In a Tense Relationship, Small Slights Hurt

As the clock ticks down on President Clinton’s June trip to China--the first for an American president since 1989--a melancholy story is emerging that Japanese officials are ambivalent about even seeing in print.

Not one Japanese politician or newspaper, predicts Asahi Evening News executive editor Yoshio Murakami, will make a big issue of it. Otherwise preoccupied with their still-huge but nose-diving economy, officials here are so angry they scarcely want to talk about the issue, and they worry about appearing insecure, emotional, pouty.

Here’s the problem: Of course, the Japanese, like everyone else in Asia, welcome better China-U.S. relations. But they do not welcome them at the expense of good Japan-U.S. relations, and they fear that the Clinton administration’s decision to exclude even a courtesy stopover in Tokyo after its China sojourn will be misinterpreted, especially by the Japanese people, but also by the Chinese government.

Tokyo is resigned as well as bitter. It now accepts that it has no chance of getting from Clinton at least the briefest of stopovers. So instead of asking, getting turned down and losing face, the Japanese would rather swallow hard and keep their peace. But they are not at peace, for the underlying issue is a profound one that America is going to have to sort out if relations with China continue to warm up.

The developing triangular relationship among Japan, China and the United States has a long way to go before attaining the same level of tortured Machiavellianism as that of the Cold War’s Bermuda Triangle (Soviet Union, China, U.S.). But this new Asia-Pacific triad has its own potential for geopolitical treachery, and the way the June summit is taking shape is starting to rattle the nerves of the member of the triad not invited to the Beijing party.

The complaint in Japan, which is in a state of tremendous upset now anyway, could in unkind hands be depicted as petty. It has many little parts. For starters, the trip is to last six full days. This is quite a lengthy commitment by a U.S. president. Diplomatically speaking, it does match the length of time Chinese President Jiang Zemin spent in America last fall, but, also diplomatically speaking, it is twice as long a stretch as Clinton has ever spent in Japan, the foremost U.S. strategic ally in Asia.

That’s one point. There’s another: President Clinton’s compliance with Jiang’s clever request that, either before or after the trip, the U.S. president stop nowhere else in Asia, as in Japan, is more problematic than it might appear. The worry in Tokyo is that growing tensions in the Japanese-U.S. relationship, epitomized by the public critiques of Japan’s economic policies not only by Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin but also Clinton himself, will prompt the Japanese public to interpret the presidential flyover as a snub.

The Japanese government’s own perspective is more geopolitical: If the president fails to call on Japan on the way back from China, will Beijing’s transparent policy of seeking to drive a wedge between Washington and Tokyo seem to be vindicated? Yes, the Japanese realize, an American president traveling abroad can’t call on everybody, but many may come to suspect that this overflight is no oversight.

On Friday, Tokyo dramatically tried to meet Washington at least halfway on the economic front. A politically embattled Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto, sinking in the domestic polls, unveiled the biggest economic stimulus package in Japan’s history. This $100-billion-plus program, it is hoped, will stimulate the country’s economy and help reinvigorate Southeast Asia’s. It also is designed to quiet what is known here as Washington’s despised “megaphone diplomacy,” the name for the well-known grumblings of, especially, Rubin, architect of U.S. policy toward the Asian crisis and chief public critic in the West of Japan’s inadequate response to it.

Unless Hashimoto falls after upcoming elections and is fated to be no more than Japan’s eighth former prime minister in eight years (as some here are predicting now), Tokyo has now shown its economic cards; this government is unlikely to cave in to more U.S. pressure. Nor will it now risk losing face by officially complaining about Clinton’s travel plans. But when Hashimoto meets Clinton at the summit of industrialized nations in England in May, the American president should bring it up himself and big-heartedly propose a Tokyo stop. It would be a brilliant way to patch Japan-U.S. relations and one that in the end China would have to accept.

As the well-connected millionaire and former diplomat Yoshio Hatano delicately puts it: “On balance, Clinton would do himself a lot of good if he dropped by, even for one afternoon.” Agrees Takeshi Kondo, a top executive of the worldwide Japanese trading firm Itochu Corp., who like some other Japanese business leaders has been as critical of Tokyo economic policy as has Rubin: “The omission will give America’s enemies in Japan a golden opportunity to criticize; it will send the wrong message to the Japanese public, and it will lead the Chinese to misunderstand the nature of the Japan-U.S. relationship. It is a fundamental strategic mistake.”

As this new triangular relationship evolves, ways must be found of relating better to China without dissing Japan. America is not off to a great start. Americans should listen more often to our Japanese allies. They know China better than we do.