Uncertain Future: Revitalizing the Us-Japan Alliance‪.‬

AT THE END OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY, Asia is entering a new era. The sudden, unexpected end of the Cold War, the rise of Japan as a regional and global economic superpower, the long delayed emergence of China into the global system, and the economic dynamism of the Asia Pacific region are creating a new distribution of economic and political power and raising a new set of issues affecting the fundamental structure of international relations in the region. Above all, these developments raise issues for the US-Japan relationship. For nearly a half century this relationship, encompassing the bilateral security pact and the growth of economic interdependence between the two countries, has been the cornerstone of international relations in Asia. The organizational structure of regional politics in Asia has experienced two great transformations in this century. Both transformations came at the end of World Wars, both were achieved through US leadership, and both shaped the fundamental nature of US-Japan relations for succeeding decades. Both, however, ultimately failed to integrate Japan into a regional structure of international relations. The first transformation in regional politics, which came about after World War I, destroyed the imperialist balance of power in East Asia. At the Washington Conference of 1921-1922, the United States sought to reorganize the region on the basis of Wilsonian principles and to constrain the Japanese rise to preeminence. Skeptical from the start, the Japanese soon broke out of these constraints and sought to revise the regional order.