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The Great East Japan Earthquake's unique scope, and the actors involved in the ensuing disaster, has the potential to significantly affect four areas influencing Japan's Self Defense Force's (SDF) trajectory: security interests, economic interests, norms, and actors and institutions. Retrenchment, status quo, and remilitarization are all plausible outcomes for the SDF's trajectory. Understanding what the disaster changed in these four areas is critical to determining the most probable SDF trajectory. This thesis finds that the SDF is not likely to embark on a retrenchment or rapid remilitarization trajectory. Japan's security and economic interests have not fundamentally changed since the disaster, but economic trends in place prior to the disaster were aggravated and its security policy was validated. Japan's norms were the most fundamentally changed, as the SDF emerged from the disaster as the most trusted institution in Japan. Changes will be limited to the fringes of the status quo bordering remilitarization as numerous disincentives restrain the SDF from rapidly moving toward remilitarization. These changes will come about from a growing sense of economic and security pragmatism that results in engaging rather than containing the SDF. Improved civil-military relations, more public support for the SDF's expanding domestic and international roles, and increased deference to the SDF as a useful tool of the state will characterize this new status quo., The original document contains color images.

We are in an era in which old solutions grounded in the confidence of overwhelming military superiority must be rethought. We no longer have the luxury of relying on raw strength to the neglect of the brain. The military professional needs rejuvenation! We are not the only group so affected, though I do not claim to be expert in other fields. Clearly, the economic would is facing many challenges as well, and some very basic research and evaluation are called for there. In the diplomatic world, each day is less and less amenable to easy cataloging, demanding greater insight and professionalism on the part of the diplomatic corps. In short, my perception is that across the board there are urgent demands for professionals of every calling to return home, to dabble less, to give the most thoughtful and considered attention to their own responsibilities., Published in Parameters, v9 n2 p76-83, 1979.

Both Japan and Germany have presented security identities of domestic antimilitarism throughout their postwar political histories. Remnants of war memories made peoples of both nations strongly antipathetic to waging a war as a way of pursuing national security. They institutionalized such means as constitutions, laws, and civilian control of military means. Among several tenets of security identities, the most basic and core tenet was no use of force in foreign war. Up until the Cold War period, the bans remained intact. However, as changes in the security environment appeared along with the end of the Cold War, Japan and Germany relied on the circumstances to consider modifying their long-standing antimilitarist approaches to security policies. This thesis examines how Japan's and Germany's political parties contributed to developing new security identities of domestic antimilitarism under the changing security environment and foreign expectations. The main focus of this thesis is finding out the answers to how the political parties' role as representatives of the public, policy makers based on their inherent security policy stances, and competitors over the preferred policies exerted influence on the evolution of the Japan's and Germany's security identity of domestic antimilitarism. Both nations faced international criticism in the Gulf War due mainly to their failures to properly meet the new expectations of the international community. In consideration of lessons learned from the Gulf War, the Afghanistan war (Japan), and the Bosnian war (Germany) were the landmark tests for both nations of their abilities to rewrite security identities of no use of force in foreign war. In the end, the expected findings of the thesis are that the political parties' identical positions in view of national security and interactions on the political stages played critical roles in preventing profound changes in the previous security identities of domestic antimilitarism., http://archive.org/details/evolutionofsecur1094510426, Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited.