International Relations
Online ISSN : 1883-9916
Print ISSN : 0454-2215
ISSN-L : 0454-2215
Volume 2011, Issue 163
Displaying 1-17 of 17 articles from this issue
Nuclear Power and Pax Americana
  • Takuya Sasaki
    2011 Volume 2011 Issue 163 Pages 163_1-13
    Published: January 20, 2011
    Released on J-STAGE: May 10, 2013
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    Nuclear weapons were an integral part of the US arsenal in the Cold War years. Successive administrations relied on the enormously destructive power of these weapons for the defense of the Western Bloc. The US government, maintaining a final voice in employing nuclear weapons in contingency, rejected its allies' request that the weapons not be used from their bases without prior approval. Nuclear power was also utilized, however, to cement ties with its allies by offering bilateral agreements for the peaceful use of this source of energy.
    While engaged in the nuclear arms race, the US and the USSR shared a common interest in averting war and preventing nuclear proliferation; both nations began nuclear test ban negotiations in the latter half of the 1950s. The PTBT of 1963 and the NPT of 1968 were two treaties that resulted from these negotiations. Throughout the Cold War years, nuclear mutual deterrence between the two superpowers was maintained, and the NPT was largely successful in controlling nuclear proliferation. The US was estimated to have spent $5.5 trillion on nuclear weapons, which represented almost 29% of all military spending in the Cold War period. The US bore the staggering cost of nuclear weapons regardless of their inherent risk so as to insure Pax America.
    With the end of the Cold War, nuclear deterrence against the USSR lost its military validity while the accelerating spread of nuclear weapons became a matter of serious concern. Iraq was reported to have reached an advanced stage of nuclear development, only to have that capability negated by the Gulf War; India, Pakistan, and North Korea, however, succeeded in declaring themselves in possession of nuclear weapons. The danger that “rogue states” and international terrorist organizations might attain and use nuclear weaponry came to loom large for America. 9/11 gave the G.W. Bush administration a sense of tremendous urgency in the matter of dealing with the issue of nuclear proliferation. Actually, the war against Iraq was waged under the pretext of eliminating weapons of mass destruction that Saddam Hussein allegedly had produced.
    The proposal that H. Kissinger, G. Shultz, W. Perry and S. Nunn made in January 2007 calling for a world without nuclear weapons should be understood in this altered strategic context. Stressing the significance of coping with the threat of nuclear proliferation, these four highly prominent experts on nuclear strategy proposed the elimination of nuclear weapons. In the same vain, President Obama made a celebrated address in Prague in April 2009; his speech's major emphasis lay on nuclear disarmament and prevention of nuclear proliferation.
    Nuclear weapons, which had brought about a certain stability and predictability in US-Soviet relations and helped insure Pax America, has now come to constitute the most pressing threat to US security. The nuclear proliferation is a disturbing legacy of the Cold War.
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  • Shinsuke Tomotsugu
    2011 Volume 2011 Issue 163 Pages 163_14-27
    Published: January 20, 2011
    Released on J-STAGE: May 10, 2013
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    The Eisenhower Administration developed the concept of the Asian Nuclear Center in 1955 as an economic aid program under the Colombo Plan for preventing infiltration of communism into Asia. The center was given the role of ensuring, improving and strengthening the welfare in the Asian countries and countering the communists' allegiance that the U.S. was only interested in the military use of atomic power. However, this maneuver was abandoned in 1959.
    Tracing the history of the Asian Nuclear Center indicates the cause of the failed attempt reflecting the various differences between American and British perceptions as well as the complex images of how to create a favorable Asian international order as perceived by the Eisenhower Administration.
    Initially, there was almost a consensus among the administration that the center would be established in Ceylon. The State Department once sounded out the site for construction with Commonwealth of Nations. Yet the group backing the Philippines for the site—with a sense of rivalry against the Commonwealth in the light of peaceful use of nuclear power, and due to the believed strategic importance of the Philippines within SEATO for the U.S.—tactically changed this policy within a very short period of time.
    The British and Canadian governments were stunned to know that change and showed their discontent. The Colombo Plan was designed for the Asian region including non-allied nations in order to block the communism. The U.K. possessed bigger fear than did the U.S. regarding the possibility that the projects of the Colombo Plan would be merely regarded as anti-communist campaign by the non-allied states and lose its appeal. Establishing the nuclear center in a country such as the Philippines holding the memberships of both the Colombo Plan and of the SEATO could realize such fear.
    Interestingly enough, no small number of officials of the Eisenhower Administration kept holding serious concerns about the selection of the Philippines, attaching importance to the cooperation with the Commonwealth. However, their worries were proved to be true by the consequences that the Commonwealth no longer agreed with the concept and that Asian nations also showed their hesitations to support the concept. Most of these countries were disappointed by the lack of consultation from the U.S. The Eisenhower Administration, now, could not expect the other states to share the burden of the operating cost for the center. Besides, the advent of the Soviet's ICBM and the mutual deterrence diluted the necessity of the American refutation to the communists' criticism focused on the U.S.'s preoccupation with the nuclear power only for military use. The lack of clear feasibility and necessity of the nuclear center erased the impetus of the proposal.
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  • Toshihiro Higuchi
    2011 Volume 2011 Issue 163 Pages 163_28-40
    Published: January 20, 2011
    Released on J-STAGE: May 10, 2013
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    In the 1950s, as the Cold War set in and nuclear arms race accelerated apace, the worldwide contamination by radioactive fallout from nuclear tests triggered a fierce controversy. The Eisenhower administration, whose pursuit of national security through nuclear superiority led to the production of environmental insecurity, sought to contain the latter through environmental monitoring and risk evaluation. Informed by the sociological theory of risk, this article interrogates Cold War America's nexus of scientific knowledge and political power that underpinned this first global environmental crisis of the Cold War.
    At the heart of the controversy was a much contested “proper perspective” of risk. Critics noted an absolute increase of harm by fallout and warned about the unknowns in its nature and scale. Washington, in contrast, emphasized the knowns, backed them up with its monopoly of monitoring data, and pushed the burden of proof upon the critics. It also adopted a comparative framework that mirrored the double-binding consensus of national security and high modernity, in which the risk from fallout appeared “negligible” compared to natural and artificial radiations, socially accepted risks, and benefits of atomic energy. The Eisenhower administration even pursued a technological solution of “cleaning up” nuclear bombs to justify the continuation of nuclear tests as well as to break an emerging taboo surrounding the use of nuclear explosives for war and peace.
    Cold War America's leadership in the risk evaluation in and out of the United States, however, proved to be far from absolute or static. The U.S. Atomic Energy Commission, an all-powerful national security state institution which underwrote the government's safety assurances, suffered much from the growing public mistrust due to the embedded conflict of interests between promotion and regulation. The commission of a risk review to the National Academy of Sciences hardly helped the government when the British counterpart issued a more conservative report. At the United Nations, the Soviet Union became assertive in challenging the logic of America's risk judgment as its scientists were rebuilding the knowledge basis of radiation biology and genetics and absorbing an alternative risk perspective through their transnational communication with Western experts. The resultant shift of consensus toward a more conservative risk assessment, in turn, increasingly narrowed the latitude of test ban policy for the Eisenhower administration, which eventually decided to abandon an option of atmospheric tests in 1959. Beyond the test ban, the transformed consensus also led Washington to reconsider the fundamental promise of “peace through nuclear superiority”, ironically, in a way to reinforce it. In short, the fallout controversy revealed the dynamic co-evolution of risk knowledge and nuclear policy for Cold War America.
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  • Akira Kurosaki
    2011 Volume 2011 Issue 163 Pages 163_41-54
    Published: January 20, 2011
    Released on J-STAGE: May 10, 2013
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    While the United States engaged in the nuclear arms race with the Soviet Union during the Cold War, it played a leading role in the general and complete disarmament (GCD) negotiation in the late 1950s and early 1960s. This article focuses on the fact that the reduction of nuclear delivery vehicles was a contentious issue between the Cold War enemies in the GCD negotiation, and examines how the U.S. government handled the matter as it strived to maintain U.S. nuclear superiority.
    Soon after the beginning of the GCD negotiation in 1959, the United States and the Soviets took different positions on the reduction of nuclear delivery vehicles. The latter proposed to abolish them at the first stage of the GCD process. This approach, however, was unacceptable for Washington because it would greatly reduce U.S. nuclear deterrent essential for the defense of the West particularly in Europe where the conventional military balance was in favor of the East. Moreover, the Eisenhower administration overestimated Soviet missile capabilities against a backdrop of the heated missile gap controversy. Although a U.S. disarmament plan included missile control measures in order to resist the Soviet propaganda offensive and to maintain the solidarity of the West, the Eisenhower administration had no intention to adopt such measures.
    The Kennedy administration's position on the reduction of nuclear delivery vehicles was heavily influenced by its obsession with U.S. nuclear superiority. In short, it preferred securing it through the nuclear arms race with the Soviets to making progresses in nuclear disarmament in cooperation with the Soviets at the expense of U.S. nuclear superiority. The Kennedy administration, which was deeply skeptical about Moscow, assumed that U.S. nuclear superiority had enhanced the credibility of U.S. nuclear deterrent not only to the Soviets but also to the U.S. allies. Therefore, although it studied such measures as the asymmetric reduction of nuclear delivery vehicles, for example, to parity with the Soviets and the reduction of nuclear delivery vehicles in advance of that of conventional weapons and armed forces, they were never proposed at the GCD negotiation.
    Of course, this doesn't mean that the United States should take all the responsibility for failing to achieve an agreement on the reduction of nuclear delivery vehicles and, more generally, to stop the Cold War nuclear arms race at that time. Nevertheless, it was ironic in retrospect that the Soviets attained parity with the United States in terms of the number of strategic nuclear delivery vehicles by the early 1970s. The U.S.-Soviet nuclear parity was achieved through competitive arms buildup rather than negotiated disarmament.
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  • Itsuki Kurashina
    2011 Volume 2011 Issue 163 Pages 163_55-67
    Published: January 20, 2011
    Released on J-STAGE: May 10, 2013
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    This paper examines the policy of nuclear non-proliferation by the administration of John F. Kennedy. His record as president about changing the US policy on this issue is not clear-cut. Kennedy tried to reduce reliance upon nuclear weapons to defend the West and did sign the Limited Test Ban Treaty, the first nuclear arms control agreement with the Soviet Union. At the same time, recent studies of his predecessor, Dwight D. Eisenhower, raise doubts as to whether these policies actually meant that US policy had changed. To understand more fully Kennedy's non-proliferation policy, this paper focuses on his administration's concerns that the Federal Republic of Germany might obtain its own nuclear forces.
    Independent nuclear weapons in Bonn's hands were problematic because it would seriously complicate “double containment”, a fundamental factor of the US alliance in Europe. West German contribution to contain the Soviet expansion was indispensable, but a too powerful FRG raised anxieties about a possible war caused by the Germans. The policy of “double containment” was designed to make a strong FRG bearable for the Western partners by integrating it into a wider framework. But West German nuclearization could break this compromise, and could shake the US control over West Europeans, if not destroy it, so the Kennedy administration tried to block Bonn from obtaining nuclear weapons.
    President Kennedy inherited two methods to prevent nuclear proliferation to the European allies: nuclear sharing and international agreements of non-proliferation. Kennedy was believed to be less supportive of nuclear sharing than his predecessor, but he was far from abandoning this option. Actually, the Kennedy administration continued to station a large number of tactical weapons in Western Europe. Its policy of sharing strategic nuclear weapons, especially the Multilateral Force, was more ambivalent. It was less intentional than a result of confused policy by the administration.
    Kennedy also failed to pursue a non-proliferation agreement through international negotiations. One important cause was Washington's failure to compromise this policy with US-FRG relations. Even though Washington and Moscow shared interest in preventing Bonn's nuclear acquisition, they failed to reach an agreement. Moscow did not hesitate to make the FRG a target of the agreement, but Washington could not sign it in order to sustain the alliance in Europe. The US tried to prevent proliferation in order to preserve the policy of “double containment”. But an agreement targeting the FRG could weaken Bonn's trust with the US and shake the alliance itself. Thus, Kennedy's inability to reach an agreement with the Soviets was inevitable, caused by the original motivation of Washington.
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  • Hiromu Arakaki
    2011 Volume 2011 Issue 163 Pages 163_68-80
    Published: January 20, 2011
    Released on J-STAGE: May 10, 2013
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    The U.S. nuclear sharing policy for North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) started in the late 1950s. The policy's initial objective was to enhance the NATO's defense capability and its readiness by providing the nonnuclear allies with military training for the use of nuclear weapons which were to be transferred from the U.S. custody in case of emergency. However, after the Soviet Union's successful launch of Sputnik, the nuclear sharing was also beginning to be recognized as an effective nuclear nonproliferation measure for the European allies since Washington anticipated that it could provide further reassurance for the allies and allay their concerns about the reliability of the U.S. extended deterrence. In this context, located at “the front line” and sensitive about the credibility and reliability of the US extended deterrence, the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany) had become the most important allies that affected the nuclear sharing policy during the Cold War period.
    For the US government, allowing the Germans too much “access” to its nuclear weapons through the nuclear sharing arrangement might cause serious concerns of other major allies, such as the United Kingdom (UK) and France. Therefore, finding a West Germany's fair “share” in the NATO nuclear defense and, at the same time, avoiding other allies to raise concerns against it was the critical requirement for the success of the nuclear sharing policy. From the latter half of the 1950's to the late 1960s, U.S. government tackled this NATO's nuclear problem by exploring the two different approaches: “hardware solution” or “collective nuclear force approach” and “consultation approach”.
    The Johnson years were the critical time because the decision was made to adopt the consultation approach, which led to the creation of NATO Nuclear Planning Group (NPG) in 1966. By focusing on the decision-making process and using newly declassified documents, this article will explain that the three deferent processes had affected the decision: the stagnation process of the Multilateral Force (MLF) proposal, the process of gaining acceptance of the consultation approach, and the process of growing momentum to materialize the approach.
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  • Takao Segawa
    2011 Volume 2011 Issue 163 Pages 163_81-95
    Published: January 20, 2011
    Released on J-STAGE: May 10, 2013
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    This article examines the Japan–U.S. cooperation in the Intermediate range Nuclear Forces (INF) reduction negotiation. The first section considers the perception of Japanese Government to INF problem. In March 1983, President Reagan tried to agree to the movement of SS-20 that Secretary-General Andropov had proposed. Andropov was going to reduce SS-20 in front of Europe, and to move this to Siberia. It meant the threat to Japan of SS-20 increased. In May 1983, Prime Minister Nakasone insisted on global zero of the INF in the Williamsburg summit. And, he supported NATO's Pershing II deployment. In addition, he stressed that the security of Japan–U.S.–Euro was inseparability. The purpose of Nakasone's speech was to have discontinued the movement of SS-20 of the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union was not able to oppose the unity of G7 and abandoned the movement of SS-20. However, a more concrete settlement plan was necessary to remove SS-20 that had already been deployed from the Asia part.
    The second section explores a Japanese concrete reduction plan of SS-20 in the Asia part. In February 1986, Reagan informed Nakasone of INF reduction plan in the letter. Reagan was going to abolish SS-20 in the Europe part at the first stage. Moreover, Reagan described for it to reduce SS-20 in the Asia part by 50% at the first stage, and to aim at the further reduction at the second stage. The Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs prepared the alternative proposal for Reagan. The alternative proposal was warned of that Reagan's plan caused the reduction negotiation between Asia part SS-20 and the U.S. forward-deployed force. That is, it meant danger of ruining the basis of the Japan–U.S. alliance. Reagan accepted the Nakasone's alternative proposal and promised Asia part SS-20 abolition.
    The third section discusses the background to which Nakasone supported INF deployment in Alaska. In June 1987, Western European leaders controverted the problem of denuclearization in Europe. In the Venice summit, Nakasone demanded the re-unity on the western countries to oppose the Soviet Union. And, he supported the deployment of INF with U.S. mainland. Nakasone understood INF of U.S. mainland did the balance to Asia part SS-20. These Nakasone's insistence promoted the re-unity on the western countries. The Secretary-General Gorbachev was confronted with the re-unity on the western countries and the potential pressures of Chinese Government. Consequently, he decided abolition of SS-20.
    A final section reexamines the cooperation of Japan–U.S. in the nuclear disarmament. INF reduction plan of Japan contributed to the achievement of INF abolition. However, it controlled a real discussion in Japan concerning the extended deterrence of the United States.
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  • Naoki Kamimura
    2011 Volume 2011 Issue 163 Pages 163_96-109
    Published: January 20, 2011
    Released on J-STAGE: May 10, 2013
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    Australia, New Zealand, and Japan were among the closest allies of the United States during most of the Cold War period. The three Pacific allies were also among the leading advocates of nuclear disarmament. These countries often found themselves in a conundrum between a nuclear alliance and nuclear disarmament. While the United States constantly pressured its allies into line with the solid Western position in the Cold War struggle, especially regarding nuclear policy, their domestic actors repeatedly challenged the nuclear alliance with the United States and urged their respective governments to adopt stricter non-nuclear policies and an activist nuclear disarmament policy.
    This article analyzes this “dilemma” among the three allies between their nuclear disarmament and non-nuclear policies, on the one hand, and their alliance with the United States, on the other. The article explores how their successive governments sought to resolve this dilemma and how such efforts affected their alliance with the United States. There were two significant attempts by them to resolve the dilemma during the Cold War, one by New Zealand's Lange government in the mid 1980s to persuade the United States into “de-nuclearizing” their alliance and the other by Australia's Hawke government in the early to mid 1980s to win over its domestic anti-nuclear critics by pursuing an activist nuclear disarmament diplomacy. Both had mixed results in terms of making alliance and nuclear disarmament compatible. New Zealand virtually had to leave the U.S. alliance while Australia had to compromise its non-nuclear policies.
    After the end of the Cold War, New Zealand and Australia developed two contrasting approaches to nuclear disarmament which were based on their critical choices made about the U.S. alliance. New Zealand, leaving the “nuclear and security umbrella” of the United States, sought to pressure, with other disarmament-oriented countries, its former ally and other nuclear powers into accepting nuclear disarmament in the changed strategic environment of the post-Cold War world. Australia, along with Japan, which began to pursue a more activist nuclear disarmament policy, sought to overcome the alliance-disarmament dilemma by influencing U.S. nuclear disarmament policy from within an alliance framework.
    In the final section, the article gives some assessment of the effect of the Obama administration's nuclear policy on this alliance-nuclear disarmament dilemma. It ends with a tentative conclusion that the Obama administration, with its unprecedented pursuit of nuclear abolition as a concrete U.S. policy objective, has drastically changed the global dynamic of nuclear disarmament politics and has a potential to greatly affect the historical alliance-nuclear disarmament dilemma for Japan, Australia and other disarmament-minded U.S. allies.
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  • Haruya Anami
    2011 Volume 2011 Issue 163 Pages 163_110-124
    Published: January 20, 2011
    Released on J-STAGE: May 10, 2013
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    Even though 20 years have passed since the end of the Cold War, the US president Obama and Russian president Medvedev still refer to “the Cold War mentality”: the U.S.-Russian relations after the Cold War has been, with a few exception of relatively favorable periods such as the immediate wake of the terrorist attacks on September 11th 2001, a long continuity of stagnated rivalry, thereby validating that the author terms it as “A Cold War after the Cold War”.
    The American foreign policy attitudinal directions in the age of terrorism and globalization can be divided into four clusters: “traditionalists”, who incline to passive engagement and preserve American national interests; “multinationalists”, who decline militaristic interventionism and prioritize international cooperation; “liberal hawks” who basically praise liberal internationalism but occasionally approve military interventionism; and “unilateralists” or “military hawks” who prefer active engagement, including resorting to arms to protect American national interests and/or to spread American values abroad.
    The George W. Bush administration intensified the two nuclear superpower relations by pursuing the deployment of missile defense (MD) systems in Poland and the Czech Republic, former Soviet allies and newly-admitted NATO member states, against alleged Iranian ballistic missile threats, at the expense of Russian cooperation on arms control and reduction accords. The policy was made in accordance with the administration's decision-making style: President Bush moved his traditionalistic foreign policy attitude to a unilateralistic one after the terrorist attacks, and his cabinet members mostly consisted of unilateralists; the president had an inclination to rely on those advisers, thereby bringing the whole administration to a unilateral, military-active direction.
    The Obama administration reversed those courses by addressing “A World Free of Nuclear Weapons”, a scrap of the previous administration's European MD programs, and proceeding on U.S. Russian nuclear arms reduction negotiations, which led to the signing of START Follow-On treaty (New START). Those changes can partly be attributable to characteristics of the adminis-tration's decision-making style: President Obama has embraced a vision of “a nuclear-free world” from the early stages of his life, making him a multilateralist at the bottom; and since the administration has been characterized by a presidentially-led style, the presidential willingness to “reset” nuclear superpower relations and nuclear arms reduction overwhelmed his “liberal hawkish” cabinet members.
    At the same time, President Obama is receptive to cabinet influences and the reality of world politics: “A Nuclear-Free World” concept was countered by a more realistic note in his own Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech; the change in European MD programs was not so much an entire abandonment of the previous administration's policy as a fine tuning to a more probable level of threats; and the Senatorial ratification process of New START has been delayed as it confronted Republican opposition.
    “A World Free of Nuclear Weapons” is a destination worth exploring, but the road is long, narrow and winding.
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  • Nobumasa Akiyama
    2011 Volume 2011 Issue 163 Pages 163_125-138
    Published: January 20, 2011
    Released on J-STAGE: May 10, 2013
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    This paper argues how the multilateral nuclear non-proliferation regime and bilateral nuclear cooperation deals such as one between the United States and India, are mutually affecting for changing compliance mechanisms of non-proliferation norms.
    The multilateral nuclear non-proliferation regime, which is formed around the NPT and the IAEA safeguards system, equips relatively weak mechanisms of enforcement and compliance. The regime rests its legitimacy and power of compliance on the universality of norms, which supports the logic of appropriateness, or spontaneous compliance by member states. Therefore, in order to achieve its objective, the non-proliferation regime requires various enforcement measures other than the formal IAEA safeguards mechanism, such as export controls through Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG), Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI), and national implementations of U.N. Security Council Resolution 1540. Such conventional non-proliferation measures are designed to regulate proliferation on the supply side, to stop the outflow of sensitive materials and technology.
    Bilateral nuclear cooperation agreements of the United States are considered as a measure to provide positive and negative incentives to recipient countries. They provide nuclear cooperation in exchange for recipient's compliance with non-proliferation requirements set by the cooperating country. In this case, compliance of the norms would be mainly maintained by the logic of consequence. The United States had once took this approach following the ‘Atoms for Peace’ speech by President Eisenhower in 1953. However, this approach was failed because of the relative decline of U.S. influence in the international nuclear market and other states' acquisition of technological capabilities in the 1970s. It impelled the United States to promote building a multilateral framework and norms of export restriction, which came to fruition as NSG.
    Recent U.S.-India nuclear cooperation agreement is a symbolic event of the resurgence of this bilateral measure focusing on the demand-side factors. However, it brought about controversy as this cooperation may give rewards to a country outside the NPT, which could threaten the credibility of ‘Grand Bargain’ committed by both nuclear weapons states and non-nuclear weapons ones. It could threaten the logic of appropriateness among non-nuclear weapons states.
    The introduction of a controversial U.S.-India agreement indicates that the U.S. non-proliferation policy is inclined toward putting emphasis on the logics of consequence and enforcement, which are calculated for individual cases, rather than spontaneous compliance by states based on the logic of appropriateness, which relies on the universality of norms. The rise of bilateral agreements implies that considerations on the individuality of cases, rather than the universality of norms becomes more important as a principle for shaping non-proliferation policy of the United States.
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  • Madoka Fukuda
    2011 Volume 2011 Issue 163 Pages 163_139-153
    Published: January 20, 2011
    Released on J-STAGE: May 10, 2013
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    This article examines the substance and modification of the “One-China” principle, which the government of the People's Republic of China (PRC) pursued in the mid 1960s. Under this principle, a country wishing to establish diplomatic relations with the PRC was required first to break off such relations with the Republic of China (ROC).
    In 1964 the PRC established diplomatic relations with France. This was its first ambassadorial exchange with a Western government. The PRC, in the negotiations over the establishment of diplomatic relations, attempted to achieve some consensus with France on the matter of “One-China”. The PRC, nevertheless, had to abandon these attempts, even though it demanded fewer conditions of France than of the United States (US), Japan and other Western countries in the 1970s.
    The PRC had demanded adherence to the “One-China” principle since 1949. France, however, refused to accept this condition. Nevertheless, the PRC established diplomatic relations with France before the latter broke off relations with the ROC. Subsequently, the PRC abandoned the same condition in negotiations with the African governments of the Republic of Congo, Central Africa, Dahomey and Mauritania.
    After the negotiations with France, the PRC began to insist that the joint communiqué on the establishment of diplomatic relations should clearly state that “the Government of the People's Republic of China is the sole legal government of China”. However, France refused to insert these words into the communiqué. Afterwards, the PRC nevertheless insisted on putting such a statement into the joint communiqués or exchanges of notes on the establishment of diplomatic relations with the African countries mentioned above. This was done in order to set precedents for making countries accede to the “One-China” principle.
    The “One-China” principle was, thus, gradually formed in the process of the negotiation and bargaining between the PRC and other governments. The PRC, based on its evaluation of the negotiations with France, decided not to adopt the same approach with other Western governments. Due to the influence of the US the PRC could not break through other Western governments' policies toward the PRC and the ROC. However, the leaders of the PRC strategically approached Western governments regarding the establishment of diplomatic relations. They could not make any careless concessions concerning the “One-China” principle, because each negotiation would influence future negotiations with the US, which were most important.
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  • Li Yanming
    2011 Volume 2011 Issue 163 Pages 163_154-168
    Published: January 20, 2011
    Released on J-STAGE: May 10, 2013
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    In September, 1972, Japan normalized its relationship with the People's Republic of China. Before this, the Japanese business community had already changed to a more pro-mainland China political attitude, and this change created a favorable domestic environment for normalization. The core question here is why this change occurred and how the business community reached a consensus between 1970 and 1972. The existing literature points out three main factors: 1) success of China's pressure policies toward Japan; 2) structural change in the international system, indicated by improvement in Sino-US relations in 1971; 3) the supporters of normalization became powerful within Japan, as the so-called “Panda huggers” who continually pursued improved Sino-Japanese relations after WWII succeeded in involving the “interdependence diplomacy” supporters in the pro-mainland camp. However, the international economic environment was not considered as a factor influencing the policy preferences of Japanese business community.
    My first point is that Beijing's policies toward Japan, although they are described as “strategic” by early research, were not highly coherent. There is new evidence to show that these policies were separate outcomes and had different origins, including Japan policy and foreign trade policy of China. The change in attitude toward China was not produced by Beijing's policies directly and happened before the structural change of the international political system.
    Second, this change was basically based on Japanese actors own views of China's significance, which was influenced by their perception of the change of international economic system. This perception can be traced to the end of 1960s when Japanese economy was experiencing high growth. Increasing tensions between Japan and the US on economic issues, such as the revaluation of the Yen against the US dollar in 1971, signaled a major change in the international economic system. The Japanese business community realized that they have to actively adapt to the new order, and then they begun to stress the significance of improving international cooperation. The attitude change toward China was a large step in expanding Japan's international cooperation.
    Through this case we can find that the Japanese business community was sensitive to the international economic environment as social economic actors. At the same time, in the consensus formation process, there existed significant differences between these actors, such as so called Zaikai (including the major business associations and their leaders) and the big companies. The former considered the national economic strategy of Japan, but the latter basically prioritized the interest of their industry and their company. This new perspective helps us to understand the current Sino-Japanese relationship.
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