After Viet Nam

While President Nixon was spreading the gospel of disengagement in Southeast Asia, Secretary of State William Rogers was deep in talks with the Japanese. Those discussions turned out to be not only diplomatically difficult but physically dangerous. A Japanese anarchist, Shigeji Hamaoka, 21, went at Rogers with a dull paint scraper and missed. Hamaoka's apparent motive: to protest the supposed injustice that Rogers was in Tokyo to discuss--continued U.S. occupation of Okinawa. The island was captured in 1945, and has since become the largest U.S. military base off the Asian mainland.

The generally pro-American government of Premier Eisaku Sato wants Okinawa to revert to Japanese control; U.S. Presidents from Eisenhower on have promised that someday it will. When that happens, however, the U.S. armory would become subject to the same conditions that now apply to American bases in Japan: no nuclear weapons under any circumstances, and no introduction of new weaponry or dispatch of U.S. forces to combat from Japanese stations without prior consultations.

Dovetail. Sato's government is saying, in effect, that it will allow an unwritten exception to these restrictions if the U.S. formally agrees to reversion for Okinawa; his regime, Sato feels, must win control of the island in order to stay in power and keep anti-American elements from gaining strength. Rogers resisted this carrot-and-stick argument; the U.S. wants no strings on its Okinawa-based forces. Japanese Foreign Minister Kiichi Aichi called Rogers' attitude "severe."

In fact, the diplomatic battle Rogers was righting is likely to become increasingly unimportant. Outside Viet Nam, where a second round of U.S. troop withdrawals already seems imminent, the American garrisons on the periphery of East Asia could be substantially reduced over the next few years. Here Nixon's goals abroad dovetail with his attempt at home to check federal spending. The Pentagon is seeking ways to reduce the overall size of the armed services. Large overseas ground forces seem the likeliest target for either disbandment or withdrawal to bases like Hawaii.

Would U.S. influence recede with the infantry? Not necessarily. Some air and sea forces would doubtless remain in place, along with the dollar. In a recent essay, Edwin Reischauer, a former U.S. Ambassador to Japan, wrote: "We should do our best, through economic and technological aid, to assist [Asians] in their long-range development. There is no reason to believe that neoimperialists, whether they be international Communists or Chinese, can dominate other Asian nations any more successfully than we, the Japanese or the French."

TIME Correspondent Louis Kraar, a longtime student of Asian affairs, completed a swing through six East Asian nations just before President Nixon began his tour. Kraar concludes: "The vast numbers of U.S. bases provide no answer to the greatest military threat: local insurgency, which thrives on poverty, social injustice and, to a degree, exploitation of nationalist sentiment directed against these enclaves of foreign troops. Every country where the U.S. has bases gets a distorted image of American aims. These bases should be cut to the bone, leaving only whatever air cover is essential to provide protection against nuclear attack. U.S. naval power, which is less obtrusive, should assume a larger share of this responsibility."

Expensive Lesson. Correspondent Kraar finds that there is unquestionably a new mood in much of Asia--a greater sense of self-reliance, a greater effort toward regional cooperation, a diminished fear of China. New institutions like the Asian Development Bank tend to draw the countries together. Japan has promised to double within five years, to $1 billion, its aid and investment programs for less affluent neighbors. A number of states, from South Korea to Singapore, have begun to make significant economic progress. In some instances the U.S. can justly take credit for advances that have been made, but there is a fine line between the kind of help that stimulates and the sort that stagnates by maintaining dependence on the U.S. In the future, the U.S. may find that channeling resources through Asian regional institutions, rather than giving direct assistance, provides the best means of fostering independence.

Psychologically, at least, most Far Eastern countries have already entered the post-Viet Nam era. While there is some fear of being abandoned entirely by the U.S., the present group of pragmatic Asian leaders have drawn their own conclusions from Viet Nam. There is little enthusiasm anywhere in Asia for having half a million U.S. troops come to the rescue when economic and social reform offers a far more effective deterrent to insurgency. The U.S. Government has talked about exactly this for years, but it took the bitter experience of Viet Nam to drive the lesson home.

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