Copyright 1988-2005 USF Center for the Pacific Rim The Occasional Paper Series of the USF Center for the Pacific Rim :: www.pacificrim.usfca.edu Pacific Rim Report No. 1, October 1995 The Empowerment of Asia by Chalmers Johnson, Ph.D. The lecture presented here, inaugurating the Kiriyama Chair, was delivered on October 4, 1995 by renowned East Asian scholar, Chalmers A. Johnson, founding president of the Japan Policy Research Institute and professor emeritus of political science at the University of California Berkeley and San Diego campuses where he held endowed chairs in Asian politics and taught for 30 years (1962-1992). Chalmers Johnson is the author of numerous articles and reviews and has written 12 books on Asian subjects. The most well-known of his works is MITI and the Japanese Miracle: The Growth of Industrial Policy, 1925-1975, which laid the foundation for the "revisionist" school of writers on Japan. His most recent book is Japan: Who Governs? The Rise of the Developmental State. We gratefully acknowledge the Kiriyama Chair for Pacific Rim Studies for funding this issue of Pacific Rim Report. Since the Cold War came to its unexpected end about five years ago, three main global trends have prevailed. One trend is a movement toward regional economic integration. Examples include the European Union, the North American Free Trade Agreement, and the various proposals for some kind of free trade zone encompassing all of the Pacific, all of non-English-speaking East Asia, or all of Southeast Asia. A second trend is the movement toward subnational ethnic fragmentation, meaning the breakup of former states into new ethnic units. Examples include the disintegration of the former USSR, the former Czechoslovakia, and the former Yugoslavia along with heightened communal tension, often leading to violence, in many parts of the world. The third trend is a tendency to cling to the old Cold War system even when it no longer makes any sense and is a major economic liability. The power of this inertia and these entrenched interests is seen most clearly in Japanese foreign policy, in the United States's maintenance of a defense budget larger than that of all of its allies combined, and in the continued existence of NATO. These three trends suggest that the post-Cold War world is witnessing a major challenge to the old state system, while new states, based on a combination of ethnic and economic interests, are slowly being forged. One characteristic of this period is a marked shift from strategic military power to economic and technological power, accompanied by a rise in technonationalism. These trends do not appear uniformly around the world. In East Asia, the most obvious trend is the third - a tenacious clinging to the old Cold War system in which the United States provides the structure of military security while the various nations within this system seek to expand their economic capabilities. The Japanese-American relationship, in which the United States provides the security for a nation to whom it is simultaneously going deeply into debt, is the best example of this old order. The greatest new challenge to this old system in East Asia comes from the Korean peninsula, where the end of the Cold War has finally started to unfreeze the huge military commitments that accompanied North-South hostility and has put unification on the agenda.1 There have been, however, other subtle reactions in East Asia to the dissolution of Cold War bipolarity. Japan's main sectors of public opinion - the bureaucracy, business leaders, journalists, and intellectuals - have started to prepare the country ideologically for a strategic disengagement from the United States and a recasting of priorities in favor of an attempt to lead Asia. China is reacting to Japan's enormous economic influence by beginning to balance Japan's power and by exerting its own economic influence among the overseas Chinese. In the meantime, American policy continues to drift, reflecting inertia left over from the Cold War in military deployments and expediency in day- to-day policy governed by domestic political considerations. While these forces are working their way into the consciousness of the peoples of Pacific Asia, the concrete situation is one of waiting for some incident that will make what is already intrinsic, extrinsic. Such an incident would reveal how the global balance of power has shifted in favor of Asia and how little prepared Americans are for coping with this development. No one, of course, knows what the catalyst will be. Perhaps it will be the reversion of Hong Kong to Chinese rule in 1997, but it could just as easily be an unscheduled event such as the sudden economic and political collapse of North Korea. Meanwhile, until the catalytic event occurs, what passes for strategic thought is largely public relations posturing, bureaucratic in-fighting over turf, and the pretense of competence by political officials in the main Pacific powers. Huntington's Analysis: A Clash of Civilizations Samuel Huntington has recently argued that future wars and global tensions will no longer be based on conflict among states but on clashing civilizations - those broad cultural entities defined by history, language, ethnicity, and religion. Huntington claims to be searching for a framework that will capture and simplify the next phase of world politics, just as the Cold War did for the past half-century. He describes seven or eight of what he calls contending civilizations -Western, Confucian, Japanese, Islamic, Hindu, Slavic-Orthodox, Latin American, and (he is not quite sure of this) African. Each is marked, he says, by different understandings of the relations between citizens and the state, freedom and authority, parents and children, and God (or Gods) and human beings.2 Some East Asians, notably the outspoken leaders of Singapore, entirely agree with this analysis and find it convenient in explaining why their abuses of the human rights of their own citizens, or their neighbors' destruction of tropical rainforests to produce toothpicks and chopsticks for Northeast Asian restaurants, should not be criticized by others. There are serious problems with Huntington's analysis, however. First, he knows next to nothing about the civilizations he has identified. Fouad Ajami, for example, has written a stinging critique of Huntington's characterization of and assumptions about the Islamic world. Second, Huntington characterizes China and Japan as belonging to different civilizations, although this contention may stem not so much from ignorance as the intent to stir up trouble. The American establishment is deeply threatened by Japan's growing economic power and even more by its state-directed means of achieving it. Until recently the American establishment tried to explain and deal with Japan by arguing that it was an unthreatening part of (or converging with) the "West," much as the Nazis during World War II and the South Africans under apartheid defined Japanese as "honorary whites." But Huntington's analysis seems to have another purpose. He separates Japanese civilization from Confucian (Chinese) civilization because he believes that Japan and China may soon fight each other over who will be supreme in Asia, and that this will work to both the economic and strategic advantage of the United States. He fails to consider the real possibility that China and Japan will find it more profitable to cooperate, to the possible disadvantage of the United States. His analytical framework also places Korea in the Confucian/Chinese camp, whereas South Korea's infrastructure and development strategy more closely resemble Japan's and its democratic system moves it closer to Western civilization. Like many Americans until quite recently, Huntington also ignores North Korea and fails to consider what role Korea will play after it is unified. In addition, he does not deal with Southeast Asia at all, simply labeling it as either the "Malay subdivision" of Islam or a part of "greater China," but not recognizing it as an independent entity being tied together by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). Some aspects of Huntington's forecast of a clash of civilizations may well prove accurate, but his particular formulation of it may be more ideological (a defense of "the West against the rest," as he puts it) or opportunistic (hoping for a Sino-Japanese conflict) than analytical. Instead of Huntington's approach, a better and more accurate approach may be to view post-Cold War Asia historically. Such a perspective draws attention to the enrichment and empowerment of Asia as the main trends affecting global politics since the Cold War. It identifies a new center of gravity in international power, and it recommends a recasting of the balance of power to reflect this development. An Historical Perspective In 1960 the Asian economies represented approximately 4 percent of total world production. Thirty years later they represented a quarter and, based on current trends, will be a third of the global economy within a decade. Japan's net savings rate continues to trend above a fifth of GNP, some two and a half times the average for the other industrialized economies; and all Asia is saving in the 30 percent range. These savings rates, when translated into investment rates, mean that the world balance of economic power will continue its shift to Asia. They also mean that low-saving countries such as the United States will remain huge importers of capital. This capital will increasingly come from Asians and be made available on their terms, providing them with leverage in many fields.3 Equally significant, during 1993 Japan's trade surplus with other countries in East Asia for the first time exceeded its trade surplus with the United States. Using Japan's definitions and accounting methods, during 1993 Japan had a surplus with its Asian trading partners of $53.6 billion compared to a $50.2 billion surplus with the United States.