Identity Theory and Foreign Policy: Explaining Japan’s Responses to the 1991 Gulf War and the 2003 U.S. War in Iraq

This article examines the feasibility of using role identity as an independent variable to explain the direction of a state’s national security policy. Focusing on the response of the Japanese government to the Gulf War (January‐March 1991) and the U.S. War in Iraq (March‐May 2003), the article correlates articulations of their preferred role made in the Japanese Diet, with these policy outcomes. It finds that the different balance of role conceptions held by Japanese politicians in the two periods under study can explain the difference in policy outcomes. The study also finds, however, that the salience of these role identities is directly affected by contextual factors. Under circumstances of heightened threat perception, Japanese policy makers were less inclined to articulate any sort of value‐based role identity for Japan in favor of role statements that were characterized by pragmatism.