The year is 1992. A local conflict has closed the Strait of Malacca, blocking Japanese tankers laden with Persian Gulf oil from entering the South China Sea. The Japanese Prime Minister places a call to the White House.
"Good evening, Mr. President," he says. "Would you consider sending the U.S. Navy to escort my ships through the strait?" Pause. The President is well aware that the request is coming from America's biggest creditor. "Why, yes, of course," he replies. The Prime Minister thanks him, adding, "I am certain that your help will reassure our private investors enough so that they will buy their usual share of Treasury bills at next Tuesday's auction."
Washington strategists have begun to envision that scenario when talk turns -- as it increasingly does nowadays -- to Japan's growing influence. The very prospect of such pressure, however remote, is part of a subtle change in the way Americans view the Japanese. No longer is Japan seen simply as a tireless competitor and an endless source of high-quality goods. Japan's successes have been so spectacular that they seem ready to burst beyond economic bounds.
At a time of constant warnings that the U.S. is in decline, Japan, above all other nations, is conspicuously on the rise. "There's no reason that Japan won't continue to grow," says Yale History Professor Paul Kennedy, author of The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers. "Its economic drive is pushing it toward center stage." Most experts agree. "The American century is over," says Clyde Prestowitz, a former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Commerce in the Reagan Administration and author of Trading Places: How We Allowed Japan to Take the Lead. "The big development in the latter part of the century is the emergence of Japan as a major superpower."
But what kind of superpower will Japan be? How quickly will the country's economic strength turn, as it eventually may, into political muscle? How will the Japanese use that newfound might, and what are the consequences for its closest ally, the U.S.? Can Japan become a truly powerful nation without acquiring a military capability that would frighten and antagonize its friends and neighbors and violate its own constitution? Will the world see a Pax Japonica 25 years from now, or will Japan the banker form a partnership with America the policeman to create a sort of Pax Amerippon?
Europeans fret that Japan's ascendance could diminish their own global stature. Pacific Rim nations recall Japan's World War II aggression and occupation of their countries and half suspect that, beneath a patina of civility, the Japanese have not fundamentally changed. The U.S., the world's No. 1 debtor nation, voices a mixture of concern and admiration. "No country is more important to our economic future than Japan," says Democratic Senator Bill Bradley of New Jersey. "You want Japan to assume more foreign policy responsibility in the world, but in partnership with the U.S. The key is to get them to assume more responsibility without getting them to rearm."