The Outlier Alliance: US-Japan Security Ties in Comparative Perspective

Abstract Abstract This paper examines the US-Japan bilateral security alliance in comparative perspective in an effort to identify distinctive structural features and evolutionary trends. The policy objective is to understand the prospective cohesion of the alliance relationship between these two political/economic powers, which between them generate over 46 percent of global GDP and account for nearly 50 percent of the world's military expenditure. A comparison is made with the contemporary US-Japan alliance and other security alliances in the Pacific and the rest of the industrialized world. Comparisons are made within three basic dimensions: (A) Patterns of security cooperation; (B) Political-economic linkages within bilateral alliance-related relationships; and (C) Asymmetries in security and economic spheres. The final section of the paper asks: "Why?"—after identifying the underlying causal dynamics that have forged the current US-Japan alliance, it enquires what these imply for that partnership's future operation. It concludes that future consolidation is likely, with broad geo-political consequences that urgently need further exploration.