Renegotiating Japan's 'Postwar Bargains': The Transformation of Japan's Foreign Policy and the Pluralisation of U.S. Hegemonic Order in the 1970s
Creators: name: Ishihara, Yusuke
Publisher: name: The Australian National University
Year: 2023

description: This thesis investigates the major changes of Japanese foreign policy in the 1970s, a period in which tectonic shifts drove the transition of U.S. hegemony into a still U.S.-led but more pluralist order: the Sino-U.S. rapprochement; the collapse and reform of the Bretton Woods system; the new aspirations of East Asian countries in shaping their post-Vietnam future; and the scaling-back of the U.S. global military presence. As a rising economic power, Japan exercised considerable influence on such developments, with four foreign policy changes being particularly consequential. First, Japan's international economic policy shifted from a preoccupation with the stable yen rate and export expansion to wider-ranging objectives - the promotion of multilateral monetary coordination and the management of rising trade tensions. Second, Japan moderated its regional leadership aspirations and supported initiatives by the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN). Third, Tokyo expanded security relations with the U.S. despite the easing of Cold War tensions. Fourth, Tokyo normalised relations with Beijing after Richard Nixon's visit to China and supported Den Xiaoping's economic reform. Why did Japan change its foreign policy so significantly in the 1970s? International Relations literature often depicts countries experiencing an increase in material strength as actors who pursue ambitious goals such as military build-up, greater influence in multilateral organisations, and/or general prestige in the international order. The mere fact, then, that Japan reoriented its foreign policy and used its growing strength to influence an already pluralising change of the U.S. hegemonic order may not be a startling discovery. Yet, the problem with such power-based accounts is their complete silence on the country's contested policy-making processes in the 1970s. Japanese leaders often confronted intensive domestic and international disputes concerning the country's goals, roles and responsibilities amid the major shifts in its international environment. Eventually, they overcame these complications and decided to transform the country's foreign policy in unprecedented ways. To explain Japanese foreign policy changes in the 1970s, this thesis develops a conceptual framework centred on 'bargains,' reciprocal compromises between states to stabilise their relations. After World War II (WWII), Japan, the U.S., and many East Asian states developed a network of bargains through which Tokyo agreed to support U.S. Cold War strategy in exchange for Washington and the other parties' assistance with Japan's entry into the U.S. hegemonic order and its much-needed economic reconstruction. The conceptual framework treats the evolution of the postwar bargains as the explanatory variable for the changes of Japan's foreign policy in three respects. First, it highlights how the success of original bargains became the source of their own contestation, which inhibited Japan's foreign policy operations in the 1970s. Second, the framework illustrates how such contestation did not drift into an impasse, as Japan and the other parties renegotiated the original bargains which resulted in the transformation of Tokyo's foreign policy. Third, the framework articulates how the interrelations among (or the network of) postwar bargains was significantly decentralised over the course of the 1970s. This network decentralisation also had a direct bearing on the changes in Japan's foreign policy,