Challenge of Japan Before World War II

Nazli Choucri, Robert C. North, Susumu Yamakage

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• eBook ISBN: 9781136130281
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

First published in 1993.This book examines the relationships between the economic, political and strategic expansion of a country, and its tendency towards conflict and war. The authors use the example of Japan to demonstrate that it is uneven economic development and the search for basic resources and markets that often set the stage for war and international conflict. Thus the pursuit of legitimate national goals - for example the expansion of a nation's industrial base - may put it into competitive, poten­tially conflicting relationships with countries with similar objectives. The names of the authors will attract all International Relations scholars who will know Choucri and North's Nations in Conflict and will have been awaiting the outcome of their fifteen years of research on Japan. The book is also invaluable reading for advanced undergraduate and postgrad­uate students of Japan and other Asian area studies, political economy and political science.

Part I

Lateral pressure and Japan

Chapter 1

Conflict and contention

A theory of lateral pressure

The theory of lateral pressure seeks to explain the relationships between domestic growth and international behavior. The most fundamental characteristics of nations – their ‘master variables’ – are population, technology, and resources. Since states differ in levels and rates of change of population characteristics, of resource endowments, and of technological capabilities, patterns of international activities vary accordingly. In this chapter we consider the international interactions generated by a state’s master variables, that is, how various distinct profiles tend to condition the transactions and foreign relations of states, patterns of competition and conflict, and sometimes even war.

The theory of lateral pressure addresses some generic features of national growth, international activities, and propensities for international conflict. Japan is a distinctive case in that patterns of growth and development have changed substantially over the past 100 years, as have propensities for expansion, imperialism, and violence. This case illustrates the transformation of both domestic structure and politics and international activities and behavior – and the change from military competition and expansionism to forms of economic competition, expansion, and related activities.

CAUSES OF WAR

In the book Nations in Conflict (Choucri and North 1975), we presented an initial conceptual framework derived from the premise that international conflict and warfare among nations are generated from at least three major processes: (a) domestic growth and the external expansion of activities and interests; (b) competition for resources, markets, superiority in arms, and strategic advantage; and (c) the dynamics of crisis. This approach had the advantage of considerable parsimony; while implying cognitive, affective decision-making and associated components, the framework made no specific use of them. Since such national attributes as population, technology (knowledge and skills), and access to resources were used to define the parameters for state activity within the international environment, however, human cognitions, affects, and decision making, as well as organizational capabilities, both empirical and cognitive, were implicit within the framework. In this chapter we render these factors explicit and show how they contribute to the broader processes of growth, competition, and conflict.

There is never a single ‘cause’ of war. Violence is more likely to emerge from a wide but seemingly convergent network of many factors which contribute variably to the probability of inter-state war. Rarely, however, if at all, are the master variables (population, technology, access to resources) or economic variables (trade, for example, or investment) the proximate ‘causes’ of war, but in combination – interacting over time – these and other factors constitute a process which can create the conditions, or set the stage, for distrust, hostile feelings, and an escalation of negative inducements leading to crisis and war. Closely associated with such empirical considerations are desires for prestige, national pride, patriotic reassurance, and other intangibles.

If war is viewed as part of a complex social, economic, and political process rooted in the past, then an abbreviated sequence of ‘causation’ may help us to understand the processes leading to inter-state war:

• population, resources, technology, lead to

• uneven growth and development, lead to

• differential capabilities, lead to

• demands, lead to

• differential expansion of activities and interests, lead to

• intersections of spheres of influence, lead to

• leverages (positive and/or negative), lead to

• escalation and crises, lead to

• war.

These are stark linkages, stated in a rather simple-minded way; but to the extent that they may prove helpful in the search for a better understanding of the antecedents of international crises and war, their simplicity serves as precursor to more complex, formal, and quantitative modes of inquiry in subsequent chapters of this book. To that extent, therefore, their use may turn out to be justified. Clearly, they are not unidirectional (the direction of influence may be reversed at any point); there may be feedback dynamics; and there is nothing inevitable about even the most simple of these linkages. To the extent that variability at any juncture can affect subsequent events in the chain, outcomes can be predicted or explained only in terms of probability. This framework evokes all three ‘images,’ or levels – man, the state, and the international system (Waltz 1959) – and seeks explicitly to articulate the linkages among them (North 1990).

This capsule representation is adequate only for summary purposes. Many other complex and important phenomena are implicit in it, including several that are elusive and difficult to identify empirically. Each phase in the sequence is mediated and, to a large extent, driven by human affects and cognitions, which are often difficult to deal with rigorously. Every change in the master variables is conditioned by cognitions and affects, and vice versa. Indicators of hostility, for example, can be seen as triggering actions or negative leverages in inter-state relations. The exercise of leverage and other manifestations of influence are relatively overt and tend to be relatively ascertainable, however, as compared with motivations, intentions, values, goals, and other somewhat elusive affective and cognitive phenomena, which are likely to be difficult or impossible to identify. Although easily professed, they are often distorted in action or honored in the breach (in crises and war, for example, both sides commonly present themselves as innocent defenders and their adversaries as ruthless aggressors). Despite the obvious oversimplification, a great deal can be learned through use of this framework, provided its limitations are kept in mind.

BASIC INTERACTIONS: POPULATION, RESOURCES, AND TECHNOLOGY

The theory of lateral pressure is rooted in interactions among the fundamental attributes of states. The individual human being – interacting with physical and social environments – is the only truly definitive actor on all levels of organization (Sprout and Sprout 1965: 11). All small group and corporate actors, including states, are viewed as coalitions (or coalitions of coalitions).

Each individual is motivated by biological needs (food, water, air, living space) and psychologically generated wants, desires, and aspirations (security, affiliation, affection, achievement, and so on) (Maslow 1970; Sites 1973: 43). These needs and wants tend to be interdependent; that is, access to food, water, and other resources depends on a degree of security; security depends upon resource access; both of these needs depend on organization, and so forth. Aggregated to the state level, individual needs and wants are manifested in terms of demands for security. The larger the number of people in a community, organization, or society, the greater will be the volume of needs, wants, and demands.

People and populations can be seen as operating to narrow or close gaps between perceptions of ‘what is’ and ‘what ought to be.’ In efforts to satisfy their needs, wants, and desires, people make demands (Easton 1965: 38–9) upon themselves, upon the physical environment, and upon other people in order to narrow or close these gaps – to ameliorate or satisfy their needs, wants, and desires. If the individual lacks an adequate capacity for obtaining the desired results, four theoretical possibilities emerge: (a) to increase personal knowledge and skills; (b) to bargain and to apply leverage, or otherwise ‘persuade’ someone else to provide what is wanted; (c) to seek the active support or collaboration of others (notably, to join a coalition or ‘bargain and leverage’ others into the formation of a coalition); or (d) to adjust priorities and do without (Riker 1962; Schelling 1966).

Constraints of the physical and social environments, together with the level of technology (knowledge and skills) available, establish limits of human well-being and achievement but do not determine successes or failures within these boundaries. Technology, including organizational as well as engineering and other essentially mechanical knowledge and skills, pushes back these limits – though not without some costs in resources, toxic wastes, and the like.

People – and states, through their human components – increase their knowledge and skills by drawing on the mechanical, organizational, and other technologies available in the society for the development of specialized capabilities (agricultural, commercial, financial, industrial, military, and so forth). Through technology, people obtain new resources and find new uses for old, relatively abundant resources. The more advanced the level of technology, however, the greater will be the amount and the wider the range of resources required (for motive power, structures, tools and machines, raw materials for transformation into products, and so on). Historically, however, the higher the level of technology, the greater have been the amount and range of resources that people have thought they needed beyond those required for survival.

All the phenomena indicated so far are mediated and to a large extent driven by human affects and cognitions, which are often difficult to investigate quantitatively or with analytical rigor.

The volume of demands may be expected to rise with population increases and advances in technology, for example, and population changes and technological developments in turn are driven by feelings, perceptions, expectations, and decisions. Technology (knowledge and skills) contributes to increased capabilities (including further learning), but if population grows in advance of technological development, capabilities will be constrained.

Demands combine with capabilities to yield actions, but actions will be constrained by the nonavailability of appropriate resources. In the absence of appropriate capabilities (and/or resources), however, extremely high demand (implying high motivation) can often substitute for limited resources and capabilities, as demonstrated by Viet Cong successes in confrontation with the United States during the 1960s (Choucri and North 1975: 284; Ashley 1980: 13).

A country’s basic capabilities and bargaining and leverage potentials are constrained by its profile; however, the ability of its leaders and bureaucrats to extract and allocate resources and develop specialized capabilities (industry, finance, commerce, research and development, military, navy, and so forth) also contributes in major ways to the nation’s position in the global configuration of power and its capacity for dealing with other nations effectively.

The capabilities of a state will be affected by the proportional financial allocations that are made to various national goals and functions – production, research and development, domestic security, education, the military, and so forth. The ability of a developing society to industrialize will depend upon agricultural productivity (characteristically, investment in industry depends upon an agricultural surplus) and the relative amounts that are allocated to light and heavy industry, research and development, toolmaking, the acquisition of foreign exchange, and the like. In Japan the period of the Meiji Restoration provides a classic demonstration of successful – and rapid – industrialization.

Two basic sets of functions performed by the individual human being seem adequate to account for the emergence of state and other forms of organization and for both the domestic and external activities of nations. These are the information – (and decision making) and the energy (and other resource) processing functions, which are inexorably intertwined. Like other organizations, a state tends to survive according to the extent that it is effective in obtaining and managing resources, winning compliance from the populace, and organizing materials, labor, knowledge, and skills productively (North and Choucri 1983: 450). Possibilities for control are limited (‘plastic’), however, and no regime can be sure of compliance. In subsequent chapters we shall see how the inability of the Japanese government to prevent ‘politics by assassination’ contributed to Japanese militarism and expansionism prior to World War II.

The acquisition, transformation, and application of resources involve bargaining at almost every step.

BARGAINING, LEVERAGE, AND COALITION FORMATION

The technology of human organization depends on people’s willingness to cooperate – more or less voluntarily – as well as upon the ability of some individuals or groups to ‘persuade’ others to act (or to refrain from or cease acting) in certain ways.

Bargaining, as defined by Thomas Schelling, refers to verbal and/or nonverbal interchanges used in situations where the ability of one participant to gain particular ends is dependent upon the choices, decisions, and actions another participant undertakes (Schelling 1966: 5–6). Three critical elements are inherent in a bargaining move: a contingency (if …, unless …); a demand (an indication of the response that is expected from another participant); and an inducement, incentive, or leverage (the advantage, reward, penalty, coercion, or punishment that is awarded, threatened, or inflicted in order to ‘persuade’ the other participant to close the ‘bargain’).

Bargaining and leverage – positive (rewarding) and/or negative (threatening, coercive, puni...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Figures
• Acknowledgements
• Prologue
• Part I Lateral pressure and Japan
• Part II Emergence of Japan
• Part III Expansion, competition, conflict
• Part IV Postwar Japan Reconstruction, growth, expansion
• Part V Conclusion Emergence of a global power
• Appendix I Major sources of quantitative data
• Appendix II Pre-World War II model estimation (for Chapter 6)
• Appendix III Post-World War II model estimation (for Chapter 15)
• Appendix IV Simulation summary statistics post-World War II (for Chapter 16)
• Notes
• References*
• Index>*