On August 24-25, 2010, the National Defense University held a conference titled “Economic Security: Neglected Dimension of National Security?” to explore the economic element of national power. This special collection of selected papers from the conference represents the view of several keynote speakers and participants in six panel discussions. It explores the complexity surrounding this subject and examines the major elements that, interacting as a system, define the economic component of national security.
The balancing of competing interests and goals will have momentous consequences for Japan—and the United States—in their quest for economic growth, social harmony, and international clout. Japan and the United States face difficult choices in charting their paths ahead as trading nations. Tokyo has long aimed for greater decisiveness, which would allow it to move away from a fragmented policymaking system favoring the status quo in order to enable meaningful internal reforms and acquire a larger voice in trade negotiations. And Washington confronts an uphill battle in rebuilding a fraying domestic consensus in favor of internationalism essential to sustain its leadership role as a champion of free trade. In Dilemmas of a Trading Nation, Mireya Solís describes how accomplishing these tasks will require the skillful navigation of vexing tradeoffs that emerge from pursuing desirable, but to some extent contradictory goals: economic competitiveness, social legitimacy, and political viability. Trade policy has catapulted front and center to the national conversations taking place in each country about their desired future direction—economic renewal, a relaunched social compact, and projected international influence. Dilemmas of a Trading Nation underscores the global consequences of these defining trade dilemmas for Japan and the United States: decisiveness, reform, internationalism. At stake is the ability of these leading economies to upgrade international economic rules and create incentives for emerging economies to converge toward these higher standards. At play is the reaffirmation of a rules-based international order that has been a source of postwar stability, the deepening of a bilateral alliance at the core of America's diplomacy in Asia, and the ability to reassure friends and rivals of the staying power of the United States. In the execution of trade policy today, we are witnessing an international leadership test dominated by domestic governance dilemmas.
Japan's National Security offers a detailed examination of Japan's distinctive security policy. It traces in considerable detail the evolution of Japan's approach to the economic, political and military dimensions of national structures of government as well as a particular set of relations between state and society. One of the noteworthy aspects of this book is its detailed attention to the transnational links between the Japanese and the American militaries. The book accords a special place of the interaction between the legal and social norms that have affected Japanese conceptions of national security since 1945. Japan's National Security offers an important, meticulously researched, and up-to-date perspective on the role that Japan is likely to play after the Cold War. Together with Defending the Japanese State, these two monographs analyze the structures and norms that are shaping Japan's policy on internal and national security. The specific focus is on governmental, state-society and transnational structures as well as the social and legal norms that affect the policies of Japan's police and self-defense forces.
The roots of Japan's aggressive, expansionist foreign policy have often been traced to its concern over acute economic vulnerability. Michael A. Barnhart tests this assumption by examining the events leading up to World War II in the context of Japan's quest for economic security, drawing on a wide array of Japanese and American sources.Barnhart focuses on the critical years from 1938 to 1941 as he investigates the development of Japan's drive for national economic self-sufficiency and independence and the way in which this drive shaped its internal and external policies. He also explores American economic pressure on Tokyo and assesses its impact on Japan's foreign policy and domestic economy. He concludes that Japan's internal political dynamics, especially the bitter rivalry between its army and navy, played a far greater role in propelling the nation into war with the United States than did its economic condition or even pressure from Washington. Japan Prepares for Total War sheds new light on prewar Japan and confirms the opinions of those in Washington who advocated economic pressure against Japan.
How has the Bank of Japan (BOJ) helped shape Japan's economic growth during the past two decades? This book comprehensively explores the relations between financial market liberalization and BOJ policies and examines the ways in which these policies promoted economic growth in the 1980s. The authors argue that the structure of Japan's financial markets, particularly restrictions on money-market transactions and the key role of commercial banks in financing corporate investments, allowed the BOJ to influence Japan's economic success. The first two chapters provide the most in-depth English-language discussion of the BOJ's operating procedures and policymaker's views about how BOJ actions affect the Japanese business cycle. Chapter three explores the impact of the BOJ's distinctive window guidance policy on corporate investment, while chapter four looks at how monetary policy affects the term structure of interest rates in Japan. The final two chapters examine the overall effect of monetary policy on real aggregate economic activity. This volume will prove invaluable not only to economists interested in the technical operating procedures of the BOJ, but also to those interested in the Japanese economy and in the operation and outcome of monetary reform in general.
The perspectives of technologists, economists, and policymakers are brought together in this volume. It includes chapters dealing with approaches to assessment of technology leadership in the United States and Japan, an evaluation of future impacts of eroding U.S. technological preeminence, an analysis of the changing nature of technology-based global competition, and a discussion of policy options for the United States.
Is Japan re-emerging as a normal, or even a great, military power in regional and global security affairs? This Adelphi Paper assesses the overall trajectory of Japan’s security policy over the last decade, and the impact of a changing Japanese military posture on the stability of East Asia. The paper examines Japan’s evolving security debate, set against the background of a shifting international environment and domestic policymaking system; the status of Japan’s national military capabilities and constitutional prohibitions; post-Cold War developments in the US Japan alliance; and Japan’s role in multilateral regional security dialogue, UN PKO, and US-led coalitions of the willing. It concludes that Japan is undoubtedly moving along the trajectory of becoming a more assertive military power, and that this trend has been accelerated post-9/11. Japan is unlikely, though, to channel its military power through greatly different frameworks than at present. Japan will opt for the enhanced, and probably inextricable, integration of its military capabilities into the US Japan alliance, rather than pursuing options for greater autonomy or multilateralism. Japan’s strengthened role as the defensive shield for the offensive sword of US power projection will only serve to bolster US military hegemony in East Asia and globally.
The dynamics of Northeast Asia have traditionally been considered primarily in military and hard security terms or alternatively along their economic dimensions. This book argues that relations among the states of Northeast Asia are far more comprehensible when the mutually shaping interactions between economics and security are considered simultaneously. It examines these interactions and some of the key empirical questions they pose, the answers to which have important lessons for international relations beyond Northeast Asia. Contributors to this volume analyze how the states of the region define their ‘security’, and how bilateral relations in hard security issues and economic linkages play out among Japan, China and the two Koreas. Further, the chapters interrogate how different patterns of techno-nationalist development affect regional security ties, and the extent to which closer economic connections enhance or detract from a nation’s self-perceived security. The book concludes by discussing scenarios for the future and the conditions that will shape relations between economics and security in the region. This book will be welcomed by students and scholars of Asian politics, Asian economics, security studies and political economy.
