A STUDY OF ALLIANCE POLITICS: THE IMPACT OF THE VIETNAM WAR ON AMERICAN-JAPANESE RELATIONS

The questions of tensions in alliances continue to be of concern to scholars of international relations. The dissertation attempts to explore the area of tensions in the American-Japanese alliance in the context of the Vietnam War. Consequently, the study primarily examines the Japanese perceptions of the Vietnam War.; The study begins with an analysis of American-Japanese relations prior to the onset of the Vietnam War. Using 1964 as a base line, the study proceeds to examine the impact of U.S. involvement in Vietnam on Japanese public opinion through polling data and the media and upon Japanese government attitudes and policy through the analysis of policy positions taken by the Prime Minister and other Japanese officials. The dissertation found that American involvement sharpened Japanese perceptions of their differences of interest with the United States. The public attitude took the position that the U.S. did not understand the Asian outlook and that intervention was a violation of the right of self-determination. Official attitude focused on the implications of the war for Japan's relations with the communist superpowers, particularly the People's Republic of China. The tension within the Japanese government circles was particularly between the Ministry of International Trade and Industry, with its emphasis on avoiding conflict that would reduce Japan's trade possibilities, and the Prime Minister, who had to maintain stable relations with Japan's principal ally--the United States. This aspect of the dissertation served as a case in bureaucratic politics in the Japanese context.; By way of conclusion, this dissertation argued that the primary reason for the tensions between the United States and Japan over the Vietnam War resulted from the fact that the United States not only failed to understand the principles of Japanese foreign policy (in terms of the separation of politics from economics and the primacy of economics in Japan's foreign policy), but also did not quite understand the political process within Japan, especially the process of foreign policy making in Japan. Far from enhancing credibility and unity of U.S.-Japanese security relations, the Vietnam War appeared to strain and weaken those relations.