Foreign Affairs at 70

William G. Hyland

From Foreign Affairs, Fall 1992

William G. Hyland leaves the editorship of Foreign Affairs with this issue.

If America?s economy does falter, so will the underlying source of its international power. Thus this nation?s central foreign policy priority in coming years and its central domestic priority must be the same: strengthening the American economy. Unless the United States reinvigorates in this decade the economic roots of its international power, it risks an erosion of self?confidence and of its international leadership at the turn of the century. With a weak economy and a society in conflict over how to allocate slowly growing resources, this nation would find it increasingly difficult to achieve its essential global objectives.

A dangerous coup in Moscow, followed by its collapse in the face of popular opposition, made for another August surprise in 1991. Like the Roman emperor for which that month was named, Gorbachev sought to transform his country. When Gorbachev emerged from the Politburo struggle for leadership in 1985, Seweryn Bialer wrote, he and his closest advisers realized that their country was stagnating:

but they termed it a ?pre?crisis situation.? So although they perceived some crisis of effectiveness in the regime, they did not yet comprehend its depth. They thought the regime only needed reform. Six and a half years later the Soviet Union and Soviet communism were dead.

The official end of the Soviet Union coincided with the fiftieth anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. It was an odd twist of fate, for it was World War II and the destruction of Japan and Germany that opened the way to the aggressive advances of the U.S.S.R. and its satellites and to the Cold War itself. Now that war also had definitely ended. With that dramatic proclamation on December 8, 1991, in Minsk, America was freed from the threats and fears that had driven its foreign and domestic policies for half a century.

With the end of the major threat to Europe, U.S.?Japan relations and other Asian relationships took on new importance. For years Foreign Affairs had warned about America?s increasingly fragile relationship with Japan. George R. Packard expressed concern over deteriorating relations and called for the formation of a wisemen?s commission of statesmen on each side to develop a plan for improving trade relations, including drafting a "mutual economic security treaty" between the United States and Japan. "If such a treaty could provide freedom from anxieties and paranoia, the entire relationship could move away from the prevailing acrimony toward closer collaboration."

In the Spring 1986 issue Ezra F. Vogel predicted "a pattern of limited and uneven Pax Nipponica." The danger as seen by Vogel and others was that Japan would pursue "neomercantilist objectives." With the end of the Cold War there was a growing appreciation that U.S.?Japan relations were based on obsolete concepts. Richard Holbrooke wrote:

Each side will have to change certain attitudes deeply engraved into their national subconscious in the half century since December 7, 1941. The United States will need to accept a Japan that carries out an independent foreign policy and no longer automatically follows the American lead on international issues. Japan will need to recognize the necessity of true equality of market access between the two nations and avoid the temptation to seek complete domination of the East Asian region. Japan will also have to learn how to treat other nations as equals.

This opinion was reflected by Secretary of State James A. Baker, III, in his overview of U.S. policy toward Asia.

The keystone of our engagement in East Asia and the Pacific is our relationship with Japan. . . . But U.S.?Japan relations have changed profoundly over the past decade. Our dealings have become more equal, and their form and substance must now be adjusted to reflect this reality if we are to address the sources of tension.

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