Japanese Security and American Policy

George F. Kennan

From Foreign Affairs, October 1964

George F. Kennan was a career officer in the U.S. Foreign Service from 1926 to 1953, retiring as Ambassador to the Soviet Union. He was later a Professor at the Institute for Advanced Study.

The provisions of the Japanese Constitution barring the resort to war as an instrument of Japanese policy, and effectively committing Japan not to maintain armed forces on a major scale, has long raised the question how Japan's security is to be assured in a world still replete with sources of international conflict. As late as 1948 it was still General MacArthur's view, if the writer of these lines understood him correctly, that it would not be essential for the United States to maintain armed forces on the Japanese archipelago permanently or for a protracted time either for its own security or for that of Japan; in his view, the most suitable status for Japan would be one of permanent demilitarization and neutralization under such general protection as might be afforded by the United Nations and by the friendly interest of the United States. He appeared to believe, as did this writer, that if such a status could be arranged with the concurrence of the Soviet Government, the likelihood of a Soviet attack on Japan would be minimal; and it was not easy to see from what other quarter Japan could be seriously threatened. This concept assumed, of course, an eventual agreement between the Soviet Union, the United States and other interested parties, on the terms of a Japanese peace settlement.

In the following year -- 1949 -- however, the decision was taken in Washington, for reasons still not fully clear, to proceed at once to the negotiation of a separate United States-Japanese treaty, one which would envisage virtually a bilateral alliance between the two countries and the retention for an indefinite period of American bases and defense facilities on the Japanese islands. Preparatory talks on such a treaty were well advanced when the Korean War broke out. To what extent these discussions, and the American disposition they reflected, were a factor in the Communist decision to launch the attack in Korea is a question which still awaits exhaustive historical scrutiny. Certainly, they were not the only factor; but it would be surprising if they had had no effect at all on this decision.

The Korean War changed the entire aspect of the Japanese security problem quite basically. The dream of a demilitarized and militarily neutralized Japan now faded from sight. That concept was not at all in accord with the view, so hastily embraced and fondly cherished in Washington officialdom, that the Communist attack in Korea was not the result of local causes but represented only the first move in a Soviet program of worldwide military conquest. Not even the greatest efforts of those who had closer knowledge of Soviet affairs could serve to disabuse the policy-making echelons of the Administration of this belief; and in the face of this interpretation, the idea of a Japan left without strong outside support, questionable enough anyway in the light of events in Korea, appeared, quite naturally, as the wildest frivolity.

The result was, of course, the Security Treaty signed at Tokyo on February 28, 1952, and the Administrative Agreement which accompanied it -- arrangements which were basically renewed and prolonged by the Treaty of Mutual Coöperation and Security concluded in January 1960.

It might be useful to attempt now to reconstruct the assumptions on the American side on which these arrangements were originally established. These may have varied somewhat in the minds of the various personalities involved, but probably it would be not too wide of the mark to suppose that the following were among them:

1. That Japan was seriously threatened with invasion or with overt military intimidation from the Communist mainland of Asia; and that such dangers were being averted, and could be averted in future, only by an active American commitment to the maintenance of Japanese security, involving the more or less permanent stationing of American forces in Japan.

2. That a similar situation prevailed with respect to South Korea, where any relaxation of the American presence would be the signal for an immediate renewal of hostilities by the Communists. In this connection, it was further postulated that the security of South Korea was essential to the security of Japan; and that American bases in Japan, in addition to their relation to the defense of Japan proper, were also necessary to support the security of South Korea.