ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the overarching framework of Japan’s subordination to the United States as inherent in the Security Treaty. This inequality is set out in terms of an increasingly comprehensive process, originating in the US occupation of Japan (1945–52), the formative period of the alliance regime – during which the United States intervened in manifold ways to consolidate a conservative, pro-US government. The treaty terms, in effect, entailed the breach of Japan’s designated peace constitution (non-possession of military means) and, given the US military base presence in Japan, its deep implication in the US military operations, from the Korean War, through the Vietnam War, to later global-wide US military engagements.
