In 1990, Japan went through the kind of decline that the Chinese are beginning to experience now. Japan has a much stronger degree of informal social control than most outsiders can see, and at the same time the large corporate conglomerates, called keiretsu, retained a great deal of latitude. Having grown rapidly after World War II, the Japanese succumbed to a financial crisis made inevitable by their failure to develop a market system for capital. Their economy operated through informal cooperation among the keiretsu and the government. This cooperation was designed so that there would be no losers, and therein lay its fatal flaw.
The capital problem was exacerbated by Japan’s not having a retirement plan worth mentioning, which meant that citizens were forced to save heavily, putting their money in government post office banks, which paid very low interest rates. The money was then loaned by the government to the large “city banks” linked to the keiretsu. This system gave Japan a huge advantage in the 1970s and 1980s, when U.S. interest rates were in the double digits and Japanese corporations could borrow at less than 5 percent. But the money was not being loaned to businesses that were inherently profitable. Most profit was derived from the added margin provided by cheap money. And the need for the Japanese to save a huge amount in order to retire meant that they were reluctant consumers. Thus the heart of the Japanese economy, like the Chinese economy today, was in exports, particularly to the United States.
As competition from other Asian countries increased, the Japanese cut prices, which reduced profits. Lower profits meant that businesses had to borrow more money in order to grow, then found it increasingly difficult to pay back their loans. What followed was an economic crash that wasn’t noticed by the Western media until several years after it happened.
Like the Chinese, the Japanese had to avoid unemployment, but for different reasons. In Japan, the reluctance to downsize was based on the social contract whereby a worker committed himself to one company for life and the company reciprocated. The Japanese honored the tradition by maintaining near full employment while allowing the growth rate to slip to almost nothing.
Western economists dubbed the twenty years during which the Japanese economy stagnated the “lost decades,” but this is a misunderstanding of Japanese objectives, or rather the imposition of a Western point of view on Japanese values. Sacrificing growth in order to maintain full employment was for this highly cohesive society not to lose a decade but to retain a core interest.
At the same time, Japan’s birthrate dropped well below the 2.1 children per woman needed to maintain its population. Now, with each generation smaller than the one before, the economy can no longer support retirees. In this way, debt and demography have created an enormous crisis for Japan.
During the next ten years, the Japanese will no longer be able to maintain full employment by exorbitantly increasing their debt, both public and private. Like the Chinese, they will have to shift economic models. But the Japanese have one overwhelming advantage: they do not have a billion people living in poverty. Unlike the Chinese, they can absorb austerity, should it be required, without inviting instability.
Japan’s fundamental weakness remains its lack of natural resources for industry, from oil to rubber to iron ore. To remain an industrial power, Japan has to buy and sell globally, and if it loses access to the sea-lanes, it loses everything. If trouble arises and it lacks the option of turning inward, Japan is far more likely to become assertive once again.
THE SINO-JAPANESE BALANCE OF POWER
For the past thirty years or so, relations between China and Japan have been secondary to each country’s relationship with the United States. The United States maintained the regional balance by maintaining mutually beneficial relations with each country, but those relations will shift in the decade ahead. First, China’s economic problems will alter its relationship to the world while transforming the country’s internal workings. Similarly, Japan’s internal problems and the solutions it chooses will transform the way it operates.
Even when passive and dependent on other countries to guarantee access to world markets, Japan always remains deeply embedded in the world. China is embedded as well, but not as irrevocably as Japan. The loss of imported raw materials does not represent an existential threat to China the way it does to Japan. Similarly, while China depends on exports, it could reconfigure itself if necessary, albeit painfully.
China, then, has less of a temptation to become assertive; it also has less of an ability to do so. China’s main access to the world is by sea, but it does not have a substantial navy relative to geography and the United States. Building a naval power takes generations, not so much to develop the necessary technology as to pass along the accumulated experience that creates good admirals. It will be a long time before China can challenge either the United States or even Japan at sea. There has been a great deal of discussion of the development of China’s navy. Certainly, significant development is under way, but there is a huge gap between the present level of effort and what China has to do to challenge U.S. naval power even in the waters near China. The most significant developments are in land-based anti-ship missiles. But the Chinese have a very long way to go before naval vessels can hope to defeat an American fleet. And even the anti-ship missiles are highly vulnerable to U.S. air and missile strikes. China’s navy will not force the United States out of regional waters in the next decade.
Northeast Asia
Today Japan is formally a pacifist power, barred by Article 9 of its constitution from having an offensive armed force, but this has not prevented it from maintaining the most capable navy in the western Pacific, nor from having a substantial army and air force. It has, however, managed to avoid using those forces, relying instead on the United States to protect its international interests, particularly its access to natural resources.
Japanese submission to the United States after World War II proved beneficial because the United States needed Japan’s help in the Cold War and wanted Japan to be as strong as possible. Things have now subtly changed. The United States still controls Japan’s sea-lanes and is still prepared to guarantee access, but its willingness to take risks with that access has put Japan in a potentially dangerous position. So far, during the U.S.-jihadist war, the United States has been cautious in not endangering the oil route through the Strait of Hormuz that Japan depends on, but it could easily miscalculate. Simply put, the United States can endure risks that Japan can’t afford, so the two countries’ perspectives on the world and their national interests diverge.
The internal problem for the Japanese is that they have gone as far as they can in this economic cycle. They must either accept austerity and unemployment or allow the economy to begin to overheat. Their great weakness remains capital markets, which still don’t operate freely, and yet the Japanese don’t have effective central planning either. This situation cannot be sustained. Moving to a free market in capital might solve the Japanese problem in the long run, but only at the cost of instability now. Because they can’t afford a true market economy, they will move toward an economy in which the state imposes greater efficiencies (never as efficient as a market, but more efficient than what they have now) and in which the keiretsu decline in importance. This will mean that the Japanese state will concentrate more power in itself and take a greater role in managing finance.
Japan’s other great problem is demographic. It is an aging country that needs more workers but is socially unable to manage large-scale immigration, which moves counter to the cohesiveness of Japanese culture. The solution is not to have workers that come to the factories but to have factories that go to the workers. Over the next ten years, Japan will be even more aggressive in exploiting labor markets outside its own borders, including those in China, depending on the evolution of events there.
Whatever the future holds, the Japanese will want to continue their core strategic relationship with the United States, including their reliance on the U.S. to secure their sea-lanes. For J
apan, this is both more cost-effective and far less dangerous than striking out on its own.
THE AMERICAN STRATEGY: PLAYING FOR TIME
The United States does not have the resources or the policy bandwidth to deal with every regional balance of power at the same time. It will be preoccupied with Russia and the Middle East, which does not leave it much in the way of resources to deal with the western Pacific. By default, then, American strategy in this region must be to delay and deflect. The United States cannot really control the vast processes that are under way, so the best it can hope to do is to shape them a bit. Fortunately, this is one region in which the processes at play have the countries on a relatively benign path toward the United States, at least for now. Therefore U.S. policy should be to stall while laying the groundwork for what comes after.
The American danger does not rest in an alliance forged between Japan and China. These two nations compete with each other in too many ways, and differ from each other too profoundly, for close cooperation. Having reached the limits of this economic cycle, Japan will no longer be the quietly passive giant it has been for the past twenty years. China, on the other hand, will be less than the economic juggernaut that it has been. The challenge for the United States will be to manage its relationship with both players in this western Pacific system, each in its own different phase. At the same time, the United States must step back from being the center and let these two Asian powers develop more direct relationships with each other, finding their own point of balance.
Neither China nor Japan will emerge as a regional hegemon in the coming decade. The Chinese economic miracle will subside, as all economic miracles do, and China will focus on maintaining stability without rapid growth. Japan will restructure itself internally while beginning to align its foreign policy with its global interests. But it will be Japan that the United States will have to watch.
As Japan increases its power, it must necessarily increase its maritime strength. It is a fundamental principle of the United States to oppose the rise of maritime powers, but obviously the United States isn’t going to go to war with Japan over this issue in 2015 or 2020 the way it did in 1941. Still, it will have to develop a strategy to deal with a more assertive Japan.
The first step in the U.S. strategy toward Japan must be to ensure that China doesn’t splinter, because the weaker China becomes, the freer Japan will be to flex its muscles. To the extent possible, the United States should relieve pressure on China by facilitating its exports to the United States. This is a reversal, of course, and there are obvious political problems in doing this. The president will have to be very clever in justifying his generosity at a time of high U.S. unemployment. But anything that constrains Japan, even marginally, is valuable to the United States.
Only a stable China can control foreign investments in its economy, and both stability and control will be necessary to fend off Japan’s designs on Chinese factories and workers. Constraining Japanese expansion will in turn delay Japan’s ability to cope with its problems, and anything that slows down Japan’s economic resurgence benefits the United States, if only to the extent that it buys time.
The second step in U.S. strategy must be to keep relations with the Japanese as cordial as possible. The more confident Japan is in its access to raw materials, the less it will be motivated to build its own naval force. The Japanese, always painfully aware of the imbalance of power, have never been as comfortable as they might appear in their deferential relationship with the United States. At the same time, they have never wanted to confront the enormous amounts of money and risk needed to create an alternative.
In the long run, a country as economically large and vulnerable as Japan will have to search for a way to secure its own interests. That doesn’t have to be in the next decade, however, and the American strategy must be to prolong Japan’s dependency as long as possible. The longer the Japanese remain dependent on the United States, the more influence the U.S. has over Japanese policy and the more it can shape that policy. Pushed hard enough, Japan might choose a new course that returns to the destructive policies of the 1930s, when it was a nation both economically statist and driven by an emphasis on national defense. The United States must be careful not to push.
Two things will make this Asian strategy easier to sell to the American public. The first is that other matters will preoccupy them. The second is that American moves in the western Pacific will be incremental rather than sudden. The president will have the advantage of not having to declare a change in policy, and his actions will not have decisive effect, because the United States is important but not central to either of these Asian powers.
At the same time, the United States must be building relationships for the next phase of history, in which it might wish to recruit Japan, China, or both to cooperate against threats from Russia or other powers. The appetite for risk within these two countries is not very great, and the United States must realize that pressing them without inducements probably won’t work.
This is where Korea may play a critical role. It is already the thorn in the side of both parts of the Sino-Japanese balance, but it is particularly irksome for the Japanese. For historical reasons, Korea despises the Japanese and distrusts the Chinese. It is not particularly comfortable with the United States, for that matter, but at least geography has made it dependent on the U.S.
As Japan increases in power and China weakens, the Koreans will need the United States more than ever, and the United States will rely on Korea to increase U.S. options for dealing with both countries. Fortunately, the U.S.-Korean relationship already exists, and for that reason extending it would not cause significant concern to either Japan or China.
Korea also has become a significant technological center. China in particular will be hungry for that technology, and having some control over the rate of transfer would increase U.S. leverage with China. For their part, the Koreans will need help in dealing with the North Korean nuisance, particularly in handling the financial aspects of reunification when it inevitably comes. A unified Korea would want special trade opportunities with the United States, and even though Korea has nowhere else to turn, the American president should make such concessions, because over the next ten years Korea may well be the most important relationship the United States has in the western Pacific. But reunification is not the core issue. North Korea, for all its bluster, is a cripple, and its nuclear facilities exist only as long as others permit it. North Korea’s nuclear program has bought it time by deflecting pressure. It cannot stabilize North Korea permanently. South Korea, in contrast, remains a dynamic power on its own and will remain a dynamic power whatever happens in the north.
The second important relationship the United States will have in the region is with Australia. One of the last landmasses to fall under European control, it is certainly on the margins of the world geographically, and most of its population remains confined to a relatively small area of the country’s southeast.
Geopolitically, Australia is misunderstood and misunderstands itself. It appears to be isolated and secure, yet its isolation is an illusion and its vulnerability real. For example, its nearest neighbor is Indonesia, a highly fragmented and weak country, separated from Australia by hundreds of miles of water. During World War II, Indonesia and its eastern neighbor, New Guinea, served an important strategic function for Australia, soaking up the Japanese attack and leaving the Japanese too weak to think about extending themselves farther south. Interestingly, World War II and Australia’s island buffers to the north have reinforced its sense of security, in spite of creating worries about boat people.
Despite the appearance of standing alone and secure, Australia is actually quite dependent on international trade, particularly the sale of food products and industrial minerals such as iron ore, to sustain its economy. These goods are shipped by sea, and Australia has no control whatever over the security of its sea-lanes. In a sense, then, Australia is like a creature whose arteries and
veins are located outside its body, unprotected and constantly at risk.
Australia’s strategy for dealing with this vulnerability has been to ally itself with the dominant naval power in the western Pacific—once Britain, now the United States. All alliances bear costs, and the British and Americans wanted the same quid pro quo: Australia’s participation in their wars. Australians sacrificed heavily in the Boer War, both world wars, and in Korea and Vietnam. Between 1970 and 1990 the Australians pulled back from this role as military partner, but during this period there were few calls for their participation. In 1990, in Desert Storm, they returned to their strategy of assisting in military operations, and they then went on to fight in both Afghanistan and Iraq.
Along with the security of sea-lanes, Australia’s well-being depends on an international trading regime that allows terms it can manage. Australia’s strategy of being of service to its Anglo-American cousins has bought it a seat at the table alongside the great powers. This has provided influence and security to its trade, something that Australia never could have achieved on its own.
During World War II, Australia served Britain by sending troops to North Africa. It served the United States by acting as a depot for building up U.S. forces for the Pacific theater. Certainly Australian forces fought as well, but if no forces had been available, Australia’s tremendous value was its location, behind the geographic shield of Indonesia and New Guinea. Should any great power emerge in the western Pacific to challenge the United States, Australia will once again be the strategic foundation for America’s Pacific strategy. The caveat is that building the infrastructure for a rear depot took several years in World War II, and any future conflict might not allow that kind of lead time.
George Friedman Page 20
