by Zack Beauchamp
If Jonathan Levine is right, then it's peace in East Asia:
Though China now has the largest military in the world, nuclear weapons and the second-largest economy, fear and distrust of Japan is primal. Though the idea of a resurgent Japanese threat to Asia may be laughable in the West, it is very real in Beijing—and this paranoia should not be dismissed so blithely. In the East, it has long been an article of faith that the U.S. security umbrella keeps a lid on Japanese militarism.
When Xi Jinping calls for an American role in East Asia, his sentiments seem genuine. If American soldiers were to leave Japan, or the Japanese-American security treaty were allowed to expire, the Japanese would likely reconstitute their military: exactly what Washington hopes for and Beijing dreads. Withdrawal of U.S. protection would lead to the emergence of a classic security dilemma, with Japan racing to narrow a glaring imbalance of capabilities with China.
This is an important point. People often wonder why, given the relative peacefulness of our time, why the United States needs to maintain a global military presence. Part of the answer is that said military presence helps maintain said peacefulness, oftentimes in ways we can't entirely entirely understand or predict. That's not a blanket justification for our currently absurd levels of defense spending, mind you, but it is a warning about against the unintended consequences of mass base shuttering or overbroad, poorly targeted cuts. Hans-Inge Langø goes in-depth on how China's military growth might alter this dynamic.
The Dish 