Revisiting the nexus of identities and norms, this article argues that actors’ attitude and policies are not the automatic reflection of a salient identity but the articulation of what I call ‘identity norms’, defined as standards of appropriate behaviour for in-group actors vis-à-vis an out-group. Central to my argument is that identities become straw men at times of momentous change, whilst identity norms, crafted and propagated through an intersubjective understanding amongst different actors, emerge as a guiding principle in state-to-state relations. By illustrating the trajectories of reconciliation between North and South Korea, this article examines the anomalies of how antagonistic states forge friendly ties.

How do state identities and their accompanying norms affect security behaviour especially when states consider forming alliances or alignments? Are middle powers different from great powers in their security norms and preferences? This article identifies dependency and activism as two ‘identity norms’ that constitute and reproduce medium-sized states as bona fide middle powers. This article argues that, due to the identity norms of a middle power, Japan and South Korea are reluctant to form a bilateral alliance between themselves and their efforts to socialize with China do not necessarily contradict their security relationships with the United States. The first section focuses on the norm of dependency to illustrate whether Japan and South Korea sought to strengthen bilateral alignment in the event of major security crises, provoked by China and North Korea. It argues that a middle power is not disposed to strengthen alignment with another middle power in the event of a national security crisis because of its entrenched norm of dependency on a great power. The second section elaborates the norm of middle power activism. Both Japan and South Korea have engaged in diplomatic efforts to enmesh China in a number of multilateral security mechanisms in order to hedge against the relative decline of US influences in East Asia.

This article aims to illustrate the trajectory of Japan's security identity transposition. As one of the catalysts in identity transposition, it focuses on the constitutive roles of norms regulating Japan's overseas dispatches of the Self-Defense Forces (SDF). Whilst keeping the identities of 'a peace state' and 'a civilian power', the authors argue that Japan has crafted a new security identity after the end of the cold war and the 9/11 terrorist attacks*namely, 'an international humanitarian power'. As evidence of this transposition, the authors illustrate a dramatic increase in the number of overseas SDF dispatches on humanitarian missions, and the shift of domestic and foreign responses to it. The authors note that Japan has been on the road to remilitarisation and internationalisation during the past four decades through the enactments of laws for overseas SDF dispatches, the general public's shift of attitude on the SDF's roles, the evolution of the alliance in a more operational direction, and the creation of threats from North Korea

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