George R. Packard
President, International University of Japan;
Director of the Reischauer Center for East Asian Studies at the School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), Johns Hopkins University, President, U.S.-Japan Foundation
George R. Packard was dean of SAIS from 1979 to 1993 and is now director of the Edwin O. Reischauer Center for East Asian Studies as well as professor of East Asian studies at the school. He is also president of the International University of Japan. From 1965 to 1967, he was chief diplomatic correspondent for Newsweek. Prior to that, he served as special assistant to U.S. Ambassador to Japan Edwin O. Reischauer. In March of 1998, he was appointed president of the U.S.-Japan Foundation.
Packard Report - Jul. 2006
Prime Minister Koizumi's visit to Washington can be viewed as a public relations success, but it also revealed some troubling aspects in the US-Japan relationship that may come back to bite us in the future.
It is painfully obvious now that there are no real Japan specialists" shinnichi-ha types" in the White House, State Department or Pentagon. A look at the guest list for the official White House dinner last evening showed an appalling lack of awareness of the individuals who have over the past 50 years contributed to better understanding between the two nations.
The only serious representative of the academic world was Professor James Morley of Columbia. Missing were such familiar faces as Ezra Vogel and Joseph Nye of Harvard, Richard Samuels of MIT, Kent Calder of Johns Hopkins and Richard Wood, new President of the Japan Society of New York.
Dr. Michael Green, who just left the National Security Council Staff, was missing from the list, as was Senator Jay Rockefeller(D - West Virginia) though Nancy Pelosi (D - CA), Senate Minority leader, was invited. It may be that Rockefeller has angered the White House by pressing too hard for more facts about how the war in Iraq was started.
Though former Ambassador Tom Foley was present, other former Ambassadors (Armacost, Mondale and Baker) were not.
Media coverage, compared with the coverage for Chinese President Hu Jintao, was pathetic. The Washington Post played the story of Koizumi's visit on page A-4 of the front news section, and stressed only the joint warning to North Korea regarding a possible launch ofthe Taepodong-2 missile. The paper then treated the White House dinner as a colorful social event in their "Style Section."
The New York Times placed the visit on page A-6 and again played up the North Korean angle. The Wall Street Journal had nothing about the visit in its front section - not even a mention in its page one roundup of worldwide news short items.
An optimistic might argue that all this neglect of the Prime Minister of America's most important ally is really good news: it means that the relationship is on a stable basis and that it no longer requires the special attention of "experts" to guide it throughmisunderstandings.
The optimist would be wrong. Many issues remain to be resolved, including the huge American bilateral trade deficit with Japan, the continuing issues over force realignment and who will pay, and a host of other problems that will require the sensitivity of Americans who understand Japan's history, culture and national interests.
Meanwhile the anti-whaling forceshave mounted an extremely effective magazine and newspaper campaign against Japan's advocacy of resuming the harvesting of whales. No one should underestimate the harsh feelings against Japan, especially among the younger Americans, that this posture invokes.
The visit to Graceland was colorful enough to command the attention of evening television news, but once again Japan is portrayed as a kind of lightweight nation - amusing but not serious.
It appears that the US is making the same mistake that it did in the 1920's, 1930's, 1970's, and 1980's: only a crisis seems to awaken our leaders to the fact that Japan must and will be taken seriously.
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