Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2020. xi, 401 pp. (Tables, figures.) US$39.99, paper. ISBN 978-0-8157-3767-4.
Three decades ago any book that had the words “Japan” and “liberal internationalism” in the title often had the words “threat to” in between. Yet at a time of growing Chinese coercion and American retreat from the Trans-Pacific Partnership, Japan has defied earlier expectations by stepping in as the leading defender of the liberal international order, particularly in Asia. For a generation of scholars raised on studies that emphasized Japan’s quasi-mercantalist developmental state model, such a transformation has been stunning to see. Experts are only just beginning to explain how this happened, what it means, and how sustainable Japan’s new activism might be.
The Crisis of Liberal Internationalism edited by Yoichi Funabashi and G. John Ikenberry will rank among the most influential treatments of this new era in Japan’s world role. A scholar-journalist, Funabashi has been at the front lines of Japan’s diplomacy since 1971 and now heads the independent Asia Pacific Initiative in Tokyo. Ikenberry is both a leading scholar of International Relations theory and a long-standing observer of Japan. Both editors have advocated a liberal internationalist agenda for Japan for decades, and this volume pulls together some of the most interesting scholars in the field to explain Japan’s response to what they argue is the most serious crisis in liberal internationalism in their lifetimes.
The first half of the book examines Japan’s new strategy to shape regional and global order. Adam Liff’s chapter on Japan as a “proactive stabilizer” (39) in Asia demonstrates why realists and liberal institutionalists now largely see Japan the same way: Tokyo—especially under Shinzo Abe—has simultaneously sought to redress the balance of power and also to restore momentum to the original Bretton Woods system in Asia. Thus Japan is both increasing military capabilities and greater “collective self-defense” with the United States while also expanding multilateral diplomacy and regional trade and economic agreements. The key variable that explains this fusion of great power realism and liberal institution-building is the reality that Japan’s external security is threatened by China even as economic relations with China remain central to Japan’s own economic growth. Liff explains the limitations Japan still faces in terms of budget outlays (Japan’s per capita defense spending still ranks closer to Barbados or Bermuda than South Korea or Australia), and remaining legal constraints on the Self Defense Forces. However, one can see why Japan has managed the complexity of intense competition and economic interdependence with China more deliberately and successfully than any other major democratic power, including arguably the United States.
Mireya Solís continues the examination of Japan’s shaping strategies in Asia by explaining how and why Japan emerged as a champion of economic rule-making over the past decade, weaving together Chinese revisionism, American unilateralism, and changes in Japan’s own domestic political economy to explain how this happened. Solís is bullish on Japan’s commitment to saving the liberal trading system even as she acknowledges that the system’s future is in question. Phillip Lipscy provides a similar treatment of Japan’s approach to international organizations arguing that Japan could demonstrate leadership as a “reformist status quo power” (108). He acknowledges that Japan’s contributions to international organizations (though still second behind the US) have declined as Japan has not compensated by demonstrating the kind of thoughtful leadership in international organizations as it has in regional security and trade. While Lipscy ascribes this in part to nationalism, it may also reflect a growing realism in Tokyo about where the centre of strategic competition with China lies—namely the Indo-Pacific. Still, Lipscy is right to urge greater Japanese initiative at the United Nations and other international organizations which are also fronts in shaping China’s impact on the world. Maiko Ichihara’s chapter spotlights the role of values in Japan’s diplomacy. Ichihara has been at the forefront of explaining the international and domestic forces driving Japan towards greater identification with universal democratic norms and the ways in which Japan is—and still is not—defending those norms in concrete ways through foreign assistance and diplomacy. The last of the chapters in the first section is Nobumasa Akiyama’s authoritative assessment of Japan’s role in nuclear non-proliferation and arms control. As with his other work, Akiyama straddles the worlds of national security realism and arms control idealism, and offers a middle ground that will likely be influential under Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, who hails from Hiroshima and seeks a path that will somehow strengthen both the US extended deterrent and Japan’s commitment on global disarmament.
The second half of the volume is called “Statecraft” but really looks at the domestic factors that drive Japan’s new strategy and offers some hints as to where those efforts could falter. Ken Hijino explains the ebbs and flows of domestic Japanese politics and the dangers of civic disengagement. Tom Berger updates his path-breaking work on Japan’s challenges managing historical issues with neighbouring China and South Korea (though it is worth noting that the rest of Asia now consistently ranks Japan as the most trustworthy country in the world). Kenneth McIlwain explains how Japan’s constitution has bent but not broken with the current crisis in international liberalism, and Kaori Hayashi dives into the impact of digitization on Japan’s traditionally corporatist media. The second section concludes with a survey experiment of the general public by Liff and McIlwain that suggests deep support for liberal institutions and democratic alignment among the public.
These latter chapters are each interesting and authoritative in their own right, but do not connect with each other or the first half of the book as well as they could—with the exception of Berger’s explanation of the role of historical issues in Japan’s diplomacy and the Liff-McIlwain survey experiment. One has to read between the lines to speculate on how the domestic churn in Japan’s politics and society might complicate Tokyo’s external strategies or how Japan’s liberalism compares with the rest of the world. On balance, though, the second section suggests that globalization and income disparities have had less of an impact on Japan’s international engagement than what we saw in Brexit or the 2016 US election. And this gives reason for hope that the world can continue to look to Japan for leadership in sustaining an international liberal order under increasing duress.
Michael J. Green
Georgetown University, Washington, DC