Barring a last-minute crisis, the President of the United States and the Prime Minister of Japan will issue a joint security declaration in Tokyo in November, culminating a year of diligent alliance management by American defense officials. Yet only a few months ago, U.S. trade officials had been threatening economic sanctions, because of Japan's dilatory efforts to open its markets to the outside world and lower its record trade surplus with the United States. During the Cold War, the U.S. government built a fire wall between trade and security issues that prevented trade disputes from interfering with the bedrock security relationship. That fire wall has disappeared, and both Democratic and Republican presidents have had trouble setting clear guidelines to balance security and economic interests. The problem of balancing U.S. economic and security interests with Japan is far more acute and involves much higher stakes than with other nations.
Japan has the second largest economy in the world.
While GNP may not be an accurate measure of the purchasing power of the Japanese people, it is a good indicator of the nation's capacity to buy things around the world. The United States must produce an integrated strategy toward Japan and devise appropriate policies and political structures to realize it. It advances a strategy that would encourage Japan to accept more responsibility for the course of international affairs, and to become a stalwart participant in and defender of an open, free-trading system. And it would assure U.S. cooperation with Japan to achieve its announced goals of playing a broader role in reinforcing regional and global stability. Such a strategy will not be easy to implement.