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.

An open letter to Ambassador-designate Nye

Dear Professor Nye:

Congratulations on your appointment to the position of United States Ambassador to Japan.

Your arrival comes at an auspicious time. It appears exceedingly likely that during your ambassadorship the Liberal Democratic Party will be bounced from power and replaced most likely by the Democratic Party of Japan, although possibly a ragtag coalition as in 1993-1994.

Between "change you can believe in" in Washington and incipient political change in Japan, now is the perfect time for a new approach for the US-Japan alliance, and I think you may be the perfect agent to deliver change.

To senior politicians in the LDP, you are remembered for your work as assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs, in particular the "Nye Initiative" which resulted in the reaffirmation of the US-Japan alliance after the trade skirmishes of the early 1990s. Nakagawa Hidenao, former LDP secretary-general, calls you a "one of the strongest advocates throughout the Democratic and Republican parties for the US-Japan alliance."

I expect he's right. But as you prepare for your move to Akasaka, it is worth asking what it means to be an advocate for the alliance today.

As Richard Samuels and James Schoff make clear in the International Herald Tribune, the alliance is in desperate need of attention. "We have allowed alliance symbols," they write, "like the nuclear umbrella and common democratic values, to stand as a surrogate for alliance value and a clear division of responsibilities."

But clarifying the goals and roles of the alliance should not involve your telling Japan what to do, although nor should it mean telling Japanese leaders what they want to hear. Japan's lingering reluctance to bear a greater burden is frustrating, particularly when it involves something like fighting pirates in the Gulf of Aden, something so innocuous and so obviously in both Japan's national interest and the interest of the international community. But Japan should not be shamed or pressured into playing a greater global role. No matter how many times your predecessor as ambassador told Japan that it should permit collective self-defense, Japan barely budged in the direction of a new interpretation. If Japan's leaders or the Japanese public are unwilling to do it themselves, no amount of pressure from the US will force their hand — and such pressure could very easily sour America's image in Japan. It is little wonder that the DPJ is criticizing the LDP for being too interested in pleasing the US while ignoring the public; the opposition party has a point.

I hope, Professor, that as ambassador you will say what you mean. The US, in pushing for Japan to be more active globally and more active in the alliance, has without question associated the two ideas in the mind of the Japanese people. These should be two different discussions. The idea of a global alliance was far-fetched and doomed to fail, in part because the Bush administration raised the prospect of entrapment in American wars to unacceptable levels. The transition to the Obama administration will diminish the fears of entrapment somewhat, but Japan's half-hearted contributions to US campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq show that Japan's tolerance for serious involvement in US military campaigns is limited. The costs of cooperation in terms of expectations (in that Japanese leaders came to expect reciprocity in North Korea) and in heightened fears of entrapment are not worth the marginal benefits of Japanese cooperation (despite the rhetoric heaped upon Japanese contributions in the Indian Ocean and Iraq, it is hard to see them as anything but marginal).

But there is still work to be done in Asia. The US-Japan alliance is an Asian alliance, a pillar of stability in the region, not least because it ensures the US forward presence in East Asia. This role is crucial, both in terms of deterring aggression and in providing public goods, most notably open sea lanes. But can the alliance be more than a hedge against a bad turn in China's development? Can the alliance play a role in reducing the possibility of a bad turn? Better coordination in relation to China is essential, without making such coordination appear as the US and Japan ganging up on China.

In a 2006 article in the Boston Globe, you described Asia policy during your time at the Pentagon as follows:

We knew that hawks who called for containment of China would not be able to rally other countries to that cause. We also knew that if we treated China as an enemy, we were ensuring future enmity. While we could not be sure how China would evolve, it made no sense to foreclose the prospect of a better future. Our response combined balance of power with liberal integration. We reinforced the US-Japan alliance so that China could not play a ''Japan card" against us, while inviting China to join the World Trade Organization. In a rare case of bipartisan comity, the Bush administration has continued that strategy.

That is where we stand today, only more so. Except that it is time to focus less on the balance of power and more on the liberal integration. The US shouldn't neglect the security relationship. It should try to guarantee the timely completion of the realignment of US forces in Japan (and be willing to reconsider portions of that agreement if doing so hastens the process). It should look to improve interoperability between US and Japanese forces.

But it is time to deemphasize the security relationship. By focusing on the security relationship to the exclusion of much else during the past decade, the US finds itself not allied with Japan, but with a narrow, increasingly powerless segment of the Japanese elite. This is not the basis for a durable alliance.

As I've argued previously, "The challenge for the Obama administration is to present a vision for the alliance that does more than prepare for the worst-case scenario with China, a vision focused on more than security cooperation. The security relationship is important, but it cannot be the whole of the U.S.-Japan relationship." The US and Japan need better coordination regarding the future of the Korean Peninsula, which necessarily means better coordination with China. It means getting Japan to focus on matters other than the fate of Japanese abductees in North Korea. It means better coordination on how to incorporate China as a regional power, and better coordination on economic regionalism in East Asia. Japan needs to be more capable of forging an independent leadership role for itself in Asia, a role which it finds difficult to play given the perception of a US veto over Japanese foreign policy.

Japan, in short, needs to be given room to forge an independent role between the US and China. This is the reality of the region: Japan, like other middle-sized powers in the region, finds itself needing to maintain good relations with both the US and China, while ensuring that the US-China relationship is neither too warm nor too hostile. Yes, the alliance could be more reciprocal, with Japan's committing to the defense of the US (in practice, committing to shooting down US missiles). Yes, Japan take on greater responsibilities within the alliance. But those changes will not come overnight, and they will not come about through US cajoling, certainly not if LDP rule gives way to a DPJ-led government.

Japan stands on the brink of an important moment in its political history. Rather than worrying about whether the DPJ will be as good as the LDP on security or whether the DPJ will trash the alliance, the Obama administration — and naturally you as its designated representative in Japan — should be prepared to celebrate the DPJ's victory and find ways to work with a possible DPJ administration along terms acceptable to the Japanese people as whole and not just a narrow segment of Japan's elite. There is no question that Japan needs to have a debate on its foreign policy, and more broadly its place in Asia and the world. But that debate will not occur immediately, and its outcome is intrinsically connected to broader political changes.

I have high hopes for your ability to strike the right tone as the ambassador in Tokyo. I believe that you recognize that there is more to the US-Japan relationship that cooperation between the US Military and Japan's Self-Defense Forces. I believe that you will respect that the Japanese people need to make decisions about their security for themselves, that while you will make the US government's positions known, you will not be overbearing in doing so. And I believe that based on your work as an academic and a government official you are the right man at the right time.

I wish you nothing but the best of luck as you embark on the next phase of your journey as a public intellectual in the service of the United States.

Cordially,
Tobias Harris

Obama's Asia team takes shape

The Japanese establishment is undoubtedly breathing a sigh of relief following the announcement of the Obama administration's prospective Asia policy team, including the ambassador to Japan.

Not surprisingly, Kurt Campbell, reportedly close to Hillary Clinton, will succeed Christopher Hill as the assistant secretary of state for East Asia and the Pacific. Marine General Wallace Gregson (ret.), who retired as the commander of US Marines in the Pacific, will succeed James Shinn for Asia affairs at the Pentagon. Jeffrey Bader, a China specialist at the Brookings Institution and a foreign policy adviser for the Obama campaign, will be senior director for Asia at the National Security Council. And in perhaps the most noteworthy pick, Harvard Professor Joseph Nye will head to Tokyo to serve as ambassador.

Worried Japanese elites can take comfort in this lineup. Change, it seems, is for matters other than Asia policy.

While some press reports have called attention to Professor Nye's ideas about soft power, it is worth asking whether the Joseph Nye being sent to Tokyo is the "soft power" Joseph Nye or the Joseph Nye who was the architect of the 1996 version of the US-Japan alliance, the prime mover in the Democratic Party in the shift to remake the alliance into a more robust security partnership. Dr. Campbell, his deputy in the 1990s, may be an even more enthusiastic proponent of the Armitage-Nye vision of the alliance than Professor Nye himself. (Dr. Campbell and Michael Green, onetime colleagues at CSIS, have for a time been something of a bipartisan duo on the alliance.) As Dr. Campbell told me when I interviewed him for my master's thesis (2006), "What we’ve had over the past five years is a high level of engagement between the US and Japan that is unprecedented: a high level of engagement on a set of strategic issues in terms of bases, out of area activities and the like that is truly unprecedented, and extraordinarily impressive and it will be hard to match in the future."

So the Campbell-Nye team — with Professor Nye reporting to Dr. Campbell this time around — will undoubtedly reassure Japan's elites that their voices will still be heard in Washington. General Gregson, meanwhile, as commander of Marines in Okinawa and then the Pacific as a whole, is intimately familiar with issues related to the realignment of US forces in Japan and will ensure active leadership on the issue from the Pentagon.

I wonder, however, whether this team will be capable of moving the alliance in the direction I think it should go. Both Professor Nye and Dr. Campbell may ultimately be too connected with the status quo to push for a dramatic departure from the Bush administration's approach.

That said, I'm not completely without hope. I think even from Tokyo Professor Nye will be the central player in the debate over the alliance's future. While he played a leading role in building the 1996 alliance, his views are far more subtle than the China hawks who have made use of the framework he developed in the mid-1990s. Professor Nye — with Robert Keohane a major proponent of the idea of mutual interdependence — argued that the alliance could not simply be about containing China, that while strengthening the alliance was part of the equation, the decisions made by the allies would influence the character of China's rise. That is even more true today. As ambassador, Professor Nye could be instrumental in moving towards a bilateral approach to China that transcends security matters. He is trusted in Tokyo, and if he learns to listen more than his predecessor, his appointment could be a critical turning point for the alliance.

Given the likelihood that Professor Nye could be dealing with a DPJ-led government from early in his ambassadorship, I hope his first goal is building a new relationship with the leading opposition party. Jun Okumura suggests that the Obama administration will put pressure on the DPJ to change what he calls its "fantasy of a foreign and national security policy." I think Okumura is being a bit unfair to the DPJ. I have criticized Ozawa Ichiro in the past for his loopy foreign policy ideas (see this post), but I also think that one can go too far in criticizing the DPJ based on the outlandish statements of one DPJ politician or another. Insofar as we can tell, a DPJ government's foreign policy would involve a bit more assertiveness on the realignment question — the DPJ has indicated that it wants to revise the 2006 roadmap and the DPJ is reluctant to commit Japanese funds to Guam construction, certainly not without more assurances that Japanese money will be used properly — and greater focus on working with China and other Asian powers on regional cooperation. A DPJ-led government may be reluctant to commit the JSDF to combat missions abroad, suggesting a retreat from the globalization of the alliance during the "golden age." But is this such a bad thing? Have Japan's symbolic contributions abroad done anything more than provide cover for the Bush administration, while antagonizing segments of the Japanese public (as seen in Mr. Morita's book)? The US needs to work on rebuilding the alliance so that it rests on more than a narrow partnership between Washington and Tokyo elites. Not acting imperious to the DPJ is a good way to start building the new partnership. (For more on the DPJ's foreign policy, see this post.)

To sum up, I think there are reasons to hope that the Obama Asia team will introduce some change to an alliance badly in need of it. They are certainly familiar enough with Japanese concerns, but hopefully their familiarity will enable them to work forthrightly with Japanese officials of whatever party to find new avenues of cooperation that recognize Japan's limitations instead issuing demands to Japan's government. After the Bush administration sided with Japanese elites while alienating the Japanese public, the Obama administration has an opportunity to repair the damage and build a new relationship.

UPDATE: I may be premature in considering Professor Nye as ambassador. However, perhaps this post makes the case for why he should take the job.