The Hatoyama government tackles the alliance early

With US President Barack Obama scheduled to visit Japan at the start of an East Asian swing in November — he will stop in Tokyo before going to Singapore for APEC and then concluding his trip with meetings in China and South Korea — the Hatoyama government is working hard to hammer out positions on the two major sticking points between the DPJ and the US government, the future of the refueling mission in the Indian Ocean and the Futenma question.

Regarding the former, Nagashima Akihisa, parliamentary secretary for defense, made waves this week when, in a speech in his Tokyo constituency Monday, he argued that the refueling mission ought to continue with a new mandate from the Diet. [Full disclosure: I have met with Nagashima on a number of occasions.]

In response, Nagashima was warned by his superior, Defense Minister Kitazawa Toshimi, by Consumer Affairs Minister and Social Democratic Party head Fukushima Mizuho, and most significantly, by Hirano Hirofumi, the chief cabinet secretary, who stressed that it is for the government to decide policy in this area. In a meeting Wednesday morning Hirano advised caution from Nagashima.

Perhaps Nagashima should not have used a speech in his constituency to advance an argument for a position that appeared to be at odds with the government's. (I say appeared because officially the government's position on Afghanistan remains to be decided — all we know is that the refueling mission will not be "simply" extended.) But just as was the case with Kamei Shizuka's comments about the debt repayment moratorium for small- and medium-sized enterprises, every note of discord within the Hatoyama government should not be a cause for alarm and an occasion for critics to declare that the government is out of control. As I've argued before, no government is free of disagreement: the important thing is how dissent is handled.

As the Hatoyama government decides what to do about Afghanistan — it will need to be in a position to offer something to Obama when he visits Japan — Nagashima should be included in the discussion on the basis of his distinct position on the issue, and the fact that he is well-connected in Washington (not to mention that his substantial security policy expertise). And I suspect he will contribute to the debate within the government, although perhaps in a less visible manner henceforth. Simply silencing dissenters (if that's even the right word) will not be to the government's benefit.

The problem for the government on Futenma is different, being less a matter of dealing with internal disagreements than with the uncomfortable reality that the Hatoyama government is trapped between a US government uninterested in renegotiating and an Okinawan public that wants the matter resolved. Accordingly, Prime Minister Hatoyama Yukio hinted that the DPJ would be willing to reconsider its position and accept the bilateral agreement on realignment. Bloomberg reports that US Ambassador to Japan John Roos said that the Obama administration will not renegotiate the agreement on relocating Futenma, although from the article it is unclear whether the administration is opposed to renegotiating entirely or whether it is simply opposed to the idea of relocating the air base to somewhere outside of Okinawa entirely; Roos apparently said that the administration will listen to the Hatoyama government's position.

For its part, the Hatoyama government, while still interested in finding a solution other than building an offshore replacement facility in Okinawa, may be softening its position. Not only did Hatoyama allude to the possibility of abandoning a manifesto position, but after an inspection visit to Okinawa Kitazawa said that the idea of relocating the Marine air station outside of Okinawa, the position espoused in the DPJ's Okinawa vision paper, is extremely difficult. The government is still considering whether to propose an alternative site within Okinawa, but it seems that the DPJ-led government will not push quite as hard for its optimal plan.

Dealing with these issues now is good politics. Not only will it give some meaning to Obama's visit next month — Okada stressed in an appearance on NHK last month that the government wants to assemble its policies on Okinawa, refueling, and Afghanistan by Obama's visit — but it will also push foreign policy out of the headlines after Obama leaves and the DPJ devotes its attention entirely to drafting next year's budget and finding ways to pay for its new spending programs. Its coalition partners will undoubtedly complain about the inevitable compromises the DPJ will make in relations with the US, but dealing with these matters now will make it that much harder for the LDP to gain traction against the DPJ by attacking the government on its handling of foreign policy in advance of next year's upper house election. By dealing with these tricky issues now the Hatoyama government can ensure that nothing will detract from encomiums to the alliance during next year's sixtieth anniversary celebrations.

It is unlikely that the DPJ will do anything to spoil next year's celebrations in the meantime. Far from the oft-heard criticism that the DPJ is reflexively anti-American, the Hatoyama government is showing that the flexibility it showed during the campaign was not a pose. The DPJ is willing to compromise with the US. It recognizes that there are limits to the political usefulness of criticizing Washington. The government's compromise position has yet to take shape, but there seems little question now that it will be a compromise position.

Let the refueling mission end

Addressing a question from the press regarding Japan's new government, Defense Department spokesman Geoff Morrell said Wednesday, "I think that with regards to the Indian Ocean refueling mission, we have greatly benefited from — as has the world, for that matter — from Japan's participation in those efforts, and we would very much encourage them to continue those efforts."

Otherwise Morrell repeated the standard Washington line about the difference between campaigning and governing in the hope that the Hatoyama government will just keep quiet and maintain the US-Japan relationship exactly as it was under the LDP.

Morrell left out what an unnamed Defense Department official said about the refueling mission immediately after the general election: Japan has played an important role, but whether to continue the mission or not is "the Japanese government's decision."

Fujisaki Ichiro, Japan's ambassador to the US, criticized Morrell for his remarks, saying, "Japan's international contribution is for Japan to decide independently."

Given the signals coming from the Obama administration over the course of the year, Morrell's remarks are anomalous: Richard Holbrooke, the administration's special envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan, explicitly said in Tokyo (mentioned in this post) that the administration would prefer financial and civil assistance for Kabul and Islamabad to JSDF personnel. I do think that the Obama administration would like to break with the Bush administration's emphasis on symbolic contributions that just happened to involve the JSDF and might therefore signal Japan's becoming "normal."

The Obama administration would be wise not to stand in the way of the Hatoyama government if it does indeed decide to let the refueling mission expire in January. Despite the insistence by Morrell and by the outgoing LDP foreign and defense ministers, the refueling mission has always been more important as a symbolic gesture than as a meaningful contribution to coalition activities on the ground in Afghanistan. Despite the arguments that were being made in 2007 when the DPJ used its upper house election victory to challenge the mission, it is difficult to believe that the multinational coaltion would not have found some way to manage in the absence of the MSDF contribution. I've long thought that the refueling mission had much more to do with the past than the future. By agreeing to send MSDF ships in support of a US-led war in Afghanistan mere weeks after 9/11, Koizumi Junichiro helped expiate the sins of 1990/1991, when despite Ozawa Ichiro's best efforts the Diet spent months debating sending personnel to support Operation Desert Storm only to defeat the Kaifu government's initiative, forcing Ozawa and then-Finance Minister Hashimoto Ryutaro to round up votes and money in what ended up being derided as "checkbook diplomacy." After a decade of foreign policy elite hand-wringing about Japan's failure in the Gulf crisis, the Koizumi government seized its first and best opportunity to wipe away bad memories of 1990. 2001 would have been more meaningful had it signaled more of a departure for Japan's security policy, but by the time the Iraq war rolled around Koizumi had a much harder time offering more than rhetorical support for the Bush administration (notice how long it took before Japan's unarmed contribution arrived in Samawah) — and the gas station in the Indian Ocean remained a gas station, meaning that the post-9/11 symbolic contribution meant that Japan was, as usual, taking the least risky course of action while receiving full rhetorical credit from Washington.

At this point, I am sure that the Obama administration would be perfectly happy with some Japanese "checkbook" diplomacy if it actually made some difference in the situation on the ground. There is far too little for the US to gain from opposing the Hatoyama government's ending the refueling mission, and much to lose, at least in terms of the atmosphere in the relationship. Ending a symbolic mission is a great way for the DPJ to show symbolically that the alliance will change under its stewardship, that it will not be bullied into doing whatever the US government "urges" Japan to do. Indeed, Morrell has perhaps guaranteed that the Hatoyama government will end the refueling mission.

The Obama administration ought to let the mission end, but begin talking immediately with Hatoyama about what his government plans to do instead to help the coalition succeed in stabilizing Afghanistan and Pakistan.

The DPJ government is clearly going to approach the alliance differently. Washington can either throw a tantrum about the transition from the "deferential" LDP and warn about tossing "the good out with the dirty LDP bathwater" (Jim Hoagland), or it can wake up to the fact that the DPJ won a clear mandate to take Japan in a different direction — which includes changing the alliance. Seriously, does Jim Hoagland really think that it's the US government's job to tell the DPJ to be nicer to Japan's bureaucrats and the broken-down LDP? Did no one tell him that the occupation is long over?

I think one of President Obama's strengths is his ability to listen to those who disagree with him in good faith, a quality he displayed admirably on Wednesday. The DPJ has justifiable concerns about how the alliance has been conducted under the LDP, and I hope that the Obama administration listens. Naturally the DPJ should reciprocate this attitude, making its arguments in good faith and not succumbing to the temptation to make a straw man of US power.

More on the Roos appointment

Considering the appointment of John Roos and other Obama donors to ambassadorial posts, David Rothkopf makes a strong argument against the relevance of ambassadorships in the first place:

For really important relationships, we need permanent high-level representation. But those relationships are comparatively few and in those cases, we need a special breed of highly empowered, highly experienced people...people who look more like Tom Shannon or perhaps Tim Roemer or Jon Huntsman...and not the others. A good rule of thumb might be: If you think a job can go to someone with no regional, diplomatic or relevant national security experience, then perhaps we ought to really be thinking about whether we need the job rather than who should fill it.

I think the one mistake Rothkopf makes is overstating the significance of the ambassador's post in Tokyo. As I argued earlier this week, Roos is going to Japan precisely because it is the kind of post that does not demand "a special breed of highly empowered, highly experienced people," especially now given Japan's domestic "difficulties." The challenges facing Roos are of a wholly different nature from the challenges facing Roemer and Huntsman in New Delhi and Beijing respectively. If China and India jobs involve smoothing out problems stemming from the emergence of two colossal powers, the Japan job is the flip side of the coin: constantly reassuring Japan that despite its relative decline, the US-Japan relationship is still important. That is not to say that Roos is not highly empowered — indeed, it appears that he was also in consideration for domestic policy jobs — but that he is high-powered in a different sense from someone like Huntsman who has extensive foreign experience. But Roos should have no problem performing his two most important tasks.

Roos's number one task is reassuring Japan's elites that the US will meet its obligations to come to Japan's defense. That message ultimately has less to do with the messenger than the messenger's persistence, and the extent to which the messenger has the backing of the administration.

Roos actually may be uniquely capable of managing what could be the other important task of his ambassadorship, welcoming a DPJ-led government into power. As someone removed from the circle of US-Japan alliance insiders, Roos presumably will arrive in Tokyo free of LDP leanings and more open to forging a relationship with the potential governing party. Even if the DPJ does not win this year, it is increasingly a force to be reckoned with in Japanese politics. I hope and trust that Roos will make building a relationship with the DPJ a top priority of his ambassadorship.

Roos to Japan

While the White House has not made the announcement official, the Nelson Report said that the Obama administration will be sending John Roos, Silicon Valley lawyer and major Obama fundraiser, to Tokyo as U.S. ambassador.

(Click here to read this post in Japanese.)

As Armchair Asia notes, this is a sign that Japan has indeed become normal: "It is about to nominate for ambassador to Japan a presidential crony and big money fundraiser--just like the traditional emissaries to the Court of St. James or France or Italy or Bermuda." Indeed, Jun Okumura looks at Britain and finds that the British press is disappointed with Obama's choice for ambassador to the Court of St. James. Japan, welcome to the club of countries that think they deserve better from Washington.

The disappointment from certain circles in Japan is palpable. Komori Yoshihisa, Sankei's editor-at-large in Washington, lists the accomplishments of previous ambasssadors and concludes that all Roos has achieved is "collecting funds for Obama's election." Naturally he compares the selection of Roos with the appointment of Utah Governor Jon Huntsman to be ambassador to China — a selection that the Economist's Banyan blog rightly calls "brilliant" — and finds Roos wanting. Asahi looks at Roos's background and reports blank next to "foreign languages," obviously calling to mind the Mandarin-speaking Huntsman.

Japanese are not the only ones questioning the Roos appointment. Jonathan Adler, blogging at the website of the conservative National Review, calls the news "interesting (if disturbing)," relaying the opinion of a nameless correspondent who calls the appointment a "slap-in-the-face" [sic].

A big part of the problem is that the Japanese media jumped the gun in its reporting on the ambassadorial sweepstakes. Recall that Asahi, surveying Obama's likely Asia policy team, pegged Joseph Nye as ambassador before Obama had even taken the oath of office. After no further news was forthcoming, Yomiuri suggested the same later in January (which prompted me to write an open letter to Nye). In hindsight, it appears that both newspapers were running with rumors, hoping for the scoop. While the story of how close Nye was to be named as ambassador has yet to be told, it appears that the Japanese newspapers were talking to the wrong people in Washington. In short, it is fine if Japan's elites feel disappointed, but they should assign the blame where it belongs, with the newspapers that rushed their reports and gave Nye an air of inevitability as the president's choice for ambassador.

And what about Roos? I do not think this is something about which to hyperventilate. Nor do I think it is a slap in the face for Japan. This is normal. While Japanese elites worry that the alliance is adrift or in crisis, the Obama administration clearly does not feel the same. The attitude appears to be, every alliance has problems and the US-Japan alliance's problems are no more severe than the problems with any other alliance. While it is natural to compare the administration's China and Japan appointments, this strikes me as a mistake. The appointments say nothing about the countries' ranks in the administration's eyes and everything about the intensity of the problems in the bilateral relationship. Obama picked a Mandarin-speaking rising star with foreign policy experience for the Beijing job because it is a job that demands a Mandarin-speaking rising star with foreign policy experience. The task of coaxing China's path to becoming a "responsible stakeholder" requires an ambassador with sufficient clout on the ground in China.

What problems in the US-Japan relationship require the same class of appointment? Is a Harvard professorship or fluency in Japanese necessary to go stand on the beach in Niigata and look out to sea? It would be one thing if Japan was ready for a serious bilateral discussion on the future of the alliance, but given the response Ozawa Ichiro's musings on the subject, Japan's leaders are not even ready to have such a discussion amongst themselves. (Speaking in Okinawa on Saturday, Ozawa revisited his remarks and said that his reference to the Seventh Fleet was "symbolic," which I presume means that he does not want the US presence reduced literally to the Seventh Fleet, but the Seventh Fleet would be the core?) As useful as Nye would have been as ambassador, his time would likely have been frustrating. Japan is simply too preoccupied with fixing its institutions to commit to make a major bilateral initiative on the alliance worthwhile. At this point it will be a major achievement if the realignment of US forces in Japan goes forward as scheduled, something that could become even more difficult should the DPJ take power later this year. Japan's preoccupation with a domestic concerns is not meant as a criticism of Japan — it is what it is. Japan does have a lot on the agenda, what is not helped by political uncertainty. Readers will know that I do not think that the "twisted" Diet is anything to panic about, but rather that I expect that the present turbulence is natural as Japan transitions to more "normal" politics. The fact that Japan can slight its foreign and security policy is a testament to the success of the alliance.

Would Nye's presence have made a difference in hastening the realignment process or fixing the obstacle that is Futenma? Will Roos fare any better or worse? It is unfair to Roos to treat his appointment as an insult to Japan without considering what exactly is the problem. I expect that Roos will be fine. I am sure that he is a quick study and in James Zumwalt, the deputy chief of mission, he has a first-class Japan specialist. (Indeed, the staff of the US Embassy in Tokyo rarely gets enough credit for the work they do managing the alliance.) As ambassador Roos will also carry a lighter burden than ambassadors to other countries because so much of the bilateral relationship is handled by the department of defense and US Forces Japan. And, in the event of a major crisis, Roos will have the president's ear.

Unease over the Roos appointment is ultimately the product of asymmetrical dependence. Given the importance of the US-Japan alliance for Japan, it is natural for Japanese officials to worry about every signal from Washington (like this signal, which will undoubtedly be another source of discomfort in Tokyo). But the Roos appointment should not be treated as Japan's being downgraded but as Japan's not being a problem for Washington. I have previously written about this administration's tendency to approach foreign policy as problems to be solved. Japan, not being the source of major problems for the US, naturally does not require a high-profile troubleshooter as ambassador. And thus it continues to look as if the Obama administration has opted for benign neglect towards Japan.

This will no doubt continue to be the case in the US-Japan relationship for years to come. Japan's dependence on the US will continue, and even intensify, over the coming years as falling defense spending will make it harder for Japan to countenance life outside of the alliance; a crowded foreign policy agenda will lead Washington to focus on fixing problems rather than tinkering with alliances; and Japan will be judged on how it contributes to fixing problems rather than how loyal an ally it declares itself to be (through "showing the flag" and the like).

There is, however, a lesson in all this for Washington. The political appointment of ambassadors should cease (or be scaled back from the thirty percent or so of ambassadors who are political appointees). US allies should not be reduced to guessing their worth by the quality of the ambassador sent by the US. Ambassadors should be career foreign service officers, preferably with knowledge of the country's language and earlier time spent working in country. It seems like a fairly simple idea that might actually make for better American diplomacy on the whole.