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member.
As long as no casualties in the SDF in Samawah are reported and stalemate with North
Korea does not get worse, Prime Minister Koizumi could depart from culturally bounded
Japanese foreign policy. However, he will face the real test once these conditions change.
Even thought time seems to be in his side, Koizumi needs to act against clock to get the
revision of Article 9 done and to increase Japan’s chance of becoming a permanent member
of the Security Council.
Once these Koizumi’s objectives are accomplished, Washington and Tokyo seriously begin
to discuss the nature and system of the U.S.-Japan alliance. In retrospect, there was time
when Washington and Tokyo’s alliance could be characterized as alliance game (conflictive).
Now the alliance has been enjoying alliance game (cooperative). However, because of the
origin of the U.S.-Japan alliance, the alliance is still asymmetrical and does not satisfy the
Vandenberg’s resolutions. To make the U.S.-Japan alliance a real alliance, Washington and
Tokyo needs to consider if both sides’ absolute and relative gains will increase once Japan
become a “normal” country. It is not clear that Prime Minister Koizumi envisions that far,
but it seems certain that Koizumi’s security polices will represent a potential watershed for
post war Japan.
Convention