The hard truth for American foreign policy is that “London and Tokyo may be increasingly unable to play the kind of international role that we desire,” former deputy secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz observed at a panel discussion at the American Enterprise Institute last week.
America’s relationships with other countries “are most successful when based on strong relationships with our traditional allies,” Wolfowitz said. Since the end of World War II, the staunchest of those allies have been Great Britain and Japan. They have been invaluable to U.S. priorities around the world, from the war on terrorism to China, North Korea, and nuclear nonproliferation. But “today both of those critical allies are sinking deeper into recession, suffering rising public distress to their political systems, and facing limits to the resources they can devote” to global commitments.
During the panel discussion, Ted R. Bromund, the Margaret Thatcher Senior Research Fellow at the Heritage Foundation, predicted that the United Kingdom “may not in the future be a reliable ally for the United States.” Bromund attributed the growing uncertainty to a very long social and political transition underway in Britain. “The Victorian model…is breaking down,” he said. That is affecting every aspect of British culture and politics and undermining the basic shared values that first made an alliance between Britain and the United States attractive and possible. Britain’s ongoing “civilizational shift” has made her less willing and less able to project power in the world or to “stand up for the [classical] liberal values on which the Victorian model was based.”
Michael Auslin, resident scholar and director of Japan studies at AEI, said that although current ties between the United States and Japan are strong, the political and economic alliance is historically one of convenience. The relationship is far less natural than the traditional affinity of liberal values between the United States and Great Britain. At the same time, Auslin said, when it comes to democracy, both in Asia and around the world, the Japanese people “see themselves as holding very dearly and very strongly a set of shared beliefs with the United States.”
The strength of those beliefs will be tested in 2009 during what Auslin referred to as likely a “transformative year” both economically and politically in Japan. According to Auslin, Japan’s economy still has not recovered from the post–Cold War recession that led to its “lost decade” in the 1990s, and conditions have been further exacerbated by the global financial crisis over the last few months as Japanese exports plummeted 50 percent. Meanwhile, for the first time since the formation of Japan’s constitutional government, rising popular disillusionment with corruption and incompetence in the ruling Liberal Democratic Party is likely to drive its members from power in the next elections. If the opposition Democratic Party of Japan cannot restore public confidence, Auslin said, then despite the Japanese desire for democracy in Asia, there is likely to be a period of “turning inward to try and solve domestic problems…focusing away from global demands and responsibilities.”
Tom Donnelly, a resident fellow in defense and security policy studies at AEI, said that while America and her allies have in the past been willing to create and defend a world where free political and economic systems can flourish, popular “attitudes about the use of military power as a tool of statecraft…are atrophying in Great Britain and Japan.” But there is reason to hope that a burgeoning U.S.-India alliance, coupled with the existing roles of England and Japan, could create a “Gang of Four” mentality in world affairs that may serve to buttress faltering political or military resolve, he said.
In the short term, much will depend on the attitude taken by President Obama toward those countries America has long regarded as friends. In an effort to distance himself from his predecessor, President Obama may alienate some traditional allies, but, as Donnelly pointed out, “culture changes slowly…and America’s power interests still remain quite strong.” In the long run, he said, there may be a “real question about the alliances with Great Britain and Japan,” but there is “no reason this administration should not be as dedicated as past administrations to the exercise of American power” and to careful nurturing of the strategic partnerships necessary to achieve that end.
Josh Eboch is an editorial intern at the American Enterprise Institute.
Image by Darren Wamboldt/The Bergman Group.
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