United States and Japan relations since World War II



United States and Japan relations since World War II

Introduction

The post-World War II U.S.-Japan alliance has long been an anchor of the U.S. security role in East Asia. The alliance facilitates the forward deployment of about 36,000 U.S. troops and other U.S. military assets in the Asia-Pacific, thereby undergirding U.S. national security strategy in the region. For Japan, the alliance and the U.S. nuclear umbrella provide maneuvering room in dealing with its neighbors, particularly China and North Korea. The relationship between Washington and Tokyo is a relic of a vanished world. Despite a sometimes awkward plume of the new Japanese Prime Minister, the United States should encourage and support the desire of Japan to play a political role regionally and internationally in line with its status as an economic power.

A United States-Japan alliance is clearly in the interests of the United States. The relationship with Japan appears perhaps not as the record of the most pressing foreign policy for Barrack Obama. However, it is unavoidable if the U.S. wants to retain significant influence in a region, Asia, whose economic dynamism, the nationalist temptations, border conflicts, transnational threats, the arms race and make it the centre of gravity the international scene. While Japan is experiencing a crisis of confidence and those relations between Tokyo and Washington through some turbulence, a renewed US-Japan alliance is essential to international stability.

Background

The diplomatic relations between Japan and the United States are characterized by close economic and military cooperation and intensive cultural exchange. Both countries have been the end of the Second World War, allied with each other. For Japan, the alliance with the United States a central element of its security and defense policy for the U.S. Japan is regarded as a major non-NATO ally and most important ally in the region. Economically, both countries are closely intertwined: 22.6% of Japan's exports declined in 2006 in the United States, representing 8% of imports. More than a third of all foreign direct investment in Japan is from the United States. On a cultural level, there are a variety of institutional and personal contacts, and the popular cultures of both countries influence each other reciprocally.

United States and Japan Alliance during the Cold War

US-Japan alliance formed in the first decade after the Second World War, when in Asia began to rapidly escalate the Cold War confrontation, as reflected in the creation of the People's Republic in October 1949 and the outbreak of the Korean War in June 1950. These events prompted the U.S. to make Japan's main ally in Asia, so as to stop the spread of communism. September 8, 1951 in San Francisco, on a peace treaty with Japan, 48 countries, the U.S. and Japan signed a security treaty, which provides for U.S. troops to remain in Japan indefinitely. In connection with the record in Article 9 of the constitution a ban on possession of the armed forces of Japan (to have only self-defense forces), the ...