Japans Military Export Policy

Svensk doktorafhandling om Japans begyndende, men restriktive våbeneksport. Der gives en grundig redegørelse for forholdene omkring Japans våbenindustri og dens relationer til udlandet, herunder USA.

The ruling Liberal Democratic Party of Japan uses incremental changes to manage conflicting pressures over defence.This work focuses on the establishment of defence policy constraints through 1992. It discusses the various implications of using defence policy as a means of conflict management.

In 2014 the Japanese government promulgated a new defense export policy, lifting bans that had been in place for nearly thirty years. As inaugurated by the Abe administration, Japan’s new defense export policy offers huge opportunities for US-Japan defense industrial cooperation. There are important risks that accompany this new defense export policy. These include: political risks, particularly with Japanese public opinion at home, as well as public opinion abroad; geopolitical risks, including Japan’s bilateral relations with Asian neighbors, particularly China; technological risks, particularly in the area of technology transfers and intellectual property (IP); economic risks for Japanese companies that venture into the new defense export arena without adequate preparation or adequate support from their government. Any new national policy, especially in the defense arena, comes with an inevitable learning curve. The highly competitive arms market today makes that curve especially steep for Japan. But when—not if—Japan masters that curve and becomes both an important defense exporter and innovator, much as it did in the automotive industry in the 1970s and 1980s, it can and will emerge as a formidable partner of the United States, or possibly even a competitor, in equipping its allies with defense technologies to make the world safer and more secure.

This is an in-depth analysis of the U.S.-Japan security alliance and its implications for Japan and the Asia-Pacific region. It moves away from the official line that the alliance is a vital aspect of Japan's security policy and introduces issues and arguments that are often overlooked: American security policy has failed to achieve its goals; Japan's interests are not fully served by the alliance; the alliance itself is a source of instability in the region; and the arrangement has placed constraints on Japan's own political development. The author measures current developments in U.S. foreign policy against Japan's role in the region and Japan's own political development. He assesses the consequences of the alliance for the current regional situation in Northeast Asia, looks at future policy options for Japan, and makes the case for a neutralist security policy.

In 1960 the Japan-United States security treaty was rewritten amid controversy and rancor. In the years since, Japan has astonished the world with her comeback from the status of defeated nation to a major industrial nation. This book is a detailed study of Japan's foreign policy which guided the nation in its resurgence. Five years in the preparation, the book examines the three main pillars of Japanese foreign policy: national prosperity, national security and recognition of Japan as an international power. The author's detailed knowledge of Japanese domestic politics provides the essential background for an understanding of the nation's pursuit of its foreign objectives.

The editors of this book have gathered writings from various contributors who discuss American and Japanese views of nonproliferation export controls. Readers will see the U.S.'s perspective and the Japanese perspective on controlling the export of dual-use items for military security reasons and trading these items for economic benefits. The book provides an analysis of issues ranging from technology control to democratization to the different interests and preferences of policy-makers. It also examines the possibility of a multilateral export control arrangement through the cooperation of Japan and the U.S. This examination includes identifying policy implication, opportunities, risks and constraints that influence and create an agenda for future nonproliferation export control research between Japan and the U.S. This book will enlighten readers to the potential of a balanced and durable global partnership. The book will make a significant contribution to the on-going discussion on the development of export controls in the post-Cold War era. It will appeal to students and teachers of foreign policy, international relations, comparative foreign policy, comparative political economy and Japanese area studies. It will also interest the policy-making community.

An important contribution to the international relations and military studies literature, this study considers the problem of conflict termination in Europe--an area of immense strategic importance to both the United States and the Soviet Union. The author argues that a well-thought-out policy for conflict termination is lacking within the NATO alliance, which currently relies almost exclusively on policies that emphasize the prevention of war. This lack of a conflict termination strategy, Cimbala asserts, leaves nations open to the danger of a quickly escalating nuclear conflict, should prevention policies fail and a war in Europe actually occur. In developing his arguments, Cimbala considers the relationship between war and politics as perceived by Soviet and Western planners; compares the superpowers' likely views on the process of escalation; and assesses the command, control, and communications perspectives implicit in Soviet and American writings and deployments and their implications for war termination. Cimbala begins with an overview of the problems and choices involved in ending war in Europe under contemporary conditions. Subsequent chapters examine such topics as the philosophical and practical issues related to the problem of preemption; the problem of military stability and its specific applications to modern Europe; and Western and Soviet approaches to the escalation and limitation of war. Soviet perspectives on command and control as well as the Soviet view of war termination receive extended treatment in two chapters. Finally, Cimbala contrasts the orthodox view of mutual assured destruction with the strategic revisionism of defense dominance or mutual assured survival. He concludes that policymakers and military planners must recognize that nuclear weapons will almost certainly be a part of any war in Europe and that termination must focus on limiting the use of these weapons before the pressures of in the field escalation tendencies begin to work against the early conclusion of a conflict. Students and scholars of military policy will find Cimbala's work enlightening and provocative reading.