Germany and Japan: The New Civilian Powers

Hanns W. Maull

From Foreign Affairs, Winter 1990/91

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Summary:  Forecasts the emergence of an international order based on 'civilian powers', defined as states dependent on economic co-operation, supra-national structures, and primarily economic (rather than military) means of defending the national interest. A discussion of the potential of the FRG and Japan as such powers.

Hanns W. Maull is Professor of International Relations at the Catholic University of Eichstätt, Germany, and European Representative of the Japan Center for International Exchange.

As the postwar international order dissolves, some of the initial concerns that informed and shaped it are resurfacing. One key objective of this old order was the containment of Japanese and German military expansionism and its threat to the international status quo in the Far East and Europe. This was achieved brilliantly by embracing both countries in an American-led alliance system directed against a new adversary, the Soviet Union. This rationale is rapidly fading now, and old specters once more raise their ugly heads; the power of Japan and Germany has again become a cause of concern for their partners in the alliance.

Some observers fear a return of either state (or both) to traditional temptations of military power politics and suspect that Japan or Germany may revert to challenging the status quo, or perhaps even try to replace it with a "Pax Nipponica" or "Pax Teutonica." Others worry about the implications of a changing distribution of economic power as a result of Germany's and Japan's single-minded pursuit of economic gain abroad and tendencies toward parochial and closed societies and economies at home.

Most fears about Japanese and/or German revanchism turn less on perceived political strategies by today's leaderships in Tokyo or Bonn than on the dynamics of ungovernable change. German unification and its impact on the alliance are seen in terms of a "runaway freight train" headed for collision as a result of sheer momentum and the inability or unwillingness of the drivers to apply the brakes. And as for Japan, we are told by a "revisionist" that nobody really is in charge there.1 The forces of change in the postwar era, which have worked so powerfully in favor of the West and against the East, are now seen as threatening American control over events.

Those concerns no doubt reflect certain realities. The redistribution and growing diffusion of economic weight is a fact (although it is often not appreciated that the U.S. share of gross world product actually grew in the 1980s). It also seems correct to suggest that the dynamics of international relations have shifted from the military-political sphere to economic and social developments-a shift that favors Japan and Germany, as economically dynamic and socially cohesive countries.

Yet on balance the alarmists are probably wrong-not because they do not identify trends correctly, but because they fail to put them in the proper perspective. International relations are not just undergoing a reshuffling of power hierarchies, but a sea-change affecting both the structure and substance of international politics. It is hardly surprising that the demise of the East-West conflict should direct our eyes (invited and guided along by Paul Kennedy's The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers) toward the traditional play of geopolitics-balance-of-power calculations, the struggle of nation-states for power and a relentless security dilemma. The question is whether this perspective really captures the essence of today's international relations. I would submit it does not, because elements of fundamental change have become more important than those of continuity. ...

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