Regionalism and Rivalry: Japan and the United States in Pacific Asia.

• Author: Bronfenbrenner, Martin

This collection of ten research papers - a dozen if we include the editors' introduction and an appraisal by Martin Feldstein in his presidential capacity - is the product of a 1992 National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) conference unusual for its multi-disciplinary character. It combines the talents of economists and political scientists. (One of the editors, Frankel, is an economist, the other, Kahler, a political scientist.) The resulting meld of viewpoints, which seems to have been predominantly cordial, may be called "political economy" - a novel meaning for this ambiguous term.

This NBER conference was designed originally to consider the question: "Are U.S.-Japan relations in the Pacific Asian region a potential national security risk for the U.S.?" Economists were to focus on three sorts of questions: Is the Pacific Asian area becoming (contrary to American preferences) an economic bloc with unusual concentration of trade, finance, and investment within the area? Does Japan dominate the economic relations of the region, including trade, financial, and investment flows? Are the Pacific Asian nations becoming dependent on Japan for trade, financing, private investment, and/or foreign aid? Political science paper writers were given a more complex trio of key questions: If an East Asian economic bloc centered on Japan is developing or will soon develop, what effect will this bloc have on the political alliances of these countries with the U.S. and with Japan? What effect will such a bloc have on potential security relations in the area? Can these developments pose a significant military or "more general" (i.e., economic) security risk for the U.S.?

The broadest generalization this reviewer can offer - it gives inadequate credit for the high-level statistical work involved in individual papers - is that the collection as a whole gives neither aid nor comfort to America's bevy of alarmists, Japan-bashers, and "revisionists." Among the paper-writers and their 13 commentators, none represents these lines of thought and few take them at all seriously. (Japan's kembei or "America-haters" get a slightly better press from the Japanese contributors.)

It seldom happens at academic conferences that paper-writers answer precisely the questions the organizers set for them - "only this, and nothing more." The present conference is no exception, and Professor Feldstein accordingly does readers a special service by classifying many - though by no...