ABSTRACT
The "domestication" of foreign policy poses a long-term threat to the disintegration of the Japanese-American alliance because it reduces the capacity of policymakers in both nations to lead and control bilateral relations. Japan will be forced to make decisions regarding matters of defense, national strategy, and geopolitics that have been avoided in the past primarily because of the nature of its alliance with the United States. Perhaps the most important international reality that bears on the future of relations between Japan and the United States is the extent to which each nation is engaged in the Western Pacific. Japanese-American economic issues moved deeply into the morass of domestic policymaking involving Washington's bureaucracies, the web of connections between them, standing Congressional committees, and a plethora of lobbyists and consultants. As long as there was a strategic vision accepted by American policymakers and the general public, the presidency was the institution that dominated foreign policymaking.
