Jitsuo Tsuchiyama

The Balance of Power in Korea, and Japan*
Jitsuo Tsuchiyama**Abstract
This paper seeks to examine East Asia, particularly the situation surrounding North Korea,
from the perspective of power politics. It specifically points out that a balance of power, thekey concept in power politics, is an order that does not simply arise from maintaining abalance in military power but is in fact premised on a shared recognition among countriesof “national interests” and “systemic interests”. It goes on to contrast the case of Europe,
where the presence of these factors enabled power politics to take root, with the current
situation in East Asia, which lacks these factors despite the seeming emergence of power
politics in the region. The paper then explains the need for Japan – which at one point acted
as if it had quickly mastered the balance of power, leading to misjudgments that culminatedin tragedy – to consciously think and behave as a key actor in ways distinct from the past in
forming a regional order encompassing the Korean peninsula.

2018 marks 150 years since the Meiji Restoration: a period that at once may appear to be along time, and yet also prompts the thought: has it only been that long? Modern Japanʼshistor y is surprisingly short. Despite the shortness of its histor y, however, modernJapanʼs diplomacy has been full of incident and turmoil, particularly in the prewar years.
Japan was the first non-European country to enter the European international order under its
own steam and join the great powers in their struggle for power and interests in East Asia. In theyears immediately following the Meiji Restoration, Japan sent a military expedition into Taiwan,
followed by the Sino-Japanese War, signed the Anglo-Japanese Alliance, was victorious in theRusso-Japanese War, concluded the agreements with France and Russia, and annexed Korea. Theyear after the outbreak of World War I, Japan issued the so-called Twenty-One Demands to China,
insisting on its interests in Shandong and Southern Manchuria. In this way, Japan transformed
itself into an empire with remarkable speed.
In the 1920s, Japan joined the League of Nations, established under the new ideal of collective
security, as a permanent member of its executive council, and became part of the Washington
order by signing the Washington Naval Treaty, marking Japanʼs arrival as one of the major powersof the international order. Ironically, however, World War I shattered the balance of power that
had been the foundation of that international order. The Russian Revolution took place during thewar, and the alliance with Britain and the agreements with France and Russia that had formed thebackbone of Japanʼs diplomacy were fatally undermined. Despite forming part of the core of theinternational order and despite seeming at first glance to have built a stable international positionfor itself, Japanʼs diplomatic isolation had already begun at this time, as Paul Claudel, the Frenchambassador to Japan, remarked. In the years that followed, having boxed itself into an impossible
position, Japan launched itself into a war with the United States that led to the collapse and*This essay was originally published on Kokusai Mondai [International Affairs], No.670, Apr. 2018.

** Jitsuo Tsuchiyama is professor emeritus of Aoyama Gakuin University.

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The Balance of Power in Korea, and Japandestruction of its empire.1After World War II, Japan seemed to reverse course and turn its back on power politics.
Certainly, the logic of the US-Japan Security Treaty system is closer to “bandwagoning” than abalance of power, and many overseas specialists on international politics regard Japanʼs postwar
diplomacy as a strategy of “hiding” in the shadow of the American superpower. For this reason,
they do not regard Japan as a major power. Even though Japan may be a member of the G7, forexample, Japan is not in charge of determining its own national security policy, and is therefore
regarded as a country that cannot achieve national security through its own power.
＊Since the end of the Cold War, the focus of international politics has shifted from Europe toEast Asia. The reasons for this shift include the rapid emergence of Chinese power, North Koreaʼsmissile and nuclear development programs, together with the decline of Japanese influence andfailing trust in US foreign policy. The centenary of the outbreak of World War I four years ago
prompted some international relations theorists to predict a war between the United States andChina by way of analogy with World War I. Some drew on the “Thucydides Trap” to compare
the clash between the United States and China to the wars between Athens and Sparta. Thesearguments were based on a distorted understanding of the historical facts2, but one thing hadin common is that they all recognized the emergence of power politics in East Asia. Comparedto Europe, however, East Asia does not have the same diplomatic norms, systems, or, mostimportantly, experience necessary for managing power politics in a prudent and cautious manner.
Various things have the potential to control power: ethics, norms, public opinion, anddemocratic systems. But ultimately what controls power is power itself. Hans J. Morgenthau
wrote that the pursuit of power by states inevitably produces a balance of power.3 Some may
object that the debate has moved on since Morgenthau ʼ s time, but Kenneth N. Waltz also
argued that a balance of power is the only logic of international politics. Setting aside for now
the question of whether it is indeed the only logic, both these thinkers pointed out that when
the balance of power functioned, Europe was at peace (under the Vienna system), while war
broke out when it failed to function (World War I). Morgenthau argued that a balance of power
inevitably results, and Waltz also thought that a balance of power produced itself naturally. But
in fact, a balance of power does not simply happen: it is created. To create an international order(a pattern of behavior among states for maintaining basic objectives), requires ideals, rules, andframeworks. In modern Europe, those roles have been played by the balance of power. A balanceof power does not mean weighing the military might of various countries on a set of virtual scales
and achieving balance in that way. It means a series of negotiations and systems to determine
who can do what, and how far they can go.4 Accordingly, for a balance of power to function, states
must not only know the meaning of their own national interests, but must also understand the1

The question why Japan became an empire and then collapsed is a major subject in international
studies. Important works have been done by Jack Snyder and Charles A. Kupchan, among others,who argue that the interests Japan gained from its empire in terms of diplomacy, national security, andeconomy did not match the costs.

2See, for example, Chapters 7 and 8 of Richard N. Rosecrance and Steven E. Miller eds., The Next Great
War? The Roots of World War I and the Risk of U.S.-China Conflict, The MIT Press, 2015.

3Hans J. Morgenthau, Politics Among Nations: The Struggle for Power and Peace, (Vol. 2), Japanesetranslation Kokusai seiji – kenryoku to heiwa by Yoshihisa Hara, Iwanami Bunko, 2013, p. 16

4Tsuchiyama Jitsuo, Anzen hoshō no kokusai seiji-gaku: aseri to ogori (International Politics of Security:
Anxiety and Hubris) 2nd. ed., Yūhikaku, 2014, Chapter 11, “Balance of Power: Kokusai chitsujo keisei toiji no jōken.”

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interest to be gained from maintaining the international order, or what might be called systemicinterests. This requires not only shared common thinking and shared understanding of history
among the countries involved in the relationship, but also practice and experience at managing
international relations. The existence of a balance of power was a precondition for the formationof the European order that developed into an international system as the European powers
expanded their power around the world in the nineteenth century; this is the international orderthat we know today.
The extent to which countries outside Europe have adopted the European thinking on
international relations varies from one countr y and region to another, but probably nowhere
has learned the lessons as keenly as Japan after the arrival of Perr y ʼ s fleet. The stor y of
Sakamoto Ryōma carrying a book of international law in his pocket may be apocryphal, but itvividly illustrates the attitude of Japan to the outside world in the waning days of the Tokugawa
shogunate. Government (bakufu) officials closely followed developments in neighboring Qing
China, which had suffered defeat in the two Opium Wars, and in Russia, which had been defeatedin the Crimean War. From an early stage, Katsu Kaishū predicted that the present system ofgovernment could not hold, while Hashimoto Sanai, right-hand man of Matsudaira Yoshinaga,
head of Fukui domain in Echizen province, came up with a proposal for a unified state to take theplace of the feudal system. That the baku-han (Tokugawa Shogunate) system successfully opened
the country and implemented the Meiji Restoration less than 20 years after the arrival of Perryʼsships was thanks to the ability of the so-called enlightenment faction of bakufu officials like Kawaji
Toshiakira and Iwase Tadanari, and the heads of powerful domains like Shimazu Nariakira
and Matsudaira Yoshinaga to read one step ahead and see how events were developing. They
possessed realism̶the ability to see what they could do based on their power, interests, and thestrength of their support, and to understand how long they could hold on. This enabled them tocalculate their strength, formulate a policy, and produce the desired results.
＊
What can a balance-of-power perspective tell us about North Koreaʼs nuclear and missile
development programs, which currently threaten the East Asian and US security system? On thebalance of power and its relationship to small and medium-sized countries, Morgenthau wrotethat the only options for a small country were to adjust to the balance of power or to get on thebandwagon of the dominance of a major power, citing Korea as an example. For more than 2000years, Koreaʼs destiny has been determined either by the dominance of a country that controlled
Korea or by a balance of power among countries competing for control.5 There is no questionthat Morgenthauʼs arguments match the reality of countries like Poland, the Baltic states, orVietnam, which have frequently fallen victim to the great powers, or to the leaders of Japan in
the bakumatsu (last days of Tokgawa shogunate) era and the Meiji Restoration, who feared aninvasion by the European powers. For example, when Russia harbored its warship Posadnik inTsushima and looked to occupy the island, Katsu Kaishū used British power to drive Russiaaway. After the Restoration, the Meiji government, having dispatched troops to Taiwan andKorea, knew that Japan was not strong enough to match the powers, and sought instead to let
the powers compete among themselves and looked to profit in that way. The balance of powerin Asia between Britain, France, and Russia worked as a positive advantage for the opening
and independence of Japan as a small country. It would probably be an exaggeration to say thatbakumatsu and early Meiji Japan carried out balance of power diplomacy with the powers. Japan
at the time did not have a Metternich or Bismarck, and there was no system or history of any
5Morgenthau, op cit., p. 34

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The Balance of Power in Korea, and Japanbalance of power existed in Asia at the time. And although foreign policy decisions taken by theearly Meiji government̶the expedition to Taiwan, the Ganghwa Island incident, and ultimately
the Sino-Japanese War̶seem to be connected in retrospect, there was no grand design thatenvisaged taking these actions from the outset. Saigō Takamoriʼs advocacy of a punitive mission
against Korea (Seikanron) was not a strategic argument, and Yamagata Aritomo ʼ s “ line ofinterest,” learned from Lorenz von Stein, also looks like an after-the-fact argument to provide ajustification for Japanʼs decision to send troops into Korea.
Despite these various qualifications, however, it remains true that Japan was the sole actor
who understood the balance of power in East Asia, especially as it pertained to Korea. This
diplomatic sense was something possessed by Katsu Kaishū, by Itō Hirobumi in Meiji, and by
Fukuzawa Yukichi outside the government. Of course, Mutsu Munemitsu, a realist who wasJapanʼs foreign minister during the Sino-Japanese War, had it too. Not that Mutsu saw everything
clearly. The biggest setback of Mutsuʼs diplomatic career was the Triple Inter vention; thereason for this failure was a mistaken judgement of how much Japan could do̶that is to say,a mistaken understanding about the balance of power. In his diplomatic memoirs Kenkenroku,
Mutsu famously wrote “I should like to think that there was no other option,” but if Japan had not
demanded that China cede the Liaodong Peninsula in the treaty of Shimonoseki (peace treatyof the First Sino-Japanese War), it is conceivable that the vicious circle that later embroiled East
Asia might never have started. Japanʼs greed and fear of Russia led to the demand for Liaodong
Peninsula, and invited the Triple Intervention. But when Japan compromised and returned thepeninsula to Qing China, Russia started to extend its own power into the peninsula. Japan chose
the Anglo-Japanese Alliance over the Russo-Japanese agreement, leading to the Russo-Japanese
War and the annexation of Korea.
As Sarah C. Paine of the US Naval War College has written, one can see diplomacy in East
Asia in the period from the Sino-Japanese War to World War I as the history of the successes
and failures of Japanʼs balance of power diplomacy, with the focus always on Korea.6 As alreadynoted, however, this balance of power diplomacy was no longer functioning by the 1920s. The
next twenty years one bad decision led to another. After the Manchuria incident, Japan reacted tocriticism from the international community by quitting the League of Nations, then entered allout war with China following the Marco Polo Bridge incident. Isolated and without support, Japanwas driven to sign an alliance with Nazi Germany; when Germany declared war on the Soviet
Union, Japan seized the opportunity to “advance south,” prompting the United States to impose
economic sanctions. Japan responded by planning a sudden attack on Pearl Harbor and war withthe United States, with tragic consequences.
＊There is a view that the collapse of the Japanese empire, rather than stabilizing the balance ofpower on the Korean peninsula, actually destroyed that balance of power, leading to the Korean
War that broke out five years later. The following year, Japan signed the US-Japan Security
Treaty, meaning that postwar Japan remained committed to the balance of power in Korea, albeit
in a different form from before the war. This is clear from an exchange of notes regarding UN
command in the first US-Japan Security Treaty, the secret Korean minutes acknowledged at thetime of the revision of the Security Treaty in 1960, the secret agreement on nuclear weapons
made at the US-Japan summit meeting in 1969, and in the guidelines for US-Japan defense
cooperation, among other things. There is an argument that the Yoshida Doctrine symbolizes
6Sarah. C. M. Paine, The Japanese Empire: Grand Strategy from the Meiji Restoration to the Pacific War,
Cambridge University Press, 2017.

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Jitsuo Tsuchiyama

postwar Japanʼs retreat from power politics, but this argument neglects the reality that the burdenof supporting the peace and security of postwar Japan has been borne by places like Korea andOkinawa. The focus of the negotiations leading up to the Agreed Framework in 1994 and the Six
Party Talks that followed, and of all subsequent policies on North Korea, including the current
economic sanctions, has been to balance the risks and interests of the countries neighboring
the North, and to find a way to bring North Koreaʼs nuclear weapons and missile development
programs to an end.7 The essential thing is to ensure that North Korea does not miscalculatethat it can use the threat of the possibility of a nuclear attack by ballistic missiles to achieve its
strategic objectives.

7Joel S. Wit, Daniel B. Poneman, and Robert L. Gallucci, Going Critical: The First North Korean Nuclear
Crisis, The Brooking Institution, 2004, is helpful in knowing the efforts of the Clinton administration torespond to the situation.

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