The World : America Is Beating Up on a Country That’s Trying to Please It : Japan: Threatening sanctions may be good politics here, but it won’t make Tokyo more receptive to helping reduce the trade deficit.

The post-Cold War era is tough on U.S. allies.

When Clinton Administration officials said “time is up” and figura tively drew a line in the sand against intolerable international behavior, they were not threatening unilateral action against the gang of Haitians who prevented U.S. troops from landing in Haiti to help implement a U.S.-brokered agreement transferring power from military to civilian authorities. Or the North Korean government that, despite agreeing to international inspections of seven nuclear facilities, continues to dodge questions about its nuclear-weapons capability and ambitions.

No, the Clinton Administration was targeting a Japanese leader who has opened up his country’s rice and construction markets, adopted a huge economic-stimulus plan to encourage more Japanese imports and who has committed himself to deregulating his economy and initiating major political reform.

The press conference after the failed talks between President Bill Clinton and Japanese Prime Minister Morihiro Hosokawa did nothing to dispel this impression. Although Clinton was gracious, even effusive, in his praise of Hosokawa, the President made it clear that he has reached the end of his patience with Japan. The subsequent U.S. threat to impose sanctions unless Japan fully opens its cellular-phone market, official hints of renewing the Super 301 provision, which mandates retaliation against trading practices that the United States deems “unfair,” and the implicit warning to drive up the value of the yen as a means of reducing Japan’s trade surplus--all underscore the Administration’s determination to alter the status quo.

These developments, coming immediately after Clinton’s public call for a “period of reflection,” also suggest that the Administration has come to see a hard-line stance on Japan as something of a “win-win” situation: Either Japanese leaders cave in to U.S. demands for specific import targets and numerical indicators of progress in opening the Japanese market, or Clinton gains stature and credibility with the American public for hanging tough. This suggests a second lesson: Slamming Japan is good politics.

Both lessons are products of long-evident changes. The collapse of the Soviet Union and end of the Cold War not only removed the sense of common threat but also weakened the glue cementing U.S.-Japan relations. The advent of global economic interdependence linked the creation of domestic jobs directly to the behavior of America’s key trading partners. And the increased U.S. dependence on trade and exports for stimulating domestic economic growth boosted the importance of opening the Japanese market. Cumulatively, these changes did not so much relegate strategic issues to a back burner as they made critical domestic imperatives key strategic objectives.

Most analysts agree that the overwhelming share of the U.S. trade deficit is caused by macroeconomic factors. They also agree that structural differences between the U.S. and Japanese economies are at the heart of bilateral economic tensions. Addressing these differences will necessarily be a time-consuming process. Even so, it is striking how slow Japan has been in responding.

The dominant U.S. inclination is to ascribe this slowness to the power of Japan’s bureaucracy and the unwillingness of Japanese political leaders to compel change. While there is some truth to this explanation, a number of underlying factors appear more salient:

* Principles . No matter how packaged, U.S. insistence on “objective criteria” and “numerical indicators” for measuring progress in opening Japan’s markets comes across to Japanese as managed trade. Nearly universal Japanese opposition to this approach has enabled the government to claim the moral high ground and bolstered bureaucratic and political opposition to U.S. pressure. The Administration’s inability to redefine the issue in terms that could enlist greater public support in Japan may represent the single greatest failure in U.S. policy.

* Distrust . Japan’s “principled” opposition to managed trade is bolstered by its semiconductor experience: A specified goal was transformed into a minimum level of imports that had to be reached to avoid U.S. sanctions. Underlying this experience, however, are years of mounting resentment of what many Japanese, rightly or wrongly, perceive to be U.S. unilateralism and highhandedness on trade issues, which make Japanese suspicion more resistant to persuasion.

* Recession . It was the misfortune of the Clinton Administration to present its demands for greater shares of Japan’s markets at precisely the time when the Japanese economy is going through a long and deep recession. Whatever willingness Japanese companies might have had in the days of growth and prosperity to consider voluntary import arrangements, their enthusiasm for affirmative-action programs at a time of low domestic growth and strong pressures on Japanese exports is clearly minimal.

* Competitive politics . The establishment of a new coalition government in Japan signified more than the defeat of the Liberal Democratic Party. It marked the advent of competitive politics, with its emphasis on public persuasion and ad hoc alliances. Together with Hosokawa’s weak political base, the end of single-party rule has both complicated consensus-building and exacerbated the task of implementing political change.

All this may suggest a third lesson: A weak Japan is not a strong U.S. partner.

What happens next?

The most likely outcome remains some sort of compromise. Both sides agree that there must be some means for measuring progress in expanding foreign access, and the high stakes weigh against a major rupture. In the end, Japan will exert maximum efforts to reach an accommodation, because the United States is central to Japanese interests.

These efforts are likely to involve the implementation of market-opening measures already proposed in U.S.-Japan discussions, along with plans to stimulate and further deregulate the Japanese economy. Japan will strive to avoid tit-for-tat retaliation, although it may well initiate actions under the General Agreement on Tariff and Trade against any U.S. sanctions. New efforts to find a term other than numerical targets are likely. Tentative indications that the U.S. might not insist on guaranteed market shares and specific sales numbers if some other means of tracking Japanese performance is developed suggest a possible resolution.

But the danger should not be underestimated. Already, charges of “betrayal” and “bad faith” are heard. The slope leading to souring relations is that much slippery. Underlying forces in both societies make political paralysis in Tokyo and gridlock between Japan and the United States a real possibility. A ratcheting up of tensions and some form of trade war cannot be ruled out.

Even if the current impasse is surmounted, however, the collapse of the framework negotiations raises a number of longer-term questions. Is it possible to maintain a mutually advantageous relation in an environment where either of the parties sees at least temporary political payoffs from its deterioration? Can we move away from defining U.S.-Japan relations so singularly in terms of trade and approach the relationship as a critical means of extending our global interests? As we look to the 21st Century, what kind of world do we want to see develop and what role do U.S.-Japan ties play in facilitating its development?

Once U.S. officials get done patting themselves on their backs for having avoided a “bad” agreement, and Japanese leaders get over their rush at having finally “said no” to Uncle Sam, they should address such questions.*