The "Abe Effect" in Northeast Asia: The Interplay of Security, Economy, and Identity
IN DECEMBER 2012 ABE SHINZO RETURNED TO POWER AFTER FIVE years in the political wilderness. Since taking office he has solidified his political leadership by winning all successive elections, paving the way to becoming one of the longest tenured premiers in postwar Japan. His security and foreign policies have already changed the landscape of international relations in East Asia as Tokyo's relations with Seoul and Beijing spiraled down to new lows for the post Cold War era. Abe's new security policy, under the slogan "Proactive Contribution to Peace," helped bring the Japan US alliance to an unprecedented level of closeness, clearly pitted against China. The Abe government is also potentially challenging the China centered new economic order by promoting the US led Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade network. Abe's decision to enter the TPP talks became a game changer in the race for free trade agreements in Asia and the Pacific.All these changes motivate the authors in this special issue to restore agency to Japan as a catalytic actor in complex regional trends and provide a more balanced and complete picture of Northeast Asian international relations, which has been overly focused on US China relations. Explanations these days of transformations in the East Asian regional order mainly focus on themes such as China's "peaceful rise," the US "pivot to Asia," Chinese leader Xi Jinping's "new model of great power relations," and China's "new type of neighboring relations" with Asian countries. Sino US relations are indisputably important, but US China competition and cooperation are not the only independent variables in the East Asian regional order. With the reemergence of Prime Minister Abe, Japan's presence and influence have been on the rise, and the articles in this special issue by Hiroshi Nakanishi and Takashi Terada focus on the Abe cabinet's ideology, identity, and policies, while T. J. Pempel critically evaluates the Abe effect in the Japanese economy, domestic politics, and the region. Xiaoming Zhang offers a comprehensive overview of JapanChina relations after Abe's comeback. John Delury provides a genealogical analysis of Korea Japan relations, while I explore how Abe's policy has influenced South Korea's regional strategic posture.In explaining the Abe effect, we adopt a synthetic approach to the international relations of Northeast Asia. Considering that Japan's military capabilities are basically unchanged, the realist theory of international relations, which posits that a shift in the balance of power between countries would threaten its security, fails to explain Japan's challenge to regional harmony. Likewise, mainstream liberalist theory cannot account for the Abe effect, given that Japan's economy remains highly integrated through trade, investment, and financial networks.