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By Robert J. Samuelson
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Japanese Prime Minister Toshiki Kaifu met with President Bush last week to repair U.S.-Japanese relations. The Japanese are exasperated that, after pledging $13 billion for the gulf war, Americans are still upset. A Business Week poll, for example, reports that 73 percent of Americans believe Japan didn't contribute its "fair share." The Japanese now fear U.S. anger will hurt trade and economic relations.
All this sounds familiar, because it resembles so many previous U.S.-Japanese "crises." I once naively thought that someday there might be a "solution" to the U.S.-Japan "problem." Wrong. There's no single "problem" capable of a "solution." There is instead a permanent state of anxiety, reflecting different cultures and world views.
The Japanese are correct when they say we're jealous of their success and, at times, try to punish them for it. But Americans are equally correct when we sense that Japan's spirit is to take more from the world than it gives. There's a touch of selfishness and amorality. This, and not the precise amount of Japan's financial contribution, is the basic American discontent crystallized by the gulf crisis.
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It is crucial that we identify and protect our vital interests in dealing with Japan. But we should not forget our common interests or blame them for our shortcomings. Our problem with Japan is not:
The trade deficit. Since 1986, it's actually dropped about 25 percent to $41 billion in 1990. Meanwhile, U.S. exports to Japan have roughly doubled. With a lower dollar, the deficit may shrink further. Although many Japanese markets remain too closed, a deficit is not an automatic problem.
Our "dependence" on Japanese capital. This is a non-issue. There may be some industries where we want to limit foreign ownership. But otherwise, foreign investment - including Japanese investment - doesn't hurt the U.S. economy. (In addition, it's abating. In 1990, new foreign investment totaled $49 billion, down from $170 billion in 1989, says the Securities Industry Association.)
Japanese technological advances. Aside from wounded national pride, exactly how are we harmed when the Japanese develop a better car, television or VCR that is quickly imported or produced in the United States? Some U.S. companies and workers suffer from Japanese competition, but our overall living standards aren't lowered.
What we learned from the gulf crisis is much simpler: we can't rely on Japan in the clutch. The Japanese aren't yet dependable allies. Their financial contribution was adequate. But it was achieved only after much political haggling and without any indication that most of the Japanese public grasped that their country's vital interests were at stake in the gulf. Japan's support was intended mainly to placate the United States, its largest export market.
Our foreign policy rests on enlightened self-interest. We do some things that do not bring immediate gain - indeed, as in the gulf crisis, often involve immediate risks - because we hope to create a world that allows us to live in peace and prosperity. This is not altruistic, but it does identify our interests in a broader global context. By contrast, the Japanese assume that someone else (meaning us) will take care of the world order and that they can attend mainly to their immediate economic interests.
The result is a constant tension in our relationship. The Japanese must almost always be prodded into actions that involve collective benefits for the world. There's little sense of responsibility: the Japanese, for example, do not think they should promote an open world trading system (from which they benefit) by spontaneously permitting rice imports. This does not separate Japan from most countries, but most countries are not as important as Japan.
You can debate the origins of these fractious attitudes: Japan's isolation until the mid-19th century or its need of imported food and raw materials, Americans' historic moralism or economic self-sufficiency. It does not matter. What matters is our response. The first task is to avoid becoming dependent on Japan for critical military technology. This is a messy problem, because these technologies (electronics, aerospace, advanced materials) are often embedded in nondefense industries. But we may have to be more aggressive in selectively subsidizing some U.S. companies to ensure they remain capable in some areas.
To do otherwise is to run real, if ill-defined, risks. The clearest warning of this comes from Shintaro Ishihara who suggests, in his best-selling "The Japan That Can Say No," that Japan might sell electronic chips to the Soviets to tip the global balance of power. What's disturbing here is not the specific proposal but its unstated assumption: there's no moral difference between Americans and Soviets; Japan should strike the best deal for itself. The unavoidable implication is that, somewhere in the hazy future and under circumstances that may now be unimaginable, the Japanese would gladly sell us out.
It's an illusion to think that Ishihara's views are wildly unrepresentative. They reflect "deep currents of popular Japanese thinking about the United States," notes Harvard sociologist Ezra Vogel in the U.S. edition's foreword.
But we should not use legitimate doubts about the Japanese to distance ourselves from Japan. At worst, this promotes crude nationalism and Japan-bashing. At best, it justifies costly protectionism and industrial subsidies. The first demeans us (just as labeling all U.S. criticisms "racist" demeans the Japanese), and the second does not serve our interests. Commerce with Japan benefits us. It sharpens our companies and technology. Japan's achievements command respect; we cannot learn from them by denying them. We should be more candid in acknowledging Japan's progress in opening its markets and less fearful about our propects. The imagery of our becoming a Japanese colony vastly underestimates our strengths.
Beyond economics, commerce with Japan is in our strategic interests. It ties them more to us than us to them. The economic connections are now more important, precisely because the gulf crisis showed the weakness of other ties. "We did as much as possible as quickly as possible. But this was not understood elsewhere," Kaifu has complained. Yes it was - and that's the problem.
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