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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
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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

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References

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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.

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6 Kristof (fn. 1), 46.

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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.

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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.

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31 Ibid., 296.

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

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

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41 JERC (fn. 30), 294.