Quality matters in US-Japan ties

The ultimate purpose of Abe's diplomacy is to revise Article 9 of the Constitution, which he thinks was forced upon Japan under US occupation in the late 1940s. Thus, Abe's famous phrase at his February 2013 meeting with Obama - "Japan is back" - entails not just an economic, but also a historical importance that Japan's surrender in the Pacific War should become only a part of the new world order, because in the long term Japan's primacy over other Asian countries in various fields should be acknowledged.

Therefore, the Obama-Abe meeting will not come up with any bizarre arrangement for the new stage of the US-Japan security alliance. Both leaders will seek to understand the domestic difficulties they face on the political and economic fronts, but Japan will need the US for the defense of "Senkaku Islands" (called Diaoyu Islands in China) if China starts a conflict over their sovereignty. The US, too, will need Japan, because its possible withdrawal from the region has to be "compensated" by Japan's military operations in the more global context. In other words, both countries are now in the same boat, although facing different directions.

What is more important is that instead of making just mechanical adjustments to the alliance, the two leaders should search for common ground and shared values in their relationship. In terms of functional interests, China has now become a big economic partner of the US. But Abe tends to think that Japan has employed a method different from China in approaching the US. "Shared values" cannot be established in one day, and whether Obama and Abe strike a "personal rapport" will be crucial for crisis management in the region in the future.

The author is a professor of international relations at Meiji University, Tokyo.

(China Daily 04/23/2014 page9)