The Noh Summit

...Answer The only figures the declaration offered were either embedded amid qualifications carefully chosen to avoid commitment, or else stated so vaguely as to have lost all meaning It was perhaps fitting that Japan —the nation that has aroused the deepest antagonism in the United States as well as Europe for being reluctant to open up its markets significantly or provide more than short-term measures to reduce its trade surplus?ought hardest to preserve its interests Tokyo s acquiescence to a covly worded pledge "not to exceed the range between 6 3 and 6 l) million barrels a day" of oil imports by 1985 represented a sacrifice in only one respect From the outset Prime Minister Masayosm Ohira, a career bureaucrat with a knack for covering his technical expertise and political shrewdness beneath his own Noh-like mask of avuncular understanding, had said he did not think it necessary to mention figures in an otherwise firm statement of purposes The European leaders perceived this view for what it was—an effort by Japan to enhance its international prestige by hosting the conference yet avoid binding obligations A high-ranking member of Carter's advisory group, in an off-handed moment with a journalist after the President himself had left, remarked that Ohira's quiet stubbornness was a major stumbling block to agreement Finally, he said, Carter had to pressure Ohira personally, pointing out the risk of the conference concluding without so much as a face-saving piece of paper to show for it What the consequent communique does not note is that Japan now manages to fuel its massive economy, with a gross national product that will soar beyond a trillion dollars this year, on oil imports of 5 4 million barrels a day In other words, under the terms of the declaration, Japan can increase its oil imports by roughly 30 per cent and easily attain Ohira's avowed target of 6 3 per cent annual economic growth The Europeans could scarcely hide their dismay over Ohira's finesse in blandly exploiting his role as conference chairman to avoid real concessions "They're the host country," snapped an EC official when asked why the European bloc did not bargain more strongly for Japanese cooperation in what the communique hypocritically describes as a "common strategy" to attack inflation, oil prices and the oil shortage The EC, though, is hardly exempt itself from similar criticism On the eve of the summit the lour participating Community leaders—Britain s Margaret Thatcher, France's Gascard D'Estang, West Germany's Helmut Schmidt, and Italy Guiho Andreotti —agreed not to budge on their goal of restricting oil imports to 1978 levels They referred to the decision of all nine EC countries at a meeting in Strasbourg to set a ceiling of 10 million barrels a day for the whole Community, and they treated it throughout the conference as a solemn pledge Since that ceiling represented the EC's total oil imports for 1978, they argued, other countries should exercise the same discipline in abiding by last year's levels The European leaders saw themselves as apostles of restraint upon Japanese acquisitiveness and American hedonism Giscard drew a shrill denunciation from one of Carter's sidekicks for saying before the summit began that the U S had "not even started" to cut down on oil use The French leader seemed to have been vindicated when an EC official remarked, "The root single problem is the Americans consume twice as much oil as anyone else " But the trouble with the European position was that it deliberately overlooked the impact of North Sea oil Not one of the official conference documents mentioned the North Sea, despite its being a point of contention because the EC does not regard the oil from there as an import regardless of where it is sold within the community The U S thinks it should count as an import wherever it's sold outside Britain The EC's Sir Roy Jenkins, left off the invitation list drawn up by Giscard for the seance the night before the summit started, nevertheless was a major participant in all the conference sessions And he did not allay doubts by acknowledging that the North Sea gave the Community "elbow room" yet claiming, "We do not intend to use it'' Still, indirectly North Sea oil was a factor in enabling the conferees to get together to the extent of accepting their inability to agree The newcomer to the EC bloc, Mrs Thatcher, said that she had withdrawn some of her objections to American and Japanese demands in the expectation that Britain would be largely self-sufficient in oil by 1981 Carter's aides later boasted that she gave in just half an hour before the end of the summit because the President refused to budge on his desire for EC members to specify their oil imports by country rather than lump them together "She was intransigent throughout the talks," said an American diplomatic source "She gave us the hardest time of any of the Europeans " Ironically, Giscard was said to have urged Mrs Thatcher to change her mind, while Schmidt decided on the first day that it would be just as difficult to impose the EC's guidelines on the Americans as it would be for the EC to accept the American formula without engaging in a great deal of deliberate ambiguity Schmidt, like Mrs Thatcher, made much of his final assent to the sentence committing the four EC nations at the summit to recommend that each Community member reveal its oil imports separately Although the clause provides less than a guarantee, the West German Chancellor spoke about it rather unhappily afterward as part of a "compromise" requiring "give and take " The Americans triumphantly explained that Carter had extracted the "concession" in return for Japan's commitment to figures Yet, the country-by-country concept clearly was as devoid of meaning as the Japanese numbers' game on oil imports, since it did not set levels for individual EC countries Another point on which Mrs Thatcher said she gave way was equally empty It revolved around the question of whether the countries should set their oil imports at the 1978 level, as decided by the EC, or the higher 1977 and projected 1979 levels The EC bloc, buoyed by North Sea oil, had not the slightest intention of yielding, but Carter's spokesman denounced its plan as "totally unworkable" during his brief tirade against Giscard A corollary question was whether the summit should commit itself on freezing oil imports for a year or two, as the U S , Japan and Canada wanted, or until 1985, the EC target In retrospect, the solution was amusingly simple Mrs Thatcher could show her desire "not to embarrass or isolate Mr Carter," as her press aide put it, by ultimately urging acceptance of an agreement that gave everyone what they wanted True, the United States, Japan and Canada—which came to be known as the "Pacific powers" in the Japanese press—talked about objectives for 1985, but they got away with a niftily worded sentence to the effect that they would stick to this year's levels and not exceed them for 1980 That gives Japan and Canada license to base their levels on this year's imports, although Mrs Thatcher later observed "an obvious weakness" in choosing a year that was not already over as a take-off point (Canada, like Japan, had hoped to avoid any figures, but accepted a 1 per cent annual increase through 1985 to compensate for dwindling Albertan reserves, even though new fields will open up in the early 1980s ) The United States, for its part, promised not to go over the 1977 or 1979 import levels, both of them 8 5 million barrels a day Yet the U S merely adopted that figure as a "goal" for 1985, bowing to the EC but implying the goal might be unavoidably missed in the end The cynicism, moreover, went beyond semantics Carter's aides could find perverse solace in the long lines at the gasoline stations back home, offering them as proof to doubting Europeans that American car owners were not getting all the gas they wanted Ohira blamed the opec increases for provoking an energy crisis worse than the one that followed the 1973 Mideast War even as he proclaimed that Japan would abandon none of its plans for growth In Japan, where all the oil is imported, talk of this kind provides a pretext for more aggressive salesmanship abroad and restrictions at home At best, the summit offered a temporary basis for reconciliation among the democratic industrial powers in the battle for oil At worst, it could lead to much deeper competition among them against the background of an increasingly avaricious opec bloc encouraged by the Soviet Union and its industrialized East European allies...

...PLAYACTING IN JAPAN The Noh Summit BY DONALD KIRK MASAYOSHI OHIRA Tokyo Nobody seemed to remember the anniversary during the June 28-29 summit here, but exactly 60 years earlier, on June 28, 1919, the leaders of this century's original Western Alliance concluded the Versailles peace treaty in keeping with Woodrow Wilson's pledge to "make the world safe for democracy" The date was not altogether irrelevant, if only because by odd historical accident the leaders of the major "Western" countries met in a building designed stone by stone after the original Palace of Versailles Called the Akasaka Guest House, it was completed 70 years ago in the lush greenery of a prince's park, now surrounded by a network of expressways, railways, avenues, and alleys crisscrossing one of Tokyo's richest residential and business districts But the irony extended beyond merely the coincidence of date and setting, for the American President seemed almost as naive as his forebear in assuming the conference would do anything more than postpone confrontations m a welter of questions and contradictions Jimmy Carter met his Versailles prouncing his full faith that "the major Western Allies" represented at the summit would "act aggressively and without precedence to cut down on our imports and our dependence on opec oil " He made that comment, to be sure, while talking to a hastily chosen pool of White House reporters on the steps of the American Embassy, after learning about the latest opec price increase It was 7 30 a m , just two hours before he was to sit down for the first summit session at the cherry-wood conference table built for the occasion, at a cost of $50,000 Yet even when all was said and little done, the President and his aides believed they had persuaded the other six participating countries of the need to reach an agreement that had "substance"—one of the overused White House code words these days In fact, with due politeness, they simply agreed, first, to disagree, and second, to guarantee themselves the right to acquire as much oil as possible for national and corporate prosperity The summit "declaration" in short, seemed likely to be about as effective in solving the oil crisis as the Versailles treaty was in safeguarding against war Gazing down upon the "big seven" and their advisers as they put together their manifesto was a work of art most definitely not borrowed or copied from Versailles but altogether appropriate It was the 3,229-square-foot "Robe of Angels," a painting on the Donald Kirk, a longtime NL contributor, is a freelance journalist currently reporting from the Far East concave ceiling depicting a scene from an ancient Noh play in which the actors perform with masks rather than makeup Had he derived any inspiration from above, Carter would have contemplated the symbolism of the characters covering their faces m a stylized drama steeped more in form than in feelings Instead, like the Democratic, Southern, Calvinist Wilson in 1919, the Baptist from Georgia returned to the United States the next week with an illusion of success against the forces of despair and the machinations of evil, notably opec He really thought, as he was heard to remark at the residence of the American ambassador and former Senate majority leader Mike Mansfield, that the outcome of the conference represented a "sweeping triumph " Carter's descent from the summit in Japan seemed almost as precipitous as Wilson's tragic plunge upon coming back from France Clearly he could not sell the agreement that was reached as a cure-all or even a placebo any more than Wilson could sell the treaty For one thing, it had made little impact on the home front For another, his ostensible purpose was to cut down on energy use, not to satisfy the demands of gas-guzzhng Americans The major flaw in the final communique, however, was its failure to impose overall guidelines Indeed, what the conference revealed more than anything else was the potential for conflict and fragmentation of this alliance that has U S military power as its unifying bond The Europeans went so far as to indicate privately that they saw no reason to concern themselves with the security of America's Pacific ally, Japan, whom they accuse of undercutting and cheating them in trade talks If Japan's worst fears were realized and the Russians attacked or imposed a blockade, the European Community (EC) would have little to lose It has gotten almost nowhere in persuading Japan to reverse its trade policies, lower the barriers to imports and redress the yawning gap between exports and imports Thus, without openly vilifying each other around the conference table, all seven leaders clung tenaciously to their original positions in what was essentially a restatement of objectives This was the case despite the self-congratulation of Carter and his entourage, who claimed to have cajoled and arm-twisted their less tractable colleagues into appreciating the urgent need for unity and cited as evidence the acceptance of "specific" fuel consumption figures nation-by-nation After all, the Americans argued, had not the President, on his way over, said he wanted a communique that was "clear, concise, specific"—and, naturally, "substantive...