Asia-Pacific Regional Security

Introduction

The divisive histories of colonialism, war, decolonization, and migration that characterized the Asia Pacific in the 20th century cannot be recalled without simultaneously conjuring the involvement of the U.S. nation-state. The end of World War II in 1945, which arrived with the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan, indubitably marked the beginning of the U.S.'s sweeping expansion into Asia and its securing of nations at risk of communism. Through claims of national exceptionalism and moral fortitude, the U.S. emerged as the presumed leader of the First World. Following the end of World War II and a period of American occupation, Japan emerged as a primary Cold War ally, mediating between the political agendas of the U.S. and a rapidly decolonizing Asia. Japan's assimilation into the emergent first-world order, Likewise, the U.S. could manage any residual guilt it experienced over the use of nuclear weaponry in Japan. In claiming responsibility for Japan's postwar reinvention and moral rehabilitation, the U.S. could justify that only the use of atomic bombs guaranteed Japan's final capitulation to the west. In an effort to prevent the mobilization of Asian peoples against the Euro-American west, and to forestall the global spread of communism, the U.S. sought to institute its political, military, and economic programs in countries it succeeded in “rescuing” - Japan and South Korea being prime examples. Therefore, all the issues related to improving regional security in Asia Pacific will be discussed in detail.

Discussion

The recognition of Japan and South Korea as legitimate postwar nations could only arrive with their acquiescence to U.S. democratic ideals and their insertion into an emergent free market capitalist global order. Due to the assumption that it extended the gift of liberation to Third World nations forever imprisoned in the past, the U.S. could legitimate its expansive ventures into post-World War II Asia. The U.S. could thereby refuse any challenges to what might be seen as potentially imperialist motives. Following the end of World War II, the Allied Forces, particularly the U.S., occupied both Japan (1945-1952) and South Korea (1945-1948), establishing a wide network of military bases that still exists to this day (Herring, 1996).

The focus on Japan's traumatic defeat relieves the nation from dealing with its colonial ventures in a larger part of Asia. Many people consciously forget that Japan's former colonies, particularly Korea, were only able to decolonize with U.S. aid and intervention. The rhetoric of rescue and conversion that characterizes dominant American historical discourse is, at best, glimpsed in the insistence that the U.S. “saved” Japan from itself. By inculcating Japan with democratic politics and practices of living, the U.S. was able to deliver the defeated nation from its fanatic and brute past and into a more progressive future (Barnhart, 1988).

This line of reasoning is also what justified the division of the Korean peninsula at the 38th parallel in August 1945 and the American occupation of South Korea. In other words, Korea's postcolonial period could only commence with an externally imposed national ...