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Line of Advantage: Japan's Grand Strategy in the Era of Abe Shinzō by Michael J. Green (review)

2023; Cambridge University Press; Volume: 49; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/jjs.2023.a903490

1549-4721

Chinese history and philosophy

Reviewed by: Line of Advantage: Japan's Grand Strategy in the Era of Abe Shinzō by Michael J. Green Tobias Harris (bio) Line of Advantage: Japan's Grand Strategy in the Era of Abe Shinzō. By Michael J. Green. Columbia University Press, 2022. xii, 311 pages. $140.00, cloth; $35.00, paper; $34.99, E-book. On December 16, 2022, Prime Minister Kishida Fumio's government approved the so-called "three national security documents," which together pointed to a dramatic shift in Japan's commitment to national defense. These documents—which included the first new National Security Strategy since 2013, a newly named National Defense Strategy to replace the former [End Page 503] National Defense Program Guidelines, and a new Defense Capability Construction Plan that outlines defense spending for the next decade—pledged a significant expansion of defense spending, committed Japan's government to the acquisition of capabilities that would enable it to strike targets overseas, and carried a stark warning that China had become an "unprecedented … strategic challenge in ensuring the peace and stability of Japan." Global news outlets characterized these changes as a major departure for "pacifist Japan." The U.S. government hailed them as a "bold and historic step," in the words of U.S. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan.1 But, as Michael J. Green, a one-time official on the U.S. National Security Council (NSC) and leading expert on Japanese politics and security politics, suggests in his Line of Advantage: Japan's Grand Strategy in the Era of Abe Shinzō the blueprint for the policies pursued by the Kishida government was arguably authored during the nearly eight-year second premiership of the late Abe Shinzō. Abe's tenure, Green argues, was marked by a profound strategic transformation in Japan as Abe's government responded to China's growing ambitions. Referring to the cold war doctrine by which Japan remained lightly armed, closely aligned with the United States, and focused on its economic power, Green writes, "[Abe's premiership] marked the end of the Yoshida doctrine and the beginning of a new era in Japanese statecraft" (p. 3). But Green's argument is not just that Abe was responding to the unique circumstances of the twenty-first century. Rather, he looks to the history of Japanese geopolitical thought—as well as underlying geographical realities—to suggest that Abe's twenty-first-century grand strategy was less a departure than a return to a "maritime strategy," what he describes as a strategy for "securing the ocean approaches for commerce and self-defense while skillfully engaging in offshore balancing and alignment alongside the other leading maritime powers" (p. 31) that was abandoned first in favor of ruinous continental expansion and then for a Yoshida Doctrine that "eschewed geopolitics and pledged instead to double Japan's national income" (p. 35). In this account, Japan's strategic shift is largely the result of China's actions. "In a hierarchical Asian order," he writes, "it was suddenly clear that Beijing had never been prepared to accept Japanese dominance or even coequal status within the system" (p. 41). While Abe's predecessors had "reluctantly shifted to a renewed focus on balance-of-power logic" (p. 41), it [End Page 504] was Abe and a team of advisors who drew on the long history of maritime strategy in Japanese geopolitical thought to articulate "a grand strategy for the era of Abe Shinzō—not just the tenure of Abe Shinzō" (p. 10).2 How ever, in his argument on the importance of China's behavior as a driver of changes in Japan's national security policies, Green also admits that there remains considerable continuity in Japan's China policies, noting "few Japanese political leaders are prepared to completely abandon Yamagata [Aritomo]'s or Yoshida [Shigeru]'s premise that Japan still has a stake in China's success" (p. 49). Line of Advantage is strongest in its account of the ways in which Abe pursued a coherent maritime strategy centered on: drawing closer to the United States; strengthening ties with Australia, India, and the countries of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN); and "internal balancing," including domestic institutional reforms, defense spending hikes, and...