The United States and Japan: High Tech is Foreign Policy

THE UNITED STATES AND JAPAN: HIGH TECH IS FOREIGN POLICY Harold Brown . or almost twenty years the United States and Japan have frequently quarreled. Yet the relationship between these two countries has remained steady: Japan depends on the U.S. security umbrella; the United States considersJapan the centerpiece of its security interests in East Asia; and the economic prosperity of each depends heavily on the other as a market for or supplier of technology, raw materials, or manufactured goods. One way to understand U.S.-Japanese interdependence is to examine its history, which teaches all too well the dangers of an adversarial political and economic relationship between the United States andJapan. From bitter enmity and a war that ended with the only use of nuclear weapons thus far, Japan and the United States have developed an unbalanced security and economic relationship critical to both sides. Yet this lesson may have been forgotten with the passage of more than four decades. Now, in the midst of quarrels that gain in frequency as well as in intensity, imagining the future requires more than the recollection of the past. For the future that must be considered has few analogous precedents in history: a future, that is, in which the United States would be the provider ofmilitary protection toJapan, Japan would lead the United States in advanced technology, and the two would be each other's principal competitor in the international market for manufactured goods. Harold Brown, chairman of the Foreign Policy Institute of theJohns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies in Washington, D.C, was secretary of defense, 1977-1981, and president of the California Institute ofTechnology, 1969-1977. 1 2 SAIS REVIEW To be sure, such a future is not yet upon us, but it is a clear possibility . An appearance of the second condition, aJapanese edge over the United States in advanced technology, along with the continuation of present trends would bring it about. Accordingly, the tensions resulting from persistent debates over issues of trade and money should not distract from the possible implications ofJapan's rise to parity or even dominance in various categories of advanced technology, which determine not only economic but also military directions for the balance of this century and beyond. Under future circumstances that bring defense and foreign policy to the age of "high tech," will Japan seek to balance its technological know-how and economic capabilities with military power, especially if actions by the other industrialized countries cause theJapanese trade surplus and the Japanese economy to falter? Will it, at least, then use its economic and financial clout as a political lever to reopen markets in those countries or to carve out a sphere of influence elsewhere? Or will Japan continue to be a first-class technological and economic power and a fourth-class military power that appears to have essentially no defense policy and hardly any foreign policy aside from foreign economic policy? Developing the PotentialJapanese Military Capability Since the 1970s the impact ofJapanese technological advances on Japan's contributions to its own military protection— and even regional security—has been evident. Already theJapanese produce their own surface ships (sometimes with U.S.-designed antiaircraft systems), diesel submarines , and tanks, although they are not at the leading edge in these systems. AlreadyJapanese-designed avionics and missiles (air-to-surface and air-to-air) can compete with anything the United States would be prepared to supply. And already, too, Japan, which manufactures most components of and does much of the assembly for some of the U.S.designed aircraft that it now produces under license (the F-15 and P-SC, for example) may be tempted to develop its own versions of follow-on aircraft for air defense and antisubmarine warfare as it debates whether its next generation fighter, the FS-X, will be a variant of the F-16, F-18, F-15, Tornado, or a domestic design. Future conventional military capability will depend increasingly on the electronic systems (guidance, navigation, electronic warfare), on the missiles (smart weapons) that are launched from air, sea and land platforms , and on the supporting command, control, communications, and intelligence derived from stations on land and sea, in...