PERSPECTIVE ON A NEW WORLD ORDER : Not Ready for NATO’s Top Table : Japan wants a more active role in Western Europe, but its foreign policy first needs to mature.

Does it make much sense to seat Japan at NATO’s top table? Perhaps it is better to keep Tokyo cooling its heels in the hope that its foreign policy will grow more mature with the waiting.

There is a case for a broader alliance coping with an enlarged democratic Europe--and thus allowing Japan, the most illustrious “honorary” member of the West, to take a more active role. If one seriously fears that rising nationalism in Japan may make it a threat to the stability of East Asia, then participation in NATO might be a less dangerous distraction.

If there is a real fear that new conflicts, such as the ones bound to develop in Central Asia, will draw in great powers from both ends of Eurasia, then Japan should get used to high-level NATO deliberations on “out of area” operations.

Yet from Europe it seems that Japan is overreacting to the new Europhoria, after years of sneering at Eurosclerosis. Japanese foreign policy is suffering yet another “shock” to its supercilious sense that it is the wave of the future. Much like Japan’s failure to read the intention of the United States to normalize relations with China in the 1970s, Japanese foreign policy is notoriously slow at reacting to major shifts in the global balance of power.

At least three major features of Japanese foreign relations need to show real signs of reform before a seat in NATO can even be considered.

--Japan needs to develop a more mature relationship with the Soviet Union. Tokyo’s rhetoric is still that of the Cold War. Japan still seems obsessed by the need for Moscow to capitulate completely on the matter of the disputed Northern Territories. At a time when even China and South Korea have normalized relations with the Soviet Union, Japan must also accept the need to negotiate.

--Japan still has much to do in developing a more mature relationship with the United States. Progress in trade talks is only part of the story. The maturing process also needs to extend to military affairs. Precisely because there is no NATO in East Asia--and it is pointless to create one--Japan must come to terms with its own limitations as a military power.

Japan is indefensible in the modern age and can be strangled in weeks by a blockade. Now that the Soviet threat is fading, it is far more worried, albeit quietly, about Chinese aspirations. Thus the United States is needed to keep local instabilities under control. Japan, meanwhile, can play a constructive role in encouraging regional arms control.

--There is a great deal that Japan can do to normalize relations with the members of the European Community. Just as the United States has come to accept the need for regular talks about a range of economic and political issues with the European Community in Brussels, so Japan must take the community more seriously. As part of the “thickening” of Japan’s relations with community states, there should also be far more discussion about cooperation in the defense sector, including cooperation on new equipment.

The United States has earned the trust of Europeans by making sacrifices for European stability and prosperity. Japan has only recently become a major investor in Europe and there are far too few European leaders, like British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, who welcome Japan as a partner in building a new Europe.

Let Japan extend to the Europeans the same trade deals it hammers out with the United States. Let Japan, like the United States, funnel its aid to the emerging democracies of Eastern Europe through the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development. And if Japan is really serious about a role in European security, then let it drop the annoying talk of a Pacific Economic Community, or at least offer the European Community a seat at the table of its Pacific pretender.