Diplomacy: Beef and Bitter Lemons

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The Reagan Administration was anxious to give Nakasone a chance to live up to his reputation as a personable, resolutely pro-American politician. So the strategy last week was to welcome him warmly while at the same time prodding him gently for further concessions. After three hours of private meetings during a two-day period, Reagan and Nakasone emerged with somewhat similar statements. Reagan noted that Japan's restrictions on U.S. products would "continue to weigh heavily" on relations, and called on the Japanese for "tangible progress."

Nakasone said that he had seen pictures of soup lines and old people sleeping in cars in the U.S., and emphasized his sympathy for the U.S.'s unemployment problem. But he asked Americans not to blame Japan for the lack of technical innovation in certain U.S. industries, and suggested that "more constructive efforts, like encouraging Japanese industries to locate in the U.S.," would be superior to imposing protectionist measures.

One development that cheered the Reagan Administration was Nakasone's readiness to strengthen Japan's defenses. In a sense, some U.S. analysts concluded, Nakasone was making a sort of trade-more on defense but less than the Reagan Administration wanted on increased access to the Japanese market. Indeed, he raised some protests among antimilitarists at home by asserting that he intended to make Japan "an unsinkable aircraft carrier" that would provide air defense against Soviet long-range Backfire bombers. He also said he would improve his country's defenses against Soviet submarines and surface ships. The Prime Minister stressed that these statements did not represent a new defense policy.

Nonetheless, the Soviet Union seized on Nakasone's comments to launch a small-scale propaganda attack of its own. Such moves by the Japanese, said the Soviet news agency TASS, would "make Japan a likely target for a retaliatory strike" and thus could lead it to "a national disaster more serious than the one that befell it 37 years ago," when U.S. planes dropped atom bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

During the talks President Reagan avoided going into detail on the most contentious issues, such as U.S. beef and citrus exports and Japanese auto imports. Instead, he emphasized the political pressure he faces to gain more trade concessions from Japan. Similarly, Nakasone described the resistance he must contend with in moving faster on trade. He indicated that the negotiations over beef and citrus products would have to wait for a "cooler" period.

Nakasone's subsequent talks on Capitol Hill went better than he had expected. Legislators gave him some blunt talk about U.S.-Japanese relations, but most seemed impressed by his desire to be accommodating. As Democratic Congressman Samuel Stratton of New York put it, "We think he is trying to do more than anybody has done before."