MISSING SUPER-POWER NIXON TRIP MAY NUDGE JAPAN CLOSER TO REARMING

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32678, 6 August 1971, Page 8

MISSING SUPER-POWER NIXON TRIP MAY NUDGE JAPAN CLOSER TO REARMING

(Reprinted from the "Economist" bp arrangement)

The news that President Nixon is going to Peking has stirred up duny among the politicians in Tokyo, and has put the Prime Minister. N Sato, in a difficult position. It looks as if Mr Nixon has inadvertently pi his foot through two central planks in Mr Sato’s policy: his refusal t have diplomatic dealings with Peking, and his faith in the America alliance as the basis for Japanese security. Mr Sato’s China policy has bee controversial in Japan for quite some time, and in recent months a stron lobby m his own Liberal Democratic Party and a powerful coterie < businessmen have urged him to recognise Peking. Mr Nixon’s visit 1 China will make it harder for Mr Sato to stick to his promtae that th Japanese Government will not recognise China so long as he is in office.

And the fact that the Nixon trip was sprung as a total surprise has provided a useful debating point for chauvinsts of both Right and Left who decry the present relationship between Japan and the United States. Some of them have called for a a policy of “armed neutrality.” That raises a very big and most unsettling question about Japan’s future. Japan’s phenomenal postwar growth has made it the third greatest economic power in the world, well on the way to surpassing Russia and even (according to some futurologists) to catching up with American by the end of the century. But even under its new defence plan, Japan is going to spend only about 1 per cent of its gross national product on defence' each year between 1972 and 1976, compared with America's present 8 per cent and Britain's 5.1 per cent. Japan is the missing factor in the global strategic balance. Its “self-defence” forces are dwarfed by Taiwan’s or South Korea's. But how long can it safely get away with spending so much less on defence, relatively speaking, than any of the other industrial countries? Emotional issue The question of a major rearmament and, above all, of nuclearisation is the most emotional issue in Japanese politics. The memory of Hiroshima may have receded into the past, but public men are still reluctant to discuss the possibility of Japan’s becoming the sixth nuclear power in the world—although public opinion polls suggest that a majority of the Japanese people, whether they like it or not, believe that the country will go nuclear over the next decade. The immediate question is whether Mr Nixon’s diplomatic initiative, which seems bound to be a turning-point in Japanese foreign policy, will also accelerate its rearmament.

Japan’s present defence policy stands on three legs. The first is the American nuclear umbrella and the presence of. the Seventh Fleet in the western Pacific. The second is a programme of graduated military expansion geared to the annual rise in gross national production. (The present limit is set at about 1 per cent of gross national production, although the officials in Mr Nakasone’s defence agency would like to see this lifted to at least 1.5 per cent) The third element could be described as the attempt to keep the option of building up a sizeable stockpile of nuclear weapons over a period of two years from the moment when the political decision to go nuclear had been taken.

I What makes this possible, ■ in the first place, is that the . Japanese are busily hamess- , ing huge quantities of . nuclear energy (an estimated I output of 5000 megawatts by I 1975) for entirely peaceful . purposes. There is also talk I of setting up a large enrichi ment plant The Japanese are , winging along, at the same time, in the area of rocketry ’ and space research. The fact that in 1970 Japan became the fifth country to put a satellite into orbit dramatised their capacity to fly t other things as well. It is ! striking, for example, that i some of the rockets they are , building are very similar to : missiles that the Americans t have fitted with nuclear warI heads: the specifications for i the Japanese MU4V rocket : correspond closely to those > for the Minuteman. Automatic growth ' So there is already a degree of automatic growth in Japanese defence policy: 1 the armed forces are swell- ' ing modestly, and an in- ’ creased nuclear potential is I being stored up without any political decision to produce ’ nuclear weapons. But there are a number of things that ' are likely to tug Japan fairly ; forcefully towards a more ' ambitious defence pro- ' gramme. At present, the 1 Japanese are tom between ' their fear of an American ! pull-out from South-East ' Asia and their desire to act ■ more independently as a ' Great Power. Both of these sentiments are likely to 1 encourage rearmament. The nightmare that the Seventh Fleet might one day sail away is related to a growing sense of vulnerability to outside events. Japan cannot escape the volatile politics of the unstable region of southern and eastern Asia on which it 1 depends for much of its raw materials, cheap manpower J and markets. It is hungry for ■ raw materials, which already < make up more than 70 per cent of its total imports.. And although the Japanese have diversified their investments (both as a hedge | against economic nationalism and to stake a claim to some i of Latin America’s mineral resources) 34 per cent of their trade is with Asia, much of it on terms that are very favourable to the Japanese. At a time when the Americans are trying to get their heads down in Asia, the Japanese may feel the need

to expand the capacity to use their own influence in the area.

Then there is the problem of sea lanes. Another of the paradoxes of Japan’s development is that this country has built the second biggest merchant fleet in the world (after Liberia, which is merely a flag of convenience) although its navy is hardly big enough to give new recruits room to scrub a deck. Under the new defence plan, the Japanese will step up their submarine construction programme. That is only a beginning. Fears of Russian naval expansion and concern for the security of the Straits of Malacca make it likely that the Japanese will make increased sea-power their top defence priority. There are plenty of people in Tokyo who would like the Government to fork out a bit more for defence. They include the men who run some of the biggest corporations, above all Mitsubishi, and have their eye, on the plum defence contracts that are cropping up now that Japan has become entirely self-sufficient in military supplies. An important group in the Liberal Democratic party headed by Mr Nakasone and Mr Kureishi has come out in favour of faster military development.

There are still enormous hurdles to be cleared. One of the few leading politicians who has been prepared even to hint at the desirability of going nuclear is Shintaro Shiham, who pulled in a record 3 million votes in his Senate campaign in 1969 on the Liberal Democratic ticket. His remarkable popularity was itself a sign of the changing public mood in the country and suggested that the celebrated "nuclear allergy’” was starting to wear off. Sense of inevitability

Other straws in the wind have been an upsurge of traditional militarist feeling on the Right and a heightened readiness among politicians in general to join a serious debate about defence. The arguments that Japanese most commonly oppose to increased defence spending are, first, that it would be an unnecessary burden and

might detract from the a> bitious social programme th the present Government trying to get moving an< second, that it would reviv the militarism of the 1930: The question remains would the emergence o Japan as a military superpower tilt the strategic balance in favour of the West? The memory of the “Asian co-prosperity sphere" will deter over-optimistic E redictions. It must always e remembered that there is still a psychological gulf between the Japanese and Westerners that is not easily bridged. The world into which the new Japan would presumably emerge would be a world dominated by five (or four and a half) Great Powers America, Russia, Japan, Europe and China.

_ The rules of the international game would probably resemble those of nineteenthcentury Europe rather than those of the Dulles era. But Japan’s perception of its national interest would probably ensure that America remained its closest ally. Its most likely rivals (apart from the somewhat marginal issue of competition for markets and raw materials in Latin America) would remain Russia and China, although there would be considerable scope for increased economic co-operation with each.

The Japanese still have a standing quarrel with the Russians over the northern territories, and are worried about all those Russian submarines. They probably have even less sympathy for the Chinese, whose system is in many ways the antithesis of their own, and who ar? their potential rivals for ascendancy in eastern Asia. It would be extraordinary —and certainly without historical precedent—if the Japanese did not feel compelled in the course of the 1970 s to behave as a Great Power in the political and military, as well as the narrowly economic, sense. It may be that the use of force as an instrument of foreign policy is waning, if one discounts support for internal subversion. But it is unlikely that the Japanese will content themselves indefinitely with a purely economic role in world affairs.