Japan’s Declining Soft Power and the US-China-Japan Relations

Resumo

The paper analyses Japan’s position in the East Asia security context, taking into account the underlying changes in power balance in East Asia and an increasing asymmetry between a powerful and muscled China and a more vulnerable Japan, struggling with a stagnant economy, a rapidly ageing population and an ambiguous image in East Asia. The Senkaku/Diaoyu islands territorial dispute is a manifestation of the ongoing reorganization of power in the regional order insofar it accentuates Japan’s vulnerability and was used by China as an opportunity to undermine the USJapan alliance and at the same time to oppose the new US soft power move associated with the TPP. This seems to have triggered a fundamental change in Japan’s security strategy in the direction of militarization and rebuilding its hard power, in order to compensate for its declining soft power, now under implementation by the new right-wing nationalist government led by Shinzo Abe.