MR HONDA GOES TO WASHINGTON

Ian Buruma on the fears of

Americans in the face of Japanese political lobbying and financial power

Washington THE names are impressive, a veritable roll-call of big Washington players: Elliot L. Richardson, the former attorney- general, William E. Brock, ex-agriculture secretary, William Eberle and Robert S. Strauss, former US trade representatives, and the former Republican chairman, Frank Fahrenkopf. What they have in common, besides a predominance of Ger- man genes, is that all now work in some capacity for Japanese interests — Hitachi, Toyota, Fujistu — and all are under attack for doing so.

'Yep,' said the sharp young Washington lawyer, as we peered down at the White House from his office window, 'it's the best view in town.' We were talking about the so-called Japan lobby. Bill (not his real name) believes that the United States is at war with Japan, an economic war. And he is angry and frustrated that his fellow Americans fail to recognise this: 'It's a bit like Winston Churchill warning the British about the German threat in the 1930s. It's that serious.'

Bill is particularly incensed about what he calls 'the fifth column in our midst', the lawyers, Congressmen, former trade repre- sentatives, think-tank pundits, academics, and other assorted Americans who all, in one way or another, make a living defend- ing Japanese interests. Almost every law firm in Washington has big Japanese corporate clients, most academic institu- tions studying Japanese affairs rely on Japanese funds, and Americans in govern- ment know that lucrative consulting jobs for Japanese corporations await them as soon as they resign from public office. In one famous instance, an official called Robert E. Watkins was sending out his C.V. to Japanese car firms, even as he was negotiating with the Japanese government about opening their market to American car parts. He was forced to resign. But what about the other lobbies in Washington? I asked Bill. Surely the Japanese were not the only players in town. 'Indeed,' he replied, 'the Israeli lobby is more influentual, but at least Israel isn't at war with us. The Japanese want to take over the world. They are buying everybody. They are sui generis, polluting the American system. . . The word 'polluting' reminded me of another critic of Japan I had interviewed in the capital of fixers, a well-known expert on international relations called Ronald A. Morse. He had used medical language to describe the gravity of the situation: the American economy was a dying body, being destroyed from within by a malig- nancy. The fatal germs included 'agents of foreign interests' lobbying for absolute free trade. This was eroding the independence and the wealth-producing capacity of the United States, since the country benefiting most from free trade, Japan, was not practising at home what she was preaching abroad.

But now for the other side of the story. Christopher Nelson used to work as an aide in the Senate. He is now a prospering consultant for a Japanese firm, or, to put it more crudely, a lobbyist. Nelson stated his case sharply and succinctly: Japan could not be blamed for America's ills; the real problem was American profligacy, the budget deficit; indeed, the Japanese were a great boon to the American economy without their investments, their factories, and their cheap and excellent products, Americans would be much worse off. 'You know,' he almost whispered, 'much of this criticism is really racist.' There it was, the dreaded word. I knew it would come. And he knew it didn't quite wash, so he didn't mention it again.

It was of course perfectly clear where Bill and Christopher were, to use an Americanism, 'coming from'. Bill's law firm handles the affairs of some major American industries, while Nelson worked for what Bill called 'the other side'. Both men were playing the Washington game. It is the way the American system works. In principle, no person or institution can grab absolute power in a system built on the representation of conflicting interests. Lobbying, in other words, is the very stuff of American politics. It is no more disrepu- table to lobby than it is to defend the interests of a client in a court of law. Sincerity is not the point, argument is, interests are. When I left Bill's office, he shook my hand and said: 'Send me your article, and if it's good I might pass it on to Senator Dole.' I told this story to a friend. 'Welcome to Washington,' he said.

So one might say that little is new. All that has changed is that whereas before it was mostly American interest that con- tended for government favours, the same game is now being played by agents of a strong foreign power. If one believes that free trade knows no borders, there is nothing wrong with this. Three cheers for the consumer and let the Americans put their own house in order. Unfortunately, it is not quite so simple.

The open society breeds its own forms of corruption, just as closed societies do. The fact that almost anything and anybody is for sale makes it difficult for a government to define its national interests. There are simply too many other interests, private and corporate, to consider. Indeed, the idea that there is not one national interest lies at the heart of the American system. So perhaps corruption isn't quite the right word. Certainly money alone does not corrupt. The heady access to power that is one of the most exhilarating aspects of American society (Mr Smith Goes to Washington and all that) has made influence-peddling almost as common an activity in American academe as fund- raising. As a result, analysis independent of political or financial interests has be- come a rare commodity in America, parti- cularly on the East Coast, where much of the financial and political action is. And when the academics, pundits and experts, who are supposed to provide the ideas that might help to define national interests, became too dependent on funds provided by one source, Japan for example, the arguments tend to reflect this. So if the Japanese are screwing Uncle Sam, the old man certainly asked for it.

The money involved in the alleged buying of America's minds is indeed con- siderable — twice as much as the fee paid by Canadian interests, which follow Japan's in the league of lobbies. Pat Choate, vice-president of TRW, a firm that sells satellites among other things, believes that the Japanese and their American affiliates spend at least $100 million a year on lawyers, lobbyists and consultants in Washington. And Chalmers Johnson, the leading scholar of Japanese studies at the University of California, San Diego, esti- mates that three-quarters of American university research on Japan is financed by Japanese. Both men play prominent roles in the 'Japan debate': Johnson as a critic of classical free trade ideology, and Choate as the author of a book, which will appear in the autumn, fingering all the Americans working, overtly or covertly, for the Japanese lobby. The title of his book, which already is sending shivers up many Washington spines, is Agents of Influence. Even before its publication, those old emotive standbys, 'racism' and 'McCarthy- ism', are already being harnessed as a kind of preliminary defence.

Some of the more prominent agents of influence are already well known, some are not. It has been claimed, most recently by John J. Judis in the New Republic, that more than 110 former government officials have been hired by the Japanese, and that almost every important American ex-trade negotiator helps the Japanese in one way or another. The think-tanks, academic institutions and policy groups, generously endowed with Japanese money, include the liberal Brookings Institute, the Reis- chauer Center for East Asian Studies at Johns Hopkins University, the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), and the Committee for Economic De- velopment (CED).

Nobody is suggesting that this money actually 'buys' opinions in the sense of making people express views they do not already hold. Some even argue that the Japanese are wasting their money, since it causes more paranoia and resentment than it's worth. But the fact that Toyota officials help appoint scholars at the CSIS and that Nissan has a hand in producing policy recommendations by the CED does seem to tilt the debate in one direction: free trade and more free trade in America, and never mind what the Japanese are up to. And the more dogmatic free-traders will even assert that the Japanese themselves exemplify free trade principles, both abroad and back home.

None of this means that the Japanese do anything illegal or that there is a conspiracy afoot in Washington. All one can say is that the Japanese are extraordinarily effec- tive players of the Washington game, partly because they are flush with cash, and partly because so many Americans are prepared to play along with them. There is a third reason for their success: their plan of action is one that Americans would find almost impossible to emulate. A con- certed, long-term industrial strategy, plan- ned and executed by a combine of corpora- tions, bureaucrats and politicians, is simply unthinkable in a free-trading, free- wheeling society where the consumers are kings, bureaucrats come and go, and gov- ernment, in theory at least, is not in the business of protecting American trade.

Japan has never been an open society. Japanese rulers, assisted by a co-operative class of scholars (not the same as an intelligentsia), have always imposed a kind of cultural propaganda on the population, which presented the status quo as benign, virtuous, unchanging, and blessedly native. In other words, it was virtuous to obey authority and not question one's lot, for that was the Japanese way. Or in more modern terms, it is virtuous for Japanese to pay more than foreigners for Japanese products (let alone foreign ones), to accept a de facto one-party state, and to sacrifice personal interests for corporate and national power: it is one's duty as a Japanese to do so.

If this causes problems abroad, it is said in Japan to be the fault of profligate, decadent foreigners. To think otherwise as some critics are beginning to do — is to be un-Japanese. And when foreigners criti- cise this state of affairs, they clearly do not understand Japanese culture, or worse, they are racist. Because Americans in particular are terrified of being called racist, many will readily agree. And those who spend their lives as experts explaining the culture of others often end up as apologists for governments acting in the name of those cultures. So even though an American scholar of Japan like George Packard of Johns Hopkins probably gets well paid to write advertising supplements for the Japanese Chamber of Commerce, he will express the same opinions gratis, since he sees it as his duty to defend and explain the Japanese, right or wrong.

One can sympathise with Americans who are tired of seeing their own ex- government officials helping foreigners compete in the US markets. There is something called the Foreign Agents Reg- istration Act but it was promulgated before the war to control Nazi propaganda. It was certainly never designed to make sure that lobbyists for foreign corporations were properly scrutinised. The Justice Depart- ment's Foreign Agents Registration Office has only a dozen employees and has yet to submit its report for 1987. Under the existing regulations advisers of foreign companies who don't lobby public officials directly, or lobbyists representing Amer- ican subsidiaries of foreign companies, don't have to register at all.

It is easy to see how a strong nation which sees trade as a strategic weapon in the expansion of its power abroad can exert enormous influence on the Washing- ton scene. But how much does it really matter? Ronald A. Morse observed that 'if you defect to the Soviet Union you get shot, but if you defect to Mitsubishi you get rich'. Again, one can sympathise, but is it apt to compare Mitsubishi with the Soviet Union, granted even that government and business are interlocked in Japan? The fact that the Japanese might see business as war, does not mean that it really is war. After all, Mitsubishi does bring palpable benefits, whereas missiles fired in anger do not. Is a Japanese company that provides jobs in America and good, cheap products to boot, good or bad for the national interest? Is it worse than an American firm which moves abroad for cheaper labour?

When one asks Americans who are worried about the Japanese economic threat quite what is so threatening, one soon enters a woolly terrain of perceived dangers to 'values', or 'our way of life'. I asked Morse what the difference was be- tween the European fear of American power in the Fifties and Sixties, and the present American fear of Japan. 'Well,' he said, 'Europe was not the leader of the free world. America still is. And Japan, a nation without principles or values, cannot lead the world. They are predators . . . But it is not immediately apparent what principles and values have to do with computers and motor cars.

In fact, what the Japan debate really boils down to is an American political debate, which should resonate in Britain, and which would take place even without the Japanese lobby. On the one side is an odd alliance of conservative Republicans and liberal Democrats, who believe in more government intervention in the eco- nomy, and on the other is a coalition of liberal free-traders, which also crosses party lines. Some right-wing Republicans, like Senator Jesse Helms, are afraid of Japanese power per se, and think the government should check the Japanese march into American markets for security reasons. Some liberal Democrats, like Labour economists in Britain, believe in protecting the principles and values of trade unions and inefficient industries, often in the name of patriotism. If this means shoddier goods, well, as Bill the lawyer said, don't mind driving a worse car, if its for the long term good of my country.' Then there are the counterparts of Michael Heseltine who wish to have an industrial strategy along Japanese lines.

To keep open markets, even to the products of 'predators', or to have more corporatism, that is the question. The irony is that those who most fear the Japanese are most eager to emulate their methods, while the Japanese pay the wages of those who argue that we should not.