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Japan’s strategy amid US–China confrontation has focused on securing national defense and economic prosperity by maintaining Japan’s alliance with the United States and promoting Asia’s socioeconomic integration. Japan is working toward an institutional order based on universal values. It realizes that such a long-term goal requires coexistence, including with countries in the midst of integrating into the political and economic world order, and prioritizes stability. This approach explains the historical development of Japan–China relations since the 1970s. During this period, Japan has expected to maneuver China into integration with global politics through economic statecraft while maintaining its alliance with the US. During the current US–China confrontation, Japan faces the challenge of maintaining this complex strategic position in the US–China–Japan triangle. Its reaction to this new reality is to enhance its alliance with the US (including cooperation for economic security) and strengthen international partnership to promote its preferred mode of institutional order, while maintaining diplomacy with China.

Since the end of World War II, US alliances have been at the core of the regional orders in both East Asia and Western Europe. However, doubts about the US-hegemonic order have arisen due to great ...

Unlike the common view that sees FOIP as a containment strategy against China, this article argues that Japan’s FOIP vision seeks to maintain an open and inclusive regional order that incorporates ...

During the Eisenhower administration, the United States championed regional security postures, underscored by ‘pacto-mania’. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles was instrumental in negotiating numerous (and mostly bilateral) alliances between the United States and various Asian allies — a network which has become known as the ‘hub and spokes’ system. Unlike America’s European allies, who preferred a multilateral alliance framework in the form of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), Washington’s security partners in Asia generally eschewed multilateral security arrangements in their own region. This has been attributed to the generally weak material capabilities of Asia’s newly decolonised countries, a regional mistrust towards Japan and the United States’ own prejudices towards Asia as a politically underdeveloped region compared to long-time European collaborators, many of whom became NATO partners (Duffield 2001; Gaddis 1997; Hummer and Katzenstein 2002).