SAIS Review

THE UNITED STATES, JAPAN, AND THE FUTURE OF RUSSIA Robert E. Hunter & 'ince the end of the Cold War, the U.S. foreign policy community has been trying to understand the impact of new realities on America's relations with its NATO allies and the former Soviet Union. There has been vigorous debate on the wisdom and practicality of providing aid to Russia, and the classic institutions of transatlantic relations, especially NATO, are well on the way to basic reform. Indeed, the transatlantic allies have created a parallel institution, the North Atlantic Cooperation Council (NACC) that, ironically, embraces all the former Warsaw Pact states from Berlin to the Bering Sea—including virtually all the former Soviet republics—but excludes both European neutrals and America's Far Eastern allies. However, no similar review of policy toward the Far East has yet taken place. This is so despite the centrality of America's relations with Japan, and despite Russia's still-imposing geographical and naval presence in the region. To be sure, the United States has reviewed its military deployments in the western Pacific, most notably in the Philippines , and has embarked on a phased reduction of its military presence in the region. But U.S.-Japanese security relations remain largely unexamined and unchanged; they now exist without political reference points appropriate for the post-Cold War era. Equally important—in contrast with the Atlantic region—there has been no apparent basic dialogue Robert E. Hunter is Vice-President for Regional Programs and Director of European Studies at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C. 65 66 SAISREVIEW between the two countries on their policy toward Russia and the other former Soviet republics. There are several reasons for this relative lack ofU.S. attention to the impact ofthe collapse ofSoviet power on the Far East. For both Washington and Moscow, this was always a secondary theater—whether in terms ofmilitary deployments, concentration ofeconomic enterprise in both East and West, or ideological competition. At the same time, the lack ofa direct U.S.-Soviet confrontation in the Far East, other than through limited proxies (the two Koreas and Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia and Thailand) provided, compared to Europe, fewer risks of miscalculation or major conflict; and what East-West confrontation did exist in the Far East did not require an elaborate, multilateral alliance structure that would now have to be reviewed in terms of each member's separate interests. By the same token, however, the end of the Cold War also produced less drama in the Far East, for it did not bring a sudden and radical reduction of threat—a fact due in part to the lack of political change in China. Indeed, as late as the fall of 1991 some serious Japanese commentators wondered whether the Cold War had really come to an end in the region. Japan's response to developments in the former Soviet Union has been radically different from that of America's European allies. To be sure, during the Cold War Japan was presumably targeted by Soviet nuclear weapons, but it was not integrated into a multilateral political guarantee system. Ofcourse, in past decades the United States deployed nuclear weapons in South Korea both to deter aggression and to provide political reassurance—implicitly to Tokyo as well as to Seoul. However, these were relatively simple relationships compared to the complex Atlantic constructs that provided much of the NATO alliance's cohesion. Thus, in terms ofWestern nuclear relationships there is less to dismantle in the Far East than there is in Europe. Moreover, Russia looms less large as a potential source of trouble in Japan than in Europe. The seas still provide a significant barrier; no buffer states between Russia and Japan are in the process of disintegrating ; the Soviet Far East has always been relatively homogeneous ethnically ; and no flood of refugees can be expected to wash up on Japanese shores. Meanwhile, China is a diverting presence for Japan and a cautioning influence on Russia. In addition, there are a number ofRusso-Japanese issues that inhibit flexibility and revision of Japan's policy. On the other side of the globe, East and West had created...