Description
| Product ID: | 9780804772167 |
| Product Form: | Hardback |
| Country of Manufacture: | US |
| Series: | Studies in Asian Security |
| Title: | Rethinking Japanese Public Opinion and Security |
| Subtitle: | From Pacifism to Realism? |
| Authors: | Author: Paul Midford |
| Page Count: | 272 |
| Subjects: | Public opinion and polls, Public opinion & polls, Japan |
| Description: | Rethinking Japanese Public Opinion and Security argues that Japanese public opinion matters and has acted to prevent overseas military deployments involving combat while increasingly supportive of a more normal military establishment capable of autonomously defending Japanese territory. In this book, Paul Midford engages claims that since 9/11 Japanese public opinion has turned sharply away from pacifism and toward supporting normalization of Japan''s military power, in which Japanese troops would fight alongside their American counterparts in various conflicts worldwide. Midford argues that Japanese public opinion has never embraced pacifism. It has, instead, contained significant elements of realism, in that it has acknowledged the utility of military power for defending national territory and independence, but has seen offensive military power as ineffective for promoting other goals—such as suppressing terrorist networks and WMD proliferation, or promoting democracy overseas. Over several decades, these realist attitudes have become more evident as the Japanese state has gradually convinced its public that Tokyo and its military can be trusted with territorial defense, and even with noncombat humanitarian and reconstruction missions overseas. On this basis, says Midford, we should re-conceptualize Japanese public opinion as attitudinal defensive realism. |
| Imprint Name: | Stanford University Press |
| Publisher Name: | Stanford University Press |
| Country of Publication: | GB |
| Publishing Date: | 2011-01-24 |
