From the Evil Empire to the Axis of Evil
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with Eurasia, from Europe to the Pacific. Former presidential adviser and geostrategist, Zbigniew Brzezinski, put it bluntly: … in terminology that hearkens back to the more brutal age of empires, the three grand imperatives of imperial geostrategy are to prevent collusion and maintain security dependence among the vassals, to keep tributaries pliant and protected, and to ‘keep the barbarians from coming together.’ It was an ambitious agenda. JAPAN: WOUNDING THE LEAD GOOSE One of the most pressing challenges to the U.S. role in the post-cold war world was the enormous new economic power of its Japanese ally over world trade and banking. Japan had built up its economic power during the postwar period through careful steps, always with an eye to its military protector, Washington. By the end of the 1980s, Japan was regarded as the leading economic and banking power in the world. People spoke about the ‘Japan that can say no,’ and the ‘Japanese economic challenge.’ American banks were in their deepest crisis since the 1930s, and U.S. industry had become overindebted and undercompetitive. This was a poor basis on which to build the world’s sole remaining superpower, and the Bush administration knew it. Prominent Japanese intellectual and political figures, such as Kinhide Mushakoji, were keenly aware of the special nature of the Japanese model. ‘Japan has industrialized but not Westernized,’ he noted. ‘Its capitalism is quite different from the Western version, and is not based on the formal concepts of the individual. It has accepted selectively only the concepts associated with the state, economic wealth accumulation and technocratic rationalism.’ In short, the Japanese model, which was tolerated during the cold war as a geopolitical counterweight to Chinese and Soviet power, was a major problem for Washington once that cold war was over. How major, Japan was soon to learn. No country had supported the Reagan era budget deficits and spending excesses during the 1980s more loyally and energetically than Washington’s former foe, Japan. Not even Germany had been so supportive of Washington’s demands. As it appeared to Japanese eyes, Tokyo’s loyalty, and its generous purchases of U.S. Treasury
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