1999 (39 page)

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 nations 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.

The leadership side of the equation is already taking shape.

At a meeting of Western leaders many years ago de Gaulle said of a postwar Japanese Prime Minister, “Who is this transistor salesman?” It was a brutally revealing characterization. In 1967 Lee Kwan Yew of Singapore struck a similar theme when he said to me, “The Japanese inevitably will again play a major role in the world. They are a great people. They cannot and should not be satisfied with a world role that limits them to making better transistor radios and sewing machines, and teaching other Asians how to grow rice.”

De Gaulle and Lee, both giants among world leaders, had hit upon an important point. With the exception of Yoshida, whose high-handed style brought derision from his left-wing opponents but gave a lift to his war-weary people at a time they desperately needed it, most Japanese premiers have been decidedly low-key. The “low posture” that Japan took in the world called for a low-posture style of leadership. In the last three decades Japan has had many outstanding leaders, all of whom faithfully followed the policies Yoshida set in place: free enterprise, economic growth, stable government, and close security ties with the United States. They were the policies and the leaders Japan needed for its first step toward recovering from war.

During the five-year tenure of Yasuhiro Nakasone—the first former Foreign Minister to serve as Prime Minister in the postwar era—Japan took the second step. It began to take on more of the responsibility for its defenses. And for the first time a Japanese leader sought to be an active, outspoken member of the exclusive fraternity of leaders of major democratic powers. Nakasone served longer than any premier since the legendary Sato and Yoshida, and
he moved his country forward just as decisively. He set a new standard for Japanese premiers. It is to be hoped that his highly skilled successor, Noboru Takeshita, will continue in the new Nakasone tradition.

Since the end of World War II Japanese prime ministers have held formal governmental authority, while the role of the previously all-powerful Emperor has been strictly ceremonial. Still, the role the Japanese monarchy plays as a unifying force should never be underestimated. One of General MacArthur's wisest decisions as he molded the new Japanese democracy was to permit the Emperor to remain. When Emperor Hirohito finally passes from the scene, Japan will have lost a spiritual leader who deserves great credit for the progress his country has made.

Many people outside Japan have considered the Emperor just a pleasant nonentity, puttering around in his garden or indulging in his hobby of oceanography. No one who knew him could possibly have shared that view. I met him twice, in 1953 when I was Vice President and again in 1971 when I was President. I was deeply impressed by his gentle, courteous demeanor. But while his manner was low-key he showed a keen interest in and understanding of international issues.

Hirohito was responsible for bringing the war to the earliest-possible end by urging his countrymen to lay down their arms after the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, thus preventing a lengthy guerrilla war of resistance. His consistency and equanimity helped his people rebuild their country from defeat in war to the status of an economic giant in peace. He had a ready grasp of the challenges Japan faced and also of his responsibility to inspire his people to meet them.

In the long run the health of any alliance depends not only upon the qualities of its leaders but upon the development of an alliance mentality. In the case of the Western alliance, what is needed is a more equitable relationship between its two most powerful members: Japan and the United States.

Japanese and Americans have yet to find what is known in politics as a level playing field on which each can deal with the other as equals confident of their equality. Too many cultural obstacles and bad memories remain. In Japan there is still a residue of the
fear of Western influences that kept it in isolation for centuries before Commodore Perry forced the door open. Even as they perfect the game of baseball in the summer, belt out choruses of the “Ode to Joy” in the winter, and eat hundreds of thousands of Big Macs each year, the Japanese resist any Western influences that seep very far below the most superficial level. In fact, their enjoyment of Western pastimes and fads is magnified by the constant awareness of their foreignness.

For their part Americans have their own suspicions of the Japanese. Even if it were not for the memory of World War II, the vast cultural differences between East and West would remain. Fashionable young Americans know all about sushi but could not begin to fathom Shinto, the ancient faith still observed by millions of Japanese. American farmers are understandably resentful because the Japanese government restricts the importing of their $180-a-ton rice, but few Americans realize that the official doctrine of Japan's ruling party is to restrict the importing of rice at least in part because rice grown from Japan's own soil is “the core of our spiritual civilization.” The folkways of Japan remain so obscure to most Westerners that many businessmen bound for Tokyo feel they need to take courses to brush up on which topics of conversation are safe and which are risky and what is expected of a guest in a Japanese home.

We often criticize the Japanese for keeping to themselves culturally and for pursuing their own economic interests too doggedly without regard to the rest of the world, but in many ways Americans are no different. Before the United States entered both world wars most Americans wanted nothing to do with Europe's conflicts even though the forebears of most Americans had come from Europe. Until the end of World War II Americans had far less in common with the Japanese than with the Europeans. Since 1945, however, the United States and Japan have had the common ground of democracy and free enterprise upon which to build. These must be the foundations of the friendship between our two nations.

Our European military and economic partners are our cultural partners as well. With the British we share language, while with the British and with the French and the Germans we have the
common ground of ancestry, philosophy, literature, and music. But the finest element of our European heritage is political liberty. We did not invent it; we inherited it. And we have in turn shared it with Japan. One of the greatest challenges for the United States in the future is to recognize that because of our common commitment to liberty we have just as strong cultural ties with the Japanese as with the Europeans.

But it is not just a one-way street. The Japanese must open up to us, too—not just their markets, but themselves. They must learn not to fear “Western contamination”; they must realize that the cultural and racial homogeneity that has been one of their greatest strengths may be a hindrance in their effort to become an integral part of a heterogeneous worldwide alliance of freedom and prosperity.

We
are
different culturally, and those differences are not going to be removed—nor should they be. The cream does not come to the top in homogenized milk. In the long run, if each partner contributes his particular strengths in the common quest for peace and prosperity, both will emerge immeasurably stronger.

Japan's cautiousness toward America may be the result in part both of the residue of the war and of the regrettable fact that many American politicians find it far too easy to instruct the Japanese how to behave. As the most powerful member of our alliance we are apt to conclude mistakenly that we are also the most wise. Sometimes our military and economic power and our willingness to project it in the world have made us suspect among weaker nations, and often we project intellectual arrogance as well. From our commentators and congressmen and senators the advice to the Japanese comes fast and furious: “Spend more on defense. Inflate your economy to create more demand for our goods. Spend more on developmental aid in the Third World. Commit funds and moral support to our efforts in the Persian Gulf.”