Fukuda should mention Iran

In the past week, the Bush administration has raised the intensity of its rhetoric on Iran to dangerously absurd levels.

Last week, President Bush suggested that Iran's possession of nuclear weapons could lead to World War III, which White House press secretary Dana Perino later played down as suggesting nothing more than the seriousness with which the president views the threat posed by a nuclear Iran.

More recently, however, Vice President Cheney said in a speech to the Washington Institute for Near East Policy on Sunday, "The United States joins other nations in sending a clear message: We will not allow Iran to have a nuclear weapon," and that Iran faces "serious consequences" for its pursuit of nuclear arms.

Between talk by Mr. Bush — head of state of a country that has somewhere between 5,000 and 10,000 nuclear weapons — of World War III and Mr. Cheney's using the same language that he used in advance of the Iraq War (Hat tip: Andrew Sullivan), observers in the US and elsewhere cannot be blamed for wondering whether the US will be at war with Iran in the waning months of the Bush administration. (Niall Ferguson dismisses the idea that war is imminent — imminent being a few weeks — but that's little comfort to me.) Even if the talk is bluster designed to make Iran give in somehow, the LA Times wonders whether the Bush administration, its credibility all but spent, can achieve anything but more Iranian recalcitrance with this approach.

For my part, like Fareed Zakaria, I'm not convinced that Iran is somehow beyond deterrence:

When the relatively moderate Mohammed Khatami was elected president in Iran, American conservatives pointed out that he was just a figurehead. Real power, they said (correctly), especially control of the military and police, was wielded by the unelected "Supreme Leader," Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Now that Ahmadinejad is president, they claim his finger is on the button. (Oh wait, Iran doesn't have a nuclear button yet and won't for at least three to eight years, according to the CIA, by which point Ahmadinejad may not be president anymore. But these are just facts.)

How does Japan enter the picture?

Prime Minister Fukuda will, of course, be in Washington next month to meet with President Bush. I think that the November summit might be a good opportunity for Mr. Fukuda to distinguish himself from his predecessors and state in no uncertain terms that Japan finds the Bush administration's rhetoric counterproductive to the resolution of the crisis, that Japan, as a state with official ties with Iran, wants to play a greater role in finding a solution, and that Washington cannot count on Tokyo's support in the event of war unless all other options are exhausted first.

In other words, for the US-Japan alliance to be more equal, Japan has to act like an equal of the US, making demands of its own on its ally.

Of course, given the Bush administration's expectations from its allies (i.e., seen and not heard), an interjection by Mr. Fukuda would probably have little impact on the administration's plans for Iran — and it's unclear to me how Japanese mediation could help resolve the crisis — but at least Mr. Fukuda could stake out a firm Japanese position now and perhaps prevent Japan from getting overwhelmed by events should a war come, all while signaling to the Japanese public that Japan's foreign policy will not be conducted from Washington.

Men are not angels

Working in the office of a Japanese Dietman and watching Japan's "sausage-making" process has been valuable in a number of ways — many of which I have documented here one way or another — but one lesson that I have left largely unmentioned is my renewed appreciation for the American political system.

No political system is perfect, because human beings are imperfect. The label of democracy does not automatically make people and the institutions by which they govern themselves somehow more perfect than otherwise.

But that is the genius of the American political system. It is grounded in human imperfection. It's all there in Federalist 51 by James Madison: "If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself. A dependence on the people is, no doubt, the primary control on the government; but experience has taught mankind the necessity of auxiliary precautions."

It is not just checks and balances, giving the branches of government the duty to check other branches (and making it in their interest to do so) — it is a culture of accountability: oversight committees, inspectors general, auditors, ombudsmen, and even investigative journalists, who lend a hand when others fail. The existence of these mechanisms presupposes human failure. They exist because they assume that individuals will try to skirt the law, will try to abuse their power — and that without vigilance by citizens, and by organizations and individuals whose purpose is to be vigilant, the system will be subverted.

One of the things I find most regrettable about the Japanese political system is the near-total absence of a culture of accountability. Public funds disappear into private pockets. Public interests are subverted by private interests. The watchers collude with the watched, and the voters — those who should be watching the watchmen — look away in indifference or disgust instead of demanding better.

It is with great alarm, then, that I look at the latest sinister twist in the saga of Dick Cheney, who has now asserted that his office is a kind of hybrid executive-legislative body, and free from the bounds of laws that govern both branches. That is a remarkably subversive idea: a powerful fiefdom within government that is free from "external [or] internal controls on government."

As the wreck that is the Bush administration finally comes to an end, the American people have a lot of serious thinking to do about the foundations of American constitutional order: not simply "liberty" or "democracy" or "equality," but accountability. It is government held accountable for its actions that makes the others possible. Unaccountable government is arbitrary government, and if American constitutionalism is to survive, citizens must recognize this as being the highest ideal.

Confluence of issues

It seems that in the aftermath of "The Facts" advert in the Washington Post, the House Foreign Affairs committee is prepared to move forward (Hat tip: Japan Probe) with the Honda resolution on the comfort women issue — and that there is something to the news emanating from Korean sources that Vice President Cheney in particular was unhappy with it.

At the same time, North Korea, having received its frozen funds, is reportedly ready to move forward on freezing the nuclear reactor at Yongbyon and welcome IAEA inspectors — moves that Assistant Secretary of State Chris Hill reportedly greeted with some enthusiasm.

And so here we are: at the same time that North Korea has signaled its readiness to move forward with the agreement, tension over the lingering Honda resolution — and Japan's clumsy reaction to it — is rising. This is the kind of confluence of events for which Pyongyang has no doubt been waiting. The time is approaching when the US will have to choose between sticking with Japan on the abductions issue and dealing with North Korea in pursuit of an elusive nuclear agreement (which will most likely be unable to achieve anything more than a nuclear freeze, and even that will not come cheap). With Japan lacking guardians within the Bush administration — and now having angered the one significant figure (Cheney) who could possibly resist Hill on Japan's behalf — the coming weeks will be essential.

It seems to me that we're seeing the product of a series of Japanese diplomatic mistakes: holding back from wielding its influence due to excessive emphasis on the abductions issue; failing to anticipate the extent to which the US is hungry for a "victory" in the six-party talks, no matter how illusory; and arrogantly thinking that Washington would be indifferent to statements intended to relativize or otherwise revise the historical record on comfort women.

As a result the Honda Resolution has gone from being on life support — on hold until after the Upper House elections or buried for good — to being rushed through the Foreign Affairs committee and put to the whole House before the end of June, just as the US looks ready to move forward, alongside China, Russia, and South Korea, in reaching an agreement with North Korea.

If Tokyo thought Chris Hill's agreement in Berlin was shocking, it ain't seen nothing yet. And this time there may fewer voices in Washington reminding the administration to be mindful of Japan's interests. Instead, we may find more people echoing the sentiments of that Washington Post editorial from March: why should we worry about your abductees when you refuse to acknowledge the victims of the Imperial Army's abductions.

Cheney comes and goes

The vice president has swooped in, addressed US navy personnel in Yokosuka, talked and dined with Prime Minister Abe and Foreign Minister Aso (I wonder if Aso had anything to say about the "comfort women" resolution currently being debated in Congress), met with the parents of abductee Yokota Megumi, and is now en route to Australia, which is, in Cheney's words, along with Japan the "most reliable" US ally in the region. (That may be true -- but it is a not so subtle dig at South Korea; as much as I think more cooperation between the US, Japan, and Australia could be a good thing for all three, I'd rather the US expend its energy on patching things up with Seoul.)

In any case, Adamu at Mutantfrog Travelogue argues in this post that Cheney's visit was "boring." Now, I'm not going to disagree about the risk of some kind of distortion in the space-time continuum as a result of Abe and Cheney meeting -- I've written about Abe's anti-charisma before, most notably here, and having seen Vice President Cheney speak on two occasions, the best I can say is that he is a competent public speaker, but not one that anyone would mistake for charismatic.

But "boring" is exactly the point: both governments needed a routine exchange of views to remind themselves that, even as the region changes, the alliance is still important.

I am less sanguine about Adamu regarding tensions in the alliance. They do exist. How could they not, after the US cut the deal it did in the six-party talks? A nuclear North Korea, still intransigent about its abductions of Japanese citizens, being welcomed to back into the fold while being given energy support to boot -- and in return only having to close its reactor at Yongbyon? All with the support of the US, in cahoots with Beijing, among others? Given the importance the North Korea threat has had not only for Japanese governments but for the Japanese people as a whole since the "Sputnik moment" that was the 1998 Taepodong launch, if the Beijing deal survives, Japan will have some serious thinking to do about its foreign policy goals. Much more than the indiscreet comments by members of Abe's Cabinet, regional dynamics suggest the possibility of Japan's being abandoned, or, to be less dramatic, ignored (i.e., Japan passing again).

So hopefully Cheney was able to assuage concerns about a renewed bout of Japan passing, and provide the political foundation for bilateral discussions on the political management of the alliance. His visit wasn't going to result in a major agreement -- substantial work on the alliance is nearly always done at the subcabinet level, with some guidance from the relevant ministers and the blessings of political leaders. But hopefully Cheney helped clear the air. Now for the allies to begin thinking about how the political management of the alliance has to change, as suggested by the new Armitage-Nye Report. Perhaps next month's 2 + 2/Security Consultative Comittee meeting, in recent years the major forum for accelerating progress on alliance cooperation, will help map out how to strengthen the alliance politically in changing times.

Reading on the six-party agreement

With Vice President Cheney in Tokyo to reassure the Abe Cabinet that the US "understands" Japan's need for progress on abductions, it is worthwhile to look at a couple essays that look into the conditions surrounding the preliminary six-party agreement reached in Beijing.

First, in the Washington Post, Philip Zelikow, onetime Condoleeza Rice co-author and until recently one of her senior advisers at the State Department, outlines the State Department's thinking in moving forward to the Beijing agreement.

Meanwhile, at Japan Focus, Gavan McCormack spells out the regional setting of the Korean question in greater detail, and points out the danger posed by this agreement to Japan:

The Nixon Shocks of 1970 would pale by comparison with such “Bush Shocks.” South Korea and Japan face especially large consequences. For Japan, dependence on the US has been the almost unquestioned foundation of national policy for over half a century. A new level of subjection to US regional and global purpose, presupposing an ongoing North Korean threat, has just been negotiated. The prospect of anything like the above shift in US Asian policy would be devastating to Tokyo. It can hardly have been coincidental that previously unimaginable rumbles of criticism of the Bush administration began to be heard from Tokyo, from the Minister of Defense and Minister of Foreign Affairs no less, over Iraq, a “mistaken” war whose justification had not existed and which had been pursued in “childish” manner, and over Okinawa, where the US was too “high-handed”. Neither earned more than the mildest of rebukes from the Prime Minister.When the Beijing deal was struck, Japan was notably the odd-man out.

This very much echoes a point I previously made here.

Both provide an interesting look at how the balance of power within the federal government changed leading to this agreement. We've come a long way from Newt Gingrich's 2003 harangue against Colin Powell's isolated, beleaguered State Department, although, of course, the State Department's clout remains insignificant in terms of personnel and budget.

Feeling the chill

The chill to which I'm referring, of course, is the chill that has set in between Tokyo and Washington.

Without looking particularly hard, I found two very clear signs of a growing appreciation among Japanese opinion makers that the US-Japan alliance is experiencing a bit of turbulence.

On the front page of today's Yomiuri, in an article published as part of an ongoing series of page one articles about the North Korean nuclear threat, Yomiuri reports on tensions just below the surface in bilateral negotiations surrounding the tentative agreement in the latest round of six-party talks. (This article does not seem to have been posted online yet.) The article reports, almost with surprise, at the swift turnaround in the US position, from clear unity with Japan following the missile and nuclear tests of 2006, to going so far as to indicate that the US might be willing to remove North Korea from the list of state sponsors of terrorism, which in 2004 George Bush insisted North Korea was, in part because of its kidnappings of Japanese citizens.

The article seems to be searching for an answer to the question, "what changed?" It's not all too difficult to explain. With Congress in Democratic hands after November and with Iraq still in shambles, the range of ways Bush could ensure a legacy narrowed considerably. Domestic avenues are more or less blocked due to the Democratic victory. The Middle East is no path to a quick victory. Reaching an accord via the six-party talks was all that was left: it enabled President Bush to show himself as willing to use patient diplomacy with other great powers in pursuit of peace -- a la Ronald Reagan's missile diplomacy with Gorbachev. Surely MOFA's American experts have some idea how presidential thinking changes as an administration winds down. It seems that the GOJ got caught up in the rhetoric that proclaimed US-Japan relations to be the best ever, and forgot that good relations can only be maintained with hard work from alliance managers in both governments -- and, in Japan in particular, with hard work by the political leadership to ensure that Japan remains at the forefront of US considerations in Asia.

But, as this op-ed in the Japan Times by former Japanese Ambassador to the US Okawara Yoshio points out, Abe has been too lax in his handling of US-Japan relations, with the result being that as a six-party agreement became possible, the US government quickly pushed Japanese concerns to the side.

The Yomiuri article ends on a doubtful note regarding Cheney's visit from the 20th to the 22nd (the following is my translation):

On the 20th, US Vice President Cheney comes to Japan. On this trip, Japan and Australia are the first priority, as he will not visit China and South Korea. This itinerary provides a "signal that Japan and Australia are America's most important allies."

To achieve a comprehensive solution to the nuclear, missile, and abduction problems, close US-Japan cooperation cannot be lacking. On Vice President Cheney's trip to Japan, can both countries close the gap on North Korea policy? The fundamentals of the alliance relationship are being questioned.

Tokyo may well be in a position to benefit from fissures within the Bush administration, as I expect that Cheney's position on the tentative agreement is not all that different from former US Ambassador to the UN John Bolton's. But I wonder if Cheney -- without his longtime ally at the Pentagon, without Scooter Libby, his beleaguered erstwhile advisor (who apparently has quite the interest in Japan), and without John Bolton -- would be able to undermine the six-party agreement fatally. Still, if he can successfully reassure Japan that the administration is not abandoning Japan while giving the Abe Cabinet a wake up call that it cannot ignore the US, his trip will have served its purpose.

No surprise here

The Japan Times is reporting here that Vice President Cheney will not be meeting Defense Minister Kyuma when he visits Japan later this month.

This was all too expected, being entirely consistent with how the Bush administration has dealt with critics throughout its tenure.

Not really much more to say here, other than that this is another sign of the palpable chill that has settled in between Washington and Tokyo.