Frank Langdon

American Northeast Asian Strategy

T he purpose of this essay is to see how adequate has been the American military strategy towards Northeast Asia under the Clinton administration after the cold war and to see how it may change under the Bush administration. Republican control of both the White House and Congress, for the first time since 1953, may permit a more united policy toward two major sources of tension in Northeast Asia, the divided countries of Korea and China. Until now, U.S. policy towards China in particular has been a continual bone of contention between President and Congress, except possibly under Nixon and Kissinger, when the U.S. and China began to cooperate informally against the common Soviet threat. The continued ability of the U.S. to intervene so robustly in the Northeast Asian region rests heavily on its forward-based military presence in Japan and South Korea and its guarantees of protection to South Korea, Japan and Taiwan. The threat of a renewal of hostilities in Korea and tensions over Taiwan from 1993 to 1996 prompted the Clinton administrations modifications of the U.S. regional strategy. The clearest exposition is in the Pentagons East Asian Strategy Reports of 1995 and 1998, which are taken up in section three.1 The striking economic returns and the promise of future returns in Northeast Asia have proven to be a powerful incentive to maintain peace and stability in the region. They have brought China and, probably now, even North Korea out of their isolation from the world economy and helped curb regional security tensions. It seems doubtful that the new Bush administration will soon make major changes in the U.S. military or economic strategies toward the region, despite its insistence on a less accommodating policy toward China, its determination to deploy missile defenses, and some loss of faith in nuclear deterrence and international arms control agreements.

Canada's goal in the Asia Pacific

Abstract Canadas chief goal in the Pacific is to gain a greater share in the economic growth of East Asia while promoting regional stability through middle power multilateralism. Like other Western countries in the Pacific Canada should strongly support trans‐oceanic groups like the ASEAN PMCs and the APEC group as well as the numerous non‐governmental organizations devoted to keeping the countries on both sides of the Pacific cooperating together, both developed and developing. Both the US under Clinton and Canada under Chretien seem to believe the economic future of their countries depends to a significant extent on participating in East Asian economic development. Giving good economic relations precedence over sanctions suggests that they have committed themselves to that course. If successful, Canadas regional activism may help to counter its weakening European ties and its greater absorption into North America, and it may help to increase its foreign influence and independence.

Japanese Reactions to India's Nuclear Explosion

THE INDIAN nuclear explosion of May i8, I974 aroused those in Japan who favour a free hand in nuclear matters or the very few desiring eventual nuclear weapons for Japan. In addition, it disturbed those who favour the present non-nuclear policy and would like to see Japan ratify the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty to foreclose the possibility of acquiring nuclear weapons. While the Indian explosion did not constitute the arrival at an important nuclear weapon, it could have some military application and did signify that India has a weapons capability, even if much inferior to that of the other nuclear weapons states. It raised more clearly the difficulty of distinguishing between military and non-military explosions-a serious problemn which had hampered the drafting of the Non-proliferation Treaty. The explosion for engineering purposes may have conferred some prestige on India. It at least prompted Pakistan to express its desire for nuclear weapons and may have breached the psychological barriers to proliferation that have held the nuclear weapons states to five for the past decade. It has at least scotched the predictions of some would-be experts that Japan would be the sixth nuclear power. But the question still remains-will this event encourage Japan to be the seventh and thus nuclearize the three major Asian states ? If a second member of the Third World has eroded the barriers to proliferation, the technically advanced states also have grown careless in nuclear matters. The eagerness of Canada and the United States to peddle reactors, fuel, and technology as they do conventional armaments will make it easier for other nations to convert from peaceful to military uses as well as to spread the equipment and knowledge even more widely. It seems certain that with publicly available scientific information, bombs can now be made. Quebec has been approached by France to consider uranium enrichment even though Canada is short of cheap energy and its reactors cannot use enriched uranium. The Strategic Arms Limitation Agreements and Vladivostok talks between the United States and the Soviet Union (ostensibly

Big Business Lobbying in Japan: The Case of Central Bank Reform

The political activities of the business community in Japan have not received the scholarly attention they deserve. Because of the paucity of information and the lack of serious studies, the nature of the political power of Japanese business is poorly understood. The popular notion that big business is influential in politics is quite correct, but just how the influence is exercised, or how much influence can be brought to bear in a particular field of policy, or what conditions limit or augment business influence are far from clear. This paper seeks to single out some of the important conditions affecting the impact of business influence in Japanese government and politics. The case approach is used, and the case is the abortive effort toward central bank reform. Even though this episode concerns only a small portion of the government machinery and the single field of monetary policy, it nevertheless demonstrates the methods commonly employed by business to reach decisions within its own group, the competition with others encountered in persuading the government to act, and the strength of bureaucratic forces resisting change. The simplicity of this case is an advantage in depicting the conflicting groups and the influence they were able to exert. Later studies may reveal more of the pattern of business action on other economic problems and in other areas of government and politics. The bank case showed the great influence of group and personal loyalties as well as the power of one of the government ministries.

Challenges to the United States in the South Pacific

IMPORTANT CHANGES IN THE CENTRAL AND SOUTH PACIFIC, including Australia and New Zealand, are challenging the old order and affecting the security of the United States and its allies in the region. The three most notable changes have been the recent impact of anti-nuclear sentiment, the trend toward greater self-reliant defence policies, and the penetration of external powers into the region. The anti-nuclear sentiment has recently resulted in the breakdown of the defence cooperation between the United States and its ally, New Zealand, and produced the worlds third nuclearfree zone in the South Pacific. The trend toward greater self-reliant defence policies has put national and regional priorities ahead of traditional cooperation with the big power ally, the United States. It is evident in the new defence white papers and planned force structures of Australia, New Zealand, and the smaller island states. External powers such as Japan, the Soviet Union, and China have shown new political as well as economic interest in penetrating the South Pacific region, thus providing new alternatives for the small island states which have had numerous disputes with the United States recently. While the hegemony of the United States and its allies in the Central and South Pacific does not seem to be much diminished, it is clearly a region increasingly open to new influences which could affect the status of the American nuclear deterrent, the character of Western alliances, and regional security. It is also a region which, thus far, has not been an arena of military competition between the United States and the Soviet Union. In addition, it is one of the rare examples of a region outside Western Europe and North America where moderate democratic regimes are the norm. The latter conditions have also resulted in some new initiatives on nuclear policies which may eventually affect the rest of the world.

The Impact of the Law of the Sea Conference Upon the Pacific Region: Part II

T HE PACIFIC OCEAN spans about one-third of the surface of the planet. Forty nation-states and hundreds of tiny colonial possessions border it or are scattered throughout. In 1977 the implementation of 200-mile fishery or economic zones in the Pacific, long under discussion at the Third Law of the Sea Conference, dramatized the international race to control ocean resources. While all the major powers seek to improve their economic position in the Northwest Pacific, the Chinese, Japanese and American governments seek also to contain Soviet power. At other levels, however, global changes in the law of the sea and in patterns of resource and energy shortages will affect the future of the region. The impact of changes in the law of the sea on political-economic relationships in the Pacific is complex: new zones of extended national jurisdiction will reduce the degree of international cooperation in some areas, and will produce new boundary disputes or aggravate old ones; on the other hand, new types of trans-national cooperation may emerge to exploit ocean resources. And, if a new international organization is created to manage deep seabed resources, most of its activity will be in the Pacific. The Pacific Ocean region (the Ocean itself, its islands, and the countries bordering it or near it) is too vast to have been encompassed by any one empire. However, since World War II a kind of Pax Americana has prevailed, the United States being the only big power in the Pacific with a large navy, major bases, military alliances with many of the principal states, and a large pervasive trade and investment network throughout much of the region. Americas strong influence, both economic and strategic, has spanned or linked the Pacific to a major degree until recent years, but Japan is now increasingly

How Even a Giant Conveyer is Limited in its Impact by the Timidity of the Self-Effacing Entrepreneur

The private associations of the type found in Europe and North America were introduced into Japan as a part of the process of industrialization. Japan’s economic advance was accompanied by conservatism in the social and political sphere in the relatively successful attempt to retain a large measure of traditional ethics and modes of behavior.1 The traditional elements facilitated development by helping to make early factory organization function in the Asian cultural environment, but it also slowed or hindered the full development of the associational form and the voluntary sphere of society in which it was elaborated. Traditional attitudes in Japan make associations diverge from their foreign models even today despite close resemblance.

Factors Shaping the Growth of Business Associations and their Involvement in Political Finance

The associational form of interest group is viewed universally as one of the most typical structures of industrial societies, the functioning of which determines to a very considerable extent the manner in which the more explicitly political structures, such as parties, process and aggregate demands. For Almond, associational interest articulation is preferable to alternative forms — anomic, institutional or non-associational — on the criteria that it tends to produce the more “orderly” processing of demands, “good” boundary maintenance between society and polity, and efficient rule-making that rationalize the operation of the political system.1 To Kerr the association is so much a member of the Establishment that it “ranges alongside the state and the enterprise as the locus of power in pluralistic industrialism,” active in a setting where struggles have become “contests,” where “battles” are of the kind that are fought “in the corridors instead of the streets,” and where “memos will flow instead of blood.” 2 These attributes apply also to the bulk of contemporary associational activity in the three countries under discussion here, yet only two generations ago the progenitors of the labor and business associations which figure most prominently in our inquiry were formed under conditions where conflict often outweighed consensus

How National Party and Interest Group Patterns Affected the Efficacy and Viability of Conveyers

The Conveyer organizations whose operations form the contemporary focus of our study were established at different times in the course of an eight-year period. In Norway Liberyas was founded in 1947, the German Forderbande were established in 1952, while Keizai Saiken Kondankai was founded in Japan in 1955. In line with the criteria which distinguish Conveyer organizations in our definition, all three had in common the facts that national business associations took the lead in their establishment and that their major function was that of raising political contributions from businessmen for channelling and distribution among a number of political parties. But beyond this the three organizations were by no means shaped from a common mold. Rather, they exhibited significant differences in regard to structure, openness of operations and relationship to peak business associations, as well as to the priority assigned to their various goals.

How German Business Associations Came to Innovate Manifold Political Finance Techniques

Due to the limited acceptance of Liberal economic values, Germany knew no prolonged period during which entrepreneurs actually sought to operate through free and uncontrolled competition. Rather, there was a very rapid transition from a semifeudal mercantilistic system to one dominated by large-scale capitalist enterprise. The new rising class of industrial entrepreneurs and managers combined their socially innovating roles with semifeudal attitudes, especially as they related to an idealization of corporative structures and pejorative attitudes toward traders, brokers and other middle-men instrumental in a free market economy.