Power, Economics, and Security: The United States and Japan in Focus
Several very fine papers on the economic elements of national security make up the first half of this volume. The most fruitful inquiries concern the conflicts between national aims and a liberal, cooperative international system in a changing world order. In the second half, the papers on Japan are a good bit more miscellaneous.
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US hostility against Japan stems not from any specific arguments about the trade deficit, or direct investment, or burden-sharing, but from an national loss of self-confidence about economic competitiveness.
No, it is not a silly question -- merely one that is not asked often enough. Odd as it may seem, the country that is home to a fifth of humankind is consistently overrated as an economy, a world power, and a source of ideas. Economically, China is a relatively unimportant small market; militarily, it is less a global rival like the Soviet Union than a regional menace like Iraq; and politically, its influence is puny. The Middle Kingdom is a middle power. China matters far less than it and most of the West think, and it is high time the West began treating it as such.
For over half a century Japan and Germany have been at the heart of America's international preoccupations. After a long and destructive war against both countries, the United States worked exhaustively to help its two erstwhile enemies recover and build democratic societies secure under the American defense umbrella. From the late 1960s to the mid-1980s, victor and vanquished moved to a more balanced relationship, especially in trade and finance. Today, in one of history's great role reversals, Tokyo and Bonn have become Washington's fierce trading rivals and also its primary bankers.

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