An Unlikely Friendship: The Strategic and Normative Foundations of the US-Japan Alliance

International relations is replete with the language of friendship. States have ‘friendly relations’, sign ‘treaties of friendship’, and categorise other states as ‘friends’ or ‘enemies’. But what does it really mean to be ‘friends’ on the international stage? This book brings in a key non-Western case to international friendship research, examining the US-Japan alliance through the analytical prism of friendship.

Top officials describe the alliance as the ‘cornerstone’ of peace, security, and prosperity’ of the entire Indo-Pacific region (Blinken et al 2023). The two states have integrated militaries, deep political and civil society connections, and they speak the language of friendship: US assistance after the 2011 tsunami came in the form of Operation Tomodachi (friend), while more recently Donald Trump and Shinzo Abe enjoyed an (in)famous ‘bromance'.

Is this friendship ‘strategic’, that is, based on a self-interested, instrumental cost-benefit analysis, or is it ‘normative’, based on trust and altruism? Normative friendships take time to develop but endure beyond the shared interests on which they were founded. Thus, determining the nature and quality of US-Japan friendship informs our understanding of the durability of the alliance, and contributes to the friendship literature: can states as culturally and geographically distant as Japan and the US really become ‘close’ friends? The answer has major implications for the future of the Indo-Pacific.