World Order

by Henry Kissinger

  At the apex of Japan’s society and its own view of world order stood the Japanese Emperor, a figure conceived, like the Chinese Emperor, as the Son of Heaven, an intermediary between the human and the divine. This title—insistently displayed on Japanese diplomatic dispatches to the Chinese court—was a direct challenge to the cosmology of the Chinese world order, which posited China’s Emperor as the single pinnacle of human hierarchy. In addition to this status (which carried a transcendent import above and beyond what would have been claimed by any Holy Roman Emperor in Europe), Japan’s traditional political philosophy posited another distinction, that Japanese emperors were deities descended from the Sun Goddess, who gave birth to the first Emperor and endowed his successors with an eternal right to rule. According to the fourteenth-century “Records of the Legitimate Succession of the Divine Sovereigns,”

  Japan is the divine country. The heavenly ancestor it was who first laid its foundations, and the Sun Goddess left her descendants to reign over it forever and ever. This is true only of our country, and nothing similar may be found in foreign lands. That is why it is called the divine country.

  Japan’s insular position allowed it wide latitude about whether to participate in international affairs at all. For many centuries, it remained on the outer boundaries of Asian affairs, cultivating its military traditions through internal contests and admitting foreign trade and culture at its discretion. At the close of the sixteenth century, Japan attempted to recast its role with an abruptness and sweep of ambition that its neighbors at first dismissed as implausible. The result was one of Asia’s major military conflicts—whose regional legacies remain the subject of vivid remembrance and dispute and whose lessons, if heeded, might have changed America’s conduct in the twentieth-century Korean War.

  In 1590, the warrior Toyotomi Hideyoshi—having bested his rivals, unified Japan, and brought more than a century of civil conflict to a close—announced a grander vision: he would raise the world’s largest army, march it up the Korean Peninsula, conquer China, and subdue the world. He dispatched a letter to the Korean King announcing his intent to “proceed to the country of the Great Ming and compel the people there to adopt our customs and manners” and inviting his assistance. After the King demurred and warned him against the endeavor (citing an “inseparable relationship between the Middle Kingdom and our kingdom” and the Confucian principle that “to invade another state is an act of which men of culture and intellectual attainments should feel ashamed”), Hideyoshi launched an invasion of 160,000 men and roughly seven hundred ships. This massive force overwhelmed initial defenses and at first marched swiftly up the peninsula. Its progress slowed as Korea’s Admiral Yi Sun-sin organized a determined naval resistance, harrying Hideyoshi’s supply lines and deflecting the invading armies to battles along the coast. When Japanese forces reached Pyongyang, near the narrow northern neck of the peninsula (and now North Korea’s capital), China intervened in force, unwilling to allow its tribute state to be overrun. A Chinese expeditionary army estimated between 40,000 and 100,000 strong crossed the Yalu River and pushed Japanese forces back as far as Seoul. After five years of inconclusive negotiations and devastating combat, Hideyoshi died, the invasion force withdrew, and the status quo ante was restored. Those who argue that history never repeats itself should ponder the comparability of China’s resistance to Hideyoshi’s enterprise with that encountered by America in the Korean War nearly four hundred years later.

  On the failure of this venture, Japan changed course, turning to ever-increasing seclusion. Under the “locked country” policy lasting over two centuries, Japan all but absented itself from participating in any world order. Comprehensive state-to-state relations on conditions of strict diplomatic equality existed only with Korea. Chinese traders were permitted to operate in select locations, though no official Sino-Japanese relations existed because no protocol could be worked out that satisfied both sides’ amour propre. Foreign trade with European countries was restricted to a few specified coastal cities; by 1673, all but the Dutch had been expelled, and they were confined to a single artificial island off the port of Nagasaki. By 1825, suspicion of the seafaring Western powers had become so great that Japan’s ruling military authorities promulgated an “edict to expel foreigners at all cost”—declaring that any foreign vessel approaching Japanese shores was to be driven away unconditionally, by force if necessary.

  All this was, however, prelude to another dramatic shift, under which Japan ultimately vaulted itself into the global order—for two centuries largely Western—and became a modern great power on Westphalian principles. The decisive catalyst came when Japan was confronted, in 1853, by four American naval vessels dispatched from Norfolk, Virginia, on an expedition to flout deliberately the seclusion edicts by entering Tokyo Bay. Their commanding officer, Commodore Matthew Perry, bore a letter from President Millard Fillmore to the Emperor of Japan, which he insisted on delivering directly to imperial representatives in the Japanese capital (a breach of two centuries of Japanese law and diplomatic protocol). Japan, which held foreign trade in as little esteem as China, cannot have been particularly reassured by the President’s letter, which informed the Emperor (whom Fillmore addressed as his “Great and Good Friend!”) that the American people “think that if your imperial majesty were so far to change the ancient laws as to allow a free trade between the two countries it would be extremely beneficial to both.” Fillmore clothed the de facto ultimatum into a classically American pragmatic proposal to the effect that the established seclusion laws, heretofore described as immutable, might be loosened on a trial basis:

  If your imperial majesty is not satisfied that it would be safe altogether to abrogate the ancient laws which forbid foreign trade, they might be suspended for five or ten years, so as to try the experiment. If it does not prove as beneficial as was hoped, the ancient laws can be restored. The United States often limit their treaties with foreign States to a few years, and then renew them or not, as they please.

  The Japanese recipients of the message recognized it as a challenge to their concept of political and international order. Yet they reacted with the reserved composure of a society that had experienced and studied the transitoriness of human endeavors for centuries while retaining its essential nature. Surveying Perry’s far superior firepower (Japanese cannons and firearms had barely advanced in two centuries, while Perry’s vessels were equipped with state-of-the-art naval gunnery capable, as he demonstrated along the Japanese coast, of firing explosive shells), Japan’s leaders concluded that direct resistance to the “black ships” would be futile. They relied on the cohesion of their society to absorb the shock and maintain their independence by that cohesion. They prepared an exquisitely courteous reply explaining that although the changes America sought were “most positively forbidden by the laws of our Imperial ancestors,” nonetheless, “for us to continue attached to ancient laws, seems to misunderstand the spirit of the age.” Allowing that “we are governed now by imperative necessity,” Japanese representatives assured Perry that they were prepared to satisfy nearly all of the American demands, including constructing a new harbor capable of accommodating American ships.

  Japan drew from the Western challenge a conclusion contrary to that of China after the appearance of a British envoy in 1793 (discussed in the next chapter). China reaffirmed its traditional stance of dismissing the intruder with aloof indifference while cultivating China’s distinctive virtues, confident that the vast extent of its population and territory and the refinement of its culture would in the end prevail. Japan set out, with studious attention to detail and subtle analysis of the balance of material and psychological forces, to enter the international order based on Western concepts of sovereignty, free trade, international law, technology, and military power—albeit for the purpose of expelling the foreign domination. After a new faction came to power in 1868 promising to “revere the Emperor, expel the barbarians,” they announced that they would do so by masteri
ng the barbarians’ concepts and technologies and joining the Westphalian world order as an equal member. The new Meiji Emperor’s coronation was marked with the Charter Oath signed by the nobility, promising a sweeping program of reform, which included provisions that all social classes should be encouraged to participate. It provided for deliberative assemblies in all provinces, an affirmation of due process, and a commitment to fulfill the aspirations of the population. It relied on the national consensus, which has been one of the principal strengths—perhaps the most distinctive feature—of Japanese society:

  By this oath, we set up as our aim the establishment of the national wealth on a broad basis and the framing of a constitution and laws.

  Deliberative assemblies shall be widely established and all matters decided by open discussion.

  All classes, high and low, shall be united in vigorously carrying out the administration of affairs of state.

  The common people, no less than the civil and military officials, shall all be allowed to pursue their own calling so that there may be no discontent.

  Evil customs of the past shall be broken off and everything based upon the just laws of Nature.

  Knowledge shall be sought throughout the world so as to strengthen the foundation of imperial rule.

  Japan would henceforth embark on the systematic construction of railways, modern industry, an export-oriented economy, and a modern military. Amidst all these transformations, the uniqueness of Japanese culture and society would preserve Japanese identity.

  The results of this dramatic change of course would, within a few decades, vault Japan into the ranks of global powers. In 1886, after a brawl between Chinese sailors and Nagasaki police, a modern German-built Chinese warship sailed toward Japan, compelling a resolution. By the next decade, intensive naval construction and training had given Japan the upper hand. When an 1894 dispute over relative Japanese and Chinese influence in Korea culminated in war, Japan prevailed decisively. The peace terms included an end of Chinese suzerainty over Korea (giving way to new contests between Japan and Russia) and the cession of Taiwan, which Japan governed as a colony.

  Japan’s reforms were pursued with such vigor that the Western powers were soon obliged to abandon the model of “extraterritoriality”—their “right” to try their own citizens in Japan by their own, not local, laws—which they had first applied in China. In a landmark trade treaty Britain, the preeminent Western power, committed British subjects in Japan to abide by Japanese jurisdiction. In 1902, the British treaty was transformed into a military alliance, the first formal strategic alignment between an Asian and a Western power. Britain sought the alliance to balance Russian pressures on India. Japan’s goal was to defeat Russian aspirations to dominate Korea and Manchuria and to establish its own freedom of maneuver for later designs there. Three years later, Japan stunned the world by defeating the Russian Empire in a war, the first defeat of a Western country by an Asian country in the modern period. In World War I, Japan joined the Entente powers and seized German bases in China and the South Pacific.

  Japan had “arrived” as the first non-Western great power in the contemporary age, accepted as a military, economic, and diplomatic equal by the countries that had heretofore shaped the international order. There was one important difference: on the Japanese side, the alliances with Western countries were not based on common strategic objectives but to expel its European allies from Asia.

  After the exhaustion of Europe in World War I, Japan’s leaders concluded that a world beset by conflict, financial crisis, and American isolationism favored imperial expansion aimed at imposing hegemony on Asia. Imperial Japan detached Manchuria from China in 1931 and established it as a Japanese satellite state under the exiled Chinese Emperor. In 1937, Japan declared war on China in order to subjugate additional Chinese territory. In the name of a “New Order in Asia” and then an “East Asian Co-prosperity Sphere,” Japan strove to organize its own anti-Westphalian sphere of influence—a “bloc of Asian nations led by the Japanese and free of Western powers,” arranged hierarchically to “thereby enable all nations to find each its proper place in the world.” In this new order, other Asian states’ sovereignty would be elided into a form of Japanese tutelage.

  The members of the established international order were too exhausted by World War I and too preoccupied with the mounting European crisis to resist. Only one Western country remained in the way of this design: the United States, the country that had forcibly opened up Japan less than a century earlier. As though history contained a narrative, the first bombs of a war between the two countries fell on American territory in 1941, when the Japanese launched a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor. American mobilization in the Pacific eventually culminated in the use of two nuclear weapons (the sole military use of these weapons to date), bringing about Japan’s unconditional surrender.

  Japan adjusted to the debacle by methods similar to its response to Commodore Perry: resilience sustained by an indomitable national spirit based on a distinctive national culture. To restore the Japanese nation, Japan’s postwar leaders (almost all of whom had been in the public service in the 1930s and 1940s) portrayed surrender as adaptation to American priorities; indeed, Japan used the authority of the American occupation regime to modernize more fully and to recover more rapidly than it could have by purely national efforts. It renounced war as an instrument of national policy, affirmed principles of constitutional democracy, and reentered the international state system as an American ally—though a low-key one more visibly concerned with economic revival than with participation in grand strategy. For nearly seven decades, this new orientation has proved an important anchor of Asian stability and global peace and prosperity.

  Japan’s postwar posture was frequently described as a new pacifism; in fact it was considerably more complex. Above all, it reflected an acquiescence in American predominance and an assessment of the strategic landscape and the imperatives of Japan’s survival and long-term success. Japan’s postwar governing class accepted the constitution drafted by American occupying authorities—with its stringent prohibitions on military action—as a necessity of their immediate circumstances. They avowed its liberal-democratic orientation as their own; they affirmed principles of democracy and international community akin to those embraced in Western capitals.

  At the same time, Japan’s leaders adapted their country’s unique demilitarized role to Japanese long-term strategic purposes. They transformed the pacifist aspects of the postwar order from a prohibition against military action to an imperative to focus on other key elements of national strategy, including economic revitalization. American forces were invited to remain deployed in Japan in substantial numbers, and the defense commitment was solidified into a mutual security treaty, deterring potentially antagonistic powers (including a Soviet Union expanding its Pacific presence) from viewing Japan as a target for strategic action. Having established the framework of the relationship, Japan’s Cold War leaders proceeded to reinforce their country’s capacities by developing an independent military capability.

  The effect of the first stage of Japan’s postwar evolution was to take its strategic orientation out of Cold War contests, freeing it to focus on a transformative program of economic development. Japan placed itself legally in the camp of the developed democracies but—citing its pacifist orientation and commitment to world community—declined to join the ideological struggles of the age. The result of this subtle strategy was a period of concerted economic growth paralleled only by that following the 1868 Meiji Revolution. Within two decades of its wartime devastation, Japan had rebuilt itself as a major global economic power. The Japanese miracle was soon after invoked as a potential challenge to American economic preeminence, though it began to level off in the last decade of the twentieth century.

  The social cohesion and sense of national commitment that enabled this remarkable transformation has been called forth in response to contemporary challenges. It enabled the Jap
anese people to respond to a devastating 2011 earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear crisis in Japan’s northeast—by World Bank estimates, the costliest natural disaster in world history—with an astonishing display of mutual assistance and national solidarity. Financial and demographic challenges have been the subject of searching internal assessment and, in some aspects, equally bold measures. In each endeavor, Japan has called forth its resources with its traditional confidence that its national essence and culture could be maintained through almost any adjustments.

  Dramatic changes in the balance of power will inevitably be translated by Japan’s establishment into a new adaptation of Japanese foreign policy. The return of strong national leadership under Prime Minister Shinzo Abe gives Tokyo new latitude to act on its assessments. A December 2013 Japanese government white paper concluded that “as Japan’s security environment becomes ever more severe … it has become indispensable for Japan to make more proactive efforts in line with the principle of international cooperation,” including strengthening Japan’s capacity to “deter” and, if needed, “defeat” threats. Surveying a changing Asian landscape, Japan increasingly articulates a desire to become a “normal country” with a military not constitutionally barred from war and an active alliance policy. The issue for Asian regional order will be the definition of “normality.”

  As at other pivotal moments in its history, Japan is moving toward a redefinition of its broader role in international order, sure to have far-reaching consequences in its region and beyond. Searching for a new role, it will assess once again, carefully, unsentimentally, and unobtrusively, the balance of material and psychological forces in light of the rise of China, Korean developments, and their impact on Japan’s security. It will examine the utility and record of the American alliance and its considerable success in serving wide-ranging mutual interests; it will also consider America’s withdrawal from three military conflicts. Japan will conduct this analysis in terms of three broad options: continued emphasis on the American alliance; adaptation to China’s rise; and reliance on an increasingly national foreign policy. Which of them will emerge as dominant, or whether the choice is for a mix of them, depends on Japan’s calculations of the global balance of power—not formal American assurances—and how it perceives underlying trends. Should Japan perceive a new configuration of power unfolding in its region or the world, it will base its security on its judgment of reality, not on traditional alignments. The outcome therefore depends on how credible the Japanese establishment judges American policy in Asia to be and how they assess the overall balance of forces. The long-term direction of U.S. foreign policy is as much at issue as Japan’s analysis.