Time for the sun to rise: how a newly confident and engaged Japan would help the United States, and the world.

PACIFISM has never been so silly. In an East Asia featuring both one of the world's most irrational states and a rising dictatorial power bent on changing the region's strategic balance, it is a crucial ally of the United States that labors under a constitution that could have been written by Quakers. Of course, it was an American team put together by Douglas MacArthur after World War II that wrote the Japanese constitution imposing pacifism as state policy. That was understandable 50 years ago. Now, the constraints of the Japanese constitution--and the Japanese attitudes that preserved them all these years--are senseless anachronisms.

Japan has slowly been emerging from its shell over the last decade, and it is one of the diplomatic triumphs of the Bush administration that it has helped accelerate this process, strengthening the U.S.-Japanese bond and enhancing its usefulness. The Japanese will proceed at their own pace, but our response to every step they take toward becoming a more "normal" country should be nothing but encouragement: "More, please." The goal, although it will never be fully achievable given historic, cultural, and other differences, should be to make Japan as reliable a partner of the U.S. in Asia as Britain is in Europe.

"There is no fear of Japan. The old cork-in-the-bottle theory is dead," says an administration official, referring to the former fear in the U.S. government that any Japanese step toward rearmament would mean an inevitable slide toward aggressive militarism. "The old saw is that Japan is just an aircraft carrier, a jumping-off point for American forces. Well, we want to make it a jumping-off point for both U.S. and Japanese forces."

The alliance is a natural. Japan broadly shares our values. The U.S. is the world's number-one economy and Japan is number two, a powerful combination. We want to check China, and Japan feels threatened by China. Japan provides the basing the U.S. needs at a time when we have lost our bases in the Philippines and our relationship with South Korea looks shaky. We want to stay in East Asia, and the Japanese want to keep us there, in a dangerous neighborhood. Japan is surrounded by three nuclear countries that would make anyone nervous: North Korea, China, and Russia.

After the Cold War, the alliance seemed headed for a breakdown. Japan provided only financial support for the first Gulf War and refused to give the U.S. intelligence and logistical aid during the 1993-1994 showdown with North Korea. The Clintonites, meanwhile, were obsessed with banging on the Japanese on trade issues, to the exclusion of national-security considerations. They talked up a "strategic partnership" with China.

But nothing concentrates the mind like a few missile launches. In 1996, China tested ballistic missiles off Taiwan, with a few landing near Japanese shipping lanes. This led to a joint U.S.-Japanese statement pledging Japanese logistical support to the U.S. during "regional contingencies" and stipulating that the U.S.-Japanese alliance includes "situations in the areas surrounding Japan." The Chinese screamed--accurately--that "situations" was meant to cover a potential conflict over Taiwan. Two years later, the North Koreans launched a missile over northern Japan, spurring Japanese interest in cooperation with the United States on a missile-defense system.

Politically, Japan has become more conservative. Its Left has effectively collapsed. The Socialist party was never serious about governing, but existed as an obstructionist force in parliament (sound familiar?). After electoral reform in the early 1990s, it all but evaporated. Japanese politics has become more populist, and Japanese society more open and less risk-averse. A new generation of politicians both in the ruling Liberal Democratic party and in the opposition Democratic party is not so wedded to the old pieties. "Japan is tired of constantly apologizing, and it wants a place in the sun more than in a pure economic sense," says former State Department official Jim Kelly.

North Korea is enough to shake anyone's pacifism. Besides its nuclear adventurism, it abducted Japanese citizens in the 1970s and 1980s, outraging ordinary Japanese. The Japanese realize that the North Koreans just might be telling the truth when they say they would never attack other Koreans; similar assurances are never made about Japan. Meanwhile, the Chinese have stupidly provoked Japan at every turn. China scholar Arthur Waldron calls Beijing's alienation of Japan one of its great post-war blunders. "Japan was a pacifist country, with a sentimental view of China," says Waldron. "It was ideal for the Chinese."

Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi took office in April 2001 determined to strengthen the U.S. alliance. The Bush administration shared the same goal, acting on an influential October 2000 National Defense University report--led by soon-to-be deputy secretary of state Richard Armitage--calling for an alliance modeled on our relationship with the British. Bush and Koizumi--a maverick reformer attracted to the American model of political leadership-have a warm relationship. "When Koizumi looks Bush in the eye and says he's going to find a way to do something, he always has," Kelly says.

And it's not just Koizumi. Japan's leadership has reached a kind of consensus that it should begin to shake off its more restrictive post-war constraints. The last few defense ministers have said things that would have gotten their post-war predecessors fired, including opining that Japan can preempt a North Korean attack. U.S officials think Japan's foreign ministry features the country's best team on national security ever.

A STUMBLING BLOCK OF A CONSTITUTION

Article 9 of the Japanese constitution is the main obstacle to a fuller U.S.-Japanese alliance. The constitution--and the interpretations and policies arising from it-bans a standing army, collective self-defense, and arms exports. Japan has a military, but it's called a Self-Defense Force, and it's supposed to be limited to territorial defense. Japan has one of the largest military budgets in the world, but much of the budget goes to personnel costs. It was long the contention of the Socialist party that the SDF was unconstitutional root and branch. Japan constantly has talmudic debates about what defense capabilities are permitted. For a long time, it denied itself refueling capacity for its F-4 fighters, since that was considered too "offensive" in nature. The prohibition on collective self-defense means that Japan cannot come to the aid of an ally--i.e., the United States--when attacked. The interpretation of this prohibition over the years has been a stumbling block to even routine U.S.-Japanese cooperation.

But the restrictions have been loosening. Japan has sent the SDF to participate in peacekeeping missions in places like Cambodia and East Timor. Koizumi in particular has helped make the constitution very much what Justice Stephen Breyer calls "a living document." He has gone through extraordinary contortions to make activities that once would have been thought forbidden pass constitutional muster. Now, the long, difficult process of officially changing the constitution is underway.

Koizumi has scored several key victories in the wake of 9/11. Legislation was passed allowing the prime minister to act in the event of a crisis without approval from the legislature and authorizing the Self-Defense Force to stray beyond East Asia. Koizumi sent ships to the Indian Ocean and Arabian Sea, where the Japanese supported the coalition efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq. "They were really battle groups," an administration official says of the Japanese forces, although, of course, they weren't used for that purpose. The Japanese patrolled, refueled coalition ships, and provided intelligence, since AEGIS destroyers--the Japanese have four of them--sop up a lot of information. "Their navy is superb," says the administration official.

Then Koizumi sent 600 ground troops to relatively peaceful southern Iraq to help with the post-invasion rebuilding. Those troops are not allowed to protect themselves. They're behind security cordons, with almost no chance of being fired on. At first, the troops' security was being provided by the Dutch. (One wonders: Who was protecting the Dutch?) Now it is provided by the Australians.

As Dan Blumenthal of the American Enterprise Institute points out, these actions had a twofold purpose. In Afghanistan, Japan showed it was ready to be a key international player and, eventually, a member of the U.N. Security Council. In Iraq, it showed it was willing to stand with the U.S. even when much of the rest of the world balked. A Japanese nationalist wrote in 1989 a popular book called The Japan That Can Say No. Koizumi has been forging a Japan that can say yes-yes to international responsibilities and yes to the United States.

The geopolitical math is simple. Since we have a rough congruence of interests, whenever Japan steps up, we have to do a little less, whether in the Indian Ocean or Iraq. The trajectory seems clear. A few years from now, Japan's constitution will likely be amended and its ability to contribute to the alliance and its own defense boosted further. "Soon they will be deploying to places like Afghanistan," says an administration official. "I don't think that's far down the road." And one day the Japanese will allow themselves the possibility of, say, dropping precision bombs on North Korean targets. "The ability to drop some bombs is very useful," the official says. "And it sends a signal to the Chinese."

THE RED DRAGON

China's ambitions are what make a more rational, up-to-date Japanese defense posture so imperative. China is pursuing what it calls "comprehensive national power"--economic growth, military power, and diplomatic influence. China's true national interest would be in not pointlessly antagonizing Japan. But the current nature of the Chinese political system means it can do no other. The Chinese government is dependent on nationalism to give it legitimacy, so must beat up on the Japanese, who are wildly unpopular given their past atrocities. Like other dictatorships, Beijing needs to point to an external threat to justify its repression.

"I think a lot of the buildup is against Japan. They aren't going to attack Japan, but they are big on intimidation," says the administration official. A few weeks ago, a mob was throwing rocks at the Japanese embassy in Beijing. "I don't know if you've ever been in the diplomatic district," says the official, "but there's not a lot of rubble lying around." Chinese destroyers and nuclear subs are a threat to Japanese sea lanes. China has been drilling for oil near Japan's so-called exclusive economic zone, and making incursions into Japanese waters. "Japan hasn't had to deal with something like this since the Soviets," the official says. Notably, Chinese intermediate-range missiles have a range that means they would overshoot Taiwan. Whom could they be intended for?

So, Japan is a convert on missile defense. "The Japanese are doing more than anyone else, arguably even more than the Israelis," says an industry insider. "Their senior guys say privately they are worried principally about China." The Japanese are pouring $1 billion a year into it, nine times what they spent from 1999 to 2003. They are buying American hardware, the PAC-3 (a defense against short-range missiles) and the SM-3 (a sea-based interceptor against longer-range missiles). Jointly with the U.S., they are developing an upgrade of the SM-3 to make it more capable, paying for half of the development costs.

Technically, Japanese policy is not to knock down a missile headed anywhere besides Japan, and they've had arguments about whether intercepting a missile before its target is known would violate the prohibition against collective self-defense. But such mincing distinctions will tend to break down as the logic of the missile-defense project prompts more technological, operational, and intelligence cooperation between Japan and the U.S. Already Koizumi has loosened the prohibition on arms exports to ease missile-defense research and development work with the U.S.

Importantly, the system will likely provide coverage to Taiwan, thus tending to draw Japan into that island's defense. As Dan Blumenthal points out, this represents unfortunate blowback for China from its missile buildup. It had hoped to intimidate Taiwan, but also to make Japan doubt the wisdom of having U.S. bases on its territory that China could strike. But now Japan is developing a capability that not only protects itself but undermines the effectiveness of China's missile buildup aimed at Taiwan.

Japan enraged the Chinese earlier this year when it joined the U.S. in issuing a statement that included in a list of "common strategic objectives" the goal of a "peaceful resolution of issues concerning the Taiwan strait." "The Japanese were determined to have it," Jim Kelly says of the statement. Indeed, the initial Japanese draft was tougher than what was eventually made public. Japan has historic ties to Taiwan, which it occupied for 50 years beginning in 1895. Taiwan is perhaps the only place in Asia that has relatively fond memories of Imperial Japanese occupation. Japan also has an obvious interest in not having a war over Taiwan break out on its doorstep.

To the extent that China has to worry about, not just a U.S. defense, but a Japanese defense of Taiwan, it complicates China's planning and makes a military move marginally less likely. This is the purpose of a strong Japan more broadly. It creates a balance of power in East Asia--of the sort that once existed in Europe--that makes any Chinese hegemonic ambitions more difficult to achieve. The Japanese are, if nothing else, providing a useful lesson in how to resist Chinese bullying, whether over missile defense or Taiwan.

THE FUTURE

It's too early to say that there is a cold war on in Asia. China is Japan's largest trading partner, so there should be a mutual interest in a stable environment for economic growth. But only firmness on the part of the U.S., and its allies, will work to restrain China's worst instincts.

Of course, any more assertive Japanese moves will revive the bogeyman of Japanese militarism. Other Asian countries have nightmarish memories of the Japanese military. Koizumi's annual visits to the Yasukuni Shrine, which memorializes Japan's war dead, including war criminals, outrage people in the region. But China's loud complaints about the visits are rich, considering That--its current repression aside--it maintains a public shrine to Mao, one of history's champion mass-murderers.

As long as the United States is the senior partner in the alliance, it should reassure the region about Japan's intentions. It also will make unnecessary Japan's acquisition of more genuinely offensive weapons--strategic bombers, ballistic missiles, etc.--and a nuclear capability. Should it come to that--if the North Korean crisis worsens, say--it would hardly be disastrous. Starting from scratch, no one would say Pakistan or North Korea--or China or Russia, for that matter--should have nukes and Japan not.

But that's a debate for another day. Now, Japan should be increasing its security role in the region, unashamedly. It is a new government, with new norms, in a new time. The traditional restraints on it only serve to hobble what should be one the world's key players on the side of decency and civilization. The old rallying cry of American conservatives was--referring to Chinese nationalist leader Chiang Kai-shek, who never gave up the dream of reconquering the mainland-"Unleash Chiang." Given the state of play, they now should be saying, "Unleash Japan," to be the kind of ally we need in Asia.