Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-2plfb Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-26T05:07:00.587Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

How Middle Powers Can Manage Resource Weakness: Japan and Energy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 June 2011

Davis B. Bobrow  and
Robert T. Kudrle
Get access

Extract

The post-World War II world has seen the transformation of the international system from a configuration with several rival great powers into one with two superpowers and a set of lesser but still substantial powers—second-tier states with democratic politics and mixed economies. One of the recurrent concerns of the latter has been to secure supplies of natural resources. We argue that postwar conditions point to eight elements of prudent resource policy for middle-level powers. Such states should: (i) avoid military means; (2) choose trade partners whose political interests overlap with their own and who enjoy political stability; (3) seek to create in supplier and transit countries a structure of economic interests that will make supply agreements self-enforcing; (4) diversify with respect to commodity dependence, supplier share, and transit bottlenecks; (5) tailor stockpiles to the urgency of demand; (6) exploit technology to reduce dependence and enhance bargaining advantages; (7) encourage the private sector and public enterprises to become intermediaries in the international resource trade; and (8) pursue strategic interdependence among consumer nations by creating multilateral stakes in the maintenance of normal commerce in resources.

Type
Research Article
Information
World Politics , Volume 39 , Issue 4 , July 1987 , pp. 536 - 565
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 1987

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Kristof, Ladis K. D., “The Origins and Evolution of Geopolitics,” Journal ofConflict Resolution 4 (March 1960), 15–51CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 In attempting to develop theoretical ideas pertinent to the changed conditions of recent decades, our first sources were the pioneering works in international relations. We carefully examined writings such as Ashley, Richard K., The Political Economy of War & Peace: The Sino-Soviet American Triangle and the Modern Security Problematique (London: Frances Pinter, 1980Google Scholar); Keohane, Robert O. and Nye, Joseph S. Jr., Power and Interdependence: World Politics in Transition (Boston: Little, Brown, 1977Google Scholar); Krasner, Stephen D., Defending the National Interest: Raw Materials Investment & U.S. Foreign Policy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978Google Scholar); Krasner, Stephen D., “State Power and the Structure of International Trade,” World Politics 28 (April 1976), 317CrossRefGoogle Scholar–47; and Russett, Bruce M., Power and Community in World Politics (San Francisco: W. H. Freeman, 1974Google Scholar). These works stress U.S. hegemony and its decline, address natural resource issues, and are frequently specific about the declining role of physical space as a critical factor in world politics. Only Choucri, Nazli and North, Robert C., Nations in Conflict: National Growth and International Violence (San Francisco: W. H. Freeman, 1975Google Scholar), however, deals in a sustained way with ideas directly relevant to resource conflicts, and even here the policy implications for mid-level powers can only be inferred. Most key expectations remain to be developed.

3 Mackinder, H. J., “The Geographical Pivot of History,” The Geographical Journal 23 (April 1904), 421–37CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4 See Harold, and Sprout, Margaret, Foundations of International Politics (New York: Van Nostrand, 1962), 326Google Scholar–32.

5 Davis B. Bobrow and Robert T. Kudrle, “Midlevel Powers: Determinants of Maneuver and Constraint” (paper presented at the American Political Science Association Annual Meeting, Washington, DC, August 30-September 2, 1984).

6 Kristof (fn. 1), 46.

7 Kudrle, Robert T. and Bobrow, Davis B., “U.S. Policy toward Foreign Direct Investment,” World Politics 34 (April 1982), 353CrossRefGoogle Scholar–79.

8 Bobrow, Davis B. and Chan, Steve, “Assets, Liabilities and Strategic Conduct,” Pacific Focus 1 (January 1986), 23–55Google Scholar.

9 Choucri and North (fn. 2); see also Choucri and North, “Lateral Pressure and International Conflict: The Case of Japan” (paper presented at the American Political Science Association Annual Meeting, Washington, DC, August 28–31, 1986).

10 The policy prescriptions of Alfred T. Mahan, for example, were a powerful influence on Theodore Roosevelt; see Mahan, , The Problem of Asia (Boston: Little, Brown, 1900Google Scholar).

11 Hirschman, Albert O., National Power and the Structure of Foreign Trade: Studies in national Political Economy (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1945Google Scholar).

12 Ibid., 34–35.

13 Telser, Lester, “A Theory of Self-Enforcing Agreements,” Journal of Business 53 (No. 1, 1980), 27–44CrossRefGoogle Scholar; see also Beth and Yarbrough, Robert, “Reciprocity, Bilateralism and Economic ‘Hostages': Self-Enforcing Agreements in International Trade,” International Studies Quarterly 30 (March 1986), 7–21CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

14 Allen, George C., A Short Economic History of Japan (London: Unwin University Books, 1962Google Scholar); Lockwood, William W., The Economic Development of Japan (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1954Google Scholar), and Trade and Trade Rivalry Between the United States and Japan (New York: American Council, Institute of Pacific Relations, 1936Google Scholar).

15 Goldwin, Robert A., ed., Readings in American Foreign Policy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1959), Vol. VII, p. 69Google Scholar.

16 Japan actively sought to create economic beneficiaries in her colonies and geared their development to Japan's economic needs. See Bruce Cummings, “The Northeast Asian Political Economy,” International Organization 38 (Winter 1984), 1–40. Exports were shifted to 1 smaller (and perhaps poorer) countries and bilateral trade with them increased, but there was little change in the sources of imports. Moreover, much of the export shift should be attributed less to Japanese initiative than to imposed pressures from the collapse of the raw silk trade, the devaluation of the yen, the closing of the markets through protectionism, and the insistence on bilateralism by many of Japan's trading partners. See Hirschman (fn. 11), 96–97.

17 Kano, Tokio, “Energy Security,” in Masamichi, Inoki and Masataka, Kosaka, eds., Japan's Security and a Crisis Proposal for Defense (Tokyo: Kodansha, 1982Google Scholar, in Japanese), 198.

18 Bobrow, Davis B., “Putting Up, Not Speaking Up; Japanese Resource Allocation to Comprehensive Security”Google Scholar (paper presented to the International Studies Association Annual Meeting, March 1985).

19 For a complete discussion of Japan's comprehensive security budget and the role of energy security in it, see ibid. On Japan's military budget and the factors associated with changes in it, see Davis B. Bobrow and Stephen R. Hill, “Managing Your Protector: Japan's Use of Military Budgets” (paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, Washington, DC, August 28–31, 1986); and Bobrow and Hill, “The Determinants of Military Budgets: The Japanese Case,” Conflict Management and Peace Science 9 (Fall 1985), 1–18.

20 Campbell, William R., “Japan and the Middle East,” in Ozaki, Robert S. and Arnold, Walter, eds., Japan's Foreign Relations (Boulder: Westview Press, 1985Google Scholar).

21 The careful reader of the text and the formula presented in Table 2 will note that the index in column A is the ratio of county Vs export of commodity X to Japan's total imports of commodity X: the trade terms between the two countries in the ratio cancel out. If we presented the information in columns B and C as the ratio of C to B, we would have the same type of outcome with the ratio of X's total exports to Japan's total imports. We leave columns B and C to be examined separately because their absolute (as opposed to relative) magnitude in the trade of the two countries would be lost in a ratio (as it is in A). There is no ideal measure of asymmetry or the importance of trade in a commodity to either country. (We could, for example, devise other measures related to the total outputs of the two countries.)

22 AIXDT: Trade Database of the Institute of Developing Economies, Tokyo.

23 Ministry of International Trade and Industry [MITI], Toward the Establishment of Economic Security (Tokyo, 1982, in Japanese), 148–49. Ministry of Transportation [MOT], Transportation Policy: Considerations of Comprehensive Security (Tokyo, 1983, in Japanese), 118–19.

24 Japanese International Cooperation Agency, JICA Annual Report (Tokyo, 1983), 75–94.

25 Interviews with officials of the Japanese General Trading Company, Tokyo, April and August 1983.

26 Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development [OECD], Energy Balances (Paris: OECDGoogle Scholar, various years); Japan Nuclear Energy Industries Conference, Nuclear Energy Pocket Book (Tokyo: Nuclear Energy Bureau, Science and Technology Agency, 1985Google Scholar, in Japanese).

27 MOT (fn. 23), 112–13.

28 Kano (fn. 17), 173.

29 OECD (fn. 26). Also see OECD, SITC (Standard International Trade Classification) Listings (various years), and International Financial Statistics [IFS] data base of the International Monetary Fund.

30 Japan Economic Research Center [JERC], Japan's Economy in the World — 1990 (Tokyo, 1983, in Japanese), 289, 294.

31 Ibid., 296.

32 Planning Bureau, Science and Technology Agency, Indicators of Science and Technology (Tokyo, 1984), 56.

33 Sunshine Information Center News (Nos. 10–11, 1984), 13.

34 Japan Foreign Trade Council, A Study of Japan's Offshore Trade (Tokyo, 1983, in Japanese), 27, 38, 40, 41, 78, 79.

35 Alexander K. Young, The Sogo Shosha (Tokyo: Charles E. Tuttle, 1979), 159.

36 Kano (fn. 17); also MITI (fn. 23).

37 Nobutoshi, Akao, ed., Japan's Economic Security (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1983), 271.

38 Science and Technology in Japan 3 (April-June 1984), 11; also see Sunshine Information Center News (fn. 33), 12.

39 Schmiegelow, Michele, “Cutting Across Doctrines: Positive Adjustment in Japan,” International Organization 39 (Spring 1985), 261CrossRefGoogle Scholar–96, at 286.

40 MOT (fn. 23), 116–19.

41 JERC (fn. 30), 294.