U.S. Asia Policy Places Top Priority on Ties With Japan

As the Bush Administration begins to put together its policy toward Asia, U.S. officials say that the single, overriding priority for the next four years is to avoid anything that would disturb the close American ties to Japan.

“Japan is No. 1. If that relationship sours, things can get very nasty,” said one Administration strategist. “. . . We have to avoid doing stupid things, like driving the Japanese away.” Like other foreign policy officials in the Bush Administration, he said he is concerned that economic disputes might alienate Japan from the United States.

In contrast with Japan, China--which has occupied a central position in American foreign policy and strategic thinking for most of the last two decades--has become much less important. One Administration official said he expects the Chinese to be preoccupied by internal political and economic problems over the next several years and to have a more “low-keyed” relationship with the United States.

“In the 1970s and the early 1980s, we (the United States) tended to think that stability in Asia led not through Tokyo but through Beijing,” said another senior Administration official. He acknowledged that U.S. foreign policy now has become more dependent on maintaining close links to Japan than it ever was.

One factor underlying the emerging Bush Administration policy, of course, is the belief that Japan’s economic power can help to buttress American interests in Asia at a time when the United States is under severe budgetary constraints. Japanese aid to the Philippines, for example, is considered crucial to ensuring the continued American military presence there.

But some Administration officials acknowledge that another important factor is Japan’s growing military power.

“The military budget in Japan is presently, or will soon be, the third largest in the world,” said a senior U.S. official.

“For example, Japan has 50 destroyer-type vessels and will soon go up to 60. By way of comparison, our own 7th Fleet (in the Pacific) has about two dozen. When you look at aircraft, Japan has about 300 modern interceptors. That’s the same number we have defending the continental United States.”

Some critics have begun to complain that the Administration is failing to develop long-range policies and strategies toward Asia that might take into account the region’s growing prosperity and the new foreign policy initiatives of Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev.

“The present Administration policy on Asia seems to be one of laissez faire,” said Thomas W. Robinson of the American Enterprise Institute. “The United States is not taking any action to lead the transition away from an American-centered group of states and a Soviet-centered group of states.”

“I think they’ve got to begin thinking about what we do if, over the next two years, the Chinese and Soviets begin reducing their force levels and maybe the Soviets offer Japan a better deal than they have so far on the northern territories,” said Paul Kreisberg of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

(At the end of World War II, the Soviet Union took over the Kurile Islands from Japan. The Japanese government considers the four southernmost islands in the chain to be its own northern territories and has refused to sign a peace treaty with the Soviet Union because of this dispute over the ownership of the islands.)

Some Changes Expected

Bush Administration officials hold out the prospect of some changes in U.S. policy toward Asia over the next four years, however. For example, they acknowledge the possibility that the United States eventually might move to normalize relations with Vietnam, if Vietnam proceeds with plans to withdraw its troops from Cambodia and helps to bring about a settlement of Cambodia’s political future.

But in general, it now appears that President Bush’s policy toward Asia will be one of holding the line--seeking to preserve the U.S. bases in the Philippines, the American troops in South Korea and, most of all, the close U.S. security ties with Japan.

“The West has basically triumphed in Asia. No one talks about communism as a model anymore,” said one Bush Administration official. “But there remains the Soviet military problem. We still have to look at the Soviet military for what it is, rather than what we’d like it to be. We have to maintain our alliance system and keep it strong, in the context of a blurred (Soviet) threat.”

Some Asia specialists believe that eventually, the Bush Administration will begin to withdraw some of the 43,000 American troops now stationed in South Korea.

“Over the next four years, there will be a change in South Korea,” said Robert D. Hormats, a former State Department official. “Whatever the change is should be worked out between (South) Korea, the United States and Japan. But at some point in time, the Koreans are going to want our troops to be scaled down.”

Conditions Changes in Korea

Robert A. Scalapino, director of UC Berkeley’s Institute of East Asian Studies, wrote recently that “conditions (in Korea) are changing. By the beginning of the 1990s, South Korea should have the military capacity to deter any North Korean attack, especially on the ground.”

However, Bush Administration officials make clear that they hope to avoid any major reductions in the U.S. military presence in South Korea.

“One of our problems will be to convince Congress to continue our policy of forward deployment (the stationing of U.S. troops overseas),” said one U.S. official. “It’s cheaper for us to have those troops in South Korea than it would be to have them at home in the United States.”

Both in South Korea and in the Philippines, Administration officials say they will try to nurture the perception that the presence of U.S. troops plays a stabilizing role by helping to keep out other Asian military powers.

The agreement under which the United States operates Clark Air Base and the Subic Bay Naval Base in the Philippines expires in 1991. The Bush Administration will have to negotiate a new agreement to maintain these two bases, which are considered among the most strategically important in the world.

But senior officials say that neither the bases in the Philippines nor anything else in Asia is as important to the United States as maintaining a close relationship with Japan.

‘Security Assured’

“If we can stay in lock-step with Japan through the first decade of the 21st Century, then security in the Pacific is assured,” observed one Administration expert on Asia. “If not, we have problems.”

In its first months in office, the Bush Administration has been severely divided over economic policy toward Japan.

Officials at the Commerce Department and the U.S. Trade Representative’s Office have been urging the Administration to advance U.S. economic interests more forcefully against Tokyo. On the other hand, officials at the State and Defense departments and the National Security Council have warned that the Administration should not offend the Japanese by pressing U.S. economic interests too strongly.

By all indications, those divisions within the Administration still exist.

“Security concerns are not as great as they were five years ago,” one Commerce Department official involved in Asian policy observed last week. “We’ve got to pay more attention to the economic aspects of our relationship (with Japan). . . . The question that awaits us now is: How willing we are to push the Japanese to be more accommodating? We are Japan’s largest market, and continued access to the U.S. market is crucial to their long-term stability.”

‘Japan’s Largest Customer’

By contrast, at the State Department, one senior U.S. official said in a recent interview: “There’s an attitude around Washington that we are Japan’s largest customer, and so where else can they go? I think that’s a dangerous attitude, because the care and feeding of our relationship with Japan is our top priority.”

Some Bush Administration officials say they believe, or hope, that the economic disputes with Japan are only temporary, while the close military and security ties will prove more lasting.

“Our (U.S.) policy has to be to manage the short-term friction with Japan while we get our (trade and budget) deficits down and get the Japanese to open their markets in a timely fashion,” one Asia specialist in the Administration said.