Posted on 04/05/2016 6:06:04 PM PDT by AmericanInTokyo
Don't Abandon Japan
Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe, arriving in Washington this week for President Obama’s nuclear-security summit, is America’s strongest ally in Asia — a region crucial to America’s future. Since taking office, Abe has pursued politically risky policies that have steadily bolstered not just Japan’s, but also America’s position in Asia. So he must be puzzled to find himself at the center of a U.S. political dispute.
Battling for votes, the Trump presidential campaign suggests that Japan is an economic and military drain on the U.S. After criticizing China, the campaign smacks Japan. Such overheated rhetoric is as outdated as it is misguided.
In the last few years, Abe has labored mightily to reinflate his currency, to restrain risky regional disputes that also endanger U.S. interests, to raise Japanese defense spending, to adopt new defense guidelines increasing Japan’s regional and global security burden, and to bend his country’s U.S.-inspired post-war constitution to enable Japan to defend U.S. ships and troops in the event of an attack.
In the process, he has sought to jump-start Japan’s stalled national economy — the third largest in the world — and to push trade deals advancing Western resilience against China’s economic bullying. He has done all this even as China’s military probes Japan’s southern boundaries and northern Japan recovers from a tsunami-related nuclear-plant disaster.
Instead of the Japan, Inc. that scared Congress and labor unions in the 1980s and 1990s and inspired fearmongering books like Clyde Prestowitz’s Trading Places, Japan now struggles with an economy that has persistently underperformed for two decades, ironically due to many of the same misguided Keynesian policies that President Obama has used to leave the U.S. economy stuck in low gear since the 2008 financial crisis.
Today’s leading economists, as well as Prestowitz’s newest book, Japan Restored, argue that Japan’s economic revival would help America and the world. Instead of being the fearsome economic predators of 1990s myth, Japanese companies like Honda, Nissan, and Toyota have opened auto plants in the U.S. that have created more than 1.3 million jobs through 2013, and have become innovative partners in new manufacturing areas like robotics.
Even more important, as an economic rival, Japan has been supplanted by a far more menacing competitor, namely China. While some aspects of our trade deficit with Japan could stand some correcting, the deficit with China has ballooned to $365.7 billion, a new record. Chinese cyberattack and commercial cybertheft endanger both Japan and the United States.
Furthermore, unlike Japan in the 1980s and 1990s, China is also a threatening geopolitical competitor. China’s $1.4 trillion “One Belt, One Road” program for financing massive infrastructure projects — from harbors and high-speed trains to oil and natural-gas pipelines that will connect China with the rest of the world — aims to displace U.S. influence worldwide, not just in Asia. Its aggressive actions in the South and East China Seas threaten freedom of navigation and could recklessly spark armed conflict. Meanwhile, China has never applied its considerable leverage to reverse the irresponsible international misbehavior, provocative missile programs, and outrageous nuclear-proliferation activities of its client state, North Korea.
Japan lies at the forefront of such challenges. So over the past decades it has spent billions annually — at times covering the majority of U.S. costs — to support U.S. bases in Japan, bases that are the bedrock of America’s position in Asia. Japan has sent ground troops to Iraq and contributed to Western efforts in Afghanistan, and it remains a foremost funder of international economic development.
But its current prime minister wants to do more to meet and to deter the challenges from China and North Korea and to be America’s true strategic partner in East Asia. Notably, he has steadily increased Japan’s defense budget — indeed, the defense budget for fiscal year 2016 will be Japan’s biggest since World War Two. In working for these changes, Abe specifically argued that Japan needed to be able to come to the aid of the U.S. in a conflict, and to provide real capabilities when it did.
In connection with this week’s summit, Japan has sought to counter the threat of nuclear blackmail in Asia — a current focus given North Korea’s recent provocations. Japan may be America’s single most significant partner in deploying missile-defense systems, including co-development of the updated Aegis and SM3 anti-ballistic programs.
For Japan, these have been historic steps. In short, Japan has been the kind of powerful democratic ally, and Abe the kind of prime minister, that America has wanted and needed for a long time to maintain peace and collective security in the region.
In 1951 General Douglas MacArthur returned from overseeing the occupation and transformation of Japan and told Congress, “Politically, economically, and socially Japan is now abreast of many free nations of the earth and . . . may be counted upon to wield a profoundly beneficial influence over the course of events in Asia.” After 70 years of uninterrupted responsible democratic governance, those words are even truer today than they were then.
It’s not time to strain our ties to Japan, but to strengthen them. Japan-bashing, like 1980s boom-boxes and DeLoreans, should not be disinterred. All of Asia, including China, will be watching what our next president does to encourage Japan’s revival as a global economic engine — and its emergence as America’s steadfast ally and n the Pacific.
Just pay for the cost. That’s all Trump is asking
Er, yes. Making Japan pay for some of its defense is a terrible thing to consider. The US Defense gravy train must continue. It’s important that, for example, US Beef farmers pay for Japan’s defense while being locked out of Japanese markets. The entire world will collapse unless all these moocher nations keep getting all that free US protection.
“Red Chinese commentary, OTOH, while angry about Donald Trump comments, seems welcoming of the possible fissure in US-Japan Alliance tactical relations were Trump somehow elected.”
This reaction on the part of China will give the Donald even more negotiating power with Japan. Go Trump. It’s about time we stop being saps.
Don’t we actually pay Japan to keep our bases there?? Yes we do...
Dear Shinzo,
Blow the dust off your checkbook.
Love,
America.
” The entire world will collapse unless all these moocher nations keep getting all that free US protection.”
You need to add a SARC tag! Time for the US Gravy Train to come to the station and shut down!
Before Obama the US averaged over 4% GDP per year in defense spending.
Today we are at 3.5%.
And Japan has averaged less than 1% over the last 20 years.
I'd sure like to hear a cogent case on why we should allow that to continue, versus giving them an ultimatum: Get to 3% in five years or we cut you loose.
Completely.
And the same ultimatum to every treat ally in the world.
No matter what.
The Japanese are FREELOADERS on stupid US largess.
No More!
Well we got to make up our minds what we want to do with Japan. A subsidized vassal or something that we expect to be making a profit?
There won’t be any problem with US and Japan’s relationship as long as Japan helps foot the bill for it’s defense. Given our trade deficit with Japan, that is not asking so much.
This was the US way of buying world influence. We can hardly blame Japan for saying “yes, gracious Master” to something like this.
What are we even buying from Japan any more? It’s like super luxury products.
We have all these allies who never do anything for us. All they do is take our money and use our military when they can. I fail to see how the US gets anything out of all these alliances.
The US purchased world influence, at a time when the USSR loomed larger.
It may be time to readjust strategy, but just to pretend we did not purpose what we purposed is a lie.
Dang, you are right. Sarcasm has become nearly impossible to detect any more.
Yes, it's how we bought post-war influence.
But the USA is MOST influential when the entire world knows we'll seek OUR interests above all others, and unilaterally if necessary.
Right now our allies see us as patsies and bullies. Making them pay their own way is likely to reverse that dynamic.
As for blaming Japan: Hell yes we can, and reasonably so.
From about 1965 onward, 20 years after the war, they have been CAPABLE of defending themselves against all comers.
They chose to rely on Uncle Sugar...and have been hating him ever since.
You posted this crap, how about sticking around to defend it.
We should not abandon Japan. It’s a country with a large, friendly population, not much in the way of natural resources and geographically near large, powerful enemies—a great ally.
And just what did Japan do to force us?
No, we chose. We can’t treat Japan as a pet and then ask why it isn’t a hunting dog.
Our trade deficits are not the fault of Japan. They’re caused by our own local, government-supported, socialist NIMBYs and their evil local regulations against building and manufacturing.
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