Japan on the Borderlines: Is Japan Still a Civilian Power?/Sinirlardaki Japonya: Japonya Hala Bir Sivil G

• Author: Pehlivanturk, Bahadir

Introduction

"There is no homecoming for the man who draws near them unawares and hears the Sirens' voices". (1) In a prominent study that contributed to the development of the concept of civilian powers, Gunther Hellmann allegorized sirens' voices in Homer's timeless classic, The Odyssey, to the corrupting and intoxicating effects of power, which are so enchanting that they cause those who give into their seductiveness to steer toward the rocks and precipitate their doom. (2) The hero of Homer's work, Odysseus, could have avoided this tragedy only by having himself tied firmly to his ship's mast with ropes.

In the immediate aftermath of the Cold War, when concerns emerged in Europe about the potential path that the now-dominant Germany might choose in the future, Hellman drew an analogy between Odysseus and Germany, which during the 1930s indeed steered toward the rocks drawn by the sirens of power and toward a tragedy for itself and all of Europe.

The event that triggered Hellmann's work was the reunification of Germany in 1990. In its immediate aftermath, this event created considerable speculation about the type of foreign policy choices that the newly enlarged Germany might make and what these choices would mean for the peace and stability of post-Cold War Europe. After all, it was the nineteenth century emergence of a unified "Gulliver" Germany in the middle of Europe that had upset the fragile balance of power, resulting in two world wars and millions of deaths. A unified Germany in the uncertain post-Cold War era worried many. Those with less faith in Germany's societal and normative transformation were unsure whether to proceed more rapidly with European integration to tighten the ropes tying Odysseus to the mast or to abandon such hopes and return to balancing. Others, mostly Germans themselves, argued that most of the success of postwar Germany was a result of Germany's self-binding, pointing to the absurdity of the supposition that Germany would risk destroying its postwar accomplishments and its current envied place in the world. While the neorealists focused on the structural effects that would inexorably pull and push Germany toward the path that would lead it to become a potentially dangerous military power (i.e., sirens), neoliberals emphasized that Germany's involvement in a multitude of international institutions, its enmeshment in the international economic system, and its federalist system and democratic norms (i.e., ropes) should keep Germany as a respected and reliable partner within the Western alliance. (3)

In Japan, similar discussions have emerged each time that the country has introduced laws reinterpreting the peace constitution and/or redefined the scope of the activities of the Self-Defense Forces (SDF), such as increasing the level of the contribution to peacekeeping. Compared with Germany, Japan has received less credit for crafting a potentially peaceful future. In Germany's case, the arguments tend to emphasize Germany's international enmeshment, while in the case of Japan constitutional limitations attract the most attention, and the conclusions are less clear.

It was the 2015 reinterpretation of the constitution, called Japan's New Security Legislation (Heiwa Anzen Housei, hereinafter NSL), passed through the Upper House of Japan's National Diet on 18 September 2015, that triggered the most serious discussions of whether Japan had begun to steer toward becoming a military power, heeding the songs of sirens that it chose to ignore for so long. These bills (frequently deemed "epoch making") represented a revision of the scope of Japan's security activities and the limitations governing the SDF. The 2015 NSL marks an important change because it legally allows for a limited collective defense ability, which Japan lacked before. This initiated a discussion about whether Japan has abandoned its pacifism. Studies arguing that Japanese pacifism is still alive and/or NSL is a continuation of Japanese international peace activism point to the strict limitations on the use of force, the path dependency emanating from the historical evolution of security thinking that emphasizes cooperation, and the persistence of pacifist norms in Japan. (4)

On the other hand, since NSL recognizes collective defense ability, according to critics, this can potentially entrap Japan and its allies in international conflicts. Therefore, on the other side of the debate it is perceived as an end to Japanese pacifism and the birth of a more unpredictable and dangerous Japan that might endanger the stability of East Asia. (5) According to this view, even though NSL is in harmony with the previous trajectory of security policy development in Japan, the recognition of the collective defense ability marks a significant, irreversible change that can be regarded as a step ending Japanese pacifism (6). Some arguments go even further, portraying an 'uninhibited' Japan. Christopher W. Hughes is perhaps the most vocal advocate of the view that the NSL marks a dangerous shift towards remilitarization of Japan and will have destabilizing consequences for the region, (7) and there are other criticisms that regard NSL as the beginning of a potentially dangerous era. (8)

These are serious concerns that are apt to be raised in a world of rising protectionism, authoritarianism, and revisionism. The neoliberal world system has been in crisis even before the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic and various regimes in the world have grown more brazen in their challenge to the status quo. The United States, which has built and maintained the neoliberal world system, is not only losing its centrality, but in many aspects has demonstrated that it can behave in a way to undermine it. In such a world of turmoil and crisis, the behavior of secondary great powers such as Japan becomes more critical, and whether they can uphold the system or become another element of disruption has to be probed. Since more than half a decade has passed since the 2015 constitutional reinterpretation relaxed the limitations on the use of force by Japan, it is high time to investigate its effects on the developing security cooperation to understand if Japan's behavior is proceeding toward harmony or discord with its allies.

This study proposes that such an analysis can be done by applying the concept of civilian powers first developed by Hans W. Maull (9) and by placing it within the neoliberal institutionalist paradigm in IR, in order to better understand the implications of NSL and Japan's potential transformation. As mentioned elsewhere, as a distinct perspective, neoliberalism has been more marginal in studies on Japan's security policy. (10) This should not be surprising since neoliberals reject the realist hierarchy of issues that places security on the top. (11) Arguably the most dominant paradigm applied to Japanese foreign policy has been constructivism. (12) However, these studies focus on the changing domestic normative political context, mainly emanating from shifts in Japan's security environment, and the normative effects of international civilian cooperation. There is still need for the development of additional tools that can specifically handle the international security ties that NSL and the constitutional allowance of collective self-defense capability potentially opens up. Furthermore, since the diffusion of norms studied by constructivism still necessitates the material basis of institutions studied by neoliberalism (and similar platforms that enable social interactions), the marginalization of liberalism in the literature should be regarded as a deficiency, and this study aims to fill in a part of the lacuna. (13)

To overcome this gap, merging the concept of civilian powers with the neoliberal paradigm can be especially helpful. Liberal IR theory's fundamental premise is that "the relationship between states and the surrounding domestic and transnational society in which they are embedded critically shapes state behavior". (14) The analysis in this study shows that path dependency plays an important role in defining the extent and limits of Japan's civilian power behavior and its international security cooperation. While the defensive realist paradigm focuses on exogenous determinants, neoliberalism allows the addition of domestic legal and bureaucratic transformations to enter into the analysis.

However, neoliberalism is more involved with the regulation of adversarial relations among states and does not sufficiently examine how behavior is regulated within an alliance regime. Instead, it takes harmony of international behavior among the cooperative states as given. Our focus here, on the other hand, is on the questions concerning the continuity of harmony between Japan and its allies, and whether Japan can go 'rogue'. In the words of Andrew Moravscik, "societal 'lock in' effects and the resulting stability of state preferences, not the costs of interstate bargaining, monitoring, and sanctioning" that "make domestic policy reversal...costly" are the focus in this study. (15) Since norm diffusion among Japan and its allies (i.e. the United States, Australia) are assumed as given, adopting the constructivist paradigm and analysing norms would not add much to our understanding more than existing studies already have.

The civilian power approach, in the form developed by Maull, incorporates the 'lock in' effects in its framework, since it includes security cooperation among allies sharing similar norms as one of its focuses. It also provides the tools to qualitatively measure Japan's security behavior vis-à-vis its allies. The argument in this study is that Japan is involved in a nascent security community, (16) developing in Indo-Pacific, and its behavior is within the parameters of a 'civilian power'.

Before proceeding, another important point has to be made. Traditionally, the civilian power concept has been used in the...