Since the second world war, the “special relationship” with Britain has been crucial to US foreign policy. This relationship remains necessary but it is no longer sufficient. When global security was the paramount concern and Europe the centre of power politics, Britain was America’s indispensable ally. Today, geoeconomics drives geopolitics as much as vice-versa. The locus of global power is shifting to Asia. The US has performed a “pivot” to the continent but it also needs a new special relationship for the new world order. Japan should be that indispensable ally.
China’s rise and its state-capitalist model present the most significant commercial and geopolitical challenge that the US has faced in two decades, and as Hillary Clinton, the secretary of state, discovered during a visit to Beijing last week, frictions between the two governments are on the rise. Conflict between the US and China is far from inevitable, but it is in the interests of the US – and China’s neighbours – to ensure that Washington remains a stabilising force in Asia as Beijing flexes its muscles. With Asia’s economic and security architecture evolving in concert, the US must advance its interests in the region by both commercial and military means. In short, US strategy in Asia demands economic statecraft. And Japan, Asia’s richest, best-educated and most technologically sophisticated country, does economic statecraft better than the US – or anyone else in the world, for that matter.
Indeed, Japan’s postwar trajectory has been a sustained triumph of commercial diplomacy. Private Japanese companies are long entrenched in both developed and developing markets. Close links between Keidanren (think of a super-charged US Chamber of Commerce), the Japanese state and private industry ensure that Japanese diplomacy reinforces commercial goals. The central government’s Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry integrates international commerce and domestic economics better than any comparable organisation worldwide. Japan has had 15 prime ministers in 23 years but recent efforts by Yoshihiko Noda, the current premier, to change the country’s “do nothing politics” provides ground for optimism.