April 15, 2014
Does American vacillation over Crimea bode poorly for Japan? Some observers think so.
Recent media coverage has revealed that some officials in Japan see the U.S. response in Crimea as a litmus test for its willingness to intervene in a Senkaku contingency. According to this narrative, Washington’s failure to uphold the 1994 Budapest Memorandum portends U.S. complacency if Japan faces an attack in the East China Sea. It is tempting to attribute this to an acute case of “resolve anxiety,” but it is also important to parse why the failure of one international agreement does not imply the frailty of them all. If the United States is to remain powerful and engaged in the world at a time of great resource constraints, it will need to choose its battles wisely. This, in turn, requires that we acknowledge that not all international commitments are created equal.
The 1994 Budapest Memorandum guaranteed Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity after it inherited and then relinquished the world’s third-largest nuclear arsenal. The document, signed by Ukraine, the United States, the United Kingdom, and the Russian Federation, was a multilateral, negative security assurance—the signatories agreed amongst themselves not to infringe upon Kiev’s sovereignty. The Budapest Memorandum, like many negative assurances, had no real mechanism for enforcement. It promised only “consultation” among the signatories in case “a situation arises that raises a question concerning these commitments.” Because negative assurances proscribe unwanted actions, but do not usually explain how violators will be punished, they may embody important principles, but are difficult to enforce.
Contrast this to the 1960 U.S.–Japan Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security. Originally signed in 1951, this bilateral defense commitment has a similar Article V commitment to all of the United States’ other defense treaties, including NATO, the U.S.–ROK alliance, and ANZUS. It is a positive security commitment and promises that an attack on Japan will be treated as a threat to the security of the United States. It also includes standard Article IV and Article VI provisions, which provide for peacetime defense consultation and the forward deployment of U.S. troops on Japanese soil. It therefore includes both a positive defense commitment and the mechanisms that make the agreement credible, and gives Washington every incentive to act if Tokyo does become the victim of an attack.
Full article : http://warontherocks.com/2014/04/credibility-under-constraint-crimea-shouldnt-unnerve-tokyo/
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