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Japan, Europe and The Dangerous Fantasy of American Leadership

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 May 2025

Karel van Wolferen
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The peculiar and unique U.S.-Japan relationship has entered a new phase, in which its future is shrouded in mist. While few Americans can be bothered ever to think about it, in the back of many Japanese minds it is something as generally accepted as a fact of nature, but at the same time a permanent complication that is recently showing sharp and irritating edges. Quite a few have begun to think that they should shake themselves out of the habit of taking it so much for granted.

Type
Research Article
Information
Asia-Pacific Journal , Volume 9 , Issue 14 , March 2011 , e1
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BYCreative Common License - NCCreative Common License - ND
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is unaltered and is properly cited. The written permission of Cambridge University Press must be obtained for commercial re-use or in order to create a derivative work.
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 2011

References

Notes

1 His book The Character Assassination of Ozawa Ichiro is appearing in Japanese in 2011.

2 This program was never aired, as I withdrew permission and stopped the recording when I realized that the tape would be edited. This could easily, I thought, result in a distorted picture of what I wanted to say.

3 A very instructive and very readable book on this subject is James Carroll, House of War.

4 A former American colonel, who has become one of America's finest political philosophers, Andrew Bacevich, has written several books identifying the fundamental characteristics and symptoms of American militarism, most recently, Washington Rules: America's Path to Permanent War.

5 See Dana Priest: The Mission: Waging War and Keeping Peace with America's Military for an early account of this switch.

6 Gavan McCormack, Client State - Japan in the American Embrace. p. 62.