The most important ingredients in the U.S.–Japan relationship, as it is between any two friendly nations, are trust and respect. Both sides must accept that while we have been and will continue to be tough economic competitors, we are partners in preserving peace and should act accordingly. Among the hundreds of government leaders I have met over the past forty years there were none whose personal friendship I cherished more than the Japanese prime ministers I was privileged to meet—Yoshida, Ikeda, Kishi, Fukuda, and Sato.
Secondary crises such as the trade imbalance or fluctuations in the values of currency should not be permitted to interfere fundamentally with the relationship between the two strongest economic powers in the free world. These occasional irritants are nothing compared to the turmoil that would result from a serious rupture in our relations.
The United States and Japan are mature nations that can withstand some heavy weather in their relations. But because of the special character of our postwar relationship and the differences between our two cultures, both sides must tread carefully. Smashing Toshiba radios on the steps of the Capitol—as a group of American congressmen did last year when a subsidiary of the Japanese company, apparently without the government’s or the parent company’s knowledge, sold key defense technology to the Soviets—is not the way one member of an alliance should behave during a dispute with another.
As they are about the trade issue, some of Japan’s critics in the United States are too quick to jump on Japan for adhering to the forty-year-old American-imposed proscriptions on military activities. It is true that the balance of power in the world has changed profoundly since World War II. But we should not expect the Japanese to deal with the psychological scars left by the war as easily as the balance of power. Relations between nations can change with the grasp of a hand, the flourish of a pen, or the flash of a bomb. Relations between people take longer.
When I visited Tokyo as Vice President in 1953, Japanese newspapers gave eight-column headlines to my statement that the United States had “made a mistake” in imposing constitutional restrictions on defense spending on the Japanese after World War II. I believed then that Japan should do more to provide for its own defense. Because of Japan’s enormously increased wealth and the fact that the Soviet Union is “reaching out its hand” in the Pacific, the case for what I urged thirty-five years ago is far stronger today. But there are understandable reasons why the Japanese have been slow to take such advice.
In the 1950s, with full American acquiescence, Japan adopted a policy that permitted it to devote virtually all of its resources to its domestic economy. Military expenditures were kept at a minimum, both because of Japan’s made-in-America constitution, which strictly limits its military activities, and because of our protective nuclear umbrella. But as the growth of our economy slowed in the 1970s and the growth of our defense budget shrank after the Vietnam War, Japan’s low defense spending became an issue in the United States. The key slogan of the argument was, “No more free ride.”
What many fail to realize is that the Japanese are still not psychologically equipped for a major military buildup, for reasons Americans ought to be able to grasp. Recently, and especially during the tenure of Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone, the Japanese have begun to emerge from the shadow of their shattering defeat in 1945. But to understand why for over three decades the Japanese were reluctant to extend themselves militarily and why to this day they remain profoundly ambivalent about defense spending, all we have to do is examine what happened in the United States in the wake of Vietnam.
For five years after our failure in Indochina the United States became increasingly isolationist as military budgets were slashed and every use of American forces abroad was examined with such a hypercritical eye that the U.S. was effectively rendered impotent as a world power. Today, thirteen years after the end of the war, even the smallest commitment of American military power to protect our interests in Central America or the Persian Gulf is bitterly criticized by the media and by isolationists in Congress. Such is the impact that defeat in war can have. Before we preach to the Japanese—who lost 1.2 million people in battle in World War II—about devoting more to defense, we should remember the paralyzing bout of indecision and isolationism that the United States suffered after losing 55,000 men, and for a time our national pride, in Vietnam.
To the extent that Japan’s reluctance to rearm is a product of the traumas of defeat in war, we should sympathize with them. To the extent that it is a rationalization that enables them to enjoy the status of an economic superpower without the responsibilities of a military one, it is unacceptable. While the Japanese reluctance to rearm is to an extent understandable, it is also true that by depending on the United States for its security Japan has had the luxury of diverting more of its resources to building an economy that now competes with, and in some areas outcompetes, our own.
There are three purely practical reasons why the Japanese must eventually abandon the essentially passive role they have played on the world scene ever since it was imposed on them by defeat in war and by policies established by the victors. Each reason has to do not only with our national interest but with theirs.
First, the United States that took the responsibility for defending Japan controlled almost 50 percent of the world’s economy. The United States that sustains that commitment today controls only 27 percent. As a result, Japan’s free ride on defense is becoming far too tempting a target for American Japan-bashers. Eventually, if such resentment spreads, our critically important and mutually beneficial relationship with Japan could be harmed.
Second, Japan must realize that, for a great power, playing a role on the world stage is not a privilege; it is a responsibility. There is nothing pleasant about having to divert resources to defense spending and foreign aid that could be applied to problems at home. We do it because we have to, not because we want to. This is the burden that weighs on any prosperous and free society that wants to protect its interests in a world that is by and large inhospitable to freedom. The United States was an isolationist power before World War II; the war made it a world power in spite of its natural inclinations. Japan must also rise to do its duty as a world power.
The third and by far most important reason is that unless Japan does do its duty as a major power, it can never hope to have real national security.
Geographically Japan is an island. But if it continues to attempt to function as an island geopolitically, it cannot survive. A commentator has said that Japan strives to be “no man’s enemy, and a salesman to all.” This is a worthy but hopelessly impractical goal. The reason is brutally simple: the position Japan occupies on the globe makes it a de-facto target of the Soviet Union. Japan plays an integral part both in Soviet planning for a possible war in the Pacific and in the Western alliance’s scheme for deterring and if necessary fighting such a war.
The Soviet conventional buildup in the Far East over the last decade has been ominous. Between a quarter and a third of Soviet military power is now aimed at the Pacific theater. In 1976 its Asia force was 31 tank divisions, 2,000 combat aircraft, and a 755-ship Navy. Today it has 41 divisions, 85 new Backfire bombers armed with nuclear missiles, 2,400 combat aircraft, and 840 ships. Even after its medium-range nuclear missiles are removed from Asia according to the terms of the proposed INF treaty, every key target in Japan will be covered by the Soviet Union’s strategic nuclear weapons.
Even more troubling is that, Gorbachev’s Asian “peace offensive” notwithstanding, the Russians have been flexing their substantial muscle. In 1986 Soviet aircraft intruded into Japanese airspace 350 times; estimates were even higher for 1987. In 1986 the Soviets also staged exercises in the Kurile Islands, which they seized from Japan in 1948, that simulated an invasion of Japan’s northernmost island of Hokkaido.
Under Nakasone, Japan’s response to the Soviet buildup was admirable. Caught between the Japanese people’s desire for better relations with the Soviets and his own realisti
c assessment of the Soviet threat, the Prime Minister put national interest ahead of his political interest time and time again. For the first time Japan has participated with the United States in full-scale three-service military exercises. It has agreed to guarantee the security of sea-lanes up to 1,000 nautical miles from its coastline. It has purchased and deployed sophisticated American F-15 fighters. It has tacitly allowed into its ports U.S. warships that are presumably carrying nuclear weapons, in spite of its understandable discomfiture about such weapons. It has shared intelligence with the United States to an unprecedented extent, agreed to participate in SDI research, and—probably most important—finally exceeded the symbolic one-percent-of-GNP restriction on its defense budget.
Taken together, these policies comprised the biggest step forward in the area of national defense in Japan’s postwar history. Some were toughed through by Nakasone in spite of brutal opposition from his political opponents. The measures were positive and encouraging, but they were not enough. Eventually, not necessarily today, but in the foreseeable future, the Japanese must do far more. They must do it not for our sake but for their own. They must do it because of the simple, overwhelming imperative of national survival.
In the short term a major military buildup by Japan would cause more problems than it would solve: it would relieve a relatively insignificant portion of the American burden for defending Japan while at the same time fostering regional unrest, especially among nations such as China and Korea that fear a militarily resurgent Japan. But in the long term it is both inevitable and proper that Japan take on a military role in Asia commensurate with its economic power. In view of Japan’s actions during and before World War II, China’s and Korea’s misgivings are understandable, but each should ponder what it fears more: Japan’s 180,000-man Self-Defense Force or the Soviets’ 785,000-man Asian army, Japan’s 270-plane air force or the 2,700 aircraft in the Soviets’ Far Eastern department.
The new postwar world demands a reassessment of the balance of power in Asia. For the foreseeable future, the stronger Japan is, the safer Asia will be. Japan is the indispensable linchpin for any strategy for peace in Asia.
Today Japan’s Self-Defense Forces could hold out as few as two days against a surprise Soviet conventional invasion. Some commentators who counsel against a major Japanese buildup say that the United States’s security guarantee is sufficient to stop such a Soviet move. Regrettably, it would not be. Since the United States does not have enough ground forces in place to match the Soviets, stopping such an invasion would be difficult at best. The United States would quickly be faced with the necessity of considering the use of nuclear weapons based at sea or on the American mainland.
While these weapons are loaded and ready, the danger is that the Soviets would see the threat of their use as an empty cannon. The concern that the United States would not risk a nuclear World War III by using U.S.-based strategic nuclear weapons against a Soviet army marching on Western Europe was the principal reason the United States deployed intermediate-range nuclear weapons in Europe in 1979. The same holds true in the Far East, only more so. An American President who used nuclear weapons to halt a Soviet conventional attack on Japan would be risking a massive nuclear attack on the United States—a risk a President would be unlikely to take. The Soviets know this. As a result, Japan today is dangerously vulnerable to such an attack. Eventually Japan must develop the capacity to defend itself by itself against Soviet conventional forces. It does not have to match the Soviets man to man. It only has to do enough to make a Soviet invasion too costly to contemplate.
Japan cannot undertake a full-scale military buildup now. The memory of World War II is still too strong among its neighbors. But that will change—especially if Japan begins to play a greater role as a supplier of development aid and investment to Third World nations in Asia and elsewhere. When Japan shows the world that it is willing to invest in a peaceful, prosperous, and free Asia, its neighbors’ misgivings about its military posture will slowly but surely fade. If it follows this course in the twenty-first century Japan will be a true superpower—willing and able to defend its own interests and those of its friends and allies in the Pacific region.
In the past the Japanese have been criticized for not spending more on aid to developing nations, since they spend substantially less than the United States on defense—just over one percent of their GNP compared with 7 percent for the U.S. To their great credit the Japanese in recent years have bolstered their foreign aid even as many other strapped industrial nations have cut back. In 1987 Japan announced new programs totaling $30 billion on top of its $8 billion a year in regular aid, most of which goes to Asian nations that in turn trade heavily with Japan. This is a welcome step, but it does not go far enough.
The basic question is how much each country in the alliance spends on national security, not just for the military portion of its national-security budget. The United States spends 8 percent of its GNP on national security, of which 6 percent is for military expenditures and 2 percent is for economic aid. Japan spends just 2 percent of its GNP on national security, which includes one percent for its military and one percent for its basic economic-aid program. Japan should match the U.S. total for national security by allocating enough for economic aid to make up for its shortfall in military expenditures.
As labor costs rise at home, Japan has begun to reach into the the developing world for cheaper labor markets, just as American multinational corporations have done. Depending on how these investments are made and managed, they can either help the developing world or hurt it. As American economic power spread over the world after World War II the myth of the “ugly American” arose. Above all Japan must avoid the “ugly Japanese” syndrome. In 1985, a government official in a Southeast Asian country which has good relations with Japan told me, “The trouble with the Japanese is that they are like semiconductors—they take everything in and give nothing in return.” This is an unfair exaggeration, but it points up a potential danger for Japan. Our neighbors in Latin America have often made that same complaint about U.S. multinational corporations. Any rich foreign power, no matter how beneficial its activities in a Third World country, makes an attractive target for left-wing politicians and revolutionaries. Japanese businessmen abroad should not be expected to be philanthropists, but they must conduct their business in a way which does not add fuel to the smoldering ashes of anti-Japanese sentiment among peoples who were victims of Japanese aggression in World War II. If the Japanese play their Asian cards right, they will prove again that an economic superpower whose industrial plant becomes multinational can do immeasurable good both for itself and for the countries in which it operates.
To say Japanese businessmen are not philanthropists is not an insult. Like businessmen everywhere they want to maximize profit, and they do not necessarily want to build up other nations through developmental aid, investment, and technology transfer to the point where those nations will become Japan’s future competitors.
In the long run, though, they inevitably will compete with Japan. Ironically, this is the way the relationship between the United States and Japan developed. After the war Japan’s economy was shattered; now, in large part because of our help, Japan’s economy competes with ours. American businessmen used to complain about the difficulty of competing with Japan’s cheap labor. Now the Japanese are worried about competing with Korea’s cheap labor. In the near future China’s cheap labor will be an awesome challenge to both Japan and the United States.
Within the narrow, parochial framework of trade and profit, Japan’s emergence as a rival of the United States may seem to some to be an unfortunate development. But in the broader context of the East–West struggle, it is a profoundly positive development, because in the community of free nations Japan’s strength complements our own, just as the strong economies of Western Europe do.
Japan must take the same broad view of its own relationships with poorer nations. It does not want these na
tions to slip into the Soviet orbit; if that happens Japan will be compromised strategically and also weakened economically. Miserably poor communist nations are poor markets for the goods of Japan or any other producer nation. For this reason Japan’s economic relations with communist Nicaragua, Cuba, and Vietnam, while perhaps profitable in the short run, will be counterproductive for Japan and the West in the long run. The Soviets use their far-flung outposts to spread tyranny and economic ruin throughout their regions. It would be better for Japan to put less stress on trade with these nations and more on trade with nations that need help to resist the siren song of communism.
Recently Japan has taken the first steps toward easing the debt problems of some Third World nations by refinancing their loans. These actions, together with its increased aid programs, show that Japan recognizes that investing in the future of the developing world is in large part the same as investing in the future of Japan.
It is desirable that Japan begin to play a more active role in world affairs. It is also inevitable. Far better for Japan to share the responsibility and the credit for building a new Pacific peace than to be burdened by the memories of a bloody past. In the United States today there are still thousands of men—some of them leading figures in Congress and elsewhere—who fought the Japanese in World War II. To these and to countless others the idea of a resurgent Japan is an uncomfortable one, just as it is to many in Asia. But in another fifty years, no one alive will remember World War II. In one hundred it will be as remote an event as the Civil War and the Mexican–American War are to Americans today. By then Japan will long since have recognized that as a major world power its destiny is to be answerable to or dependent upon no other nation.
If Japan is to become a full partner in the Western alliance it will need two ingredients besides economic and military power. It will need a more internationalist state of mind and the kind of leaders who are willing to assert Japan’s interests on the world stage.
1999 Page 26