PACIFIC PERSPECTIVE: THE BUSH/KAIFU SUMMIT : A Japan That Actually May Say <i> No</i> : Growing Apart

Today’s Bush-Kaifu summit will have to deal with the fact that bilateral discussions are widening in scope while U.S. and Japanese interests seem to be growing apart. This means that Japan is fast becoming a paramount policy problem. Five issues likely to be on the agenda help make this point.

-- Japanese authorities last month got U.S. rice growers to remove their product from display at a U.S. trade show in Japan by threatening to arrest them. This incident unequivocally says “no” to U.S. requests to lift a ban on rice imports. The United States needs another answer if it is to end Japanese protectionism in agriculture and bring world trade talks to a successful conclusion.

-- The Persian Gulf conflict brought out differences that will be hard to reconcile. The United States saw an opportunity to forge a new partnership with Japan to protect Western access to oil, as well as preserve U.N.-endorsed norms of peaceful international conduct. Japan made significant financial contributions only under external pressure. Even with constitutional military constraints, the question is whether Japan even wants to reinvigorate its partnership with the United States after the end of the Cold War.

-- Mikhail Gorbachev’s visit to Tokyo later this month is important. The Soviets seem willing to return two of four disputed islands; meanwhile there are reports that Japan would give $28 billion in loans if the Soviets concede the remaining two. This would radically alter the Northeast Asian economic and security scene.

-- Japanese offers of aid to China, Vietnam and North Korea--motivated by economic interests as well as a desire for a more central role in regional diplomacy--have consistently run ahead of a U.S. policy that has linked normal ties with the West to human rights and the solution of regional conflicts. Bush will have to seek Japanese cooperation in these areas.

Finally, Malaysia’s call for an East Asian economic group led by Japan was echoed in March by China. This proposed group could be the Asian counterpart to the developing U.S.-Canada-Mexico free-trade area and the European Community. This call makes explicit what has been mostly implicit in Japanese policy toward Asia, namely, the creation of Japanese leadership over an Asian economy consisting of the ASEAN members, Asia’s newly industrialized countries and China. Exclusion of the United States from this group could affect U.S. economic and security interests in Asia.

In the context of growing Japanese economic power, vanishing Japanese fear of China and the Soviet Union and deepening U.S. economic dependence on Japan, the hard truth is that Japan might politely ignore some, if not all, of Bush’s requests. The question now is how the United States can deal with the new Japan that actually may say “no.”