The US-Japan Security Treaty was originally intended to deal with the threats from the Soviet Union and the Communist China. The end of the Cold War, therefore, meant the disappearance of such threats, which in turn would have seriously questioned the basic rationale for its existence. Nevertheless, not only does the treaty (system) continue even after the Cold War ended but it seems even further reinforced as the ‘redefinition’ process beginning in November 1994 indicates. This article intends to explore some of the important historical changes occurring in the 1960s that were presumed to have contributed to the treaty (system)'s continuity and transformation.
The paper will particularly focus on the emergence of regionalism in Asia in the mid-1960s in the context of the Vietnam War during the Johnson administration and its impact on US-Japan relations involving the security treaty. It is argued that the bilateral security relations tied together by the treaty (system) was often strained by the US policy in the Vietnam War but the war also contributed to the creation of both domestic and external conditions in the Asia-Pacific region where the United States, under the policy of regionalism, made strenuous efforts to pressure Japan to play a larger role in promoting the economic development and political stability of the non-Communist Asian countries. Such role was what the Ikeda and Sato administrations and the Japanese people were prepared to accept as they tried to give concrete expression to their rising consciousness and desire for Japan to play a greater international role. Prime Minister Eisaku Sato was particularly conscious that the reversion of the Ryukyu Islands would be impossible without meeting the US needs and expectations; that is, to support President Johnson's war efforts in Vietnam as well as to accept Japan's larger role in Asia. To that end, Sato and his supporters tried to overcome the Japanese domestic opposition to America's war in Vietnam and Japan's assumption of larger responsibilities associated with the American war efforts. The Johnson administration wanted the Sato government to recognize Japan's regional responsibilities as well as the relationship between Ryukyus settlement and its own and regional security. As the Sato government increasingly accepted such US definition of the role of the security treaty, the treaty's functions expanded to the extent that Japan supported and supplemented the US Cold War efforts on a regional scale. The mutually supplementary relationship in the security field was made possible as Washington, while recognizing the legal and political limitations in Japanese politics, defined Japan's role in Asia increasingly in economic and political rather than military terms. The newly inserted article II of the revised 1960 security treaty was an expression of the compromise between the two differring conceptions of security that eventually enabled Japan to make contributions to the “common defense” of the “free world.” This compromise also largely explains the continuing existence of the security treaty (system) after the Cold War was over.
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