By 1973, Asia-Pacific regional order had experienced a dramatic transformation due to President Richard Nixon’s trip to Beijing and Moscow in 1972, as well as to the settlement of Vietnam peace negotiations. From 1973 on, the United States began to pay more attention to its allies, including Japan, than it had in previous years.

This article examines how the U.S. government defined its partnership with Japan during the ebb of the Cold War in the Asia-Pacific region. It demonstrates that the United States became convinced of the direction of Japanese foreign policy, which was decidedly pro-American, and thus, came to evaluate Japan as a staunch partner in maintaining regional stability as well as in tackling problems caused by an emerging global interdependence. This, in turn, led to Washington’s redefinition of the U.S-Japanese alliance as a “pillar” of the America’s strategy.

In the early 1970s, U.S.-Japan relations deteriorated mainly because of the “Nixon Shocks” (Washington’s abrupt rapprochement with China and its new economic policies). By 1973, moreover, some American officials felt apprehension about an independent Japanese foreign policy. In November 1973, Secretary of State Henry Kissinger requested the Director of the Policy Planning Staff to foresee the long-term foreign policy direction of Japan. A resulting memorandum noted that Japan would keep an alliance with Washington for ten years, thus easing apprehension among American officials toward Japan.

Kissinger, meanwhile, was confident in the détente with Moscow. Other officials also considered the Soviet diplomatic maneuver and its presence in the Asia-Pacific highly limited. Thus, the U.S. was required to define its alliance with Japan in the regional environment in which Washington faced no imminent threat. As regards to U.S.-China relations, it was getting stagnant, leading Kissinger to downplay the importance of it.

With the fall of Saigon, South Vietnam, in April 1975, Japanese foreign policies toward Asia and the United States were vigorously implemented, resulting in an improvement of the relations with South Korea, the beginning of cooperation with ASEAN, and the positive attitude toward military cooperation with Washington. Kissinger welcomed these active Japanese foreign policies. Kissinger, moreover, came to realize that Japan was playing an important role in addressing problems brought about by the global interdependence.

These changes in the configuration of the U.S. foreign policy mindset were clearly revealed in the “Pacific Doctrine” address delivered by President Gerald Ford in December 1975. In this address, Ford affirmed that America’s partnership with Japan was a “pillar” of the U.S. strategy, heralding a new era: one in which the U.S.-Japanese alliance would play a robust stabilizing role in the region and in the interdependent world.

This article examines the Japanese government’s attitude toward the issue of “nationality of married women” in the Hague Conference for the Codification of International Law in 1930, the first diplomatic conference hosted by the League of Nations for the purpose of codification of international law. Through investigating the decision-making process on the Conference within the government, it aims at revealing the Japan’s constructive engagement in the codification project conducted by the League of Nations, which set in motion the advancement of international law during the inter-war period.

It is well known that the Hague Conference marked a watershed in the history of international law. Though the achievements in the Conference were meager, it surely paved the way of setting up the current codification system in the United Nations, particularly the establishment of the International Law Commission. Seldom discussed and little known is how Japan responded to this major development in the field of international law. While some preceding literatures have elucidated the passive, or sometimes hostile, stance of Japan toward enhancement of laws of war, they have yet to show a complete picture of the Japanese view on international law at that time since they do not sufficiently address the issues of laws of peace with which the Hague Conference was mainly concerned.

Probably, no issues discussed in The Hague attracted attention and received publicity more than nationality of married women. One of the reasons was that it touched the heart of the tension between the concept of family unity and gender equality. At the time of 1930, while most countries still adhered to the old principle that wife follows the nationality of husband in case of international marriage, some national legislations had discarded it and allowed an alien woman who married their national to retain her original nationality if she wished so. It was against this background that the Hague Conference attempted to reconcile the difference between legislations in nationality of married women by means of multilateral convention.

While Japan still maintained the old principle in its nationality law based on the traditional family values, it took a somewhat flexible stance in The Hague. Interestingly enough, Tokyo instructed its delegation to the Conference that if a consensus emerged among states, they could go along with the proposed article, which granted a married woman the right to choose not to acquire husband’s nationality. These findings suggest that at that time Japan sought to project its image as an important contributor to the development of international law through its active participation to the codification project by the League.

During the Vietnam War, the Philippines received increased economic and military aid from the United States, and the two countries revised their base treaty twice. The United States, a major power in asymmetrical alliances, offered concessions to President Ferdinand Marcos of the Philippines, a collaborative leader of a subordinate state, in exchange for the Philippines’ participation in the war. However, Marcos withdrew the Philippines’ forces from Vietnam within only three years. According to U.S. Admiral Arthur Radford, Marcos and his government were “the world’s most accomplished thieves.” What caused this paradox of power in U.S.–Philippine relations in the 1960s?

This study identifies three elements to account for the paradox: collaborators’ strategic importance, the trustworthiness of collaborators for major powers, and the stability of collaborators. In asymmetrical alliances, a major power offers security guarantees and economic benefits to subordinate states in exchange for their cooperation. The strategic importance of the Philippines’ participation in the war, which materialized as the Philippine Civic Action Group (PHILCAG), provided U.S. officials with incentives to offer concessions to Marcos.

However, during the presidency of Diosdado Macapagal, Marcos’ predecessor, U.S. officials had rejected an increase in aid due to their mistrust of Macapagal—even though he offered to send Filipino troops to Vietnam. A major power in asymmetrical alliances will not reward collaborators if they do not have the intention or capability to fulfill their promises. On the other hand, Marcos was regarded as a capable and pro-American collaborator, especially in 1966, the first year of his presidency. U.S. officials’ trust of Marcos led them to expect his reciprocal cooperation and therefore gave them incentives to invest in helping him.

The collaborators’ cooperation with U.S. policy sometimes triggers jeopardy in domestic politics. After 1967, domestic Filipino protests restrained Marcos from cooperating with the United States, which negatively affected U.S. officials’ trust in him. Marcos, in response to the domestic pressure, decided to reduce the number of PHILCAG soldiers in 1968 and finally had the PHILCAG retreat in 1969. U.S. officials criticized those decisions and required Marcos to reconsider them, but those U.S. efforts led to nothing. By the late 1960s, there was neither cooperation from Marcos nor U.S. trust in him.

Nevertheless, the United States finally tolerated Marcos’ disobedience and continued to support him. This shows a dilemma among American policy makers: how to get their desired policy results while mitigating protests in allies’ domestic politics. Beginning in mid-1968, Filipinos developed an anti-American and anti-Marcos sentiment, which put the interests of both Marcos and the U.S. in danger. Marcos, who at least guaranteed U.S. military bases in the Philippines under these circumstances, was a useful collaborator for the United States as a result.

The former Japanese Prime Minister Masayoshi Ohira established “the Comprehensive National Security Study Group” in 1979, which mainly consisted of Japanese leading scholars and government officials. However, the term “comprehensive security” was not invented by him, but was already well known to Japanese people at the end of the 1970s.

Many previous studies have discussed the concept from various points of view. However, they have not explained in what ways policy-makers accepted it and regarded it as an integral factor in Japanese security policy.

This study focuses on the impacts of comprehensive security on policy-makers, and especially the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan, which was in charge of general security issues. It clarifies the situation in which comprehensive security appeared, explains what perceptions the ministry had of the concept, and shows how international and internal factors in those days influenced those perceptions, using declassified Japanese and U.S. government documents.

It also pays attention to the different forms of security, focusing the discussion on the attempt to establish the “National Comprehensive Security Council” during the Zenko Suzuki Administration at the beginning of the 1980s. Comprehensive security did not simply comprise military security – i.e. security in the narrow sense – but also economic security, food security and others, i.e. security in the broad sense. At the same time, into comprehensive security was integrated anything that did not otherwise fall into the category of security.

These elements contributed to jurisdictional disputes. The differentiation of security led other ministries and agencies to become concerned with security in a broader sense. For example, the Ministry of International Trade and Industry was interested in economic security, and the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, among others, was concerned with food security.

At first, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs did not manifest interest in comprehensive security. Its main concern was security in the narrow sense because of an administrative dispute with the Japan Defense Agency. This study shows how it started to become involved in comprehensive security, and demonstrates what impact the differentiation of security had on ministries and agencies.

Previous studies have regarded the Japanese government as a single actor, and have not revealed the differences between ministries and agencies. This paper demonstrates that for the Japanese government, the concept was not monolithic. Even though ministries and agencies were allied on the surface, they had different opinions and objectives. By investigating the acceptance of comprehensive security, this study aims to clarify the implications of this concept in the context of U.S.-Japan relations in the last phase of the Cold War.

The purpose of this research is to examine the process of the Republic of China (ROC) on Taiwan implementing its anti-communist alliance policy in the middle of the 1960s with the Vietnam War intensified as the background. After evacuating to Taiwan, the ROC government lead by Chiang Kai-shek continued to declare its intention to recapture the mainland China and build up a collective security treaty organization like SEATO with other anti-communist countries in East Asia.

It is generally considered that Chiang Kai-shek eventually gave up trying to add or join any Asia military alliance in the early 1960s around 1963, but recent research in Korea has shown that the ROC still had an interest in it after that. This paper presents the truth by using the newly opened archives in Taiwan, Korea, and the U.S. Moreover, special attention is paid to the decision-makers of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the ROC as another major factor influencing the promotion of the alliance concept and their response to national and Cold War regional politics at the same time. Because whatever the outcome, the bilateral talks and negotiations for the treaty of military alliance, with the end goal being the improvement of mutual understanding between ROC and other Asian anti-communist countries, which would have a substantial effect on ROC’s foreign policy making later.

At the beginning of 1964 when the French government was about to establish the diplomatic relations with the People’s Republic of China (PRC), Chiang Kai-shek decided to commence military action as a countermeasure, and propose the concept of ‘Asian Anti-communist Alliance’ for setting up a new anti-communist alliance with the Republic of Korea (ROK) and the Republic of Vietnam (ROV) in advance in which the aim is to get the military support from ROK instead of U.S. and invading the mainland China through the North Vietnam, while the U.S. was starting to put great pressure on all the East Asian allies to follow the U.S. military strategy in Vietnam.

The failure of the Sea battle of August 6 in 1965 made the ROC leaders recognized that the ROC’s military power was not strong enough. In the late 1960s, Chiang Kai-shek postponed the military action and let the POK take the initiative in APACL after losing interest in joining or adding a new alliance. On the other hand, the ROC’s diplomats started to coordinate their Asian foreign policy after the Concept of ‘Asian Anti-communist Alliance’ failed, in response to the regional political transformation in East Asia that most of the free countries had been seeking to improve the domestic economy rather than the ideological confrontation.

This thesis proves the details about the U.S.–Japan defense cooperation before the Guidelines for Defense Cooperation between the U.S. and Japan (1978) were created. Japan and the U.S. periodically made CJOEPs (Combined Joint Outline Emergency Plan, before 1964/Coordinated Joint Outline Emergency Plan, after 1964) and contingency plans (including “Hakone” between the U.S. Navy in Japan and the Maritime Self Defense Force). The contents of the CJOEPs and the details about how to make the plans are successfully shown in this thesis. Accordingly, the draft of the CJOEP in 1955 mentioned that “unified command, under a Combined Force Commander, will be established over all U.S. and Japanese forces in Japan. The Combined Force Commander… will exercise command through a combined and joint command structure.” Considering the U.S.–Japan relationship at that time, the Combined Force Commander was assumed to be an American. However, it was finally changed without mentioning the Combined Force Commander. This means that Japan finally succeeded in avoiding the apparent mention of a “secret agreement” in the CJOEP. From this, we can see Japan’s strong will to retain its own sovereignty and independence. The Japan Self Defense Forces (JSDF) and the U.S. Forces in Japan (USFJ) not only made those plans but also conducted map exercises so that they could examine the plans and reflect the results of the exercises in the next year’s plans. This thesis shows the details of the exercises called “FUJI” in 1957 and “MAPLE LEAF” in 1958, and how the JSDF and USFJ conducted them. The joint exercises between the JSDF and the USFJ that took place before the Guidelines are also shown. The fact that the Japan Ground SDF and Air SDF engaged in them with their counterparts should be especially emphasized, because existing studies have not proven this with first-hand materials yet. In addition, this thesis could prove the fact that there were some institutions for defense cooperation between the JSDF and the USFJ at various levels including the Combined Planning Committee, which was established for making the CJOEPs and Combined Planning Groups that were in each service, and set up for making contingency plans based on the CJOEPs. This result means that the defense cooperation during this period was greater than previously thought. Moreover, this leads to two implications: first, the aspect of “symmetric alliance” in the U.S.–Japan Security Arrangement existed earlier and was more substantial; second, the institutionalization of the arrangement was more developed than previous studies have indicated.

In October 1976, the National Defense Program Outline (NDPO), which was based on the “Concept of Standard Defense Force,” was formulated and approved by the National Defense Council and the cabinet. Early literature argues that the ideas of Takuya Kubo are quite important to understanding the making process and the interpretation of the “Concept of Standard Defense Force.”

This paper demonstrates that the “Concept of Standing Defense Capacity” contrived by the Defense Division was considered a prototype of the NDPO. “N Study Group,” which was established within the Defense Division in 1974, proposed that Kubo’s argument should be integrated into the conventional “Necessity Defense Force Concept.” In January 1975, the Defense Division prepared a draft of NDPO in which an incipient version of the “Concept of Standing Defense Capacity” was included. While negating the “no threat argument” advocated by Kubo, this draft revealed several characteristics of NDPO, such as a lowering of the target range in defense buildups, a theory for the expansion of defense capacity in case of emergency and an analysis of the international situation (détente).

In February, Haruo Natsume, the Director of the Defense Division, circulated among his staff “Consideration about the Concept of Standing Defense Capacity (request),” which was followed by the “Consideration about the Concept of Standing Defense Capacity (circular note)” directed by the administrative Vice-Minister in April. Although the “Concept of Standing Defense Capacity” was authorized, any concepts of defense forces were not mentioned in the First Director General Order. This was because Self-Defense Officials repelled the “Concept of Standing Defense Capacity.”

In July, Kubo was installed as administrative Vice-Minister of Defense. Although he suggested that his “no threat argument” should be included in NDPO, both Self-Defense Officials and defense bureaucrats opposed him. The uniform team, not Kubo, got in the way of adopting the “Concept of Standing Defense Capacity.” The Defense Division persuaded them to comply by adding the phrase “repelling limited and small-scale aggressions without external assistances” to NDPO. In October, the resulting Second Director General Order adopted the “Concept of Standing Defense Capacity.”

This concept evolved into the “Concept of Standard Defense Force,” which was settled as the theme of the 1976 Defense White Paper. While repulsion against Kubo’s argument was revived in the process of preparing the White Paper, the fact that it was written by Kubo led to his ideas exerting a great influence on the interpretation of NDPO.