THE DECLINE OF CHINA
China has become much less important in world affairs than seemed likely thirty-five years ago. Although it was not then apparent, the golden days of China’s growth were over by 2015. Its labor force had started shrinking in 2012–2013, while the overall population began aging rapidly in 2015 and quickly became among the oldest in the world. The question had always been whether China would get rich before it became old; the answer, as it turned out, was that it would not. When that became apparent, the flaws in the Chinese system began to show. It was clear that the already wide gap between rich and poor was going to continue widening. The bill for past pollution, environmental degradation, and corruption began to come due. None of this had affected the Chinese high-growth GDP figures in the past, but now the results were clear: corrupt practices were choking growth, and pollution and environmental problems were resulting in ill health and premature deaths. Corruption in particular became a huge issue. Officials and Communist Party operatives who had become enormously rich while officially being paid normal salaries became the targets of investigation, public protest, and harassment. Such people hurried to get themselves and their money out of China and to obscure the funds they had already stashed away abroad. More important than this was the fact that China was increasingly unable to afford medical and elder care while also paying for the large military force it had been building and maintaining. Thus, like the United States before it, China began to downsize its security forces, a step that also induced it to be more cooperative with Japan and other leading countries.
Most important, however, was China’s growing internal political tension and a loosening of national unity. Large areas like Guangdong Province were demanding more autonomy, and major political, business, academic, and media figures were calling for more participative politics with much more transparency and openness. China had become absorbed with its own internal difficulties while Japan’s Revitalization Commission was leading its country toward restoration.
Now, in the middle of the twenty-first century, India has become far more important than China. As the Centre for Economics and Business Research forecast long ago, India has recently passed China to become the world’s largest economy. Having become the world’s most populous nation in 2025, it now has the youngest working population of the major countries. It also has a large, well-trained, and experienced military with its own nuclear weapons and delivery systems, as well as large modern naval, air, cyber, and drone forces. These forces were successful in compelling China to abandon its claims to Indian territory by 2025 with the Treaty of the Himalayas. It was the 2022 inclusion of India in what had been the US-Japan Mutual Security Treaty, and the extension of that alliance to include Australia, Indonesia, and the Philippines that turned the old bilateral US-Japan pact into what has come to be called the Grand Alliance. This treaty also includes many cooperative basing, training, and visiting arrangements with countries such as Singapore and Vietnam. The Grand Alliance has become more significant to world security than NATO, and—in combination with the inward turning of China—now assures peace and stability in the entire region spanning Asia-Pacific countries, the Indian Ocean, and the Persian Gulf. Importantly, it was not the United States but Japan that took the initiative to achieve this multilateral security system, and it is Japan, Australia, the Philippines, and India who take the primary first reaction responsibility for assuring security in their respective regions. Of course, US forces are always available if absolutely necessary, but they are the call of last rather than first resort.
Effectively, the mutual security system that grew out of the US occupation of Japan and the Cold War has been turned upside down. The Pax Americana has become the Pax Indo-Pacifica.
THE FADING OF THE PAX AMERICANA
The end of the Pax Americana in the Pacific had actually been foreshadowed as early as July, 1969, when then-president Richard Nixon announced the Nixon Doctrine. This stated that the United States would provide a nuclear shield to allies under the threat of nuclear attack, and that the United States would provide appropriate security assistance to allies threatened by non-nuclear aggression. But it emphasized that the United States would expect the nation under threat to assume the primary responsibility for its own defense. Coming at the height of the Vietnam War, this was an early signal that the countries of Asia could not count on America to fight their battles if they were not prepared to fight for themselves.
Subsequently, the end of the Cold War removed much of the justification for the extensive network of US security alliances and military deployments. A “peace dividend” was widely expected, and most of the US forces in Europe were repatriated as Washington slashed defense expenditures.
The US Defense Strategy Reports of 1990 and 1992 also called for removal of most US forces from the Asia-Pacific region by the end of the decade. At the same time, leaders in Japan began to speak of the lessening need for the security alliance with the United States, and of greater reliance on the UN and on economic cooperation. It began to look as if Japan would reassume responsibility for its own foreign policy and bear a much greater burden for its own defense.
But that all changed in 1995 with the publication of the US Defense Department’s new Security Strategy for the East Asia-Pacific Region. This document reversed previous statements by saying that although the Cold War was over, diverse conflicts posed threats to US interests and made it necessary for America to maintain its then-current troop levels (about 100,000) in the region for the foreseeable future. This was followed in April of 1996 by the US-Japan Joint Declaration reaffirming the “Alliance for the 21st Century,” which essentially confirmed the unilateral US commitments of the US-Japan Mutual Security Treaty while providing the basis for a potential broadening of Japan’s support of US military-related actions. Thus, as far as the United States and Japan were concerned, the end of the Cold War changed nothing.
Behind this great reversal were three unexpected developments: the Gulf War of 1990–1991, North Korea’s nuclear weapon and missile development, and the rapid rise of China’s military spending. All of these created uncertainty that caused both Tokyo and Washington to postpone significant changes in the security arrangements. But this status-quo course posed several problems for America. The US was losing the overwhelming economic competitiveness that had supported its political and military superiority during the Cold War. China was becoming a formidable regional rival. With a rapidly growing economy and an authoritarian government that had no need of policy approval from the citizenry, it could easily bear the burden of an arms race. With a relatively declining economy, Washington would find engaging in such a race increasingly difficult. (By 2012 it had already become impossible for Washington to even contemplate sending its aircraft-carrier battle groups into the Taiwan Strait, as it had done in 1996 in response to Chinese threats of attack on Taiwan.) In addition, by carrying the major burden of defense for Japan and its other Asian allies, the United States was enabling Japan to postpone the long-term necessity of providing more of its own security. The arrangement allowed Tokyo to avoid serious consideration of its own circumstances. For instance, it could neglect settling disputes with South Korea and China over minor islands, antagonize neighbors with denials of certain facts of World War II, and postpone serious discussion of mutual defense arrangements with South Korea and other potential Asian allies. Finally, the understanding assumed a perfect and continuing congruence between the interests of America and those of its Asian allies. In doing so, it potentially made the United States hostage to policies and actions of its allies that might not always be in its own best interests.
WAKE-UP TIME
The advent of the administration of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in December of 2012 marked the beginning of the end of the Pax Americana. Abe himself recognized that the United States could not indefinitely maintain its hegemonic role, and that the arrangement had become a potential long-term trap: as US power declined, Japan would increasingly be unable to defend itself unless it took steps now to assure its future. Early in his term, Abe spoke of “breaking away from the postwar order.”
Abe visited India in May of 2013, pledging greater defense cooperation between Japan and India and agreeing to conduct joint military exercises on a frequent basis. In July of that year, he visited the Philippines and offered ten