The 1970s: Take 2
Gilbert Rozman
Asia was a sideshow in IR theory to the 1970s, reflected in urgent appeals to
bring together the separate traditions of area studies and social science analysis. In
three developments, above all, observers felt ill served by their artificial separation.
The Sino-Soviet split, the nature of the Vietnam War, and the modernization of Japan
all posed challenges that many recognized were not adequately addressed. As these
issues aroused appeals for better theories—comparative communism, comparisons
of revolutions and liberation movements, and comparative modernization—a basis
was established for an upsurge in scholarship on Asia and in theorizing about it. All
three of these theoretical pursuits, however, proceeded haltingly in the face of doubt
about how to analyze East Asian differences from the West and their impact on IR.
Discussions of all three issues fell short of academic rigor. Writings on the big
schism in the communist movement were rarely informed by internal debates in the
Soviet Union or China, relying instead on English-language translations, especially of
the Foreign Broadcast Information Service and making simplistic assumptions from
one or the other side of the divide rather than assessing both sides at once. Analysis
of the Vietnam War became highly politicized, leading to entrenched assumptions
on both sides that generally overlooked the big picture. Finally, social scientists did
not, as a rule, take Japan’s modernization seriously, as if arguments about a unique
process linked to cultural background were just the illusions of area specialists. If
one or another of these themes drew serious attention, specialists usually narrowed
the topic with little regard to IR theory and generalists stuck to the theory without
delving deeply into the facts of the situation. Scholars overcame the divide slowly.
The Cold War remained at a high pitch in the 1970s, echoed in theories on IR
and on comparisons of states with powerful IR implications. In addition to Vietnam’s
impact on extending research into newly developing countries and Japan’s influence
on widening coverage of Asian dynamism, China’s sudden shifts in direction aroused
great interest. In comparison to the initial quarter century of the postwar era, Asia
gained far more prominence. This was a breakthrough decade, but that did not lead
to IR theories effective in covering the themes deemed most urgent by area experts.
Three events punctuated the IR narrative of the 1970s against a backdrop of
economic miracles in maritime Asia and economic stagnation in continental Asia.
The defining development in great power relations was the two-stage normalization
of Sino-U.S. relations in contrast to multi-stage deterioration of U.S.-Soviet relations
and abject failure to make progress in overcoming the Sino-Soviet split. Second, the
turning point in the postwar hegemonic U.S. position in maritime Asia was defeat in
the Vietnam War, as it increasingly acknowledged Japan’s growing economic role in
Southeast Asia while elements of Japan’s modernization model spread along with its
flying geese formation to South Korea and elsewhere in the region. Third, East Asia
was shaken by the back-to-back Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia amid a genocidal
implosion and then the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, exposing a chaotic state in
continental Asia while highlighting Sino-U.S. common interests. Over the course of a
decade China’s transformation was most pronounced, raising the stakes for theory
on IR as great and middle powers alike jockeyed for advantage in this environment.
The theoretical preferences of the 1950s-60s came under fresh scrutiny. For
modernization theory, the challenges from Asia ranged from Chinese claims during
the Cultural Revolution to have found an alternative path to economic development
and social transformation to Japanese claims, beginning to be echoed in South Korea
and elsewhere in Asia, to be able to steer modernization away from the litigiousness
of the West toward a harmonious system based on distinctive values. If convergence
was excluded, shared views of IR were also in doubt. For balance of power theory,
the assumption of a polarized world in which states had to choose sides persisted,
but there was greater scrutiny of the notion of monolithic blocs under superpower
control as triangular configurations began to draw attention. Also, for theory aimed
at explaining the impact of culture and national identity, the Vietnam War awakened
new interest, as did assertions across Asia on limiting the impact of Westernization.
The decade of the 1970s saw extensive rethinking in multiple areas of IR theorizing.
In a span of one decade the Asian landscape was turned topsy-turvy. Making
Asia a focus of expansionism, the Soviet Union went from détente and upbeat talks
with Japan to a massive military build-up and support for aggression in Afghanistan
and Cambodia. Switching from the frenzied class struggle of the Cultural Revolution
and isolationism mixed with revolutionary sponsorship, China studied the lessons of
modernization in East Asia and joined with the United States and Japan in resistance
to the Soviet Union. By decade’s end the Cold War in Asia and modernization as a
driving force in improved relations had emerged as essential matters for IR theory.
In the shadow of the Cold War, IR theory entered the 1970s confronting the
dichotomy between class struggle/ revolution and top-down, bureaucratic reform/
modernization as the driving force of social change and of inclination toward world
conflict or global cooperation. This fundamental divide was reinforced by Marxists
insistent on a struggle to the end with no room for compromise. Similarly, realists
under the sway of theory obsessed with democracy as the basis of cooperation saw
two systems in mortal combat. There was a growing school also of hybrid theorists,
who saw revolution turning into modernization and class struggle giving way to the
bureaucratic pursuit of reform amid acceptance first of peaceful coexistence with
convergence over the horizon. This meant discerning the connection between the
domestic transformation of the Soviet Union and its IR policies as well as relations
with the United States. By decade’s end the spotlight had turned to China as well.
History was not in the forefront in IR theory, but it had a place in attempts to
trace the roots of revolution and modernization, including to attitudes toward the
international environment. The Sino-Soviet dispute brought new attention to causes
traceable to the pre-communist era in both states, while the rapid rise of Japan drew
further interest in the sources of its modernization after earlier fascination with the
causes of its militarism. The impact of historical analysis was varied. In most states
the focus on national history followed the urge to impede convergence, emphasizing
what was unique and showing aloofness to drawing close to foreign partners. Yet, to
the extent that historical analysis centered on “preconditions of modernization” or
of revolution, it paved the way to visualizing a parallel transformation portending
well for cooperation. In the 1970s history’s role was often divisive for IR theory in
support of more common ground, but that a foundation was built for a positive role.
The Cold War in East Asia
Tsuyoshi Hasegawa has argued that the Cold War in East Asia was different,
merging decolonization and revolution while propelling China into the forefront for
a time.i In the 1970s, however, an insecure Soviet Union went on the offense in Asia
while a defeated United States retreated in Southeast Asia and a refocused China
saw Asia in a new light. The Cold War in Asia sparked more trouble spots, raised the
stature of more actors, and posed strikingly new challenges for IR theory in the 70s.
In contrast to the beginning of the decade, by the end of the 1970s China is active in
what it called the Second World, especially in Asia, Japan’s foreign policy deviated
more from that of the United States, notably in Asia, and the Soviet Union pressed
for an advantage in Asia as it stirred a wide backlash. As the United States switched
to seeking full normalization with China and an alliance-like relationship opposed to
the Soviet Union and Japan tilted toward China as it turned its back on the Soviets,
the decade ended with the semblance of regional cohesion against a sole adversary
and its marginalized allies—a parallel to Europe. Explanations centered on Soviet
adventurous policies that aroused this coalition of countries joined in resistance.
IR theories had to adapt to the greater complexity of the 1970s, but it was
tempting to simplify the story into a rising power challenging the status quo and
meeting a concerted response. The Soviet Union was the big loser, requiring more
theoretical clarity about why it acted so recklessly.ii Japan may have been perceived
as a winner, but it ended the decade failing to maintain its omnidirectional foreign
policy and finding after agreeing to China’s language opposed to Soviet hegemonism
that ties with China were not as good as expected and tightening its U.S. alliance was
the best means to greater security. Similarly, U.S. hopes for China were soon dashed.
Reticence about drawing close to the United States requires theoretical explanation.
The allure of a strategic triangle, the fear of convergence’s effect on identity and IR,
and the weight of Asianism in Japanese thinking are ideas of theoretical salience.
Discussions of the Cold War in East Asia apart from the Strategic Triangle,
which is covered below, focused on Vietnam through the decade, on Afghanistan at
decade’s end, and, from time to time on North Korea. In the case of Vietnam, China
was seen at first as aligned with the Soviet Union in opposing the United States, and
in 1979 as appealing to the United States to support punitive action to rid Cambodia
of Vietnamese troops supported by the Soviet Union. In contrast to Sino-U.S. joint
opposition to the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan, China and the Soviet Union
each backed North Korea against the United States and its ally, South Korea. While
the Soviet military build-up and assertiveness was intensifying the Cold War, there
was little clarity on the lines of division. Still, through most of the 1970s, the Soviet
Union in isolated intransigence confronted the United States, its allies, and China. In
IR theory the expansionist state provoked a broad coalition against it, although the
cooperation of India and the reasoning behind China’s opposition proved puzzling.
The Strategic Triangle
Over the decade theorists faced a string of developments or lack thereof that
kept the focus on the quality of their analysis. Given the poor state of Sino-Soviet ties
and the sense that the Soviet Union was on the offensive while drawing closer to the
goal of overtaking the United States, would the weakest leg in the strategic triangle
turn to the United States for balancing purposes? Once Sino-U.S. ties had improved
and especially after Mao Zedong’s death, would the Soviet Union woo China in order
rebalance the strategic triangle? Finally, after Soviet policy grew more assertive late
in the decade, would China and the United States solidify their side of the triangle?
In the postwar era this decade was the first chance to look closely at theories of the
strategic triangle. This should have given a big boost to IR theorists, who earlier had
been preoccupied with the Cold War in Europe and now had Asia in their sights.
IR theory in this context faced challenges in predicting bilateral and trilateral
relations, on the one hand, and the domestic factors driving them on the other. In
the face of the 1969 Sino-Soviet battle over an Amur River island on the heels of the
Soviet Union’s new Brezhnev Doctrine for intervening in the internal affairs of states
in the socialist bloc, starting with Czechoslovakia, what would be the impact on the
Sino-U.S. relationship? Furthermore, after the Sino-U.S. breakthrough what would
be the effect of domestic developments in the two communist giants, such as the
death of Mao Zedong on the relationship? At decade’s end, the focus changed to how
the aggressive Soviet posture would impact Sino-U.S. relations as economic interests
were boosting them. Much was written about each of these three bilateral relations,
each drawing rapt attention at times over the decade, but interpreting them as part
of a triangular context long proved to be a daunting theoretical challenge.
Leonid Brezhnev and the coterie of Soviet leaders around him were decisive
in shaping the strategic triangle in response to changing U.S. administrations and
successive developments in China from the U.S. reconciliation to Mao’s death to the
consolidation of power by Deng Xiaoping at decade’s end. Nixon offered them both
détente and a cooperative role in managing the end of the Vietnam War. Carter gave
them a democratic leader eager to reduce tensions. Mao’s death removed the source
of the Sino-Soviet split and the target of Soviet diatribes, while Deng’s ascent and
abrupt policy redirection eliminated the rationale for charges against revisionism in
the Soviet Union. If IR theory could have been expected to predict serious overtures
to China, there were few advocates of this interpretation. One reason to resist was
the argument that Chinese national identity was fixated on humiliation by Tsarist
imperialism, manifest still in Soviet occupation of vast territories that rightly belong
to China. Such thinking trumped balancing in the strategic triangle, it was assumed.
This obsession also was presumed to be independent of socialist ideology; so that
when Deng jettisoned much of the ideology, Soviets supposedly had no reason to see
a new opportunity for balancing. Missing in such approaches to China’s reasoning is
awareness of how limited were China’s serious territorial claims to islands in the
Amur River on the Chinese side of existing navigational channels and how intense
were the ideological barriers on the Soviet side that complicated strategic thought.
If China saw a spike in identity charges against the Soviet Union in 1976-77
at a time when Soviet leaders paused their criticisms to await a signal of interest, it
was the Soviet side almost continuously through the decade that ignored the value
of restraint. Weakening détente with the United States in the wake of the Sino-U.S.
rapprochement, approving Vietnam’s invasion of Cambodia not long after Mao’s
demise, and sending troops to fight a war in Afghanistan just as China dropped the
term revisionism for the Soviet Union, defied the logic of strategic balancing. This
skewed outlook on maximizing power reverberated in Soviet publications over the
decade on China and Sino-U.S. relations. During the 1960s U.S. insistence on staying
the course in demonizing “Red China” showed a dearth of strategic flexibility, while
through the 1970s it was the Soviet Union’s narrow thinking that ignored realism.
Theorists following the logic of balancing should have predicted the Sino-U.S.
breakthrough, delayed as it was by U.S. rigidity and especially by a xenophobic orgy
in China during the second half of the 1960s, and Soviet overtures to rebalance the
triangle after 1972, which proved to be even more delayed. They should have made
strategic triangle theory a centerpiece of the IR field, following debates in the Soviet
Union, above all, to explain why the theory was not confirmed. Instead, writings on
the Sino-Soviet split in the 1970s were of generally low quality, both for empirical
coverage of developments in the two countries and for their theoretical arguments.
The prevailing view of China’s interest in rapprochement with the United
States was that clashing Sino-Soviet interests had trumped shared ideology, leading
ideology to be invoked to drive countries further apart. Believing that Chinese had
awakened to the aggressive, expansionist nature of the Soviet Union and prioritized
the return of vast areas lost to Soviet imperialism, analysts foresaw sustained SinoU.S. cooperation. Considering the intemperate Soviet response and even the danger
of war between the two states, the 1992 turning point in the strategic triangle drew
IR predictions of a fundamental realignment, missing the tactical logic behind it.
In the period 1972 to 1980 the future of Sino-U.S. relations was of theoretical
significance beyond any other bilateral relationship, apart from U.S.-Soviet relations.
First came a strategic relationship, then an economic one, which generated euphoria
in some circles at the end of the decade. If there was some stagnation at mid-decade,
observers were inclined to see growing pains as China sorted out its domestic strife
in a manner more fitting with its strategic interests. As normalization was realized
at the very time China embarked on Deng’s reform and open door, prospects for the
two states to draw much closer were widely heralded. Yet, the Taiwan Relations Act
of 1979 and the continuing Chinese criticism of imperialism backed by policies to
North Korea, Pakistan, and some other states should have cast doubt on optimism.
Modernization Theory and Convergence of Socialism and Capitalism
Modernization theory became entangled in discussions on how the Cold War
would evolve. This began in the late 1950s, intensified in the 1960s, and reached its
culmination in the 1970s. One school argued that the Soviet model of modernization
would soon reach a dead-end, as a dearth of incentives would slow growth and deep
popular discontent would demonstrate that the shift from Stalin’s terror to control
based largely on persuasion cannot work. Without abandoning socialism and then
embracing democracy and the free market Soviet development would stagnate in
the new stage of advanced modernization. By implication, the United States should
be cautious about cooperation as it waited for the coming collapse of the system. A
second school of modernization theory held open the possibility of convergence via
reform. With a more educated, urban population, the Soviet Union was experiencing
structural changes, which provide a foundation for interest groups and technocratic
leadership. This approach did not assume that Soviet leaders would take the reform
measures required, but it lent itself to recommendations for U.S. overtures that give
current and future leaders more knowledge and encouragement for convergence.
Some argue that modernization theory was a response to the Cold War. As a
theory that denied socialist arguments about the primacy of class struggle, it was. In
both the version that insisted the Soviet Union would collapse and the one that gives
diplomats reason for future cooperation this theory led to an agenda for managing
the Cold War. The fate of the theory in the 1970s should be considered in this light.
In the wake of Khrushchev’s thaw and peaceful coexistence and in the early
days of Brezhnev’s uncertain path to reform and détente, modernization theory was
a guide to policy. The drive for détente was consistent with it. When Brezhnev era
aversion to reform under the claim of “developed socialism” closed the door to real
reform, the prospect that a new generation of leaders would respond to deepening
stagnation kept convergence theory alive, as the danger of nuclear war made many
loathe to intensify the Cold War except as an answer to provocations. The fact that
this theory was denounced in the Soviet Union as an ideological threat and that it
stood in opposition to the increasingly discredited Soviet ideology on social change
and inevitable conflict between two systems did not mean that its purpose was to
exacerbate the Cold War. Yet, the theory’s growing unpopularity came at a price.
One reason that modernization theory lost popularity in the late 1960s and
1970s was that critics as well as some advocates twisted it into a unilinear thesis for
ignoring a country’s history and culture in order to transplant Western institutions,
including democracy. This was perceived as a rationale for the Vietnam War, seeing
South Vietnam as a defender of democracy against communist North Vietnam, as if
shared national identity mattered little in the face of the South’s prospects under the
auspices of the United States for freedom and modernization. Another reason was
the depressing result of foreign assistance in the Third World, showing idealism to
be of scant value in combating misuse of aid and corruption. A third reason was that
communist policies stirred doubts, both in China’s claims in 1966-76 to have found
an alternative to modernization, including rapid reductions in inequalities between
mental and manual and urban and rural, and in Soviet reaffirmation of a command
economy producing faster economic growth without the supposed prerequisites of
modernization. The implications for IR theory of casting modernization theory aside
were undue pessimism about the prospects for eventual Soviet reform and its effect
on U.S.-Soviet relations and confusion over how to assess Sino-U.S. relations.
Clark Kerr gave one of the most optimistic interpretations of convergence. He
cited Weber’s view of bureaucracy and rationalization, noted the powerful urge for
modernization, pointed to a cosmopolitan impact of education and communications,
and mentioned the growing awareness of common human needs and expectations.
While acknowledging the continued effect of forces of diversity, he put industrial
structure in the forefront as economies draw the world closer.iii Independent of the
force of economic interdependence, Kerr saw parallel economic transformation as a
factor in easing international tensions. At the beginning of the 1970s some applied
this logic to prospects for Soviet economic reforms and the emergence of interest
groups. At the end of the decade the same logic was applied to the modernization of
China. Throughout it was present in views of Japan. Whether détente, normalization,
or alliance, convergence theory was an omnipresent factor in optimistic scenarios.
As the backlash against modernization theory kept mounting, its impact on
the study of Asia was transformed. Many dismissed it as having a negative impact on
analysis of socialist countries, developing states, and even the growing number of
economic success stories in East Asia. Rarely did they recognize the full range of the
theory and its positive consequences for both national strategies leading toward a
greater degree of convergence and cooperation in the international arena. Various
approaches to IR in Asia embodied this theory, to a greater or lesser extent. One may
be labeled comprehensive convergence frontloaded Westernization as well as
democratization irrespective of regional and national heritage. Its IR message was
to submit to the West by aping its reconstructed model of social change. Along these
lines, a caricature of Japan’s successful modernization beginning with the postwar
U.S. Occupation highlighted the ease of transferring democracy and embracing an
alliance. A second approach countered with assertions of duplicitous convergence,
whereby states were deceived into aspiring to the model and falling into the orbit of
the West only to succumb to dependency at the expense of development. Left in a
state of limbo, states lose the capacity to pursue their own national interests and to
wrench policymaking away from a small oligarchy keeping society downtrodden. In
both of these approaches East Asian dynamism and IR were misunderstood.
Over the course of the 1970s two struggles over interpreting modernization
in socialist states played a large role in the controversies associated with this theme.
One struggle centered on the Soviet Union and its relations with the United States.
At the start of the decade, as détente ground haltingly ahead, analysts of structural
convergence held aloft a roadmap for the transformation from totalitarianism to
developmental authoritarianism reliant on interest groups, material incentives, and
integration into the world economy. This model implied that peaceful coexistence is
not only sustainable, it promotes rising interdependence and mutual understanding.
Yet, as Soviet reforms stagnated, external forecasts of convergence boosting trust
elicited a fierce counterattack from Soviet ideologues who accused the “bourgeois
theory of modernization” of spreading falsehoods against socialism. Such charges,
accompanying warnings that the ideological struggle was intensifying, heralded the
collapse of détente, revealing that IR theory denying the inevitability of the clash
between two irreconcilable systems was unacceptable to the Soviets and, therefore,
incorrect. In the West, this theory soon lost support, but it survived. In the mid-80s,
it would be invoked in some interpretations of what was occurring in Gorbachev’s
reforms and how they were contributing to better Soviet relations with the world.
The second struggle over modernization theory and socialism featured China
as it traversed the opposite trajectory over the 1970s. In the first part of the decade
the Cultural Revolution raised the banner of revolutionary non-convergence, later
echoed in Western writings treating Mao’s “barefoot doctors,” etc. as a radical
alternative to modernization in the West. At first, this was understood to lead to
implacable opposition between two systems, but after the Sino-U.S. breakthrough in
1972 many assumed that clashing approaches to modernization are now overridden
by overlapping strategic interests. After China’s Third Plenum in 1978 and publicity
given to the “four modernizations” as selective convergence, predictions spread
of socialist reforms that intensify into a shared path of development. Accompanying
this optimism was IR theory that linked national interests to national identities in
bolstering cooperation, despite hesitation about how far convergence would go.
The improved relationship between Washington and Beijing in 1972 under
Mao and in 1979 under Deng posed a problem for IR theorists. There was no basis
for anticipating Chinese modernization in the first period; so why would a radical
form of communism find sufficient common ground with the U.S.-led “free world?” A
crude argument that the Soviet Union was an expansionist power that China feared
and would keep fearing, no matter the global balance of power, was what remained.
In the second period with Deng’s embrace of the “four modernizations” theorists
revived modernization theory in arguing for convergence as a basis for improving
bilateral relations. This was reinforced by arguments that East Asian modernization
was spreading across the region with Japan in the lead. Warnings that the process
was different from modernization in the West and had uncertain consequences for
international relations had less impact than the earlier convergence assumptions.
Longstanding skeptics of convergence saw China at the end of the 1970s as a
weak state with little leverage in the strategic triangle and vulnerable to unilateral
U.S. moves to forge a new regional order in Asia. The underlying theory, as in prior
rejection of détente with the Soviet Union, centered on a superpower acting from
strength producing the most positive results. Not only must it take vigorous action,
it also must explain itself in highly moralistic terms as defending its values against
those who would compromise them. Suggestions that U.S. policy toward Taiwan was
compromised in order to develop Chinese relations with an eye toward the strategic
triangle failed to persuade those driven by a theory that Taiwan mattered for U.S.
national identity if not security and that assertiveness would be rewarded. Political
circles on the right and the left grasped for academic theories to justify this outlook.
In the early 1980s the right would grow more enamored of this way of thinking.
IR theories cast doubt on Soviet and Chinese efforts to reorganize Asia with
revolution rather than modernization in the foreground. Indeed, as in the 1960s, the
two giants of communism were striving to undercut each other in their appeals to
anti-imperialism and rejection of U.S. notions of modernization. The Soviets stuck
longer with attacks on the contradictions of capitalism, insisting that U.S-Japan ties
were vulnerable even after China had stopped showing concern over them. China’s
appeal to the “Third World” is more intensely anti-West, anti peaceful coexistence,
and premised on continuous revolution, but its case weakened first by the extreme
nature of its image in the late 1960s and then by its rapprochement with the United
States. That left an opening for the Soviet Union to press its advantage, emphasizing
class struggle less, and for a rising Japan to see an opening linked to its own model
of modernization. China’s stress on class and race coincided with the Soviet stress
on anti-imperialism and the Japanese stress on economics and culture.
Modernization Theory, Japan, and Asianism
The bilateral relationship of greatest interest outside of the strategic triangle
were U.S.-Japanese ties with their spillover to triangular ties to the Soviet Union and
South Korea as well as China. In the shadow of U.S. dominance, Japan and the Soviet
Union tussled over how complementary economic interests in developing natural
resources in Siberia and the Russian Far East for export to the burgeoning factories
of Japan would be weighed in comparison to their lingering territorial dispute and
divergent strategic interests. At the same time, Japan and South Korea under U.S.
pressure and North Korean menace, faced the challenge of building on their 1965
normalization of diplomatic relations leading to acceleration of economic relations
to make the virtual triangular alliance with the United States a reality. In regard to
China there was a budding triangular question too: would a gap open between how
the United States and Japan envisioned their relations with it, reviving notions of
Asianism in Japan at the expense of internationalism? Although there was no catchy
theoretical concept comparable to the strategic triangle to capture various triangles
involving Japan and the United States, interest had grown in convergence based on
modernization and democratic values as a factor in international relations.
As modernization theory informed comparative studies, it also formed the
backdrop for IR studies. Writings on Japan, as on the Soviet Union and China, were
heavily shaped by changing interpretations and rejections of one or another version
of the theory. At decade’s end, when social scientists writing on the “Third World”
were often captivated by “dependency theory” and its offshoots in opposition to
modernization theory, analysis of East Asia was reviving interest in modernization
with rival interpretations of how much convergence would occur and how strong
would be the impact on reducing international tensions. If the heyday of this theory
in the West was the 1960s, it was gathering steam in East Asia into the 1980s.
On the surface, U.S-Japanese relations proceeded quite smoothly, as Japan
followed the U.S. lead in normalizing relations with China, soured on Soviet ties as
détente faded away, and picked up the mantle toward Southeast Asia through the
Fukuda Doctrine after the U.S. departure from Vietnam. Despite Japan’s stature as a
rising power, democratic values and alliance continuity overshadowed any rivalry.
In any case, theorists were not anticipating discord. Looking closely at the debate in
Japan, however, suggests that IR theory was blind to forces that were strengthening.
The recognized challenge to the alliance within Japan came from the left. In
1960 it had sought to block the security treaty, and late in the decade, when local
elections were going in its favor, student anarchy reached a peak. Observers saw a
divide between pro-U.S. conservatives and progressives sympathetic to China, even
in the Cultural Revolution. What was missing was the Asianist orientation present
on the right, which manifested itself in diverse ways through the 1970s. There were
efforts to block normalization with China in 1972 and then the peace treaty in 1978
due to closeness to Taiwan, not for democratic values but for its acquiescent views
regarding Japan’s historical assertiveness. 0vertures to North Korea in 1973-74 did
not coordinate with South Korea or the United States. Optimism about China was
infectious in the public and some conservative as well as progressive circles beyond
any hopes raised in the United States, another indicator of a wellspring of eagerness
to achieve a breakthrough. This was the flip side of the revisionist rejection of the
“masochistic” media and education coverage of Japan’s history. From multiple sides
Japanese yearned for an Asian foreign policy distant from that of the United States,
but it did not extend to strategic thinking about alliance building with South Korea.
Kazuhiko Togo notes the sense of liberation in Japan from the dual effect of
détente and the Sino-U.S. rapprochement, although this was preceded by the “Nixon
shock” of not being informed more than minutes before Nixon announced his plan
to visit China. Japan’s new ties with China gave it an opportunity to assert itself in
regional power politics and had cultural implications for its ability to move beyond
the limbo in its postwar Asian identity, mixing guilt with a sense of forced silence.
There was a desire to forge a triangle with China as well as the United States, facing
no objection to the U.S.-Japan Security Treaty while not fully abandoning Taiwan at
the same time as China abandoned claims to reparations. In 1972-73, talks with the
Soviet Union raised the greatest prospects in the Cold War to reach a breakthrough.
Japanese detected a Soviet interest in limiting the Sino-Japanese relationship and a
desire for assistance in Siberian development, forging an economic nexus with the
rapidly advancing Japanese economy. Soon, however, the 1994 oil shock gave more
confidence to Soviet leaders, sitting on vast oil reserves, and fear of encirclement no
longer seemed to be a problem. If Togo argues that the extent of Sino-Japanese ties
and Japan’s agreement to an anti-hegemony clause sought by China reduced Soviet
interest, he puts the most weight on a mismatch between a rising superpower with
the pride of a victor facing a loser in WWII and a rising regional power confident of
its economic advance and its diplomacy after the breakthrough with China, adding
that Japan’s main objective was to bring to a close unresolved issues from WWII.iv
This drive to set history right put Japan’s national identity above strategic calculus.
The attention given to Japan in modernization theory of the 1960s persisted
in the 1970s. Its further economic rise defied models of state-society, interpersonal,
and individualist transformation, raising more theoretical interest in what stood in
the way of convergence. IR theory began to consider whether these signs of a unique
trajectory mattered in foreign relations. Suddenly, the word “shock” was being used
to describe Japan’s response to its ally, despite the successful transfer of Okinawa to
Japan at the start of the decade. There was the textile shock when Japanese decided
that Nixon was reneging on the principle of free trade, the first Nixon shock obliging
Japan to revalue the yen, the second Nixon shock when Japan discovered U.S. policy
toward China had fundamentally changed, two oil crises when the supply and price
of a vital import became problematic, and a growing sense of an unfinished mission
whose nature remained vague. Observers perceived a Japan in limbo, in the grip of
the Yoshida Doctrine that put off other concerns while mercantilist growth loomed
foremost and under the shadow of defeat that had left the populace, especially the
academic and cultural elite, enamored of passivism and passivity in world affairs. If
a vocal minority in the governing LDP were known to want to overturn the verdicts
on the war years once Japan was freer to speak its mind to its ally and had the clout
to limit apologies to Asian states despite the risk to normalization of relations, this
did not rise to the level of IR theory because policies cautiously followed U.S. ones.
The Cultural and Historical Variable
Bilateral relations in the 1970s were emerging from the shadow of Cold War
polarization, which was fixated on ideological or strategic differences. China, Japan,
South Korea, and even the Soviet Union started to be depicted in a more nuanced
manner. This aroused interest in culture as a factor in international relations. If
fascination with national identities only became widespread later, already for this
decade we should raise questions about how well theory was addressing culture.
IR theorists were attuned to political-military and political economy issues,
but socio-political and historical issues often escaped notice. Yet, in the 1970s much
of the discussion related to reforming socialist states, recovering normality in Japan,
and overcoming problems in bilateral relations proceeded on the plain of historical
narrative with sociological themes often more prone to be raised than the sensitive
political ones. The cultural variable figured into the rhetoric far more than it earlier
had. Soviet discussions about China’s history and culture, Mao’s frenzied efforts to
forestall all but condemnatory discussion of Confucianism, and Japan’s rediscovery
of the glory of its history and culture were indicative of these trends. Beneath the
surface of apparently unbending approaches to the main IR themes new ideas were
already churning. In the late 1970s Chinese and Soviet mutual views and Japanese
and Soviet mutual views appeared to harden, while Chinese and Japanese mutual
views appeared to soften, but there was much evidence to go beneath the surface.
Japan’s cultural identity posed a theoretical problem not just for comparative
analysis but also for IR. Whereas some theory dismissed it as irrelevant or a dying
residue of the prewar era, other theory recognized it as a source of distrust of the
United States with potential to grow more serious. Their arguments began with an
acknowledgment that not only in the period to 1868 had Japanese culture distanced
the country so fully from the outside word and in the period to 1945 was it asserted
in a most extreme manner linking emperor worship with state glorification, loyalty,
and filial piety, but by the 1960s claims of superiority to the West were reasserted in
defense of a special historical mission to free Asian nations from cultural, if not full,
imperialism. Protective of various types of group identities linked to state primacy
and, in Japan, to the continued cultural centrality of the emperor, writers opposed
Western claims to universalism.v However much they were ready to compromise
through the embrace of democracy and alliance with the United States, their cultural
obsession implied insistence on Asian regionalism opposed to U.S. leadership.
During the frenzy of the Cultural Revolution, observers dug deep into China’s
heritage and the nature of Chinese communism to explain the crisis of authority in
that country. Much of this was forgotten as China, yet in the grip of internal hysteria,
took the bold step of reconciliation with the United States and Japan. Theorists saw
realism as the driving force, shunting aside the identity themes that had appeared to
be compelling a short time earlier. Lucien Pye reminded us of them: 1) the parallel
between Confucianism and communism in the arrogance of authority, insistence on
ideological conformity, and rejection of private interests; 2) an emphasis on national
greatness, strength through memories of humiliation, and moral discourse even if it
defied reality; 3) the strength of Chinese cultural identity and inherent rivalry with
Western civilization mean that a crisis of authority is not a crisis of identity.vi While
social class struggle was at odds with nation state solidarity, Pye concludes that it
served the leadership in boosting their version of national identity and overcoming
legitimacy challenges in the process of modernization.vii
Misjudgments about China came in the 1971-72 rapprochement with the
United States and Japan and in the 1978-79 reform and opening. The first response
reflected an exaggeration of the sources and durability of the Sino-Soviet dispute.
The second represented an overestimation of the impact of integration into the
global economy on domestic transformation and foreign relations. Few noticed that
as Sino-U.S. relations improved, China also drew closer to North Korea, offering new
economic and military assistance packages despite the North’s recent belligerence
toward South Korea. Few also took seriously Chinese discussions on how to sustain
communist rule despite compromises. Theorists thought that they better knew the
implications of reforms than did the architects behind them. Little was written on
how communist states could be revitalized and renew the Cold War, which China
pioneered over a transition lasting four decades. Assumptions about the inability to
regain dynamism without discarding socialism were fueled by Soviet stagnation too.
Whereas IR theory customarily linked development to the growth of liberal
institutions and in the 1970s neither the Soviet Union nor China contradicted this
argument, Japan and South Korea raised doubts associated with concepts such as
the “developmental state,” linking mercantilism and national identity in ways that
thwarted both civil society and integration into the global community. Domestic
networks, notably a nexus between big business and the state dominated by a few
bureaucracies with protection from political leaders, came to define not only the
way the economy grew but also combinations of export orientation and domestic
market protectionism.viii Given their internal organization, Japan and South Korea
were deemed by critics of IR theory unsupportive of the free market principles and
values essential for forging a strong international community. Counterarguments
held that their deviations from the norm were secondary or a stage in development
and that in a bipolar world they stand firmly on the side of the United States. Theory
generally discarded their exceptionalism even as critics grew more vocal about it.
As would happen in the 2010s in China, the Soviet Union in the 1970s sought
to answer IR theory in the West not just with the ideological platitudes of old, but
also with theories of its own grounded in some of the same language on how the
international system was changing and in sharp refutations of arguments about the
correlation of forces.ix While much of this self-serving defense of Soviet policy,
which failed on such important matters as predicting China’s repositioning in the
strategic triangle and the pivotal role of Japan in rising regionalism, had a short shelf
life, it proved to be important in opening the horizons of some Soviet officials as well
as many in the “intelligentsia” to the rapidly changing international system.
Conclusion
Three countries in Asia preoccupied social scientists: the Soviet Union, the
Cold War rival; China, the state changing sides; and Japan, the rising challenger. IR
theory stressed their relations with the United States without paying much attention
to their relations with each other and their thinking about reorganizing Asia. Theory
found new openings by considering triangularity, although almost exclusively for
one case; modernization as divergent models, despite tendencies to find unilinearity
or, at least, convergence; and culture and history, even if they were dismissed by the
mainstream theorists. Small steps away from the narrow paradigms of the Cold War
were initiated during a decade of blossoming interest in Asia, which stimulated area
specialists to be less parochial and IR theorists to entertain growing reservations.
i
Tsuyoshi Hasegawa, “Introduction: East Asia—The Second Significant Front of the
Cold War,” in Tsuyoshi Hasegawa, ed., The Cold War in East Asia, 1945-1991
(Washington, DC and Stanford, CA: Woodrow Wilson International Center Press and
Stanford University Press, 2011), pp. 9-10.
Tsuyoshi Hasegawa, “A Strategic Quadrangle: The Superpowers and the Sino-
ii
Japanese Treaty of Peace and Friendship, 1977-1978,” in Tsuyoshi Hasegawa, ed.,
The Cold War in East Asia, 1945-1991, pp. 213-35.
iii
Clark Kerr, The Future of Industrial Society: Convergence or Continuing Diversity?
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1983).
Kazuhiko Togo, “Japan’s Foreign Policy under Détente: Relations with China and
iv
the Soviet Union, 1971-1973,” in Tsuyoshi Hasegawa, ed., The Cold War in East Asia,
1945-1991, pp. 180-205.
v
Robert N. Bellah, “Japan’s Cultural Identity: Some Reflections on the Work of
Watsuji Tetsuro,” Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. 24, No. 4 (1965), pp. 573-94.
vi
Lucian W. Pye, The Spirit of Chinese Politics: A Psychocultural Study of the
Authoritarian Crisis in Political Development (Cambridge, MA: The M.I.T. Press,
1968).
vii
Lucien W. Pye, Ch. 3, “Identity and the Political Culture,” Ch. 4, “The Legitimacy
Crisis,” in Leonard Binder, et. al., eds. Crises and Sequences in Political Development
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1971), pp. 101-58,
viii
Meredith Woo-Cumings, “Introduction: Chalmers Johnson and the Politics of
Nationalism and Development,” and Ch. 2, Chalmers Johnson, “The Developmental
State: Odyssey of a Concept,” in Meredith Woo-Cumings, ed. The Developmental State
(Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1999), pp. 1-31 and 32-60.
ix
Allen Lynch, The Soviet Study of International Relations (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1987), pp. 49-60.