The truth cannot be more different from this Japanese belief. U.S. policy-makers have been fearing for decades that Japan will one day announce its intention to terminate the alliance. This is because Japan is the most valuable of America's 58 treaty-bound allies in two ways. First, the United States cannot maintain global preponderance without Japan. Second, in military terms, the alliance with Japan is the most symmetric of America's alliances.
Japan meets and surpasses various conditions for a power-projection platform.
One is industrial and technological development. Few allies are capable of repairing technology-intensive weapons of the U.S. armed forces. Another is economic capacity. In the course of acting as the world's leader, the United States sometimes finds itself in a financial shortfall. While not discussed often, the public's friendliness toward the United States is another important condition.