subordination by having no choice other than automatic compliance with self-serving or misguided policies implemented by foreigners.
National Vulnerabilities and Strengths
At several times in the twentieth century, Japan has seemed to have achieved, or at least have approached, the top levels of world power-its defeat of Russia as the twentieth century dawned, its gains in the peace settlement after World War I, the imperial seizure of large parts of Asia, and the economic superpower posture of the 1980s. Whatever euphoria those accomplishments generated in Japanese strengths ultimately turned out to be unwarranted. Indeed, for many Japanese a tendency toward grandiose notions of national strength became an intangible vulnerability. Japan must therefore guard against any runaway momentum if it intends to shape the world rather than be shaped.
Fundamental vulnerabilities are inherent in the small and crowded space that most of Japan's population and wealth occupy. That concentration makes Japan far more vulnerable to attack than such large continental and near-continental nations as the U.S., Russia, and China. Japan would essentially be crushed by a handful of nuclear weapons and would not contain the possibility of defense. Nor does Japan have a realistic possibility of food or energy self-sufficiency. Needs in those areas must be satisfied by imports traversing the seas and thus vulnerable to foreign interference. Further, Japan has to cope with the suspicion of others toward it. Inhospitable major neighbors (China, both Koreas, and Russia) nurse historical grievances and are highly sensitive to signs that Japan may again attempt to dominate them. Tenuous Asian acceptance has its counterpart in American and European views of Japan as not a full member of their cultural community. More recently, Japan has become an aging society lacking the large supply of young people required for military and economic activity.
What does Japan have going for it that is largely within its own control? The answers emphasize human resources in terms of skills, and a cohesive society whose institutions and individuals work together for national benefits expecting them to be widely shared domestically. These have been supplemented in recent decades by first-rate applied science and technology, efficient and flexible industrial production, and abundant capital for foreign investment. These advantages for foreign and defense policies feature acute awareness of foreign developments, a lack of ideological fixations, and nimbleness in seizing promising policy opportunities. The other side of the coin involves determined resistance to international commitments which engender risk to such strengths.
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