Points of No Return: The Eisenhower-Kennedy Transition and US-Japan Relations

Abstract

There is a considerable amount of focus among historians on both Dwight D. Eisenhower’s and John F. Kennedy’s approaches to foreign policy, including internal developments within the United States and Japan during the Cold War. However, I have noticed a lack of attention regarding the link between these important areas of historical focus, which in my view is crucial to a more complete understanding of the American international security posture at the height of the Cold War. Japan is typically underrepresented in the assessment of historians when considering the Cold War balance of power dynamic. This thesis posits that the presidential transition from Eisenhower to Kennedy was the cornerstone of the special relationship between the US and Japan. It transformed perceptions of Japan as a geopolitical outlier to those of a critical bulwark against communist expansionism alongside the aegis of American strategy. More broadly, the changing nature of the US-Japan relationship during the Eisenhower-Kennedy transition proves that the theory of containment evolved beyond the view of an overarching East-West divide to become more pragmatic, thus increasingly valuing the strategic importance of American influence in the East. Japan, dangerously close to the communist strongholds of China and the Soviet Union, survived its most violent political upheaval in a generation as a consequence of this evolution toward pragmatism.