Japanese-American Relations: The Costs of Brinkmanship
| Date | 01 December 1991 |
| Published date | 01 December 1991 |
| DOI | 10.1177/002070209104600403 |
| Subject Matter | Article |
MICHAEL
W.
DONNELLY
Japanese-American
relations:
the
costs
of
brinkmanship
Even
a
cursory examination
of
the empirical
record
reveals
that
the
current
political
relations
ofJapan
and
the
United
States
are
marked
by
a
puzzling
mixture
of
interdependence
and
auton-
omy,
partnership
and
competition,
ritual
and
threat.
No
single
array
of
related
concepts
or
global
generalization
is
adequate
to
compress
all
the
important
aspects
of
this
paradoxical
and
changing
bilateral
relationship
into
a
single
meaning or
to
pre-
dict
with
certainty
where
it
is
headed.
The
very
few
carefully
defined
studies,
which
have
been
conducted
within
a
consistent
framework,
disciplined
by
the
rules
of
social
science,
and
researched
with
objective
care
in
both
countries
and
languages,
provide
further
warning against
excessive
confidence
in
model-
ling
this
ambiguous
tangle
of
politics
and
economics.
Undaunted,
this
essay
offers an
interpretation
of
Japanese-
American
political
ties
which
begins
with
a
portrait
of
a
complex
bilateral
world
of
uneasy
economic
interdependence
and
strained
official
relations.
My
major
assertion
is
that
the various
puzzles
and
uncertainties
regarding
Japanese-American
politi-
cal
relations
must
be
linked
to
a
postwar
political
and
economic
settlement
that
has
been
undermined
by
structural
bilateral
economic
change
and
internationalized
by
historical
forces
that
are
bringing
an
end
to
the
Cold
War.
The
political
record
sug-
gests
that
the
practice
of
political
brinkmanship
which
has
marked
the
peculiar
style
of
conflict
management
adopted
by
Associate
Professor
of
Political
Science,
University
of
Toronto,
the
author
is
completing
a
monograph
on
the
political
economy
of
nuclear
power
in
Japan.
International
Journal
xLvi autumn
1991
624
INTERNATIONAL
JOURNAL
the
two
countries
has
left
an ambiguous
legacy
of
some
success
but
also
a
weak
commitment
to
genuine
co-operation,
a
political
climate
that
prevents
balanced
judgments
from prevailing,
and
unsolved
economic
problems.
If
the
two
nations
are
to
create
the
foundations of
a
stable
and
equal
partnership,
then
new
political
practices must
be
found
to
allow
them
to
go
beyond
the
anachronistic,
dominant-subordinate
framework
established
over
four
decades
ago.
The
current
state
of
bilateral
relations
does
not
allow
for
excessive
optimism
that
this
will
prove
easy.
What
does
the
relationship
look
like
at
the
moment?
I
By
any
standard
measurement,
the
economic
relationship
between
Japan
and
the
United
States
has
been
massively
trans-
formed
during
the
past
three
decades.
The
two
countries
have
become ever
more
interdependent,
their
national
economic
prospects
reciprocally
intertwined
through
trade,
direct
invest-
ment,
joint
ventures,
financial
flows,
and
other
commercial,
technological,
ed-ucational,
and
military
links.'
At
the
end
of
1989,
overall
Japanese
direct
investment
in
the
United
States
totalled
US$7
9.-
billion,
helping
to
make
Japan
the
second largest
foreign
investor
(behind
the
United
King-
dom)
in
American
business
and
real estate.
About
50
per
cent
of
all
Japanese
foreign
direct
investment
is
in
the
United
States;
at
the
beginning
of
this
decade
Japanese
corporate
investors
had
stakes
of
5o
per
cent
or
more
in
960
manufacturing
or
assembly
ventures
and
minority
interests
in
another
i
1 i
production oper-
ations.
These
companies
tend
to
be
clustered
in
industries
in
which
Japan
has an
international
competitive
advantage.
At
least
255,000
people
were
employed
by
these
manufacturing
and
assembly
plants,
a
positive
factor
during
recessionary
times,
and
no
doubt
an
effective
way
for
Americans
to
learn
more
about
i
See
the
discussion
in
Robert
Gilpin,
The
Political
Economy
of
International
Relations
(Princeton
Nj:
Princeton
University
Press,
1967),
336-9.
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