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69 Foreign Aff. 91 (1989-1991)
Germany and Japan: The New Civilian Powers

handle is hein.journals/fora69 and id is 969 raw text is: Hanns W. Maull GERMANY AND JAPAN: THE NEW CIVILIAN POWERS As the postwar international order dissolves, some of the initial concerns that informed and shaped it are resurfac- ing. One key objective of this old order was the containment of Japanese and German military expansionism and its threat to the international status quo in the Far East and Europe. This was achieved brilliantly by embracing both countries in an American-led alliance system directed against a new adversary, the Soviet Union. This rationale is rapidly fading now, and old specters once more raise their ugly heads; the power of Japan and Germany has again become a cause of concern for their partners in the alliance. Some observers fear a return of either state (or both) to traditional temptations of military power politics and suspect that Japan or Germany may revert to challenging the status quo, or perhaps even try to replace it with a Pax Nipponica or Pax Teutonica. Others worry about the implications of a changing distribution of economic power as a result of Ger- many's and Japan's single-minded pursuit of economic gain abroad and tendencies toward parochial and closed societies and economies at home. Most fears about Japanese and/or German revanchism turn less on perceived political strategies by today's leaderships in Tokyo or Bonn than on the dynamics of ungovernable change. German unification and its impact on the alliance are seen in terms of a runaway freight train headed for collision as a result of sheer momentum and the inability or unwillingness of the drivers to apply the brakes. And as for Japan, we are told by a revisionist that nobody really is in charge there.I The forces of change in the postwar era, which have worked so I This is the central thesis of Karel van Wolferen's The Enigma ofJapanese Power, New York: Knopf, 1989. Hanns W. Maull is Professor of International Relations at the Catholic University of Eichstatt, Germany, and European Representative of the Japan Center for International Exchange.

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