when the incident was made public in 1987, hawks in the Congress, under the banner of “national security,” smashed a Toshiba radio cassette player with sledgehammers on the steps of the Capitol. A Norwegian company, Kongsberg Vaapenfabrikk, had also sold this kind of equipment to the Soviet Union, however, and Russian submarines had become quieter well before the sales by Toshiba Machine began. To put it bluntly, Japan was “had” by then Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger.
As for the FSX, Japan was forced to make humiliating concessions in its plans to develop the next generation of support fighters for the Japanese Air Self-Defense Force. By making the FSX into a political issue, America was able to indulge in as much Japan-bashing as it pleased.
Under pressure from Weinberger, in January 1988 Japan abandoned plans to develop its own fighter support plane and agreed to a joint U.S.–Japan development project. That November the two countries exchanged a memorandum of understanding to the effect that Japan would assume the entire cost of the project in exchange for American aviation technology. On January 29, 1989, however, the Washington Post carried an article by Clyde Prestowitz entitled “Giving Japan a Handout,” which charged that America was giving away its airplane technology to Japan. Although an agreement had been reached the previous year with the Reagan administration and a memo of understanding had already been exchanged, the United States unreasonably demanded that the issue be reopened. The upshot was that America withdrew its promise to furnish “critical” jet engine technology, and the baffling decision was made that Japan was to unconditionally turn over to the United States the technology it had independently developed. At the heart of the issue was America’s fear that if it provided Japan with technology, Japan would “beat the United States at its own game” and overtake America in aerospace and defense-related industries as it had in other areas. In the words of Newsweek (August 7, 1989), “For the first time, policymakers treated America’s economic strength as a national-security issue.”
Public hearings on the FSX project were held during the spring of 1989. American congressmen know nothing about Article 9 of the Japanese constitution that forever renounces “war as a sovereign right of the nation and the threat or use of force as a means of settling international disputes.” They are equally ignorant of Japan’s three principles on weapon exports, first promulgated by Prime Minister Eisaku Sato in 1967, that forbid the export of weapons to communist countries, to countries to which the United Nations prohibits the export of weapons, or to countries that currently are, or might become, involved in international conflict. The purpose of the hearings was to provide an opportunity for U.S. government officials to explain these and other issues and answer any questions.
As I watched the coverage of the hearings on CSPAN, it was abundantly clear that trade matters and national security issues had become closely linked. The members of Congress bombarded the witnesses with questions. Secretary of Defense Richard Cheney was asked what would happen if Japan diverted the FSX technology the United States was to supply and sold it to the Soviet Union. Cheney replied that there was no cause for concern on that subject because of Japan’s peace constitution and its three principles on the export of weapons.
Almost before Cheney had finished answering, another congressman jumped in with the next question. Wasn’t it clear that Japan would steal our technology? Didn’t the Japanese pose a threat to the supremacy of the American aeronautics industry? Secretary of Commerce Robert Mosbacher answered that he too had been most concerned about that point so he had gone over everything more than once including the black boxing of the essential software. He assured his interlocutor that there was no need to worry. Other questions followed: 60 percent of the procurements were to be awarded to Japanese contractors and only 40 percent to Americans. If America supplied the technology, shouldn’t its share be 60 percent? The government’s reply was that the Japanese government was putting up all the money for the FSX. Under those circumstances, a 40-percent share for the United States was a “good deal.”
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