The Tokyo summit between Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi and U.S. President George W. Bush demonstrated that Japan's economic revival has strategic importance for security in East Asia. The Japan-U.S. alliance is no longer based merely on military cooperation; it now hinges on Japan's economic clout in the Asia-Pacific region and the world. The new union inseparably links the Japanese economy to security.
Bush, who has launched a campaign against the "axis of evil," said while in Tokyo that he believed the Japan-U.S. alliance is the "bedrock for peace and prosperity in the Pacific." Bush repeated words of support to Koizumi, who says the greatest challenge for his administration is to restore confidence in the Japanese economy. This reflects growing awareness in the Bush administration that unless the Japanese economy recovers quickly, U.S. strategies in the Asia-Pacific region, based on the bilateral alliance, will falter.
Never in the half-century history of the Japan-U.S. alliance has the Japanese economy assumed so much importance. Even when the Japan-U.S. relations deteriorated over trade frictions, security was never directly imperiled.