The impression one gets,
(think of it as history now being rolled up by postmodernism, rather than unfolding; striking the camp, cancelling, the views, culture, and enemy tents of the histories of all lived pasts, whether of empires, nations or tribes,)
now in 2020, is that China as a threat (analogous to Germany), now is interpreted as a sui generis very recent phenomenon, occurring only long after the ascendancy of Reagan in 1980 at the earliest, and only became apparent to a select few here in the early 2000s, (the flash crash of '87, interpreted as a 'false signal'; '08 as a 'self inflicted wound') even as late as the publication of Pillsbury's Confessions;
and that if we have been deceived (and they have not admitted this yet in a bi partisan way here), it has only been since the Bush era (Democrats' claim) that American politicians, publishers, journalists, and parties were legitimately and fairly finally placed on notice of any danger to their shared globalization policy caused by the rise of Asia.
It is an exercise in futility, which I will nevertheless make, to point out that the rise of Japan as the second largest global economy had happened already by 1980.
Books were written, Chalmers Johnson, MITI and the Japanese Miracle, 1982, Van Wolferen, The Enigma of Japanese power, 1989, Prestowitz Trading Places, 1988, and others.
These authors were accused of wanton Japan bashing, back then, their views and concerns based on misguided interpretations of how the world was going.
If you actually take a glance at or even read these books, you will see that they are either very well informed former civil servants, very highly respected academics, or very good and very well informed journalists. They were very important books in their time which were viciously attacked.
Later, when Friedman published The Coming War With China, china bought the entire run of copies.
Johnson, author of MITI, was actually our foremost expert at the time on China, not Japan.
Similarly to how the rise of China occurred much later vis a vis the USSR, Japan had been viewed as integral to geopolitical strategic calculations re Communist China and Soviet Russia, as well as uniquely vulnerable immediately after WWII to immediate invasion by the USSR or China unless protected for a time.
The Wars in Indochina, Korea and then Vietnam, turned into a bonanzas for Japan economically and industrially because they meant that the US was perfectly willing to trade economic disadvantage for ostensible strategic advantage.
That was the theme of Eckes' later famous essay in Foreign Affairs, "Trading American Interests", 1992.
But I would point out that naked strategic advantage hardly always figured in America's wastrel trade and commerce decisions......
Take NAFTA, for example. It is hard to picture, with a straight face, how such a trade deal, even had it benefitted the US economically, served any real or serious strategic objective whatsoever, in fact the opposite, it created strategic liabilities. The WTO, another example of this kind.
The opening to China, engineered by them not us as Pillsbury only recently explained, was a strategically motivated so called pivot, although it did not abandon the US Japan relationship, it substantially trimmed Japan's economic opportunities after 1971.
However, it is also worth pointing out that Japan had long been secretly playing three sides in its trade relations, taking advantage of a covert China trade prohibited by the US but winked at in practice, while also feasting on the increasingly tariff barrierless US market at the same time.
Just to give one example of the analogy I have been sketching here and on DK's site, highlighted in The Gathering Storm BBC film, Britain was still selling Rolls Royce airplane engines to Hitler's Germany almost on the eve of his move West, and subsequent attack by air, using Britain's own engines, of Britain.
and that if we have been deceived (and they have not admitted this yet in a bi partisan way here), it has only been since the Bush era (Democrats' claim) that American politicians, publishers, journalists, and parties were legitimately and fairly finally placed on notice of any danger to their shared globalization policy caused by the rise of Asia.
It is an exercise in futility, which I will nevertheless make, to point out that the rise of Japan as the second largest global economy had happened already by 1980.
Books were written, Chalmers Johnson, MITI and the Japanese Miracle, 1982, Van Wolferen, The Enigma of Japanese power, 1989, Prestowitz Trading Places, 1988, and others.
These authors were accused of wanton Japan bashing, back then, their views and concerns based on misguided interpretations of how the world was going.
If you actually take a glance at or even read these books, you will see that they are either very well informed former civil servants, very highly respected academics, or very good and very well informed journalists. They were very important books in their time which were viciously attacked.
Later, when Friedman published The Coming War With China, china bought the entire run of copies.
Johnson, author of MITI, was actually our foremost expert at the time on China, not Japan.
Similarly to how the rise of China occurred much later vis a vis the USSR, Japan had been viewed as integral to geopolitical strategic calculations re Communist China and Soviet Russia, as well as uniquely vulnerable immediately after WWII to immediate invasion by the USSR or China unless protected for a time.
The Wars in Indochina, Korea and then Vietnam, turned into a bonanzas for Japan economically and industrially because they meant that the US was perfectly willing to trade economic disadvantage for ostensible strategic advantage.
That was the theme of Eckes' later famous essay in Foreign Affairs, "Trading American Interests", 1992.
But I would point out that naked strategic advantage hardly always figured in America's wastrel trade and commerce decisions......
Take NAFTA, for example. It is hard to picture, with a straight face, how such a trade deal, even had it benefitted the US economically, served any real or serious strategic objective whatsoever, in fact the opposite, it created strategic liabilities. The WTO, another example of this kind.
The opening to China, engineered by them not us as Pillsbury only recently explained, was a strategically motivated so called pivot, although it did not abandon the US Japan relationship, it substantially trimmed Japan's economic opportunities after 1971.
However, it is also worth pointing out that Japan had long been secretly playing three sides in its trade relations, taking advantage of a covert China trade prohibited by the US but winked at in practice, while also feasting on the increasingly tariff barrierless US market at the same time.
Just to give one example of the analogy I have been sketching here and on DK's site, highlighted in The Gathering Storm BBC film, Britain was still selling Rolls Royce airplane engines to Hitler's Germany almost on the eve of his move West, and subsequent attack by air, using Britain's own engines, of Britain.
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