Trade and geopolitics - U.S. relations in the Asia Pacific region and how they are impacted by changes in China and Japan's military and economic power - Editorial

National Review, April 4, 1994

SECRETARY of State Christopher's stormy visits to Tokyo and Peking lead to reflections on the development of the Asia-Pacific region. In the last twenty years the extraordinary economic boom there has been underpinned by a historically remarkable phenomenon--the harmony of political relations among China, Japan, and the United States. The history of the early part of this century suggests a certain fragility in these relationships, but it was America's great success in the early 1970s to build a structure of stability--one which, apparently, is now being taken for granted.

These political ties are under strain today from all directions--from China, because of its huge military build-up after Tiananmen, its disruptive arms-sales policies in the Middle East and North Korea, and its retrograde attitude to human rights; from Japan, because of its stubbornly mercantilist trade policies and a growing nationalist reaction to U.S. pressures; and from the U.S., which is resorting to harsher and harsher tactics against both countries even while it is weakening its military posture in Asia and thereby eroding its credibility as a source of security on which both countries have relied. In particular, the feeble U.S. response to the North Korean nuclear threat calls into question the value to Japan of the U.S. guarantee and may well trigger a Japanese nuclear-weapons program which no country, including Japan, wants.

China's practices regarding human rights and Japan's regarding open trade are to be deplored. But the crude economic warfare upon which the U.S. may be embarking--threatening to end normal trade relations with China and to impose extraordinary sanctions against Japan--will have its ultimate cost. China and Japan fear each other in an elemental way, and each therefore looks to us as reassurance against the other. So both these countries need us-- up to a point--and will yield to our pressures--up to a point. In the Japanese case, there are profound questions about the long-term benefits of managed trade, which is what most of the Administration's "victories" consist of. In the Chinese case, the greatest pressure for democracy will come not from the isolation of China but from the extraordinary economic transformation that has grown out of China's exposure to the outside world.

And in both cases, we may soon learn that a bully that is seen as militarily weak will come to be be regarded as a paper tiger. If that happens, not only will our leverage dissipate but stability (and therefore prosperity) around the entire Pacific Rim will be at risk. These are higher stakes than a handful of congressional votes or a marginal rise in the President's popularity.