TREATIES: Liability into Assets?

Japan may be the strongest anti-Communist force in Asia. But as an occupied country, it is a limping liability which U.S. troops are obliged to defend. Recognizing that General MacArthur’s successful occupation has passed the point of diminishing returns, President Truman last week gave hope of an early Japanese peace treaty. He appointed U.N. Delegate John Foster Dulles head of a mission to “conduct such further discussions and negotiations as may be necessary to bring a Japanese settlement to an eventual successful conclusion.”

Behind Dulles’ mission is a new plan permitting Japan to make bilateral peace treaties with the U.S. and anyone else who wants to negotiate. This sidetracks Russia’s demand for a four-nation Japanese peace conference with vetoes for the U.S., Russia, Britain and Red China.

Remember Pearl Harbor. For two years Japanese leaders­with General MacArthur’s blessing­have been doing verbal handsprings to attract the attention of the State Department treatymakers. More than a year ago, Douglas Mac-Arthur said: “. . . They have well earned the freedom and dignity and opportunity which alone can come with the restoration of a formal peace.”

Red China’s aggression in Korea stiffened the Japanese opposition to Communism. Japan’s Communist Party membership has dwindled to a new low. U.S. prestige, which suffered elsewhere, has apparently not been hurt in Japan by Korean defeats. The Japanese public is well acquainted with U.S. war potential. “Pearl Harbor victory” is what they call the current Communist successes.

Although confident of ultimate U.S. victory over Communism, most Japanese are disturbed about the time it would take the U.S. to mobilize. With Russia and Red China facing them on the mainland, Japanese have started thinking about rearmament. Hisato Ichimada, governor of the Bank of Japan, recently said: “Rearmament is a question forced upon Japan by the international situation.” Premier Shigeru Yoshida, who would like to use rearmament as a treaty bargaining point, last week cautiously added his agreement.

Cold Commitment. Rearmament would stretch Japan’s present piano-wire economy to the breaking point. Japan must import most of its industrial raw materials, even depends on outside sources for 20% of its food. Southeast Asia can supply part of Japan’s new material needs, but the loss of access to North China’s coal and iron has dimmed Japan’s industrial prospect.

Entirely aside from military expenses, the U.S. is now subsidizing Japan’s economy at the rate of $182 million a year. It could pay for some Japanese rearmament by continuing or increasing this after the signing of a treaty. The U.S. subsidy could be reduced by the re-creation of a large Japanese merchant marine. A bigger merchant-marine building program, long restricted by occupation policy, would put the Japanese in a position to import distant raw materials at prices they can pay.

Nobody can be certain that the Japanese have become trustworthy friends of the U.S. But they probably cannot be made more trustworthy by prolonging the occupation indefinitely. Certainly, the Japanese can, if given a chance, contribute to defending their country against Communist Chinese-Russian aggression. Said a Tokyo editor last week: “The clearest lesson brought home to Japanese by recent events of the Korean war is the cold realization that they are now irrevocably committed to the West, whether they like it or not.”