75 Years after Pearl Harbor, Japan Is a Key Defender of Global Stability

Michael Auslin

Security, Asia

How Japan became a key force for order, not disorder.

Seventy-five years ago today, Japan launched surprise attacks against the Western powers in Asia, igniting the full Pacific War that witnessed horrific war crimes by the Imperial Japanese Army and climaxed in the atomic furies over Hiroshima and Nagasaki four years later. Though best known in America for the early Sunday morning, December 7, attack on Pearl Harbor, the main object of Japanese military operations was to overwhelm European and American garrisons in Southeast Asia and break the embargo on oil and other raw materials that threatened to strangle its national power. Hong Kong, Malaya, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand all were besieged from air and sea that day, and the rest of Southeast Asia was assaulted by January in a bold bid to destroy the balance of power in Asia and create a new, Japanese-dominated regional order.

This week it was announced that Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe will visit Pearl Harbor with President Barack Obama in late December, finally closing the page on that day of infamy. Further, in late November, Japan’s defense minister, Tomomi Inada, inaugurated the first Japan-Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) defense initiative, the “Vientiane Vision,” at the second informal meeting of defense ministers from Japan and ASEAN nations. In aiming explicitly to cooperate on maritime security and promote the rule of international law in Asia, Japanese Prime Minister Abe is positioning Japan as a bulwark of the post–World War II international system, just the opposite of the role his country played in 1941.