TOKYO -- U.S. policy makers seem to have given up on Japan, laments
Michael Green, a Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations in New
York.
The exasperation is at least premature, the expert says, for by most
yardsticks, Japan
is more important to U.S. interests than is China. This is important as
U.S. Republicans choose a Presidential candidate and think more intensely
about foreign policy.
"Who can take a country seriously when its June 25 elections featured
almost no debate on how to revitalize a stagnant economy," Green asks
rhetorically and facetiously in a paper released on the internet this
week by the Foreign Policy Research Institute.
The popular disbelief continues, Green says:
"When the electorate returned to power one of the most unpopular
coalition governments and Prime Ministers in post-war Japanese history?
When the bureaucracy stubbornly refuses to reduce the access fees
that NTT charges for internet service, even though information
technology is the
only hope for Japan to achieve higher productivity to compensate for
a rapidly aging society?
"The common wisdom in Washington is that Japan is incapable of
'leadership.'
"All eyes turn instead to the problem of managing Asia's new rising
power -- China."
But the common wisdom is misguided, Green says.
The United States tends to define Japanese "leadership" as Tokyo
doing what Washington wants without Washington having to tell Tokyo to do
so. The prospects for
that sort of "leadership" may not be very good.
However, Green says, the prospects for Japan becoming a more
significant player
in the international system are very high.
"To understand why requires a view not from Washington, but from Tokyo."
Green is the latest in a small group of American specialists to come
forward with the view that
Japan is more important to U.S. interests in Asia than China. Another is
Richard Armitage, an adviser to Republican presidential candidate George
W. Bush.
"Our strategic partner is Japan," Armitage told the Far Eastern Economic
Review in May. "It hosts our military presence and allows us to project
our strategy throughout Asia."
Green's thesis starts with the essential realization that whether or
not Japan's GDP reaches its potential growth rate of 1 to 2 percent
in the decade ahead or not, Tokyo sits on considerable assets in the
international arena.
Japan is the second largest contributor to the United Nations, the
International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank
-- and just about every other multilateral institution that sustains
the world order.
Second, Japan's economic weight in Asia continues to be massive.
Despite the "rise" of China, two-thirds of Asian GDP is Japanese, and
Japan's economy is seven times the size
of China's.
Third, Japan is increasingly moving as an independent strategic
player in the region. Polls show that support for the U.S.-Japan alliance
is higher in both countries than it has been since 1986, but there is a
growing consensus among Japanese that their nation must have more
ownership of the alliance.
This shift is occurring because of generational change; fatigue
over apologizing for history; insecurity caused by economic stagnation;
and the danger thrust in the Japanese consciousness by events like the
1996 Taiwan Strait crisis and the 1998 launch of North Korea's Taepodong
missile.
From the U.S.perspective, as Green notes, "Japan is a good ally.
It is not quite as strategically
reliable as Great Britain, but it has rarely undermined U.S. foreign or
security policy the way other middle powers like France or even Canada
have.
"The United States should not squander its unique moment by letting
hubris and disinterest push Japan in the wrong direction."
Veteran diplomats know that working with Japan is mind-boggling,
labor-intensive, and extremely challenging. But U.S. strategic interests -- not to mention
global stability -- leave no other choice.
Edward Neilan (eneilan@crisscross.com) is a veteran journalist, based in Tokyo, who covers East Asia and writes weekly for World Tribune.com.