A new course on the abductees

Kawamura Takeo, the chief cabinet secretary, told reporters Monday that the government is working to arrange a meeting between US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the families of Japanese abducted by North Korea.

As MTC wrote of a dinner Secretary Clinton had with Asia experts in advance of her trip, "Members of the Bush Administration Asia team committed a major blunder in failing to speak bluntly to the Japanese government and the Japanese people about the DPRK abductions issue. Having the Yokotas visit with President Bush was a nightmarishly bad decision, setting the stage for an ultimate, inevitable 'betrayal' of Japan over the DPRK terrorism delisting."

I cannot stress this point enough.

The Bush administration, for all of its good work on behalf of the alliance, nearly allowed itself to get entrapped by the Japanese right. Japanese conservatives sought not only to make Japan's North Korea policy center on the abductees — a goal largely achieved — but also to center US North Korea policy on the abductees. The US was to be the instrument by which the Japanese people would be made whole again, because US pressure in tandem with Japanese pressure would force North Korea to provide a full account of its abductions and release any surviving abductees.

Of course, if the conservatives were really focused on recovering the abductees, they would have been making overtures to China, presumably the only country with enough leverage over North Korea to get it to do anything (which may overstate the extent of Chinese influence in Pyongyang). They did not look to China for help on the abductees. Could that be because they had little interest in recovering the abductees but rather in using the abductees as a lever to take a harder line against both North Korea and China, a way to justify a more hawkish foreign policy?

Similarly, the abductees were also used as a bludgeon against the US. Consider that once the US opted to embrace the abductees by scheduling face-to-face meetings with the families for former President Bush and former US Ambassador J. Thomas Schieffer, it became difficult for senior US officials — even the vice president — to question openly the Japanese government's emphasis on the abductees. Naturally some Bush administration officials believed in the importance of abductee issue, but as the about-face on North Korea showed, not everyone believed it, because ultimately the US was able to break the bargain on the abductees and commit to negotiations with North Korea. Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill, however, was left to take much of the blame for "betrayal," with the president reassuring Japan even as the US proceeded to remove North Korea from the list of state sponsors of terrorism.

The point is that if the Obama administration is going to rest on symbolic gestures, like meeting with abductee families and taking care to stress the problem at every opportunity, it better be prepared to follow through on those gestures — or be prepared to damage the alliance.

My frustration with last year's "crisis" in the alliance was that it was completely foreseeable, and yet the Bush administration did nothing to soften the blow, nothing to convince Japanese officials to shift their focus and try to turn the attention of the Japanese public from the abductions to other pressing concerns regarding North Korea. The administration wasn't wrong to treat other issues as more important; it was wrong to continue to signal to Japan that the abductees were important to the administration when clearly the administration had other priorities in its final years.

I only hope that Secretary Clinton is conscious of this dynamic. Yes, Japanese are wondering about the durability of the US commitment to Japan following the "betrayal" of 2008. But is the way to renew the US commitment simply repeating the same empty promises that led to the sense of betrayal in the first place? It would be one thing if the Obama administration were prepared to commit political capital to solving the issue (although if it were I would have grave concerns for the administration's priorities). But I suspect that the abductees — and the alliance in general — are not among the top five priorities. So why continue the game of using the beleaguered relatives of the abductees as pawns to show that the US cares about the abductees? The alliance is desperately in need of a reassessment of each ally's expectations of the other.

Accordingly, I hope when Mr. Kawamura speaks of Mrs. Clinton's "busy schedule," he is preparing the way for the secretary's not meeting with the abductee families, for the good of the alliance of course.

No surprises

When is a shock not a shock?

Sankei Shimbun's front cover this morning proclaimed, in large print, "Shock to the Japanese nation."

The headline, of course, referred to President Bush's announcement Thursday that, in keeping with the principle of "action for action," the Bush administration will (1) lift "the provisions of the Trading with the Enemy Act with respect to North Korea" and (2) inform Congress of its intent "to rescind North Korea's designation as a state sponsor of terror in 45 days."

Is there a set of criteria to determine when an event counts as a shock to the Japanese people?

This has been a shock more than a year in the making. As early as May of last year, there were rumors that the US government was prepared to link the "terror sponsor" designation to the nuclear issue, instead of the abductions issue (i.e., a "terrorism" issue). While the rumors last May were subsequently denied, the possibility had been broached that the US would reward North Korea for progress in nuclear negotiations with removal from the list. Japan has had a year to either dissuade the US from doing so — as recently as February, conservatives were prepared to do a victory dance over the carcass of the six-party talks — or to shift its position accordingly in preparation for a move by the US.

Is a crisis still a crisis if it is wholly predictable well in advance?

The response of each of the actors was equally predictable. The abductee families responded with anger and disbelief. Prime Minister Fukuda emphasized that US-Japan cooperation on the abductions issue and North Korea policy more generally will be unaffected by the announcement. The response in the Japanese political system was equally predictable. Yamasaki Taku's study group for normalization with North Korea welcomed the step; Hiranuma Takeo's abductee problem study group warned about cracks in the alliance; Ozawa Ichiro said the US was ignoring Japan; and unspecified young LDP Diet members warned that if the delisting proceeds without North Korea taking appropriate actions, Mr. Fukuda's popularity will suffer yet another blow.

As I argued previously, this is unquestionably a positive step, even if the report filed by North Korea left out information related to missile production, nuclear testing sites, the uranium refinement program, or possible proliferation activities. It was unreasonable to expect that the process would wrap up in one fell swoop, with North Korea handing over information about all of its dubious activities and the US responding by rushing to full diplomatic recognition. This is a complicated dance, now moving forward, now back, now standing still. Secretary Hill and the State Department more generally deserve credit for their perseverance, not just in the face of North Korean intransigence, but also sniping from Japan (the "Kim Jong Hill" moniker, for example) and from within the Bush administration.

This process is not about full disarmament, but buying time, finding a way to reduce tension on the Korean Peninsula, freeze North Korea's nuclear programs as much as possible (and prevent proliferation), and possibly get North Korea to open its door to the world ever so slightly. Yes, there is also the possibility — based on North Korea's behavior in the past — that North Korea will not keep its end of the bargain. But lacking good alternatives (sanctions are useless as long as China opts out, war is extremely unlikely both because of the US position in Iraq and because of the immorality of America's launching a war in which South Korea would bear the brunt of the costs) negotiation is the last bad option. North Korea doesn't follow through? Fine, then it doesn't receive any of the benefits of negotiating with the US. North Korea delivers something concrete? Okay, the US responds by lifting one of its many sanctions on North Korea.

As President Bush said Thursday, "North Korea will remain one of the most heavily sanctioned nations in the world. The sanctions that North Korea faces for its human rights violations, its nuclear test in 2006, and its weapons proliferation will all stay in effect. And all United Nations Security Council sanctions will stay in effect as well."

In short, North Korea is only slight less of a pariah today than it was yesterday. But the process will move forward.

So I second Steve Clemons's congratulations to Christopher Hill, John Negroponte, Condoleezza Rice, the former Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs R. Nicholas Burns and his successor William Burns. They have made the best of a bad situation, even if their opponents in Japan and the US will not pay them the slightest compliment for their deft work.

UPDATE: In this post, Sam Roggeveen at The Interpreter asks a question I meant to ask.

"...What I'm not seeing from the critics is a plausible alternative plan. Nobody is suggesting military action to disarm North Korea, because given the geography, Pyongyang effectively holds the city of Seoul hostage. Isolating the regime also seems to have done very little good.

"And what harm can be done by this approach? Yes, North Korea gains economic aid and a sense of legitimacy from being brought out of its pariah status, but those are favours that can easily be stopped or revoked.

"To paint these negotiations as if the US is being held over a barrel by the crafty Stalinists in Pyongyang is at best a partial reading. The US and its negotiating partners have a lot of what North Korea wants — wealth. That remains an important point of leverage."

UPDATE TWO: It seems that Machimura Nobutaka, in a phone conversation with Stephen Hadley, US national security adviser, informed Mr. Hadley that the Japanese people were "shocked" by the US decision.

Again, assuming that it's true that the Japanese people are shocked — and having seen no evidence showing how they're shocked, I'm not accepting this claim at face value — why didn't the Japanese government do more to prepare them for the US decision, given that the US has advertised its willingness to remove North Korea from the list for nearly a year now? The Fukuda government will try to shift as much blame to the US as possible, but will anyone buy it? The conservatives certainly won't: they'll be happy to blame both the US and the Fukuda government.

The consequences of the US-Japan rift on North Korea

With North Korea expected to deliver its account of its nuclear program Thursday — excluding its existing nuclear weapons, which Chris Hill has said will be addressed in the next round — the US is prepared to move forward in removing North Korea from the list of state sponsors of terrorism.

The long-awaited blow to the US-Japan alliance has been landed, even as the Fukuda government has agreed to go along with the US move.

On Tuesday, Prime Minister Fukuda said that he hoped this would contribute to progress on the nuclear front, even as he said that he looks forward to further cooperation with the US in resolving the abductions issue. At the same time, Machimura Nobutaka, in a press conference Tuesday morning, cautioned the US to examine the North Korean report carefully before proceeding, a lame statement of the sheer helplessness of the Fukuda government's position.

The US will go forward, and the Japanese government will follow along meekly behind — ignoring the wishes of the conservatives (and a bulk of the Japanese public) that North Korea should stay on the list until it follows through on the latest agreement on the abductees. They want North Korea's position on the terrorism list to remain linked to acts of terrorism (however long ago they occurred); the US, perhaps acknowledging that North Korea is no longer a state sponsor of terrorism (at least against other countries), is prepared to link removal to another, arguably more important issue. As argued in an article in this week's AERA, this latest move may trigger a spasm of protest from the public. It will be the latest and perhaps greatest charge in the conservative case against Mr. Fukuda: giving in to both the US and North Korea and abandoning the abductees, while getting nothing but an oral promise from the US that it will continue to pressure North Korea on the abductees. This probably destroys whatever chance Mr. Fukuda had of staying in power long enough to lead the LDP into the next general election.

That said, it is worth asking how Abe Shinzo would have handled this had it happened under his watch as prime minister.

His admirers seem to think that he would have been able to say no to the US. The bloggers at Pride of Japan ended a post on this issue with the statement, "I think that the time demands the appearance of a politician with backbone, like former Prime Minister Abe."

But would Mr. Abe have stood up to the US in this case and said no, his government will not support removing North Korea from the list? What would he do instead? What could he do instead? Would he respond by tightening Japanese sanctions even more? A US move to lift sanctions on North Korea makes Japan's sanctions, no matter how astringent, that much less effective. What would rejecting the US position at this point do but isolate Japan further and make it even less likely that North Korea would cooperate in resolving the abductions issue? Mr. Abe might have spoken in harsh terms, he might have appealed directly to President Bush for a promise that the US will continue to help on the abductions, but ultimately I suspect that Mr. Abe too would fall into line.

I am fine with the turn that the six-party talks are taking. I think that the gain of neutralizing North Korea's nuclear program is a worthy goal, and that it should take priority to issues like the abductions issue. If lifting sanctions bit by bit — effectively a series of small bribes — moderates North Korea's behavior and buys the region's powers some time to plan for the tsunami of instability that will likely follow Kim Jong-il's death by keeping the Korean Peninsula stable, then the talks will have been successful. The US has had little choice but to talk (and to talk with China's assistance) because it had no other option short of doing nothing. Mr. Hill has made the most of a poor situation. All of which is why I opposed the Abe government's pulling Japan out of this process. Japan, like the US, had no real way to compel North Korea to change its behavior. As the country that may be most threatened by a nuclear North Korea, it should have been in the lead, alongside the US and China, in finding a way to defuse the situation, if not disarm North Korea. Instead it opted out of the process, on the grounds of North Korea intransgience on the abductees.

I have little sympathy with the argument that the abductees are a primary "national interest," on the grounds that the Japanese government must secure the lives of every Japanese citizen. (Mr. Abe makes a variation of this argument at length in Utsukushi kuni e.) Does it rank somewhere on the list of Japanese national interests? Probably. Is it a top interest that should take priority over other interests like, say, stability on the Korean Peninsula, good relations with Japan's neighbors, and a diminished threat from North Korea? I would argue no. The deal may yet fall apart due to another shift by North Korea or domestic opposition in the US (Steve Clemons has the details on the situation in Washington) — but given the lack of other options, it has been a useful effort, one in which Japan should have played more than a begrudging role.

The failure of the US to explain its reasoning more fully — and the failure of Japan to be more flexible in its defense of its national interests — have resulted in a blow to the alliance, in that both Japanese elites and the Japanese public have lost confidence in the US as an ally. That blow may have been unavoidable: I suspect that part of the reason for the loss of confidence, especially among elites, is that after Japan gave its full-throated support to the US in Afghanistan and Iraq, it would receive equally full-throated support in dealing with North Korea. The US wasted opportunities to disabuse Japan of that idea and left Mr. Hill to bear the brunt of Japanese anger; the president should have made it explicitly clear why the US shifted on North Korea. But even then it is likely that there would still be a feeling of betrayal among Japanese.

Where will the US-Japan relationship go from here? The alliance will survive, but I expect that future Japanese governments will be less trusting of the US. I would not go so far as journalist Aoki Naoto (author of a book entitled A State That Could Become An Enemy: USA), who argues that this is the beginning of an antagonistic relationship between the US and Japan and the start of a US-China security relationship. In fact, the US shift on North Korea might prove to be a good thing for the alliance. As a result of having been "abandoned" in the six-party talks, Japan may finally learn to say no to the US, which could result in a stronger, more effective partnership in which Japan feels less obligated to do whatever the US asks. Much like Japan's 1990 failure in responding to the Gulf crisis led to a decade of soul-searching for Japan's foreign policy establishment, so too might this incident prompt soul-searching that leads to a Japan better able to articulate its interests to the US, even if it means disagreement between Washington and Tokyo.

As in the aftermath of the Gulf crisis, Ozawa Ichiro may show the way. Asked to comment on the developments in the six-party talks, Mr. Ozawa stated that Japan has little ability to influence US strategy, and added on the abductees, "The US has until now said good things to the abductee families, but it did not take our national strategy and our interests into account at all." I expect that should the DPJ form a government in the near future, it will be much less inclined to follow the US in the way that LDP governments have (especially LDP governments under Messrs. Koizumi and Abe).

As a result of the six-party talks, future LDP governments may share Mr. Ozawa's assessment.

More trouble headed Fukuda's way?

According to the Washington Post, in exchange for North Korea's "acknowledging" US concerns about its nuclear activities, disabling Yongbyon, and provide a full accounting of its plutonium stockpile, the US will be prepared to "remove North Korea from the U.S. list of state sponsors of terrorism and to exempt it from the Trading With the Enemy Act."

The domestic obstacles standing the way of the US government holding up its end of the bargain are considerable, but this "agreement" could still cause trouble for Prime Minister Fukuda in the meantime.

The LDP's conservatives, now for the most part embodied in the Nakagawa Shoichi's "true" conservative study group, have spent the fourteen months since the US-DPRK Berlin agreement trying to ensure that the US does not remove North Korea from the state sponsors of terrorism list until the abductions issue is resolved. As I noted back in February, Mr. Nakagawa and comrades were quite pleased with the lack of progress in the six-party talks and open warfare in the Bush administration over North Korea policy.

Now a deal is once again on the table that envisions North Korea removed from the list despite Japan's conditions not being met — in short, US abandonment of Japan on a fundamental issue for the conservatives. While they need not panic yet (their Washington allies will naturally do all they can to derail this latest attempt by Chris Hill to resolve the crisis), they will be watching Mr. Fukuda carefully in the coming weeks and months, ready to pounce on him if he deviates from the hard line on North Korea, which the prime minister embraced early in his term after suggesting that he might chart a new, more flexible course. At the same time, Washington — or the State Department, anyway — will likely be leaning on Tokyo to play a constructive role should the latest agreement go forward

Mr. Fukuda may be able to duck this pressure for the time being by claiming that his hands are tied thanks to the recently passed six-month extension of the economic sanctions originally implemented following North Korea's October 2006 nuclear test. But if this latest agreement somehow proves a success, that may not be a satisfactory answer for the US government, at which point the prime minister would be forced to choose between alienating the US or alienating the LDP's conservatives, one of whom is already measuring curtains for the Kantei. Provided Mr. Fukuda survives long enough to face that choice, will he buck the conservatives and follow the US? Or will he continue to hew to the Abe line of doing nothing until "progress" is made on the abductions issue, ensuring that Japan remains isolated within the six-party talks?

UPDATE: Gerald Curtis, Japanese politics specialist at Columbia University, visited North Korea last week and upon his return met with a nonpartisan Diet members study group to report that there is a "high probability" of Washington's removing North Korea from the terror sponsors list within the year.

Dueling with the right in Japan and the US

Perhaps as a sign that the six-party talk's latest agreement on North Korea is getting dangerously close to proceeding smoothly, there are signs that the positions of two actors are changing, one for the better, one for the worse.

For the better, Sasae Kenichiro, Japan's negotiator in the six-party talks, suggested in a meeting with Dennis Wilder, the NSC's senior Asia assistant, that it is "essential" to execute a verifible denuclearization for North Korea to be removed from the terror list, a position that is strikingly close to the US position. Mr. Sasae apparently appended a remark about the abductions issue, but it seems that the overall thrust of the talks — according to Asahi — was actually the nuclear issue, suggesting that Japan might be ready for a subtle shift in its position in the talks.

At the same time, however, the New York Times reports that the American right, which has been remarkably quiet about the latest progress in negotiations with North Korea (giving Chris Hill and Condoleeza Rice space to bargain with Pyongyang), has turned on Secretary Rice, with Republican Ileana Ros-Lehtinen meeting with Ms. Rice to question the administration's North Korea policy. Perhaps Republican discontent is more a sign of fears that the deal might work: when it was unclear whether Mr. Hill's bargaining would bear fruit, conservatives could hold off from sniping at the negotiations out of confidence that the talks would fall apart.

Now, though, it may be too late for conservatives to do anything to stop it — unless there is some truth to the lingering rumor that Israel destroyed a North Korea-provided Syrian nuclear facility last month.

In any case, it seems that the tacit alliance between American and Japanese conservatives, cemented during the tenures of Messrs. Koizumi and Abe, remains sound, even as US-Japan relations experience a bit of turmoil.

False alarm (for now)

Not surprisingly, Chris Hill has dismissed claims that the US agreed to remove North Korea from the State Department's state sponsors of terrorism list, at least not before North Korea makes significant progress towards denuclearization.

Perhaps the news media should, you know, actually check with the other party in the talks before reporting the claims of the North Korean foreign ministry.

Nevertheless, Hill's agreement did contain a concession of major significance for Japan (of course unreported): Hill made no mention whatsoever of the abductions issue, sending a clear signal to Japan that if it thinks that the US has linked the terror list removal to denuclearization and the resolution of the abductions issue, it is in for a surprise.

Hear that Mr. Abe? Stop listening to what your buddy George says and start paying attention to what the key players on this issue are actually doing. And get your government ready for the shift, instead of saying after the fact, "We had no idea that the US would change its position like that."

Learning to be self-reliant?

If I could draw, I would have drawn something exactly like this cartoon in today's Yomiuri:


The caption on this cartoon reads, "Troubles at home, worries in America," Abe's dual American "worries" being the looming comfort women resolution and Christopher Hill's nuclear bargaining.

It didn't need to be this way, did it? As I wrote last week, the confluence of the North Korea nuclear question and the comfort women issue is largely a product of the blundering of the Japanese government, which has failed to appreciate how the mood in Washington has changed and act accordingly. Instead, at every juncture Shinzo has relied upon his buddy George's promises, without asking what those promises are worth when Foggy Bottom is running North Korea policy and the Congress — riled by Japanese revisionism on comfort women — does not share the president's sanguine views of Abe's empathy (and I'm sure it doesn't appreciate being called a tool of China).

The Abe government is right that the practical impact of this resolution will be limited; the foundation of the relationship is sound, and, as noted Tuesday, both the American public and American elites are content with the relationship. It's nothing short of amazing that even with a report emanating from the Bank of International Settlements noting that the yen's decline is "anomalous," Congress is more concerned about comfort women, and on monetary matters has directed its ire at China.

The importance of this episode is, rather, in the intangible impact on thinking in Japan. Relations between states, like relations between people, is a learning process. States learn what to expect from others, especially allies, and begin to build upon these expectations. Japan has come to expect a US that will refrain from criticizing its most important partner "bar none." It has relied upon a network of friends to ensure that this understanding remained in place, particularly after Japan was subject to all manner of American criticism in the early 1990s. (Robert Angel's 1996 introduction to the Japan lobby remains especially useful in illustrating how this works.) But now, with Congress's digging into Japan's past and the administration bereft of friends, the old understanding seems to be under threat.

How will Japan respond? Defensively, with alarm that it is being betrayed and abandoned by its supposed "ally"? That is how Amaki Naoto views recent events in US-Japan relations. He connects the comfort women resolution, Christopher Hill's recent statement about a peaceful framework among four countries, Japan excluded, and — citing a question asked by my boss in the Upper House foreign relations committee — Admiral Keating's remarks about aircraft carriers while in China in May to suggest that the US is not Japan's ally. He writes: "As the above-mentioned sequence of events makes clear, the US will never see Japan as an equal ally...Conservatives, nationalists, left-wing ideologues, and pacifists, as well as the people as a whole, are beginning to find further subordination to the US unfavorable. The problem is that after achieving autonomy and independence from the US, how will Japan ensure its security?"

The question is the extent to which this kind of thinking has taken hold among Japanese elites and the Japanese people — and the extent to which it could take hold in the midst of the aforementioned "betrayals." I cannot answer that, but I suspect it is more prevalent than perhaps Washington realizes.

So here we are: because Japan is incapable of dealing with criticism, and because the US does not particularly care that Japan is incapable of dealing with criticism, the future of the US-Japan relationship is murky, and will only get murkier as Japanese elites begin to assume that the US is not especially concerned about Japan's interests.

The Pyongyang visit

Peter Howard at Duck of Minerva greets Chris Hill's visit to Pyongyang with fairly effusive praise, arguing that the "reverse course" in North Korea policy undertaken by Hill with Condoleeza Rice's support has begun to yield some positive results. He points to the imminent closing of Yongbyon and the admission of IAEA inspectors as signs that the new approach to North Korea is working.

Meanwhile, at One Free Korea, Joshua Stanton excoriates the administration for its embrace of bilateral negotiations with North Korea.

So which is it — fool's errand or successful shuttle diplomacy?

Dare I say neither? I cannot possibly summon the rage Stanton directs at the administration and supporters of negotiations outside of the administration. What choices does the US have? The use of force? More sanctions? Doing nothing? Given that it's not altogether clear what direct threat, if any, North Korea poses to the US — the possibility of nuclear handover to terrorists or other states cannot be ruled out, but I have yet to see any report that suggests that this is highly probable — the only sensible option for the US seems to be trying to devise a modus vivendi that is some combination of deterrence, pressure from China, and monetary rewards for good behavior, while planning with the region's other powers for the post-Kim era.

In that sense, the goalposts have indeed shifted, because it should be increasingly clear to all that fully verifiable disarmament is unlikely to result from these negotiations. And so US efforts should be directed to securing the best possible arrangement in the short term. This is a great illustration of the nature of power. For all America's attributional power — its military might, its economic strength, its population and territory — the US has very little power in this situation. More sanctions? Useless. A war for regime change? The consequences are unfathomable. So if negotiating directly with Pyongyang, and countenancing the use of concessions to induce North Korea to behave gives the US more leverage, so be it.

Meanwhile, Japan bears much of the burden for the irrelevance of the six-party talks, given the Abe government's refusal to participate in an agreement until "progress" is realized on the abductions issue. To abstain from shaping the modus vivendi is a serious abdication of responsibility on the part of Japan. Why should the US stand around and wait for Japan? No one should underestimate the hunger on the part of Assistant Secretary Hill and Secretary Rice for an agreement that they can sell as proof that their global diplomatic approach is working. This quote from a New York Times article over the weekend caught my eye: "'Condi knows she needs a big win here,' said a senior administration official who has dealt with her often on North Korea. 'They know they are getting nowhere on Iraq, and they probably won’t get far on Iran. She needs to show that she can reduce at least one big threat.'"

That said, the desire on the part of the US to reach some kind of acceptable arrangement should not be mistaken for the availability of an objectively sound agreement. The only party likely emerge from these talks completely or mostly happy is North Korea.