The Tool to Build Post-war Partnership
With a Biden administration pledged to revitalize critical alliances undermined by the transactionalism of the outgoing Trump administration, it is important to understand the different factors behind the resilience of America’s alliance partnerships.
Jennifer Miller’s new study of Us-japanese relations, focusing on 1945 to 1960, widens the conceptual lens to include psychological as well as material, primarily economic and military, factors in understanding the tools that US and Japanese leaders used to build a lasting post-war partnership. Both the Truman and Eisenhower administrations deployed psychological awareness to formulate a vision of democracy, allied to notions of “spirit” and collective resolve, that could be marshalled by national elites in both countries to resist the appeal of Communism and neutralism.
In Miller’s telling, this was a narrowly elitist, restrictive and at times Orientalist agenda clashing with progressive ideas embraced by students, academics and left-wing opposition politicians in Japan. In a regional context it was distinctly hierarchical, involving US promotion of a Japanese model of development and modernity that integrated other Asian states into a distinctly US hegemonic order in East Asia. Focusing on the allied occupation, military bases and rearmament, Peace and Security Treaty negotiations, and efforts to promote economic regionalism in Southeast Asia, Miller’s elegant analysis shows how an alliance partnership that was anything but guaranteed after the Second World War has become a key element in the identity of 21st-century Japan and America.
He details the challenges of engaging with a country that is highly suspicious of foreigners.