In his latest op-ed, Ian Bremmer, president of Eurasia Group, says that Japan can become in East Asia what Israel is in the Middle East, a “wildcard”:

In part, that’s because Israel acts as a kind of wildcard in the Middle East. The United States can decide what it is (and is not) prepared to do to manage threats from Tehran. But if the Israeli government determines that its very survival is at stake, it is fully capable of taking matters into its own hands and attacking Iran’s nuclear sites. The international stalemate over North Korea will last longer, because there is not yet a wildcard state capable of upsetting East Asia’s status quo.

But if Japan were eventually to feel threatened enough by North Korea’s sometimes provocative behavior or China’s economic and military expansion to assume a more assertive regional security role, it could challenge that delicate balance and return North Korea’s nuclear program to the top of the international agenda.

Parallels already exist between Israel’s and Japan’s positions in these conflicts.

Both are democracies and strategically important U.S. allies. Both rely to some extent on Washington to help safeguard their security. Both face neighbors who bear deep historical grievances against them. In both, a growing number of elected officials publicly argue that their countries now live in the lengthening nuclear shadow of a hostile authoritarian neighbor.

I was one of the earlier advocates of “playing the Japan card” in an Asian Wall Street Journal op-ed of August 20, 2003, long before the Japan card became popular among other right-leaning pundits. I wrote:

Second, the U.S. can exert pressure on China to cooperate further on the North Korean problem by encouraging Japan to assume a greater regional security role. If China is convinced the level of its cooperation in curbing North Korea’s threats inversely determines the extent Japan assumes a more active military role in East Asia, it will do more to encourage positive North Korean behavior.

I still champion the idea of encouraging Japan to expand its regional security role.

But I do so with clear-eyed understanding of the deep pacificism that pervades Japanese society and how much such pacifism constrains security policy.

This crucial domestic component is entirely missing from Bremmer’s claim that:

But a potential wildcard in Japan could pose real longer-term dangers, because there are no multilateral institutions in Asia today that are capable of mediating security disputes among the region’s most powerful states. In the meantime, the U.S.-North Korean stalemate doesn’t look so bad.

Contrary to Bremmer’s surface “parellels” between Israel and Japan, the dominat security psyches of the two peoples are far apart.

The tough, gun-toting Sabra — the native-born Israeli — the “wildcard” in Bremer’s terminology, is a reaction to the helpless Ashkenaji Jew who was herded to a death camp like so many sheep. The underlying ethos is “We were weak, so they killed us. Now we will be strong and we will survive.”

In Japan, however, the most traumatic event was not an outcome of meekness, but of boldness, of impetuous aggresson. It is Hiroshima. The Japanese psyche is the opposite, “We were aggressive, so they killed us. Now we will be meek and we shall inherit the bounties of the earth.”

Bremmer argues that Japanese participation in U.S. missile defense program “could certainly spook China and generate a new round of Sino-Japanese tensions.” Never mind that the rising Sino-Japanese tension is over the alteration of existing regional status quo, brought on by the Chinese economic growth, the attendant military modernization and the increasingly aggressive tendencies of Beijing (including intrusions of PRC submarines into Japanese waters).

The growing Japanee unease is natural and understanble. Though he does not state so directly, Bremmer appears to fear the instability that could result from Sino-Japanese tension as Japan begins to counteract Chinese aggressiveness far more than he does Chinese domination of the region in absence of that Japanese reaction.

Indeed, a China that dominates all of East Asia is far more likely to come into a devastating conflict with the United States than one whose power is kept in check by a Japanese balancer — a larger geopolitical perspective Bremmer ignores… unless, of course, Bremmer wants all of us to play possum and let China become the next hegemonic power in all of Asia and maybe even the world, in the interest of forestalling any “instability.”