Alliance Adrift

The U.S.-Japan alliance is now confronting its most critical test since its inception in 1951. It is facing a new evolutionary stage in a radically changed context, with the rise of China, Asia's economic crisis, and Japan's economic decline and political immobility.Alliance Adrift offers a dynamic and informative overview of this process of "redefining" the U.S.-Japan alliance. It presents four specific case studies: the impact of macroeconomic and trade frictions on the alliance; the effect on the functions of the alliance of the suspicions about North Korea's nuclear program; the vehement protests against the alliance triggered by the rape of an Okinawan schoolgirl by U.S. servicemen in 1995; and the challenges to the alliance posed by the straining of Sino-American relations over Taiwan and the Chinese missile tests in 1996, which prompted the U.S. decision to dispatch an aircraft carrier to the region. These events were all part of the "redefining" process, a process which continues to this day and is likely to continue in the future as well.