What happened on Sept. 11 was very significant but not revolutionary, not something that will transform international politics or the international system.

Some have spoken in the press about the possible formation of a ground coalition of major powers: the U.S., Russia, China, Japan, European countries, etc. Although these countries are all at some level anti-terrorist, they have very different perceptions and priorities. I think a coalition such as this would be tested severely if the United States decides to engage militarily against Iraq following or at the same time with this campaign in Afghanistan.

Sept. 11 actually led to a very important lesson in American foreign policy. It taught the new Bush administration the value of international cooperation. This is an administration whose basic instinct was to go it alone, to be more unilateral. Sept. 11 showed this administration that the U.S. needs the world as much as the world needs the U.S.

I think it is fair to say that by the end of the 1990s, both American and Japanese government officials had some concerns about the long-term stability of their alliance relationship. Those concerns can be traced directly to the end of the Cold War. In the absence of the external threat, which gave a very strong central purpose to the alliance, during the 90s both the United States and Japan faced uncertainty about both the role and the future endurance of the alliance.

In the United States, there is a lot of post-Cold War concern that the alliance needed to become more equal in the sense that Japan had to play a greater role.

The concern expressed continuously by American officials was that Japan needed to be shouldering more of the burden in a more equitable way, not in a fully equal way, but in a more equitable way. An underlined concern American officials had was that if the Japanese did not stand "side by side" with the United States, that the American public opinion might eventually, in the face of a crisis in Northeast Asia, turn against the alliance.

How has Sept. 11 effected that alliance's dynamics? It would seem to me that Sept. 11, even though it is a crisis and a tragedy, potentially is a great opportunity for the U.S.- Japanese alliance because it gives the United States and Japan the first experience in engaging with each other side by side in a conflict.

Just compare the kind of agonizing debate of the socalled Persian Gulf trauma from 10 years ago to the situation today. The Japanese government moved remarkably quick to pass new legislation and show the United States, without the United States having to directly pressure it, that it in fact was prepared to make a contribution beyond economics-- and very quickly. This is only the first step in what is necessarily a larger and deeper cooperation between these two sides, but it is an important first step.

One of the things that emerged after Sept. 11 is the very important and unanticipated new cooperation between the United States and Russia. This is a very important development because China before Sept. 11 was trying to play a "Russia card" to form closer ties in an informal coalition against American hegemony. After Sept. 11, Russia is at least initially aligning itself more closely to the United States. This has provided the United States with the possibilities of more diplomatic options in dealing with China.

The final point I want to make is about American public opinion because we know that public opinion is very important in driving foreign policy in United States. I think it's important to think about American foreign policy and public opinion before and after Sept.11. Now the question is, what kind of general lesson will the public draw from both the attacks of Sept. 11 and United States' response? There are two important kinds of responses and they are each represented in the public today.

One response would be for the American public to conclude that Sept. 11 and its aftermath suggest that the United States needs to be far more multilateral in its foreign polic--it must stress multilateral cooperation. Recent polls suggest that as of now about two-thirds of Americans interpret Sept. 11 in that way. But roughly onethird of Americans draw a different conclusion. For these people Sept. 11 suggest that maybe the United States is too involved in the world.

Maybe it is engaged too much, and as a result, it has brought all sorts of problems on to the United States.

Interestingly this division in public opinion mirrors the division within the Bush administration: with foreign policy officials such as Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld, the National Security Adviser Condy Rice, and arguably the president himself, tending more toward the side of unilateralism, and other officials, Secretary of State Colin Powell, for example, tending more toward the side of multilateralism.

The important thing for us all to watch is how these public opinion "coalitions" move in the months and years ahead. Because ultimately in the United States, foreign policy decisions are tied very much to the sensitivities of the public. Today the balance is probably two-thirds multilateral, onethird unilateral. It will be interesting to see if it remains that way.