Hiroshi Nakanishi

Turbulence in the Post-war Order andIssues in Japanese Diplomacy*
Hiroshi Nakanishi**
Abstract
Few would deny that a sense of insecurity is growing across the world today. One might
say that, at the root of such sense of insecurity, there exists a turbulence in the post-war
order, which has been the basis of the peace and prosperity that the world has enjoyed formore than 70 years. We have a tendency to focus on particular individuals and phenomena.
However, distinctive individuals and events are the signs̶and also the results̶of changes
that are both structural and long-term. In this paper, the author presents an overview of the
trajectory of changes in the post-war order and points out three factors that have hollowed
out the post-war order from the inside: emergence of a risk society, the rise of the rest, anddecline in the political leadership of the democratic system. The author also suggests thatJapan should enhance the ability to make strategic judgments that determine the allocationof limited resources in order to maintain its peace and prosperity in such a turbulent world.

Introduction

F

ew would deny that a sense of insecurity is growing across the world today. Of course,
this is a question of perception, and one might also say that compared with the terrorof nuclear war between the US and USSR during the Cold War era, there are presently
no huge threats and the modern world has escaped from the danger of major disaster.
However, the fact that there is no clear object of fear is itself amplifying the present sense of
uncertainty. At the time this is being written (the end of November 2017), the world is facing
multiple unpredictable political risks including tensions regarding North Koreaʼs nuclear missile
program, developments in Saudi Arabia in the Middle East, and the outlook for the administrationof Angela Merkel in Germany. On the other hand, the global economy is favorable and stock
markets continue to post record highs. Does this mean that the worldʼs investors anticipate thatthe impact of such political risks will be limited, and that has resulted in such a situation? Orshould it be interpreted as an indication that investors are closing their eyes to political risks
and concentrating on financial speculation alone? The source of the anxiety today is that our
fundamental conceptual framework itself for understanding and interpreting the current situation
is being shaken. To quote the famous words of US President Franklin Rooseveltʼs inaugural
address, “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” Nevertheless, this undefined fear is whatmakes us most afraid.
One might say that at the root which has led to such global conditions lies an upheaval in the
post-war order, which has been the basis of the peace and prosperity that the world has enjoyed* This essay was originally published on Kokusai Mondai [International Affairs], No.668, Jan.–Feb. 2018.
Note: Parts of this essay include revisions to “Yū kai Suru Sengo Chitsujo no Raireki to Kadai” [History andIssues of the Dissolving Post-war Order], Journal of the Research Bureau (Secretariat of the House of Representatives), No. 14 (Dec. 2017), pp. 1–8.
** Hiroshi Nakanishi is a professor in the Law Department at Kyoto University.

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for more than 70 years. We have a tendency to focus on particular individuals and phenomena
such as the withdrawal of the United Kingdom from the European Union (EU), the election of
President Trump, and the North Korean nuclear missile tests. However, distinctive individuals
and events are the signs̶in other words, the superstructure̶of changes that are both structuraland long-term. In this paper, I present an overview of the trajectory of changes in the post-war
order, and also touch on issues in Japanese diplomacy.

1. Histor y of the Post-war Order
The framework of the present international order was formed during and just after the end of
WWII. At its core are universal international institutions such as the United Nations and the
Bretton Woods institutions. Following two world wars, which caused tens of millions of casualties
during the first half of the 20th centur y, as well as the horrors of the development and useof nuclear weapons toward the end of WWII by a project which gathered the best of modern
science, humanity has spent more than 70 years without experiencing large-scale war.
So, from a long-term perspective, one might conclude that the continued peace brought
about by the post-war international order was actually founded on the long-term and large-scale
destruction and violence experienced prior to that time. Then, why did such destruction andviolence occur? One interpretation is that the changes sparked by the Industrial Revolution,
which developed full-scale from 19th century Europe, had burst apart the 19th century order, andthat these horrors occurred in the process of seeking a new equilibrium.

(1) Formation of the post-war order
From the 19th century forward, the Industrial Revolution promoted industrialization throughout
the world. Industrialization brought multiple huge changes to human society. These changes may
be summarized as (1) a dramatic increase in production capacity, (2) an expansion of the stateʼsadministrative ability to control society, (3) a rapid increase in population, and (4) the diffusion of
power from Europe to the rest of the world.
From the end of the 19th century through the beginning of the 20th century, these changes
created nations with robust state bureaucratic systems, including large-scale military forces, inthe advanced nations where industrialization had progressed, and also rapidly deepened crossborder exchange. Meanwhile, the empires of the Qing Dynasty, Spain, Ottoman Turkey, British
India, and Russia, which had ruled over most of non-European world up until that time, could
not bear militar y rivalr y with and economic penetration by the advanced nations which had
industrialized, and they gradually weakened.
Such changes led to the wars such as the First Sino-Japanese War, the Spanish-America War,and the Boer Wars, as well as the revolutions and anti-government movements such as the First
Russian Revolution, the Young Turk Revolution, the Xinhai Revolution, and self-government by
the Indian National Congress. In WWI, a terrorist incident in the Balkans at the border of theweakened Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman empires triggered war among European industrializedcountries, and eventually spread into a global war in which Japan and the US also participated.
The Russian, Austro-Hungarian, German, and Ottoman empires were forced to collapse one after
another.
After WWI, efforts were made to restore the international order with the formation of the
League of Nations and the reconstructed gold standard, but with the beginning of the Great
Depression (1929), the capitalist economies led by the US and the UK were at the brink offailure. The USSR and fascist nations adopted planned economies or controlled economies, andthe acceptance of market intervention by the state rose in the free market countries as well. In
the course of political and economic crises, the advanced nations proceeded along the path tobecoming administrative states with large-scale bureaucratic organs responsible for wide-ranging
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Hiroshi Nakanishifunctions such as national security and social security, and with the tax collection systems to
support them.
WWII provided another opportunity, especially for both the US and the UK, to shape a newinternational order. As presented in the Atlantic Charter, which was issued in August 1941, thatinternational order was fundamentally one to pursue liberal ideals. Having said that, national
power was also emphasized to facilitate the achievement of those liberal ideals and to upholdthem. The solid foundations of the post-war international order were established by combining
liberal ideals with practical elements of power.
Specifically, the post-war order had four main pillars. The first was the realization of the“politics of productivity” (Charles Maier), which enabled both industrialization and stable populargovernment. The second was the founding of a universalistic United Nations with mechanisms forthe great powers to maintain the international order. The third was the multilateral free trading
system, which mostly promotes trade in industrial products. And the fourth was a progressivism
that affirms industrial civilization, along with a sharing of anti-war sentiment transcending regions
and systems, based on the tens of millions of victims of the two world wars.
These four pillars underwent revisions as the Cold War began and the advanced industrialized
world was split into the two camps of East and West shortly after the end of WWII. The security
order was mainly maintained by mutual restraint between the two camps rather than bycollaboration among the great powers, and the free trade system was shared exclusively among
Western industrialized nations as a hegemonic framework for which the US carried the burden.
Regardless, through the early 1970s, these four pillars continued functioning to a substantial
extent as the basic framework of the international order.
Japan, which was defeated in WWII, also walked the path to reconstruction within this postwar order. Japan lost its regional hegemony in Asia and its militar y, but the Western open
economic system resolved the lack of resources and markets that had troubled pre-war Japan as a
newly industrializing country. Japan was able to advance rapid industrialization under this system.
With the “politics of productivity” as the foundation, Japan was also able to construct the stable
political framework known as the “1955 System.”On the other hand, Japanese foreign policy was facing two issues up until the early 1970s. The
first concerned Japanʼs security policy. Under the Constitution of Japan enacted just after the war,
the security of Japan, as a former enemy nation, was prescribed assuming it was under the controlof the United Nations. In the subsequent transition to the Cold War regime, however, Japan
accepted US forces as an ally, concluded the Japan-US Security Treaty, and began rearmament
within certain limits without revising its Constitution. This torsion did not generate any specificproblems as long as the mutual deterrence structure between East and West avoided actual wars
among the industrial powers, but a fundamental vagueness remained in Japanʼs national security
structure.
The second issue was that the post-war Asian region became the focus not only of the Cold
War regime, but also of decolonialization, which was another global-scale transformation. While
Japan positioned itself as “a member of Asia,” an interaction between the Cold War and postdecolonization politics prevented Japan from establishing formal relations with divided China
and Korea, with which it had deep ties as former war theaters and colonies, were postponed. As aresult, the emphasis of Japanʼs foreign policy was placed overwhelmingly on its relations with the
US, Europe and their post-colonies.

(2) Changes in the post-war order
The post-war order reached a turning point in the 1970s. While the industrialized nations were
suffering from skyrocketing resources prices, reduced economic growth rates, high inflation, andrising unemployment, the East-West framework of the Cold War could no longer grasp the whole
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Turbulence in the Post-war Order and Issues in Japanese Diplomacy

of international politics, including changes such as an intensification of the North-South divideand shifting relations among the US, China, and the USSR.
The basis of these changes was the undercurrent that subsequently came to be called
globalization, that is, technological advances made it possible for various actors in society togreatly amplify their capabilities, and the quality and quantity of transnational activities rapidly
expanded. Such phenomena had begun gradually progressing from the 1960s. While advancesin transportation and telecommunications technologies enabled the movement of people, goods,
and money eluding the net of government regulations, new communication networks, suchtechnological developments also awakened an awareness of identity based on ethnicity andreligion. One might say that the strengthening domestic solidarity and increased cross-borderinterdependence which had progressed centered on the state from the 19th century through thefirst half of the 20th century emerged at this time with a focus on social actors.
Yet, in the 1970s, the Cold War framework was still steadfast, and the Western capitalist
nations were able to maintain solidarity. The Western countries stepped up their vigilance over
the advance of the USSR and other communist countries such as Cuba into developing nations,and collaborated to strengthen defense capabilities and maintain free trade to avert protectionism
and division into bloc economies.
Then from the 1980s, new political coalitions that would lead the West were formed in the US
and the UK. In contrast to the liberal and Labour Party forces that had led politics since the endof the war, political conservatism and market-oriented liberalism fused into new political alliances
which attacked large government, labor unions, and other vested interests. US President Ronald
Reagan and UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher brought together conser vative politicalalliances while also establishing market-oriented economic policies.
In this way, the post-war order was maintained, overcoming the crisis of the 1970s.
Nevertheless, the post-war Cold War framework was weakened. The mutual deterrence between
East and West by nuclear weapons morphed into competition in high-tech weapons, and theconfrontation between capitalism and socialism, which shared industrial civilization, turned intoa moral battle of good against evil between democracy and despotism. The deregulation line ledby the US and the UK transformed into a globalization policy of removing all economic barriers
from free trade centered on the manufacturing industry, and as the relocation of manufacturing
overseas advanced, the stable middle class and organized interest groups such as industrial
societies or trade unions gradually broke down, and the trend whereby public relations and image
strategies determine election results intensified. Manufacturing firms relocated to developing
countries, which had started moving away from their former closed development policies andbegun adopting market economy policies, and rapid industrialization was achieved in the East
Asian countries, in particular.
Mikhail Gorbachev, who became the Secretary General of the Communist Party of the Soviet
Union in 1985, eased the USSRʼs tense foreign relations and worked toward the revitalization ofits domestic society. He achieved some measure of success at the former, but failed at the latter,
which ultimately brought about the separation of Eastern Europe from the Communist Bloc aswell as the eventual dissolution of the USSR and its withdrawal from communism. In foreign
relations, his “new thinking” diplomacy eased East-West tensions and was well received, but thedomestic revolution became frustrated, and ultimately this approach allowed Eastern Europe toabandon communism, leading to an attempted coup dʼétat by communist party members and thecollapse of the USSR. In a nutshell, , whose efforts ultimately failed
As the Cold War was coming to an end, when Saddam Hussein of Iraq attempted to annex
Kuwait by force, miscalculating the US reaction, the US and USSR collaborated to confront thisby restoring the pre-Cold War UN collective security mechanism, and the multilateral forces
dispatched based on a UN Security Council resolution won an overwhelming victory with the full
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Hiroshi Nakanishi

use of US high-tech weaponry. The images of the war broadcast live across the globe gave theimpression that the liberal international order originally conceived in the aftermath of WWII had
been realized under US initiative. While happenstance, it was also symbolic that it was President
George H.W. Bush, the last president to have fought in WWII, who proclaimed “a new worldorder.”
During this period, Japanese diplomacy followed a path of growth and setbacks. Fromthe 1960s through the 1970s, Japan had overcome its prior restraints for the time being andconstructed a foreign policy framework as the second largest economy in the free world. First,
this was a comprehensive security policy whereby, while keeping self-defense capabilities withina certain range, economic influence was used as a means for diplomatic security policy for the
purposes of international cooperation and development assistance, instead of linking economic
power to building up militar y capabilities overseas. Second, it succeeded in setting Japan ʼsrelations with Asian countries including China and South Korea, with economic relations as thefoundation, and promoted Asia-Pacific regionalism by combining free trade among advanced
nations around the Pacific rim with development assistance to Asian countries. These became
systematic during the Masayoshi Ōhira administration in the late 1970s, which called for PanPacific regional cooperation and established the Pacific Economic Cooperation Caucus (PECC) in1980. Based on this foundation, in the 1980s the administration of Yasuhiro Nakasone worked tosolidify Japanʼs ties with the West, reinforce the US-Japan security alliance, and improve relations
with China and South Korea, under the slogan of Japan as an “international state.”
However, the direction of such successes changed in the late 1980s when the Japanese
economy became bloated from an economic bubble and Japan became viewed as an outlier
mercantilist power by other Western countries. Moreover, in the Persian Gulf Crisis and the Gulf
War, Japan presented no clear policy on the potential use of force, and in the end could only share
the burden with a financial contribution of $13 billion. Coming on top of the collapse of the bubble
economy, this experience made Japan feel a deep sense of frustration and begin seeking reforms
to catch up with the new post-Cold War world order.

2. The Dissolving Post-War Order
However, expectations of the new world order rapidly fell by the wayside. Looking back today,
one cannot help but see the Western worldʼs euphoria and pride, as well as its failures. This
period gave rise to the two theses: Francis Fukuyamaʼs 1989 “The End of History?” and SamuelHuntingtonʼs “The Clash of Civilizations?”1 Reading these again today, while they naturally havesome defects because of the limitations of the times, one notes how the world, and the Westernworld in particular, failed to take seriously the warnings voiced by these two authors. While
stressing the victor y of liberal ideology, Fukuyama points out that contemporar y liberalism
is limited because of its inability to give people aspirations which transcend utilitarianism andeverydayness. Meanwhile, Huntington argues that while for the time being Western civilization
should work at reinforcing its own influence versus non-Western civilization, especially Confucian
and Islamic civilization, over the long term it is necessary to anticipate the emergence of nonWestern civilization, transcend cultural differences, and reach a deep understanding. Despite thedebates sparked by both of these essays, the West did not earnestly respond to such reservations
1

Francis Fukuyama, “The End of Histor y?” The National Interest, Vol. 16 (Summer 1989), pp. 3–18;
Samuel P. Huntington, “The Clash of Civilizations?” Foreign Affairs, Vol. 73, No. 3 (Summer 1993),
pp. 22–49. Both of these papers were subsequently published as books: Francis Fukuyama (Shōichi
Watanabe trans.), Rekishi no Owari—Rekishi no “Shū ten” ni Tatsu Saigo no Ningen [The End of
History̶The Last Human Standing at the “Destination” of History] (Vols. 1 and 2), Mikasa Shobo, 1992
[original text 1992]; Samuel P. Huntington (Chikara Suzuki trans.), Bunmei no Shō totsu [The Clash of
Civilizations], Shueisha, 1998 [original 1996].

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Turbulence in the Post-war Order and Issues in Japanese Diplomacy

or warnings. The conditions today nearly 30 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, in which wallsthat separate people are being built in all parts of the world, including cyberspace, must be seenas the consequences of the complacency of the advocates of liberalism. More specifically, threefactors overlapped to gradually hollow out the post-war order from the inside, just as termites
destroy buildings by consuming their pillars.

(1) Emergence of a risk society

What manifested in the 1990s following the conclusion of the Cold War was the risk society2 that
accompanies globalization. While globalization greatly expanded the scope of activity of social
actors, by removing various boundaries and linking them as a network it also caused new risks
that had been buried during the Cold War era to emerge.
The rapid advance of identity politics was one of the sources of these risks. Throughexaminations of historical relics and records, the information technologies that enabled
globalization also made it possible for the masses to gain awareness of memories that had
been forgotten in the past. In contrast to the post-Cold War liberal world view which tended todeny a communitarian sense of belonging to certain groups, groups which rallied for particularethnicities and religious interpretations provided identity awareness and gained a strong ability tomobilize.
What is more, with the progress of globalization which made it possible for people, money,
goods, and information to move across national boundaries, society approached a complex system(chaos) of multifaceted spider web-like networks linking various and diverse factors. In complex
systems, local phenomena gain the potential to exert large-scale changes and influences going
beyond the range that can be controlled based on technological causal inference (the butterfly
effect). Such conditions were demonstrated time and again, as typified by the financial crisesof Black Monday (1987), the East Asian monetary crisis (1997), and the Lehman crisis (2008).
What is more, the power of entities which devote themselves to destroying the existing order at
the local level gained force relative to that of systems managers responsible for overall stability,
such as the major powers. Small-scale challenges and disruptions of order by terrorists and rogue
states came to cause risks for overall systems.3
In that sense, the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in the US were an epoch-making event.
A terrorist group using just the low-level technology of hijacking airplanes struck a blow in theheart of the US, which apparently took pride in being invincible. The psychological impact ofthese attacks was far greater than the physical damage.
Following the 9/11 attacks, the administration of President George W. Bush placed the “waron terror” at the center of US foreign policy, and not only invaded Afghanistan which had becomea base of Al-Qaeda and toppled the Taliban regime, but also designated Iraq, Iran, and North
Korea as the “axis of evil” and went to war to overthrow the government of Saddam Hussein in
Iraq. The administration of Tony Blair in the UK mediated in assembling cooperation from theinternational community for the “war on terror,” and ultimately exercised force together with the2This term is based on the concept suggested in Ulrich Beck (Ren Azuma and Midori Itō trans.), Kiken
Shaka—Atarashii Kindai e no Michi [Risk Society̶Towards a New Modernity], Hosei University
Press, 1998 [original 1986].

3

Early works which attempted to apply the concept of chaos to international politics include Yōnosuke
Nagai and Jitsuo Tsuchiyama (eds), Chitsujo to Konton (Chaos)—Reisengo no Sekai [Order and Chaos̶the Post-war World], Ningenno Kagakusha, 1993, and Robert Jer vis, System Ef fects: Complexity in
Political and Social Life, Princeton University Press, 1997. Talebʼs work stressed this concept once
again just before the Lehman crisis: Nassim Nicholas Taleb (Mamoru Mochizuki trans.), Black Swan—
Fukakujitsusei to Risk no Honshitsu [The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable] (Vols. 1
and 2), Diamond, Inc., 2009 [original 2007].

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Hiroshi Nakanishi

US.
Over tur ning the Hussein administration was easily achieved given the US militar ycapabilities. However, the failure to make any preparations for government after the collapse ofthat administration reflected the simple optimism of liberal democracy as the historical winner,and the US and UK which took the initiative in the war paid a high price for their excessively
optimistic outlook. The confusion of the post-war governance pulled down the internationalprestige of the US and UK, and insufficient attention was given to the development of nuclear
weapons by Iran and North Korea.
Because the burden of the “war on terror” turned out to be much heavier than initiallyanticipated, the Bush administration then had to give particular attention to upholding domestic
economic conditions. Because a real estate bubble had been tolerated and those loans wereturned into financial products, when the real estate bubble collapsed, that spread into a general
financial crisis. The emergence of the Lehman crisis in September 2008 reconfirmed the fragility
inherent in globalization.

(2) The rise of the rest

The “rise of the rest”4 progressed in parallel with the prolongation of the war on terror andconcerns about a global depression starting from the US caused by the collapse of Lehman
Brothers. A 2003 report by the largest US securities company Goldman Sachs used the term
“BRICs” to refer to Brazil, Russia, India, and China, and hinted at the potential that these countries
could surpass the industrialized nations in the future global economy, drawing a great deal ofattention.5 These four countries plus South Africa subsequently came to be called the BRICS, andvarious other terms were proposed to refer to the BRICS together with other emerging nations.
At that point in time, the West mostly viewed the emergence of the newly industrializing
economies not as a challenge to the international order, but rather as a demonstration that thecooperative framework would be maintained because these countries also benefitted from theopen order created by the West.6 To be certain, up until the 2008 Lehman shock, the basic policyin these countries as well was to pursue economic growth within the international order led by
the industrialized nations. For example, in the case of China, the administration of Hu Jintao
which came to power in 2002 initially called for a “peaceful rise” of China, and emphasized thestance that the emergence of the Chinese economy was not a threat to the existing order but was
rather in line with that framework.
Just after the 2008 Lehman crisis, there were growing calls for the industrialized nations andthe newly industrializing economies to reinforce the international cooperation framework withnew foundations. The strengthening of the G20 is a representative example. The G20 Summit
first held at the invitation of the US in November 2008 was made into a regular event. After thecrisis settled down somewhat, however, cracks emerged between the advanced nations and theemerging economies, and the stagnation of the G20 became conspicuous. The background to
this included a sense among the emerging economies that Western leadership was in decline asthey gained confidence in their own economic power, along with an emphasis on strengthening
authoritarian systems to avert domestic social discontent over growing economic disparities and4

Fareed Zakaria (Kōichi Nirei trans.), Amerika-go no Sekai [The Post-American World], Tokuma Shoten,
2008 [original 2008].

5

Dominic Wilson and Roopa Purushothaman, “Dreaming with BRICs: The Path to 2050,” Global
Economics, Paper No. 99 (Oct. 2003) [http://www.goldmansachs.com/our-thinking/archive/archivepdfs/brics-dream.pdf].

6

As a representative advocate, see G. John Ikenberr y (Yūichi Hosoya trans.), Riberaruna Chitsujo
ka Teikoku ka—Amerika to Sekai Seiji no Yukue [Liberal Order and Imperial Ambition: Essays on
American Power and International Order] (Vols. 1 and 2), Keiso Shobo, 2012 [original 2006].

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Turbulence in the Post-war Order and Issues in Japanese Diplomacy

over control over freedom of speech. Consequently, albeit only partially, the newly industrializing
countries began to make clear their critical stance toward the existing order led by the West.
The trends in China and Russia were particularly important. The Beijing Olympics were held
just before the Lehman crisis, and in China from this time there were growing calls among theleadership to switch from the line of “keeping a low profile and biding time” to a policy of actively“striving for achievement,” and a struggle for power emerged in relation to the succession of
power to Xi Jinping. Once Xi took power from 2012, China turned increasingly proactive in its
foreign policy. Under the banner of “the great revival of the Chinese nation,” while strengthening
its voice within the existing international economic order through such initiatives as including
the renminbi as one of the currencies that comprise International Monetary Fund (IMF) Special
Drawing Rights (SDR), China launched its “great maritime power” and “Belt and Road” initiatives,
established the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, and other wise began building up aframework to compete with the existing framework led by the West. Meanwhile, domestically,
the Chinese government tightened its stance toward controlling the spread of outside influence,and stepped up its control over free speech, which had been tolerated to some extent under thereform and opening-up policy.
Glorification of nationalism and regression of freedom have also proceeded in Russia under
the administration of Vladimir Putin, which has suppressed the opposition, placed the media
under control, and grasped the foundations of power of the siloviki (persons related to thesecurity or military services) and of energy and other industrial conglomerates. Furthermore, thePutin administration has strong suspicions regarding Western penetration of Russia and nearby
regions, and has taken stances opposing the West in its territorial dispute with Georgia (2008),
and in the Russian military intervention in Ukraine and annexation of Crimea (2014).
However, the newly emerging economies are not strongly united: India was absent from the2017 Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation, and there is some overlap between
the Belt and Road initiative and the Eurasian Union advocated by President Putin. At least for
the time being, the effect from the rise of the newly emerging economies will likely be limited toeroding and weakening the post-war order, and the construction of an opposing order will not be
straightforwardly pursued.

(3) Decline in the political leadership of the democratic system
While the newly emerging economies began to distance themselves from the post-war order
led by the West, domestic politics were destabilized in the Western nations, especially in the
US and UK which had served as the core leaders of the post-war order, and their international
leadership declined. This trend, which had been noted just after the end of the Cold War7, rapidly
accelerated after the Lehman crisis. While the recurrence of a global depression has been
averted since the Lehman crisis by non-traditional financial policies and a large-scale expansionin fiscal spending, the fracturing of society has deepened over that time, and the political support
for anti-globalism can no longer be ignored. While the anti-globalism movement does not havea systematic world view, it does embody the sense of the downfall of the middle class, whichenjoyed prosperity during the period when the post-war order was fixed, and this movement has
also become mixed with a backlash against the elite who pushed globalization forward, animosity
toward immigrants, ethnic and religious chauvinism, and fear of terrorism. Although the majorityof people do not actively support anti-globalism, its influence in democratic politics is rising from7

A political analyst who proposed the “southern strategy” to the Republican Party in the past drew a
picture of the political deterioration of Anglo-Saxon society. See Kevin Phillips (Hisayoshi Ina trans.),
Amerika de “Kakumei” ga Okiru—Washinton Kaitai o Semaru Shin Popyurizumu [Arrogant Capital:
Washington, Wall Street, and the Frustration of American Politics], Nikkei Publishing, Inc., 1995
[original 1994].

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its ability to mobilize politically since the use of social networking services (SNS) and other new
communications means outside the mass media has become widely available.
In 2016, such political changes brought about major shifts in the foreign policies of the US andthe UK, which had been in charge of the post-war order. Barack Obama, who became the first
black president of the US in 2009, declared that the US is not the worldʼs policeman, and pursued
a diplomacy without relying on militar y power and an emphasis on multilateral cooperation.
While Obamaʼs idealistic vision calling for a “world without nuclear weapons” had the power toappeal to public opinion, he failed to completely bridge the gap with China and Russia which
stepped up their challenges against the West and were becoming increasingly authoritarian, andwhile he did achieve the withdrawal of US combat units from Iraq, that invited the rise of theIslamic State (IS). Non-military response to the mountain of problems, including the governanceof Afghanistan, North Korean nuclear missile development, and Iraqi nuclear development, had
its limits and conversely led to a decline in international prestige and intensification of domestic
opposition. In the 2016 US presidential election, Hillary Clinton who inherited the Obama line
lost to Donald Trump who called for an America First policy, which implied destroying the postwar international order based on American liberal leadership. In the UK as well, Prime Minister
Tony Blair who had a middle-of-the-road line resigned amid criticism regarding the Iraq War.
The Labour Party lost its cohesiveness, and after the brief administration of Gordon Brown, thegovernment switched to the Conservative Party administration of David Cameron. However, inorder to achieve unity within his own party, Cameron rather capriciously proposed a nationalreferendum on Britain leaving the EU. To the shock of the British and the world, the “Leave” votenarrowly outnumbered the “Remain” vote in the referendum of June 2016.
The Brexit referendum under the Cameron administration and the selection of real estateagent Donald Trump as the Republican Party candidate and then as president revealed cracks
in the alliance between neoliberalism and conservative patriotism that had been central to US
and UK politics since the 1980s. Neoliberalism and conser vative patriotism had been united
under the great causes of criticizing the administrative state and confronting communism, but
after the end of the Cold War internal tensions intensified with a sense of the downfall of theconservative middle class and debates regarding war leadership. As a result of this split among
the conservatives, Prime Minister Cameron was forced into holding the Brexit referendum. whilein the US, the split within the Republican Party enabled the selection of Trump as the Republican
candidate. Of course, turmoil in domestic politics is not limited to the US and the UK: theemergence of anti-EU factions and separatist movements can be seen in other European countries
as well.
It should be possible to argue from a logical and utilitarian viewpoint against President
Trumpʼs assertions that the present international order places excessive burdens on the US,
allows free-riding by other countries, and harms US interests. Nevertheless, it is undeniable that
the US and the UK, and the US in particular, have borne an asymmetrical burden (admittedly
with certain privileges) in the post-war international order, and a utilitarian counterargument
based on profit-and-loss arithmetic will not resonate with the feelings of those who seek morethan utilitarian value. In addition to the emergence of the risk society and the rise of the newly
emerging economies, the post-war order is now being challenged from inside the states that have
served as its main axis. This is the greatest trial the post-war order has ever faced.

Conclusion
In this paper, I have reviewed the developments in the post-war order from its formation up
until the present time. Although the post-war order has provided peace and stability for morethan 70 years, its shaking is gradually growing stronger. The post-war order is a system thatwas conceived at the peak of industrial civilization, and there is no question that it has become
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Turbulence in the Post-war Order and Issues in Japanese Diplomacya presence which no longer matches the age of post-industrialization. The issue is whether thetransition to a new order will take place peacefully and gradually, or if we shift to a new order bypassing through devastating shocks including war. Of course, the former is clearly desirable, but
we cannot overlook the reality that this path is gradually narrowing.
Japan, which has received great benefits from the post-war order, has a particularly greatinterest in a peaceful transition. Even though Japan lacks the power to determine the fate of
the international order by itself, the decisions of Japan may have a large influence on important
aspects.
In that regard, what will be most important is the ability to make strategic judgments that
determine the allocation of limited resources. The environment surrounding Japan includes
potential conflict areas such as North Korea and the Taiwan Strait and is a region where US,
Chinese, and Russian influences intersect, and where it is becoming increasingly difficult toproject the future overall. Consequently, Japanʼs efforts to reinforce its security system should
be prioritized to enhance Japanʼs own safety and also as a means of diplomatic influence. Yet
considering the present level of the technologies, there are clearly limits to Japanʼs own resourcesthat can be devoted to defense, and Japan should allocate substantial resources to its diplomatic
capabilities and information collection and analysis capabilities. In particular, in this age of fakenews and conspiracy theories, accurate information analysis capabilities may determine the fateof nations.
Also, geopolitically, the Indo-Pacific region may gain importance as a region where US andChinese interests compete, and Japan may also need to build up its own network of influencein this region as well. That may require a dramatic expansion of people-to-people exchanges,
including the acceptance of immigrants from this region.
From a longer-term perspective, as the world transitions to an information civilization, thedecision on whether the unit that comprises a stable order will be the nation state or takes someother form is important. The modern nation state framework is presently the most rational anduniversal political order. Nevertheless, it is also certain that areas where the modern nation
state system, which is premised on the demarcation of strict national boundaries and on ethnic
integration, cannot be applied occupy a substantial part of the world. In the international orderthat will be formed from now, a choice will have to be made on whether to greatly reformthe nature of the 20th century nation state, or to find new principles of order that differ fromthe sovereign state, or to adopt some mixture of both. Even if the territory of Japan, which issurrounded by the sea, remains unchanged, the type of principles of order to be adopted will havedecisive importance on Japanʼs living environment.
Devising and implementing long-term strategies is an area where Japan has not been strong.
But if we do not deal with this issue amid the intensifying upheaval of the post-war order, thedanger that Japanʼs peace and prosperity may be lost will only grow stronger.

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