Search

The United States and Japan have maintained their strategic alignment for nearly an half century. This is the longest alliance ever for Japan and the second longest one for the United States besides NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization). However, theoretical understanding of this bilateral relashionship is relatively poor. In particular, existense of the alliance after the Cold War generated further explanative disturbance. This paper attempts to grapes U.S.-Japan alliance as an "security community," modeled by Karl Deutsch in the 1950s, that is more convincing theoretical framework than neorealism, neoliberalism and constructivism. Although his model was created upon "transatlantic" relationship between the United States and Western Europe, the author considers the model is largely applicable to "transpacific" alignment. This paper argues a mechanism of peaceful change on multilateralism, military planning, and common definition of threats by examining institutions, norms and identity between the two countries in the 1990s. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Karl Deutsch and those who have taken up his work on security communities universally acknowledge the relevance of increased transnational interactions as a necessary condition for integration. Yet despite an international system increasingly characterized by globalization, in most cases of increased interaction among states dependable expectations of peaceful change, the defining characteristic of a security community, have not followed. Why has increased transnational interaction led to the emergence of security communities in certain cases but not others? This paper attempts to answer this question by positing a multi-level theory of integration, which asserts that integration is contingent on the mutual identification of self-signifying practices common to intersubjectively differentiated groups, which in turn allows for enhancements in social communication and the development of a higher-order level of collective identity. By focusing on concomitant processes of integration at the regional, state and subnational levels, this theory pushes forward the discourse on security communities by explaining the emergence of new social tensions resulting from changes in the meanings of practices associated with integration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Five decades ago, Karl Deutsch devised what he called "Parkinson's Law for international affairs": A state's insecurity expands along with its power. This certainly seems to apply to the United States, which is simultaneously the strongest country in the history of the world and the most insecure of today's great powers. The threats it has recently identified in the international system, from Iraq to Hugo Chavez to terrorism, are minor compared to what most states have had to confront throughout history. As states grow in power they usually also become more materially secure; why, then, do they often seem to worry more, often about trivial matters? This paper explores the political psychology of unipolarity in general, and the connection between power and insecurity in particular. Pathologies arise when irrational forces drive policymaking; presumably good policy is the result of rational cost-benefit analyses. If it is true that great power leads to perceptions of insecurity - or merely elevates the trivial to appear existential - then some of the most fundamental assumptions of U.S. grand strategy might need to be rethought. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]