This book investigates the phenomenon of overbalancing through an analysis of Japan’s foreign policy during the interbellum. In the mid-1930s, Japan withdrew from a naval arms control framework that had restrained military buildup on both sides of the Pacific Ocean since the early 1920s. By doing so, Japan not only triggered a naval arms race with the United States that exhausted its economy, it also destroyed the last institutionalized structure regulating the relationship between the two Pacific powers. Japan and the United States became caught in a spiral of tensions that culminated with the attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941. Puzzling is the fact that the international environment in the Asia-Pacific was relatively stable in the mid-1930s, while Washington was pursuing a policy of accommodation toward Tokyo. By rejecting arms control and engaging in unfettered naval expansion, Japan overbalanced against the United States and began its rush to the Pacific War.
The book explains Japan’s overbalancing with a neoclassical realist model that combines the literatures on threat perception and civil-military relations. Amid the Manchurian crisis of 1931-1933, as the Japanese government collaborated with the military institution to address the situation in China, military influence on the formulation of foreign policy surged. The perceptual and policy biases of the military, which include the tendency to distrust other countries’ intentions, to adopt worst-case analyses of international dynamics and to strive to maximize military power, gradually penetrated the decision-making process. Dysfunctions in the preexisting structure of Japanese civil-military relations, engendered by an over-depoliticization of the military institution, allowed the navy to convince policymakers that the United States was inherently hostile to Japan, hence the necessity to prepare for war. The government was brainstormed, adopting the biased military perspective on international affairs. Japan overbalanced in a myopic but conscious way.
Author(s): Lionel P. Fatton
Series: Palgrave Studies in International Relations
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Year: 2023
Language: English
Pages: 323
City: Cham
Foreword
Preface
Contents
About the Author
List of Figures
Convention
Quotations
1 Overbalancing as a Systemic Pathology
The Phenomenon of Overbalancing
Why Did Japan Rush to the Pacific War?
The Argument
Overview
2 Explaining Japan’s Rush to the Pacific War
Neorealism, Neoclassical Realism and Overbalancing
Neorealism and Overbalancing
Neoclassical Realism as a Complement to Neorealism
Neoclassical Realism, Domestic Factors and Identity Crisis
Putting Neoclassical Realism Back on Track
Mechanism of Contextual Adaption, Threat Perception and Overbalancing
The Foreign Policy Executive and Its Advisors
The Mechanism of Contextual Adaption
Exogenous Shocks and Threat Perception
The Political Construction of Threat Perception
The Biases of the Military Institution
The Structure of Civil–Military Relations
Scope Condition and Paradigmatic Boundaries
3 Appropriate Balancing in the Naval Arms Control Era, 1920–1931
Improving Threat Perception: Making Peace with the International Community
Tense Japan–United States Relations in the Early Twentieth Century
Competing Naval Expansions Before the Washington Conference
Japan and the League of Nations
The League of Nations and Arms Control
Prelude to the Washington Conference
The Washington Conference
Japanese Reactions to the Washington Conference
Appropriate Balancing and International Cooperation During the 1920s and Early 1930s
Japanese Restraint Toward China
From Washington to the Geneva Conference
The Geneva Conference and Its Aftermath
Prelude to the London Conference
The London Conference
Japanese Reactions to the London Conference
4 The Manchurian Crisis as an Exogenous Shock, 1931–1933
Exogenous Shock: The Manchurian Crisis
The Mukden Incident and Its Aftermath
From Manchuria to Shanghai, and Back Again
The Settlement of the Manchurian Crisis
American Restraint During the Manchurian Crisis
American Naval Expansion in the First Half of the 1930s
The Construction of Threat Perception Through Securitization
Secondary Audience: Socio-economic Background
Secondary Audience: Ideological Background
The Army’s Securitizing Efforts
The Navy’s Securitizing Efforts
Primary Audience: Finance and Foreign Ministries
Primary Audience: Military Pressure on the Government
5 Overbalancing and Japan’s Rush to the Pacific War, 1933–1941
Inflated Threat Perception and the End of Naval Arms Control
The Navy’s Internal Unity Against Arms Control
Struggle Over Threat Perception: Drafting Foreign Policy of Imperial Japan
Inflated Threat Perception and the Abrogation of the Five-Power Treaty
Preparatory Talks for the Second London Conference
The Failure of the Second London Conference
Overbalancing Through Naval Expansion
Japan’s Shift Toward Unilateralism in Foreign Policy
Japan’s Overbalancing and the Road to Pearl Harbor
Back to the Beginning: The Structure of Japan’s Civil–Military Relations
6 Beyond Japan and the Pacific War
Lessons on Overbalancing, Foreign Policy and International Politics
On the Neoclassical Realist Agenda
Chronology
Bibliography
Index
