ABSTRACT
Legacies of the past are never far from the surface when it comes to present-day controversies and tensions involving Japan, China, and the United States. Take, for example, a single day in China: September 18, 2012. Demonstrators in scores of Chinese cities were protesting Japan’s claims to the tiny, uninhabited islands in the East China Sea known as Senkaku in Japanese and Diaoyu in Chinese – desecrating the Hi no Maru flag and forcing many China-based Japanese factories and businesses to temporarily shut down. Simultaneously, Chinese leaders were accusing the United States and Japan of jointly pursuing a new “containment of China” policy – manifested, most recently, in the decision to build a new level of ballistic-missile defenses in Japan as part of the Obama administration’s strategic “pivot to Asia.” And September 18 in particular? This, the Chinese were keen to point out, was the eighty-first anniversary of the Manchurian Incident of 1931 – the staged event that the Japanese military used as a pretext for seizing the three northeastern provinces of China and turning them into the quasi-colony they renamed Manchukuo. The disputed islands, the containment-of-China accusations, even the bitter “history issue” involving recollection of imperial Japan’s militarism all have toxic roots in the early years of the Cold War. Together with other present-day controversies, they trace back to the San Francisco System under which Japan re-entered the post-war world as a sovereign nation after being occupied by US forces for over six years, from August 1945 to the end of April 1952. The tensions of September escalated in the weeks and months that followed, and the alarm this generated was occasionally apocalyptic. Pundits spoke of “flash points” – in this case, the Senkaku/Diaoyu confrontation – that could lead to an “accidental war” in which US forces supported Japan against China. This, it was observed, would be consistent with America’s obligations under the bilateral security treaty with Japan that lies at the heart of the San Francisco System. That this worst-case scenario could be taken seriously in 2012 is both surprising and unsurprising. It is surprising because this was taking place forty years after both Japan and the United States belatedly normalized relations with the People’s Republic of China (PRC), dramatically abandoning the “containment” policy that had defined Cold War China policy prior to 1972. Over the course of
those four decades, the economies of the three countries had become interdependent, seemingly creating a foundation for durable peace. What makes the crisis of 2012 unsurprising, on the other hand, is the fact that China’s emergence as a major economic power has been followed by intense nationalistic pride coupled with resolute commitment to military modernization. This may have been predictable, but it nonetheless came as a shock to those who took the overwhelming military supremacy of Pax Amer icana for granted. The San Francisco System and this militarized Pax Amer icana go hand in hand. They have defined the strategic status quo in the Asia-Pacific area since the early 1950s. They have shaped (and distorted) the nature of the post-war Japanese state in ways beyond measure. They have involved both peace-keeping and war-making. As the events of 2012 made much clearer, this system and these structures now stand at a turning point.
