Now, idling through Kenneth B. Pyle's Japan Rising, my attention is called to an added irony: if Nixon did not understand economics, he had good company. That is: neither did his ally, enabler, co-conspirator Henry Kissinger, Mr. Power himself. As Pye explains, Kissinger never got Japan. And the reason is that Japan was about commerce--economics,-- and Kissinger did not understand that commerce was power.
The reason for [Kissinger's] obliviousness [to the rise of Japan] was that Japanese postwar foreign policy was characterized by economic realism, and Kissinger had little interest in economics as a source of power. National Security Council staff members under Kissinger observed that he had a "profound lack of knowledge and interest in economics" and that discussing economic issues with him was akin to discussing military strategy with the pope. He perceived Japanese diplomats as "not conceptual" in their thinking, lacking long-term vision, and making decisions only by consensus. "The Japanese do no yet think in strategic terms," he told Deng Xiaoping in 1974. "They think in commercial terms." The implication was that pursuing economic advantge was not a means of strategic pursuit of power.Let's set aside the question of whether the pope understands military strategy. An added irony here is that Kissinger was talking to the one man who understood better than any other that the way forward for China was to set aside ideology and concentrate on, yes, economics--Kenneth B. Pyle, Japan Rising 15 (2007)
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