China-Japan-US Hyper-Triumvirate

Abstract

Systemic-subsystemic structural tensions converged here with urgency. Since the 1950s, the US-Japan alliance was a bulwark against feared communist encroachments in the Western Pacific. America’s extended-deterrence umbrella enabled Japan to grow its economic, scientific-technological and ‘soft-power’ assets, and push outward beyond the bounds of limited sovereignty. Systemic transitions triggered by the ‘Nixon Shokku’ and Soviet collapse shook Tokyo. China’s ‘rise’ forced Japan to formally establish its Ministry of Defence (MoD). Since then, disputes over history and geography focused Sino-Japanese rivalry resonating with Sino-US competition. Convergent deepening of the US-Japanese alliance paralleled a loosening of Japan’s legal-constitutional restrictions. And yet, post-War US-Japan-PRC dynamics betrayed very different tensions. The chapter examines the atypical evolution of this potentially inflammable triangular relational dynamic.