Due to continuing challenges around the TPP agreement, the public release of the revised Guidelines for Japan–US Defense Cooperation is the key policy outcome of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s spring visit to Washington DC. The rebalance to Asia is the signature feature of the Obama administration’s foreign policy, with the Japanese alliance at its center. For this reason alone the Guidelines are of importance. They also spell out a broader functional purpose and larger conceptual frame of reference for the bilateral relationship, which adds to their significance. But what signals do the Guidelines send about the strategic relationship and its purpose?
Perhaps the most striking of these is that the alliance is now explicitly global in scope. The alliance has evolved from a key part of US Cold War strategy and it’s now an instrument conceived at the global level. In part this is driven by recognition that security threats to Japan and the US are not constrained by geography and that arrangements to defend these interests must have a global remit. In relation to “emerging threats” to Japan’s security, the Guidelines explicitly say that such “situations cannot be defined geographically.” This is a nod to the 1997 Guidelines that were controversial precisely because of a geographic reference to activity, which annoyed China. And the logical consequence of a conceptual rather than geographic approach to security threats is the need to position the alliance in global terms.
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