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In sum, widely recognized national strengths and vulnerabilities make it inadvisable for Japan to try to overpower almost anyone or to risk the few advantages it has. What makes sense is to capitalize on understanding of what will encourage others to treat Japan well. Economic contributions seem to do that, and major military ones do not. Thus, Japan provided money but not soldiers for the first Gulf War, and backed off its pursuit of United Nations Security Council membership in large measure to avoid the military involvements associated with that status. An equally important strategic element is to position Japan so that foreigners make mutually offsetting or canceling-out demands on Tokyo, a positioning which in effect lets Japan duck out of the way, while foreigners do the work of holding each other's demands at bay.
Foreign Players
One of the most striking continuities in the last half-century of Japan's policies has been the centrality of a special relationship with the U.S.-a pillar to be kept firm not through automatic followership but through arrangements and manipulations largely compatible with the first two sets of shaping factors. A major piece of the relationship continues to be the U.S.-Japan Security Treaty of 1951 and its subsequent associated measures and practical interpretations in "Defense Guidelines." Unlike the major security relationship between the U.S. and Western Europe (the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, or NATO), the Security Treaty offers no clear reciprocal commitment for the ally to come to the defense of the U.S., or for U.S. command authority. The most recent Guidelines only authorize Japan to consider joint action in Asia, and retain the language and tangible features which commit the U.S. to defend Japan. Prohibitions have been relaxed, rather than commitments expanded. Along the lines advocated by Japan's leading politician shortly after World War II in the Yoshida Doctrine, Japan induces the U.S. to base its forces and devise its Asian and global security strategies in ways which make Japan a major asset (an "unsinkable aircraft carrier"), an asset which if lost would require agonizing revisions in U.S. security postures.
What does this gain for Japan? First, it puts Japan firmly under the U.S. military deterrence umbrella, be it attack from the Cold War era Soviet Union or post-Cold War China or North Korea. An attack on Japan would necessarily be an attack on U.S. military forces. The American shield reduces the need for Japan to acquire the military capacity to project force against others, or to raise the military share of its national economic resources, or to empower its military institutions. Secondly, it gives the U.S. incentives for Japan's economic prosperity, Japan's inclusion in major international clubs (such as the United Nations and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, or OECD), and Japan's substantial influence in Asia. Third, it works to restrain U.S. pressures on Japan to change its economic or diplomatic practices lest Japan reduce its military ties. Like Japan's previous alliances with England (1902) and the Axis powers (1940), that with the U.S. goes beyond seeking protection against a military threat to placing Japan in the camp of a dominant or potentially dominant world power. It then becomes easier for Japan to follow the historical lessons described previously, and following them helps allay Asian fears of the resurgence of Japan as an independent, assertive military power.
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