Zbigniew brzezinski

8. For example, the Higuchi Commission, a prime-ministerial advisory board that outlined the "Three Pillars of 
Japanese Security Policy" in a report issued in the summer of 1994, stressed the primacy of the American-
Japanese security ties but also advocated an Asian multilateral security dialogue; the 1994 O/awa Coinmillcr 
report, "Uliieprinl for a New Japan"; the Yomiuri Shimbun 's outline for "A Comprehensive Security Policy" of 
May 1995, advocating among other items the use abroad of the Japanese military for peacekeeping; the April 
1996 report of the Japan Association of Corporate Executives (keizai doyukai), prepared with the assistance of 
the Fuji Bank think tank, urging greater symmetry in the American-Japanese defense system; the report entitled 
"Possibility and Role of a Security System in the Asian-Pacific Region," submitted to the prime minister in June 
1996 by the Japan Forum on International Affairs; as well as numerous books and articles published over the 
last several years, often much more polemical and extreme in their recommendations and more often cited by 
the Western media than the above-mentioned mostly mainstream reports. For example, in 1996 a book edited 
by a Japanese general evoked widespread press commentaries when it dared to speculate that under some 
circumstances the United States might fail to protect Japan and hence Japan should augment its national 
defense capabilities (see General Yasuhiro Morino, ed., Next deneralion (Imund Self-Defense I'orc.e and the 
commentary on it in "Myths of the U.S. Coming to Our Aid," Sunhei Sliimbun, March 4, 1996). 
However, on the level of public policy, the seriously discussed recommendations have been, on the whole, 
relatively sober, measured, and moderate. The extreme options—that of outright pacifism (tinged with an anti-
U.S. flavor) or of unilateral and major rearmament (requiring a revision of the Constitution and pursued 

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presumably in defiance of an adverse American and regional reaction)—have won few adherents. The public 
appeal of pacifism has, if anything, waned in recent years, and unilateralism and militarism have also failed to 
gain much public support, despite the advocacy of some flamboyant spokesmen. The public at large and 
certainly the influential business elite viscerally sense that neither option provides a real policy choice and, in 
fact, could only endanger Japan's well-being. 
The politically dominant public discussions have primarily involved differences in emphasis regarding 
Japan's basic international posture, with some secondary variations concerning geopolitical priorities. In broad 
terms, three major orientations, and perhaps a minor fourth one, can be identified and labeled as follows: the 
unabashed "America Firsters," the global mercantilists, the proactive realists, and the international visionaries. 
However, in the final analysis, all four share the same rather general goal and partake of the same central 
concern: to exploit the special relationship with the United States in order to gain global recognition for Japan, 
while avoiding Asian hostility and without prematurely jeopardizing the American security umbrella. 
The first orientation takes as its point of departure the proposition that the maintenance of the existing (and 
admittedly asymmetrical) American-Japanese relationship should remain the central core of Japan's 
geostrategy. Its adherents desire, as do most Japanese, greater international recognition for Japan and more 
equality in the alliance, but it is their cardinal article of faith, as Prime Minister Kiichi Miyazawa put it in 
January 1993, that "the outlook for the world going into the twenty-first century will largely depend on whether 
or not Japan and the United States ... are able to provide coordinated leadership under a shared vision." This 
viewpoint has been dominant within the internationalist political elite and the foreign policy establishment that 
has held power over the course of the last two or so decades. On the key geostrategic issues of China's regional 
role and America's presence in Korea, that leadership has been supportive of the United States, but it also sees 
its role as a source of restraint on any American propensity to adopt a confrontationist posture toward China. In 
fact, even this group has become increasingly inclined to emphasize the need for closer Japanese-Chinese 
relations, ranking them in importance just below the ties with America. 
The second orientation does not contest the geostrategic identification of Japan's policy with America's, but it 
sees Japanese interests as best served by the frank recognition and acceptance of the fact that Japan is primarily 
an economic power. This outlook is most often associated with the traditionally influential bureaucracy of the 
MITI (Ministry of International Trade and Industry) and with the country's trading and export business 
leadership. In this view, Japan's relative demilitarization is an asset worth preserving. With America assuring 
the security of the country, Japan is free to pursue a policy of global economic engagement, which quietly 
enhances its global standing. 
In an ideal world, the second orientation would be inclined to favor a policy of at least de facto neutralism, 
with America offsetting China's regional power and thereby protecting Taiwan and South Korea, thus making 
Japan free to cultivate a closer economic relationship with the mainland and with Southeast Asia. However, 
given the existing political realities, the global mercantilists accept the American-Japanese alliance as a 
necessary arrangement, including the relatively modest budgetary outlays for the Japanese armed forces (still 
not much exceeding 1 percent of the country's GDP), but they are not eager to infuse the alliance with any 
regionally significant substance. 
The third group, the proactive realists, tend to be the new breed of politicians and geopolitical thinkers. They 
believe that as a rich and successful democracy Japan has both the opportunity and the obligation to make a real 
difference in the post-Cold War world. By doing so, it can also gain the global recognition to which Japan is 
entitled as an economic powerhouse that historically ranks among the world's few truly great nations. The 
appearance of such a more muscular Japanese posture was foreshadowed in the 1980s by Prime Minister 
Yasuhiro Nakasone, but perhaps the best-known exposition of that perspective was contained in the 
controversial Ozawa Committee report, published in 1994 and entitled suggestively "Blueprint for a New 
Japan: The Rethinking of a Nation." 
Named after the committee's chairman, Ichiro Ozawa, a rapidly rising centrist political leader, the report 
advocated both a democratization of the country's hierarchical political culture and a rethinking of Japan's 
international posture. Urging Japan to become "a normal country," the report recommended the retention of the 
American-Japanese security connection but also counseled that Japan should abandon its international passivity 

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by becoming actively engaged in global politics, especially by taking the lead in international peacekeeping 
efforts. To that end, the report recommended that the country's constitutional limitations on the dispatch abroad 
of Japanese armed forces be lifted. 
Left unsaid but implied by the cMiiphasis on "a normal country" was also the notion of a more significant 
geopolitical emancipation from America's security blanket. The advocates of this viewpoint tended to argue that 
on matters of global importance, Japan should not hesitate to speak up for Asia, instead of automatically 
following the American lead. However, they remained characteristically vague on such sensitive matters as the 
growing regional role of China or the future of Korea, not differing much from their more traditionalist 
colleagues. Thus, in regard to regional security, they^paitook of the still strong Japanese inclination to let both 
matters remain primarily the responsibility of America, with Japan merely exercising a moderating role on any 
excessive American zeal. 
By the second half of the 1990s, this proactive realist orientation was beginning to dominate public thinking 
and affect the formulation of Japanese foreign policy. In the first half of 1996, the Japanese government started 
to speak of Japan's "independent diplomacy" (jishu gaiko), even though the ever-cautious Japanese Foreign 
Ministry chose to translate the Japanese phrase as the vaguer (and to America presumably less pointed) term 
"proactive diplomacy." 
The fourth orientation, that of the international visionaries, has been less influential than any of the 
preceding, but it occasionally serves to infuse the Japanese viewpoint with more idealistic rhetoric. It tends to 
be associated publicly with outstanding individuals—like Akio Morita of Sony—who personally dramatize the 
importance to Japan of a demonstrative commitment to morally desirable global goals. Often invoking the 
notion of "a new global order," the visionaries call on Japan—precisely because it is not burdened by 
geopolitical responsibilities—to be a global leader in the development and advancement of a truly humane 
agenda for the world community. 
All four orientations are in agreement on one key regional issue: that the emergence of more multilateral 
Asia-Pacific cooperation is in Japan's interest. Such cooperation can have, over time, three positive effects: it 
can help to engage (and also subtly to restrain) China; it can help to keep America in Asia, even while gradually 
reducing its predominance; and it can help to mitigate anti-Japanese resentment and thus increase Japan's 
influence. Although it is unlikely l<> ereate ;i Japanese sphere of regional inlluence, it might gain Japan some 
degree of regional deference, especially in the offshore maritime countries that may be uneasy over China's 
growing power. 
All four viewpoints also agree that a cautious cultivation of China is much to be preferred over any 
American-led effort toward the direct containment of China. In fact, the notion of an American-led strategy to 
contain China, or even the idea of an informal balancing coalition confined to the island states of Taiwan, the 
Philippines, Brunei, and Indonesia, backed by Japan and America, has had no significant appeal for the 
Japanese foreign policy establishment. In the Japanese perspective, any effort of that sort would not only 
require an indefinite and major American military presence in both Japan and Korea but—by creating an 
incendiary geopolitical overlap between Chinese and American-Japanese regional interests (see map on page 
184)—would be likely to become a self-fulfilling prophesy of a collision with China.9 The result would be to 
inhibit Japan's evolutionary emancipation and threaten the Far East's economic well-being.