Resisting the urge to "just do something" in US foreign policy

Edward Luttwak has a brief piece at Foreign Policy in which he praises the restraint with which the Obama administration has approached the ongoing conflict in Syria. Luttwak argues that the importance of managing China's rise means that the US should get out of the business of determining the nature of political regimes in the Middle East:

The United States has other new responsibilities: To respond effectively to a rising China, it is essential to disengage from the futile pursuit of stability in North Africa, the Middle East, and Afghanistan. Their endless crises capture far too much policy attention and generate pressures for extremely costly military interventions that increase rather than reduce terrorist violence.

In other words, Luttwak is calling for the US to focus on a strategic goal that it has proved capable of pursuing in the past: preventing the emergence of a hegemon on the Eurasian landmass, using a mix of alliances, bilateral and multilateral diplomacy, deterrence, and, if necessary, war. As Luttwak notes, pursuing this goal in the face of a rising China is trickier in the past, not least because of economic interdependence and the degree to which China — at least until relatively recently — has avoided the naked aggression of rising powers of the past, and therefore requires nuance, subtlety, and Washington's full attention.

Of course, even without the need to get Asia's future right, there's a good argument for the US government's being less involved in the makeup of Middle Eastern governments: even before Iraq, the US did not exactly have the best record when it came to picking and supporting Middle Eastern regimes.

The problem, however, is neither restraint nor strategic prioritization seem to have much purchase in American elite discourse. As Salon's Alex Pareene noted in the midst of North Korea's saber rattling last month:

Making matters worse is that our political press frequently moonlights as our foreign affairs press. And that press thrives on partisan conflict and has an innate bias in favor of “action.” (Every Sunday show features a foreign policy panel in which multiple participants inevitably agree that America needs to “do something” about the situation in some other country. “Do something” is always considered sound, serious advice.)

Because the default position whenever anything happens anywhere for many American foreign policy and media elites is "do something," it becomes exceedingly difficult for an administration to exercise restraint without appearing weak. So the real question is whether the US can break some of the bad habits of the unipolar '90s, when many elites convinced themselves that the US could be everywhere and solve every problem. By refraining from armed intervention in Syria (thus far), the Obama administration has at least taken a step in the right direction.

The pivot to Asia cannot just mean shifting resources and personnel. It can only work if it is accompanied by self-restraint and discipline, which means resisting the urge to solve any problem that arises somewhere in the world, no matter how thorny.

Facing constraints in the alliance

Prime Minister Kan Naoto had his debut on the world stage at the G20 meeting in Toronto this week. While in Toronto he had his first meeting with US President Barack Obama.

As Reuters notes, Kan met with Obama for a half-hour, considerably more time than Hatoyama got when he visited Washington in April (when Hatoyama was infamously described as "loopy"). The two leaders apparently discussed their shared love of matcha ice cream, and the Japanese media looked for signs that the two were becoming pals, looking for evidence that the relationship between the US and Japan was back on track after the Hatoyama government "strained" the bilateral relationship.

Meanwhile at gatherings in Washington to commemorate the "fiftieth anniversary" of the alliance (depending on when one chooses the date the birth of the alliance), the mood, according to Peter Ennis, was relatively upbeat following Hatoyama's decision to embrace a version of the status quo regarding Futenma and his subsequent resignation. Ennis says that the theme was "emphasize the positive."

All well and good, but as far as I can tell the alliance is right back to where it was 2007-2009, with the only difference being that the Japanese government is openly confronting the problems surrounding the implementation of the 2006 roadmap.

As I've argued before, the collapse of the Abe government in 2007 was more than just a spectacular reversal for the LDP — it marked the end of the bilateral "project" that grew out of the Nye Initiative in the mid-1990s to build a stronger, closer US-Japan alliance. After rewriting the guidelines on defense cooperation, securing (token) Japanese contributions to the Afghanistan and Iraq conflicts, and develop a new "shared values" rationale for the alliance, the project ran squarely into the wall of political realities in Japan and in the region.

Regarding the former, when faced with a government that was dead set on constitution revision, it turned out that the Japanese public was not all that interested in it, no matter what years of Yomiuri Shimbun polls said (although revisionist politicians apparently missed the polls that showed that very few felt that constitution revision was an issue deserving of the attention of national leaders). More than that, there are few signs that the Japanese public is interested in anything but the status quo as far as security policy is concerned. In other words, the status quo in which Japan spends less and less each year on defense while playing host to forward-deployed US forces. While public opinion polls are at best ambiguous regarding Japan's former refueling mission in the Indian Ocean or its ongoing anti-piracy mission off the Horn of Africa, the public isn't exactly clamoring for a more expansive role abroad for the SDF. Nor does there seem to be much support for collective self-defense, another remaining piece of the project.

Now, of course, it's the job of the government to lead — indeed, dating back at least to the early 1990s the idea behind the administrative reforms at the heart of the DPJ's program was that it would produce more decisive leadership, especially in foreign and security affairs. But realistically speaking, it is unlikely that a government committed to a controversial fiscal retrenchment agenda will simultaneously pursue a foreign policy agenda that would if anything be more controversial, especially in light of the domestic agenda.

The result is an unusual parallel to the Yoshida Doctrine, which, incidentally, Ambassador Katō Ryozō, who before serving as ambassador to the US for the whole of the Bush administration was deeply involved in the project to strengthen the alliance, recently declared had "completed its mission." Today Japan finds itself in a position where it needs an alliance with the US based on the forward deployment of troops not to free up resources for re-industrialization but so that it can weather its demographic plight and economic decline. The resulting arrangement looks the same, but the underlying logic is strikingly different — and remarkably fragile, resting as it does on the strength of the US commitment to Asia, the willingness of the Japanese taxpayer to provide host-nation support (and Okinawan and other communities to host US forces), and the restraint of the People's Republic of China.

In fairness, policymakers in both countries seem to recognize that this arrangement is less than ideal. For example, two years before he became known within US-Japan circles for issuing a warning to the Hatoyama government not to challenge the 2006 agreement, US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates delivered a speech in Tokyo calling for a review of the alliance that would seek to answer basic questions about its raison d'etre. 

But no one has taken up Gates's call, perhaps in large part because there are no easy answers to the challenges that face the alliance. Japan's domestic political environment shows no signs of changing (at least as far as the alliance is concerned), and the political environment could even worsen if the ruling parties fall short of a majority in the upper house. While China occasionally acts in ways that could trigger a shift in Japanese public opinion, on the whole China has been restrained, meaning that Japan will continue to seek a constructive partnership with China. There are no signs that the US commitment to regional security is wavering, but given the state of the US economy it is impossible to rule out an isolationist turn (fears of which naturally lead Japan and other countries in the region to consider their options).

In other words, the new project for the alliance is learning to accept and make the best of these constraints. As leaders of both countries say, the alliance continues to play an important role in providing peace and security in the region, but the idea that the alliance could be something more than a "passive" or negative force for peace (what, after all, could be more passive than oxygen, Joseph Nye's commonly used metaphor for the US presence in Asia), that it could play a creative role in promoting US values or reshaping the regional security environment appears to be increasingly fanciful. The alliance may well survive for decades to come, but its survival — and the form it takes — may depend less on decisions made in Washington and Tokyo than on decisions made in Beijing.

Preparing to retreat?

As the Hatoyama government approaches the end of its first 100 days in office, the air is thick with condemnation of the DPJ-led government's handling of the relationship with the United States, particularly the ongoing dispute over the future of Futenma air station and the US presence in Okinawa.

Smelling blood in the water, the LDP and its allies in the conservative commentariat have gone on the offensive against the government. On Thursday Tanigaki Sadakazu, the leader of the LDP, said that the government was acting irresponsibly when it came to the hopes of the Okinawan people and harming relations with the US. Compared to what others were saying, Tanigaki was being charitable. Conservative journalist Sakurai Yoshiko, speaking in Kyushu at a forum sponsored by the Sankei-affiliated journal Seiron, said the Hatoyama government was effectively giving comfort to China by taking on the US on Futenma. (Sakurai also criticized the Hatoyama government for neglecting the military to spend money on child allowances, and insisted that Japan is on the path to becoming a dependency of China.) Sankei's prose is no less purple than Sakurai's. In an editorial published Thursday, Sankei accused the Hatoyama government of creating a crisis in the US-Japan alliance, and says that Hatoyama has committed an act of betrayal towards President Obama by prioritizing the stability of his government over his country's security.

Richard Armitage, visiting Tokyo earlier this week along with Michael Green, added his criticism of the Hatoyama government in a meeting with Tanigaki, questioning the government's ability to lead.

It is hard not to conclude that the Hatoyama government has miscalculated, in part I think because Hatoyama assumed that he could resolve the problem by speaking frankly with Obama (which would explain the prime minister's desire to summit with Obama on the sidelines in Copenhagen). In effect, Hatoyama seems to have desired the mirror image of Koizumi Junichiro's relationship with George W. Bush: where the Bush-Koizumi relationship deepened Japan's dependence on the US and led Japan to support US wars abroad, his relationship with Obama would based on mutual trust and would result in the creation of an "equal" US-Japan relationship that would focus on cooperation in non-security fields.

To build this relationship Hatoyama seems to have decided to take a calculated risk. If the two countries could tackle Futenma quickly — an issue which has been a millstone around the alliance for years — the way would be open to the kind of relationship Hatoyama purports to desire. By addressing this issue in the first months of its tenure, his government could signal a break with past practices in the alliance and demonstrate its ability to follow through on its promises and its deftness in foreign policy.

Instead the Hatoyama government faces its worst-case scenario: it has painted itself into a corner, having systematically eliminated alternatives to the current agreement, while appearing incompetent in its handling of foreign policy, deepening the mistrust of US officials (many of whom were already skeptical about the DPJ) in the process. Also, by dangling the possibility of a new agreement that could remove Marines from Okinawa entirely, the Hatoyama government raised the hopes of the Okinawan people, perhaps to unreasonable heights.

I am hesitant to declare this situation a crisis for the alliance because the Hatoyama government may already be moving in the direction of accommodation: Hatoyama has said that all options are on the table (including the agreement on hand), and has indicated that his government's plan will be forthcoming as early as next week. Foreign Minister Okada Katsuya has concluded that relocating Futenma's operations to Kadena is not an option. After visiting Guam, Defense Minister Kitazawa Toshimi — perhaps the leading defender of the status quo in the cabinet — concluded that relocating Futenma to Guam is not doable. The Hatoyama government is running out of alternatives to the 2006 agreement. Even the Social Democrats may be coming around: a senior member of her own party criticized SDPJ leader Fukushima Mizuho for suggesting that she could pull her party out of the government over the Futenma issue.

If it ends up embracing the 2006 agreement, it will be hard to conclude that the Hatoyama government did not injure itself by dragging out the process only to maintain the status quo. I do not think that it will be a mortal blow to the government because ultimately Futenma is a low-stakes issue domestically. It does reinforce the image that the DPJ is inexperienced on foreign policy, but then the Japanese public already believed that last summer before the general election and still voted the DPJ into power. More significantly, it calls into question Hatoyama's ability to lead his cabinet.

I am more sanguine than most when it comes to the significance of disagreements among cabinet ministers — I do think that the DPJ's model is a prime minister who is first among equals. That being said, on the Futenma issue Hatoyama has not been first at all, despite his periodic interjections to remind the public and the US that the final decision will be his and his alone. Given the sensitivities of this issue, Hatoyama needed to use a heavier hand to guide the deliberations of his ministers. Someone needed to take control of the process of reviewing the agreement. Okada tried, but apparently failed. It needed to be the prime minister. Hatoyama may be trying to correct that now, but the damage has been done.

What have we learned from this dispute?

First, my earlier misgivings about Hatoyama's ability to lead are justified. Hatoyama seems to have some idea of where he wants to take Japan, but he seems to have little idea how to go about it. Hatoyama strikes me as too much of a dreamer and not enough of a strategist. This tendency would be less of a problem if Hatoyama had a Machiavelli in his cabinet, but it is not yet clear to me who in the government will fill this role, if anyone. (For all we know it may be Ozawa Ichiro after all, although I am not convinced of this just yet.)

Second, as noted above, I think the lasting damage from this dispute will be limited, especially if it works out in Washington's favor. Having been burned on this issue and facing an general election upper house election (I hope writing general election where I meant upper house election doesn't prove prescient) and a fight over the budget in the new year, we will be hearing less from the Hatoyama government on foreign policy in the months to come, perhaps clearing the air for a proper discussion of the future of the alliance and the future of US forces in Japan (what Hatoyama, Ozawa, and others are most interested in anyway). This discussion needs to happen, the sooner the better, and Futenma and Okinawa are sideshows to the bigger question of where the DPJ sees the alliance in its Asia-centered foreign policy and what is the minimum level of commitment the US will expect from Japan if the alliance indeed narrows its focus to the defense of Japan. Someone, if not Hatoyama, needs to start signaling how the Japanese government plans to translate its foreign policy ideals into concrete policy.

Third, the DPJ may hold the upper hand in its relationship with the SDPJ. The SDPJ does have the nuclear option of pulling out of the government and reducing it to a minority in the upper house, but it is a one-shot weapon. Once the SDPJ uses it, it's done and who is to say how the SDPJ would fare in a snap election triggered by its pulling out of the government. What would the SDPJ have to gain from pulling out of the government? With Fukushima in the cabinet it has a seat at the table, giving it more influence over policy now than it could expect to have in opposition (just ask the LDP) or as a silent partner in the Diet. While the SDPJ's hand — and, for that matter, the PNP's hand — looks impressive given that it holds the balance in the upper house, its position is weaker than meets the eye.

The Hatoyama government misplayed the Futenma dispute. But it is possible that the prime minister and his ministers will learn from the experience and be a bit savvier the next time around.

Time for the US to accept new realities

According to Helene Cooper of the New York Times, "President Obama will arrive in Tokyo on Friday, at a time when America’s relations with Japan are at their most contentious since the trade wars of the 1990s."

Cooper then proceeds to list the ways in which the transition to the DPJ has made for a "more contentious relationship."

The bill of particulars includes the Hatoyama government's decision to withdraw MSDF refueling ships from the Indian Ocean, the decision to revisit the roadmap on the realignment of US forces in Japan, the loss of "shyness about publicly sparring with American officials," and plans to revisit the bilateral Status-of-Forces agreement (SOFA). In addition to all that, she implicitly criticizes Prime Minister Hatoyama for failing at his "kiss-and-make-up session" while visiting New York and Pittsburgh, when he "responded with the usual diplomatic niceties" but was the last to arrive at a dinner for G20 leaders in Pittsburgh.

Reading this article one gets the impression that the US-Japan alliance was in perfect shape right up until the DPJ took power in September. The onus is apparently entirely on the DPJ for being disagreeable and contentious, for sparring with American officials when they try to dictate what the Japanese government should and should not be doing. The article only hints that there might be structural forces tugging at the alliance beyond the drama involving the senior officials of both countries, beyond Hatoyama's late arrival or Gates's "snubbing" the defense ministry when in Tokyo.

The current tension — if tension is the right word for it — is the product of structural change in two areas, neither of which works in favor of the US.

First, that the DPJ is in power is alone an indicator of profound changes occurring within Japan. For all the speculation by analysts about whether the public favors this proposal or that proposal in the DPJ's manifesto and about whether the public actually expects the Hatoyama government to be able to deliver, the DPJ's victory spelled the end of the old system of government. While the new system is still coalescing, I think it is already safe to say that there will be no going back to the old regime of cozy ties among LDP backbenchers and bureaucrats. The old system meant that the alliance rested in the hands of a small number of LDP alliance managers and MOFA and more recently JDA/MOD officials. As analysts like the Washington Post's Jim Hoagland, who rushed to the defense of Japan's bureaucrats after the August election, realized, the US benefited greatly from this system. Alliance cooperation was predictable, even if the US government would have preferred that Japan contribute more.

This system, however, made it difficult for the Japanese government to secure the approval of the Japanese people when it came to things like sweeping changes in the configuration of US forces in Japan. Indeed, after the fiasco of the 1960 treaty revision, the Japanese people and their representatives were rarely consulted when it came to alliance cooperation with the US. And the US government had little reason to object to this — indeed, while the Obama administration may have forgotten or may not appreciate the role the US played in propping up the LDP and its 1955 system, the DPJ and the Japanese public has not.

The old system was also poorly configured for introducing sweeping changes into the nature of the alliance. The alliance managers on both sides certainly tried after 1996, when they thought they could turn the alliance into a global security partnership without having to consult with the Japanese people about whether they wanted their Self-Defense forces participating in US-led wars far from Japanese shores. When the people were finally consulted, it turns out that they had no interest in the "Japan as the Britain of Asia" model. The public had no interest in a robust military bolstered by bigger defense budgets, or in constitution revision, which some officials on both sides thought would be the inevitable product of greater US-Japan defense cooperation. It turns out that if given a choice between maintaining the constitution and cooperating with the US abroad, the Japanese people would prefer the former. The DPJ's victory, while not directly a result of foreign policy, was a product of public dissatisfaction of the LDP's government behind closed doors in which the Japanese people were consulted as an afterthought — including and especially on the alliance.

With the option of a more robust global security partnership foreclosed, the discussion is now turning to what the alliance should be instead, a discussion that is long overdue and might have happened sooner if the two governments had been more honest with each other. What Cooper sees as the signs of tension stemming from the DPJ's coming to power I see as the first stirrings of an honest dialogue between the two governments. Okinawa is just one manifestation of this process. The US was the beneficiary of an arrangement by which the LDP made its life easier politically by foisting the bulk of US forces in Japan to distant Okinawa. It is now paying the price, as the DPJ tries to get the best deal possible for the people of Okinawa.

Of course, that the DPJ wants to reconsider the alliance with the US is shaped by another structural change, the transformation of East Asia. To a certain extent the 1996 vision of the alliance was undone precisely because the two governments were unable to decide what role the alliance could and should play in a region in which growing Chinese influence (and interdependence) was an inescapable fact. The answer provided by the Bush administration and the Koizumi and Abe governments was "shared values" and cooperation among democracies, an approach that did not survive the Abe government. And values diplomacy notwithstanding, even Abe Shinzo recognized that jabbing the Yasukuni stick in China's eye was a poor substitute for a China policy. Arguably Japan was already shifting in the direction of an Asia-centered foreign policy after Koizumi, but — with the notable exception of Fukuda Yasuo — its prime ministers were less explicit about the changes underfoot. They dutifully recited the mantras while reorienting Japan away from a security-centered US-Japan alliance. As I've argued previously, what's changed with the Hatoyama government is that it has for the most part discarded with the alliance boilerplate and is actually trying to articulate what Japanese foreign policy should look like in an age characterized by a rising China, a still strong but struggling US, and a region populated with countries facing the same dilemma as Japan.

As Hatoyama's frenetic Asia diplomacy suggests, his government is obsessed with carving out a leadership role for Japan. Devin Stewart is right to suggest that Japan cannot neglect the US dimension of its new realism. But I think Stewart is mistaken when he suggests "the path toward a more 'independent' foreign policy for Japan is not by weakening its alliance with the world's strongest military power." On the contrary, I think Japan's credibility as a leader in the region is enhanced to the extent to which the Hatoyama government is able to show that its foreign policy is not dominated by its alliance with the world's strongest military power. Which is precisely what Fukuda tried to achieve when he stressed that security cooperation would take a back seat — and what some in the US are coming to appreciate. The DPJ still has work to do answering the question of precisely what kind of security relationship it wants with the US, of course, which is why it is good that the Hatoyama government decided not to rush the National Defense Program Guidelines that were originally supposed to be issued in December. Instead the US and Japan will be conducting a bilateral review of the alliance at the same time that the DPJ-led government is conducting an internal review of defense policy going forward.

Meanwhile the Japanese people are sensitive to the need for an Asia-centered approach in Japanese foreign policy. The public had little interest in Koizumi's approach to China. Whatever concerns Japanese citizens have about China, they have little interest in policies in provoking China. Indeed, the remarkable thing is that despite, in Stewart's words, a "bellicose North Korea and an increasingly powerful China," the public does not support a dramatic increase in Japan's military capabilities, an expansion of the roles open to the JSDF, and ever closer defense cooperation with the US. At the same time there is little support for ending the alliance entirely.

Both the US and Japan have considerable room for maneuver within these structural constraints. Indeed, the US is by no means powerless in the face of Japan's push to reorient its foreign policy. For starters, the Obama administration can reverse course on trade policy in Asia, a region which Daniel Drezner contends "has simply bypassed Washington." Instead of viewing the DPJ's initiatives in the region as leaving the US behind, the Obama administration should view it as a spur to join the game.

Moreover, the Obama administration ought to reconcile itself to the DPJ's message. Thus far Washington has mishandled the transition to the DPJ, in what arguably counts as an open-source intelligence failure. Washington did not take the DPJ seriously until far too late, and even when analysts in Washington began listening to the DPJ they still thought that the DPJ was bluffing — or was trying to appease its left-wing members and the Social Democrats — when it talked about the alliance and Okinawa. The DPJ means exactly what it says. Of the examples cited by Cooper, all were articulated by the DPJ well before it won the August election, and articulated not because of the DPJ's left but because there is a broad consensus within the party on the need to reconsider the alliance and recenter Japanese foreign policy on Asia.

It is unlikely that President Obama will use this weekend to begin engineering a shift in how the US responds to the structural forces that have brought the US-Japan relationship to this juncture. As Michael Cucek trenchantly observes, there will be altogether too much left unsaid when Hatoyama and Obama meet Friday evening. But it is time for the administration to realize that the current difficulties are not simply the product of the DPJ, its leaders, and its coalition partners, and that it is not too late for the US to revitalize its Asia policy and its alliance with Japan.

Waking up to a new alliance

The day of Barack Obama's first visit to Japan is approaching rapidly and the focus of the allies remains on the future of Futenma and the US-Japan agreement on the realignment of US forces in Japan.

The Hatoyama government is still weighing its options — and Prime Minister Hatoyama has said on more than one occasion that his government will not be treating Obama's visit as a firm deadline for coming up with an alternative to the status quo agreement. Okada Katsuya, the foreign minister, is pushing hard for the Kadena option, which he made clear in response to questioning in the upper house last week is for the moment his personal preference and not the policy of the government. On the other side of the debate is Kitazawa Toshimi, the defense minister, who has emerged as the cabinet's advocate for upholding the current agreement. Last month he stated that he thinks relocating the Marine helicopters at Futenma to the air force base at Kadena is "extremely difficult," and he subsequently suggested that it would not violate the DPJ's election manifesto if the government were to uphold the agreement to build a replacement facility at Camp Schwab.

The US government, not surprisingly, also sees Kadena as a non-starter. Following Secretary of Defense Robert Gates's statement, General Edward Rice, commander of US forces in Japan, told Asahi that Kadena would not work as an alternative. Assistant Secretary of State Kurt Campbell is due in Tokyo Thursday for talks, but on Tuesday State Department spokesman Ian Kelly stressed that "it’s up to Japan to decide what kind of relationship they want to have." In other words, the US government has no interest in renegotiating, and the Japanese government can take it (and suffer the political costs at home) or leave it (and embitter the Obama administration towards the new government).

Okada is also under fire from Okinawans, including Okinawa governor Nakaima Hirokazu, who sees the Kadena option as doing nothing to relieve the burden on Okinawa's citizens.

In other words, the Hatoyama government is no closer to having a proposal to present to the US.

While the conventional wisdom says the Hatoyama government's deliberate pace is a cause for alarm for the alliance — see this Jiji article for example — I am still convinced that the complaints about the public disagreements between Hatoyama's ministers are more a product of observers being unaccustomed to the cabinet actually making policy as opposed to genuine disorder in the government. This is normal government. Indeed, this debate over the alliance lies at the nexus of the DPJ's plans to normalize Japan's foreign and domestic policies, as it shows the cabinet shining light on its deliberations — removing alliance management from the shadows of Kasumigaseki — while also not being bullied by Washington into rushing its decision. In other words, the DPJ is doing exactly what it said it would do. Rather than treating the US with "deference" (remember that word?), the Hatoyama government is weighing its options. It has not ruled out the status quo, but it will not be pressured into accepting the status quo for its own sake either.

Nevertheless, some in Washington seem to feel that the Hatoyama government was in need of — in Michael Green's phrase — a "smackdown." [Although, to be fair, it's possible that he did not choose that unfortunate word for the title of his post.] Upon reading his post at Foreign Policy's Shadow Government one could be excused for thinking that he was discussing the relationship between an empire and its satrap and not two sovereign governments. In addition to his use of the word "smackdown," he calls Hatoyama "defiant" (as opposed to Hatoyama patiently weighing his government's options); Gates's stance, he writes, "sent shudders" through the DPJ; and the DPJ has been "slapping around" the US (instead of articulating a policy approach that happened to differ from its predecessor's).

In a single post Green managed to illustrate why the DPJ's approach to the alliance is merited. During the "golden age" — Green appears to have taken the rhetoric from days of George and Jun and (briefly) George and Shinzo seriously — the US government did not need to deliver "smackdowns," it seems, because Tokyo followed along nicely (which, given the frustrations endured by US negotiators during the Defense Policy Review Initiative talks, was a convenient facade for what was actually a fairly contentious period for the alliance). The difference seems to be that LDP governments kept their disagreements private. The difficulties of the Koizumi years wash away and we're left with talk of a golden age.

The US government is now paying the price for believing that the post-1996 decade was a golden age for the alliance, for believing that pocketing cooperation from the Koizumi and Abe governments meant that it enjoyed the support of the Japanese people as a whole. Green can tell himself that the alliance is popularity among three quarters of the Japanese — which may be true (although the latest figure is actually 68.9% favorable, a seven-point drop from the previous year's poll), but the alliance's overall approval rating says very little about what the Japanese public thinks about specific pieces of the alliance's agenda in recent years. Voters may not have had the alliance and foreign policy at the top of the list of reasons to vote for the DPJ, but it is difficult to say that they were voting for the status quo on the alliance. It strikes me as odd that voters would be open to the DPJ's promises of sweeping changes in how their government functions (easily the most popular portion of the DPJ's agenda) but would demand that the government cling resolutely to the status quo in foreign policy. As the DPJ is illustrating, it is entirely possible to support the maintenance of the alliance while demanding changes in how it operates.

And, meanwhile, a recent report based on a series of discussions among US and Japanese experts convened by the National Bureau of Asian Research (NBR) and drafted by Michael Finnegan and exposes Green's argument about a "golden age" as a myth. Premised on the idea of "unmet expectations" — expectations that were unmet well before the DPJ took power — Finnegan concludes "despite public statements about strength, the alliance is actually quite brittle precisely at a time when both allies are perhaps depending on it more than ever." The idea of mismatched expectations from the alliance is not a new one, but Finnegan provides a frank assessment of the state of the alliance and shows despite the apparently close relationship between President Bush and Prime Minister Koizumi, the relationship among the national leaders did not translate into a frank and realistic discussion of whether the alliance is headed.

What does Finnegan see as the mismatched expectations? He sums of each country's expectations in two words: for the US, "Do More," and for Japan, "Meet Commitments." It is difficult to say whether the report's assessment of Japan's expectations for the alliance continue to hold under the DPJ government, but "Do More" pretty much sums up US expectations going back decades. The irony was that the advent of unipolarity ratcheted US expectations of Japan and its other allies to unprecedented levels — despite (or because of) the US was unchallenged by a rival superpower and towering over all rivals even during the peace divided 1990s, the US decided to bear more burdens than ever, which meant more demands for burden-sharing with its allies. Accordingly, after 1996 the US came to expect greater operational cooperation with Japan and greater Japanese involvement in providing security far from Japanese shores. The failure to strengthen bilateral cooperation for the defense of Japan is particularly glaring, and it falls on the Japanese government's shoulders. This failure raises an obvious question: if the LDP was such a faithful friend of the alliance, why is Finnegan able to provide such a lengthy list of operational deficiencies short of the major sticking point of the ban on the exercise of Japan's right of collective self-defense?

Finnegan concludes the report by offering a list of options available to each government going forward, and proposing that the allies scale back their expectations so to acknowledge political constraints in Japan and refocus the alliance on the core mission of defending Japan. He writes: "The new bargain suggested here would establish a laser-like focus on the core expectation of the alliance, the defense of Japan. Such a recalibrated or tempered arrangement would forgo out-of-area missions, instead recognizing a division of labor within the alliance. On the one hand, Japan would assume primacy in the defense of Japan, focusing all of its defense efforts and resources on this singular mission. Japan would be its own 'first line of defense' for the first time in the postwar period." Having argued for precisely this model of the alliance in the past, I fully agree with this proposal and am glad that Finnegan and the NBR study group managed to flesh out what it means in concrete terms. (Indeed, I argued for precisely this kind of discussion on the occasion of a previous Gates visit to Japan, when the secretary was working for a different president.)

The greatest virtue of the NBR report is that it recognizes that whether or not it was possible to create the expansive global alliance desired by some Japan hands after 1996, it is not possible today. Even before the DPJ took power Japan's leaders recognized that the challenge for the coming decades is carving out a role for Japan as China solidified its position as a regional superpower. Even Hatoyama's LDP predecessors recognized that they could no longer get away with antagonizing China over Yasukuni and other history questions. Neither of Abe's LDP successors saw it worthwhile to talk about the values shared by the US and Japan and to expend political capital deepening cooperation among the region's democracies. The challenge for the US and Japan is to build an alliance based on the notion that Japan has little choice but to be deeply engaged in regional cooperation, whatever form it ends up taking. Hatoyama, Okada, and other DPJ leaders do not believe they have to choose between Asia and the US, but they do believe that the alliance as it was conceived by alliance managers in the 1990s and early 2000s forces them to pick a side and constrains Japan's freedom of action.

As difficult as the Futenma dispute is, I am still fairly sanguine over the ability of the Obama administration to manage the shift to a deep but narrow security partnership, in which security cooperation is focused almost exclusively on the defense of Japan and embedded in a broader partnership in which the allies cooperate closely in areas other than security outside of East Asia and are free to pursue independent initiatives as necessary within the region. At the very least, an alliance based on Yokosuka and Kadena can still be valuable to the US.

It is time, however, for US officials (and former officials) to stop acting surprised that the DPJ is doing precisely what it promised it would do — and to wake up and recognize that the early 2000s were not a golden age and that there are more points of continuity between the LDP post-Koizumi and the DPJ than most are willing to admit. I am truly dismayed by how Washington — inside and outside of government — has handled the transition to DPJ rule. While the Obama administration deserves credit for having Secretary of State Hillary Clinton meet with Ozawa Ichiro when she visited Japan back in February, the administration seems taken aback by the Hatoyama government's following through on its promises to manage the alliance differently from the LDP. It is time for commentators in Washington to stop clinging to the notion that the DPJ is "badly divided internally" on foreign policy. While the Hatoyama government may be debating how best to resolve the Futenma issue, it is anything but divided when it comes to changing how the alliance is managed and where the alliance should fit in Japan's foreign policy. The Hatoyama government is entirely serious, and it will be running the government in Tokyo for the foreseeable future.

It is time for Washington to wake up to the reality of DPJ rule. The NBR report is an excellent step in the right direction.

Gates rules out renegotiation

The DPJ has pushed on Futenma — and the Obama administration, in the guise of Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, has pushed back.

Gates, visiting Japan on a tour through Asia, delivered an unambiguous message to the Hatoyama government that the US government is not interested in renegotiating the bilateral agreement on the realignment of US forces in Japan. As he said in a joint press conference with Defense Minister Kitazawa Toshimi:

Our view is clear. The Futenma relocation facility is the lynchpin of the realignment road map. Without the Futenma realignment, the Futenma facility, there will be no relocation to Guam. And without relocation to Guam, there will be no consolidation of forces and the return of land in Okinawa.

Our view is this may not be the perfect alternative for anyone, but it is the best alternative for everyone, and it is time to move on.

We are — feel strongly that this is a complex agreement, negotiated over a period of many years. It is interlocking — (inaudible) – immensely complicated and counterproductive. We have investigated all of the alternatives in great detail and believe that they are both politically untenable and operationally unworkable.

I emphasized the paragraph above because I think it's probably the most honest statement of the US position at this point. The administration has enough problems on its hands that it has little interest in renegotiating what it sees as a done deal — signed by foreign ministers and everything — after years of hard work. I can understand the US position: Futenma has been a source of unpleasantness for a long enough time that the US government just wants the issue off the agenda.

But, on the other hand, the concerns of the new government and the people of Okinawa cannot be tossed aside simply because the US government is impatient. It is too convenient for the US government to say that it signed an agreement with the LDP and therefore the DPJ should just accept the agreement and move on — as if the transition from the LDP to the DPJ was a routine matter. I continue to find it perplexing that US officials expect that the DPJ would take power and attempt to change everything but the alliance, which was, after all, an integral piece of the 1955 system. The US may not view the alliance that way, but to pretend that the US was not a pillar propping up the LDP system for years, to pretend that the US-Japan alliance is an alliance like any other, is to be willfully insensitive to history. As much as Gates and the Obama administration would like to turn the page, their Japanese counterparts — the first government in a half-century based on a parliamentary majority for a party other than the LDP — cannot simply accept what it views as the product of the "abnormal" US-LDP alliance.

The Hatoyama government has already softened its stance on Futenma considerably by backing away from the position that the Futenma replacement facility should be outside of Okinawa. Is the Hatoyama government in a hopeless position? Gates may have been entirely sincere in the message he delivered in Tokyo, but it also is not a bad bargaining stance either. If ratcheting up pressure on the new government forces it to drop the issue — perhaps with a minor concession like this — the US will have gotten its way with little effort expended. But I doubt that the government will back down easily, certainly not without compensation. The domestic politics of the issue do not favor backing down: its coalition partners, the SDPJ in particular, want Futenma out of Okinawa, the DPJ is largely united against the current agreement, and the Okinawan people and their representatives are unhappy with the current agreement. Were it to back down now that it has put Futenma at the top of its agenda in advance of President Obama's visit next month, the Hatoyama government's public approval rating would probably suffer. And, beyond the government's interests, it should be stressed that the prime minister and his ministers actually object to the substance of the current agreement and want it changed and are willing to exhaust political capital to do so (and to show that a DPJ-led government is capable of standing up to the US).

If the Hatoyama government does not back down, what options are available to the Obama administration that won't make Futenma a bigger problem than it already is? If the administration simply refuses to talk about Futenma and then blames the agreement's failure on the Hatoyama government, how can it expect a constructive relationship with the new government on other issues? Would the Obama administration contemplate abandoning Futenma unilaterally and leaving the Japanese government to clean up after the Marines? I doubt that the situation will come to any of these scenarios. The US has little to gain by letting the issue fester — and, ironically, despite Gates's desire to "move on," rejecting the Hatoyama government's desire to renegotiate outright may be the surest way to guarantee that the allies will be unable to move beyond the question of what to do about Futenma and US forces in Okinawa.

The US ought to acknowledge that the Hatoyama government has actually shown itself to be relatively flexible on the question of Futenma when compared with earlier DPJ statements. The Obama administration must recognize that to simply say no to a Hatoyama government that is desperate to find a solution — that shares Gates's desire to move on — is to make it harder for the US and Japan to turn their attention to other, more important issues. For the sake of both countries I hope that Gates's position is not the Obama administration's final position.

And as for the Hatoyama government? Foreign Minister Okada Katsuya has a month until President Obama visits Japan. He should at the very least be ready to provide some idea of what concessions will be necessary to get the Japanese government to back away from more comprehensive revisions, however difficult it may be do so.

However tetchy the relationship looks at the moment, this is not a crisis for the alliance, but rather the DPJ simply doing what it said it was going to do: speak honestly to the US. When was the last time, after all, that a meeting of senior US and Japanese officials carried even a whiff of public controversy? As Ozawa Ichiro reportedly said in a meeting with US Ambassador John Roos, "I want the US to speak frankly about any problems, just as I think that Japan's DPJ government should speak directly to the US."

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.

Middle-power diplomacy in New York

It may be too early to declare that the Obama administration and the Hatoyama cabinet have successfully managed the transition from LDP to DPJ, but this week was clearly a step in the right direction.

At the start of the week, Foreign Minister Okada Katsuya and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton met in New York City, which, at least according to this Asahi report, entailed a frank and open discussion of the two most pressing issues for the alliance, Japan's refueling mission in support of coalition activities in Afghanistan and the Futenma question. Okada described Clinton as "not obstinate" when it came to hearing the DPJ government's concerns. Okada also told reporters Thursday that the government would begin its own review of plans for replacing Futenma with a facility within Okinawa.

The bigger meeting — bigger in terms of symbolism if not substance — was between Hatoyama Yukio and Barack Obama Wednesday. Obama singled out Hatoyama for praise for "running an extraordinary campaign and his party leading dramatic change in Japan." He also exhibited his ability to empathize, linking his own experiences in office to the DPJ, saying, "I know how it feels to have just been elected and form a government and suddenly you have to appear at a range of international summits; I went through this nine months ago. But I'm very confident that not only will the Prime Minister succeed in his efforts and his campaign commitments, but that this will give us an opportunity to strengthen and renew a U.S.-Japan alliance that will be as strong in the 21st century as it was in the latter half of the 20th century." In contrast to some commentators in Washington, Obama delivered an unambiguous message to the DPJ: he recognizes the DPJ's victory as significant and historic, and will not react with panic just because they have some concerns about the alliance. Not the days of George and Junichiro or Ron and Yasu, but so much the better for the relationship — a much more businesslike partnership. As I've argued about Obama in the past, his administration's focus is on solving problems, whether the problems are within the bilateral relationship or whether it is a matter of what role Japan can play in solving global problems. His administration will listen, it may well yield, but it seems unlikely that the US government will accept the use of the traditional mantras to paper over problems in the relationship.

Sankei suggests that the Obama-Hatoyama meeting was precisely that, papering over problems: the joint statement made no mention, after all, of the problems discussed by Clinton and Okada. This is a silly complaint. When have two leaders at a summit actually used the joint press conference to discuss an unresolved issue that the two governments are in the process of hammering out? And as far as the Japanese government is concerned, the heavy lifting will be done by Okada. No, the summit seems to have went as well as a photo-op summit could go.

But what I find more interesting than the Hatoyama government's efforts to get the new US-Japan relationship off to a good start is what the Hatoyama government sought to achieve in its Asia policy in New York.

Revealingly, it was not Obama and Hatoyama who referred to each other by their first names but Hatoyama and Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd. The two met for forty minutes, and apparently Hatoyama was deeply impressed with Rudd's knowledge of "regime change" in Japan. While conservatives railed against Hatoyama's discussions with Chinese President Hu Jintao of an East Asian community, the real story is not the distant dream of an East Asia integrated like the EU but the prospects for partnership between Hatoyama and the leaders of East Asia's other middle powers, symbolized by the exchange between Hatoyama and Rudd. In the past I noted the affinities between Rudd's vision for Asia and former Prime Minister Fukuda Yasuo's. I have also noted the affinities between Fukuda and Hatoyama when it comes to Asia. The point is that greater links among the governments of Japan, Australia, South Korea, and the ASEAN member states are to be expected. These are not the links envisioned by Abe, Bush, and Howard administrations back in 2007, the defunct quadrilateral that included India but not South Korea and that emphasized shared values, democracy, and security cooperation. It is too early to say what precisely will come of greater cooperation among these countries, but given their shared concerns, the relationships will continue to deepen.

Accordingly, there seems to be a tendency among some in Japan to assume that when DPJ officials refer to an "Asia-centered" foreign policy, Asia is a code word for China. But while the Hatoyama government wants a constructive relationship with China — much like its predecessors did — there is clearly more to Asia than China, and more to cooperation in Asia than cooperation with China. Despite Komori Yoshihisa's alarmism about how an East Asian community will mean the dissolution of Japan, the reality is that an East Asian community that includes all the countries that participate in the East Asian Summit would be a means of "enmeshing" China, much as the ASEAN countries have found ways to cooperate with China while quietly increasing security ties with the US. (See this monograph by Evelyn Goh for more on how Southeast Asian states have maneuvered between the US and China.)

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.

The Obama administration wastes no time

Responding to yesterday's election, President Barack Obama has issued an innocuous statement congratulating Japan on its "historic election," but the Obama administration appears that it will waste no time in establishing the terms of the relationship with the Hatoyama government.

Yomiuri reports that Secretary of Defense Robert Gates will be visiting Japan in mid-October for discussions with the new government on alliance issues in advance of the president's trip to Japan scheduled for November. And before Gates arrives, Kurt Campbell, the assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs, will come around 16 September, around the time the new government is expected to form. I think Gates's visit may be well timed, but Campbell's strikes me as a bit too soon. Then again, if Hatoyama wants to meet with Obama while in the US for the opening of the UN General Assembly, perhaps a visit sooner rather than later is advisable.

On the face of it, I think this is a meaningful gesture on the part of the Obama administration, provided that Campbell and Gates listen as much as they speak when they visit Tokyo. The US-Japan alliance, as much an institution of LDP rule as other, more familiar institutions, will not be unaffected by the transition to the Hatoyama government, and the sooner the two governments find a way to manage the transition the better it will be for the relationship.

At the same time, the early visits by the two officials will put pressure on the DPJ to have its act together by the time Campbell arrives.

Hatoyama in the New York Times

There isn't much I can add to MTC's comments on the New York Times's publication of the translation of Hatoyama Yukio's essay in Voice (which originally appeared in the Christian Science Monitor). I am stunned that no one at DPJ HQ thought better of having Hatoyama's provocative essay appear — again — in an American publication, indeed the American publication where it is guaranteed to be read by the American establishment, such as it is.

Hatoyama will now make it difficult for even potentially sympathetic Americans to view him with anything but distrust.

I have no problem with a DPJ government saying no to the US from time to time. I have no problem with the idea of more distance from the US, which might make for a healthier alliance in the long run. But to an audience not steeped in Japanese debates about capitalism and globalization — to an audience not aware, for example, that the incumbent prime minister has also railed about "market fundamentalism" — Hatoyama looks less like the leader in waiting of one of the world's second largest economy and more like, say, former Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad (who, incidentally, has long looked to Japan for leadership in standing up to the west).

Earlier this week, Hatoyama said that he wanted to meet with President Barack Obama while in the US for the opening of the UN General Assembly. He expressed his confidence that if he were to sit down with Obama and talk frankly about two issues of concern — the matter of Futenma and the matter of the introduction of nuclear weapons into Japan by the US — the president would see things Hatoyama's way. While this scenario was far-fetched before, what kind of reception will Hatoyama get now? What kind of reception should he get now?

Does the DPJ not realize how much it has lucked out in the transition from the Bush administration to the Obama administration? The latter has exhibited an openness to the possibility of a DPJ government and not overreacted at, say, Ozawa Ichiro's remarks on the US military presence even as most of the Japan policy community piled on Ozawa for his alleged anti-Americanism. Does the DPJ not realize just how skeptical many Americans are of the DPJ, and that there is a difference between being Washington's lackey and showing a degree of courtesy by, say, not having the party leader's incoherent opinions about "fraternity" and US-led globalization splashed across the pages of the New York Times?

Earlier this week I suggested that the DPJ's leaders should not talk so much about a sensitive matter like the alliance before the party actually takes power and forms a government. This episode, I think, qualifies as talking too much.

I hope that someone senior in the DPJ will be meeting as soon as possible with newly arrived Ambassador John Roos to put Hatoyama's remarks in proper context.

Meanwhile, I am no less convinced that Hatoyama as prime minister will be the single greatest weakness of a DPJ government.

The DPJ contemplates its opening moves with the US

In a survey of candidates' political attitudes, Mainichi found that DPJ and Komeito candidates overlapped more than Komeito and LDP or LDP and DPJ candidates. Whether the policy affinities between DPJ and Komeito candidates presages cooperation between the two parties after the election will depend on other factors, but what interested me about this survey was what it revealed about the DPJ itself.

It is common to discuss the divisions in the DPJ, to assume that no matter how well the DPJ does in the general election the new DPJ government will run aground on the internal divisions of the ruling party. This assumption is due for a revision, and the Mainichi survey at least helps suggest otherwise.

Consider questions related to Japan's constitution. While a majority of DPJ candidates recognized the value of constitution revision generically, only around 20% approved of revising Article 9. Only a fraction more (25%) approved of reinterpreting Article 9 to permit the exercise of the right of collective self-defense. Or the dispatch of the JSDF to Afghanistan, approved by roughly 15% of DPJ candidates. The party is more divided on the general orientation of Japan's foreign policy, although a clear majority (62%) approved shifting the emphasis to Asia and a clear minority (18%) supported placing the most stress on the US-Japan alliance. It is not exactly clear what the remainder prefers. The DPJ is even more uniform on domestic policy.

The danger therefore is not paralysis but the opposite: that uniformity leads the party's leadership to take a more reckless course than it might do otherwise. Similarly, as MTC argues, there is the danger that because so many DPJ candidates are running on the basis of the manifesto, they will make it difficult for the party to back away from the manifesto when it inevitably conflicts with reality.

What will this mean for Japan's foreign policy? A DPJ government could be more confident in challenging the US than perhaps some observers expect. On the whole, I still don't expect the DPJ to spend much energy on foreign policy within its first year in office, but there are signs that the DPJ might actually attempt to follow through on its goal of halting the construction of a Futenma Replacement Facility in Heneko Bay as stipulated in the US-Japan agreement on realignment. Mainichi's survey did not include a question pertaining to realignment, but I would imagine that the party may be even more uniform in its opposition to the current plan than on some other foreign policy issues, because even pro-alliance hawks are skeptical of the arrangements for realignment.

Accordingly, Kan Naoto, on a visit to Okinawa (notice how the DPJ's most radical statements on foreign policy are always made in Okinawa), said that there is a "high possibility" of a discussion between the new prime minister and President Obama in September. What exactly does this mean? Will Hatoyama Yukio go to Washington upon taking office? I suppose it is possible, given that if elected he wants to attend the opening of the UN general assembly on 15 September (which assumes, of course, that Japan will have a new government by then). Kan said that there must be a relationship in which "the new prime minister" can speak from the heart with Obama. A desire for a heart-to-heart (building "fraternity" I suppose) is all well and good, but will that be enough? Having talked with enough working-level US officials who have been involved in negotiations related to Okinawa, I can imagine that Hatoyama's heartfelt plea would not be particularly welcome in Washington.

That does not mean it shouldn't be. Problems in the realignment plan continue to emerge, the latest being construction of housing on Guam for Marines relocated from Okinawa, and, more seriously, the Abercrombie amendment to the 2010 Defense Authorization act, which would restrict the use of foreign labor for construction related to the realignment and mandate that laborers be paid higher, Hawaiian construction wages. It is estimated that if passed the Abercrombie amendment would double the already $10 billion price tag for the relocation. On both the Guam and Okinawa ends the realignment plan strikes me as a disaster waiting to happen. It may be completed, but past its deadline, over budget, and having stirred up considerable bilateral acrimony in the meantime. It does seem like alternatives exist. I found this contribution by Peter Ennis of The Oriental Economist to NBR'S US-Japan forum of value: Ennis suggests that the helicopters should move to Kadena, that the only real obstacles are infighting between the US Air Force and the Marines and the need for a facility that could handle surge capacity in the event of a crisis. While the DPJ has said that it wants facilities out of Okinawa entirely, I think that the DPJ would settle for a move to Kadena in place of building an FRF. But as Ennis suggests, it's going to take executive leadership.

But Futenma wasn't the only bilateral issue Kan discussed while in Okinawa. Kan also criticized the foreign ministry for its secret agreements with the US, especially the agreement permitting the introduction of US nuclear weapons without consulting the Japanese government in advance. The foreign ministry itself denies the existence of secret agreements but says that there were negotiations of differing interpretations. But Hatoyama has decided to run with this issue, suggesting that just as in the case of Futenma what's necessary to resolve the matter is a heart to heart with Obama. Hatoyama seems convinced that he can simply persuade Obama to change US policy to accord with the three non-nuclear principles. (Don't the Japanese realize that there are at least two Obamas, if not more?) And yet, at the same time, only two days earlier Hatoyama said that maintaining the US nuclear umbrella is unavoidable. I preferred Hatoyama's position last month, when, in the face of the contradiction of the three non-nuclear principles and the US-Japan secret agreement, Hatoyama suggested that he would consider revising the principles to accord with reality.

I think the DPJ's leaders need to stop talking so much. Win the election first, put together a cabinet, and then decide what the best way to approach the US on these issues is. Keep talking and what remains of the DPJ's credibility will be gone before the party even takes office. It is revealing that Hatoyama is avoiding burasagari press conferences in order to avoid gaffes. The more Hatoyama and others speak, giving the impression as if policy has been set in stone, the more they will have to retract once a DPJ-led government actually forms.

The coming DPJ tsunami?

Daniel Twining, writing at Shadow Government, Foreign Policy's blog for Republicans in exile from government in Washington, argues that the advent of a DPJ government could represent a "tsunami" for the US and Japan.

Twining offers the standard Washington perspective on the DPJ: Japan has lots of problems, but who knows whether the DPJ can actually fix them.

Indeed, there is very little in this post that hasn't been said before — and which I argued against in this post.

But I want to respond to Twining's argument about how the DPJ "will pull its foreign and security policy further to the left — and further away from the broad consensus that has defined the U.S.-Japan alliance for three generations."

What is this consensus, you ask? Twining notes "the deference with which generations of LDP leaders treated Washington and the alliance framework that has made possible Japan's postwar prosperity and security." The use of the word deference is revealing. In short, the alliance has been unequal and should continue to be so: "expanding Japan's alliance roles and responsibilities to make that country a global security leader" but always remaining subordinate to the US, host to US forces, cooperating in US-led operations abroad, and altering its forces to conform to US wishes.

There are several problems with Twining's argument. First, before even looking at the merits of the DPJ position, it is worth mentioning that despite the fears of Twining and others in Washington, the most likely outcome of a DPJ government for the foreseeable future is the maintenance of the status quo. The DPJ has said that it wants to renegotiate the 2006 roadmap on the realignment of US forces and the status of US forces in Japan more generally. True, but will these be high priorities for a DPJ government? Any democratic government has only so much political capital to spend, and it is unlikely that a DPJ-led government will devote serious attention to Okinawa in the early years of its government. Okinawa is a low priority for voters outside of Okinawa prefecture, and will take a back seat to administrative reform, pensions, health care, and the economy. Beyond these specific issues, it is a mistake to anticipate radical chance on the alliance for precisely the same reason. Of course there are socialists in the DPJ, and the SDPJ will likely be included in a DPJ-led coalition. But as Twining himself notes, there are those "who support a more hawkish Japanese security policy."

The result will be equilibrium in favor of the status quo. Neither the left nor the right will be able to achieve radical changes in Japanese security policy. Any changes to Japan's foreign and security policy will be the result of top-down incremental changes — and the DPJ's leaders tend to fall somewhere between the two extremes. After flirting with "petite" nationalism earlier in his career, Hatoyama Yukio's foreign policy views are fairly pedestrian. Ozawa Ichiro is perhaps more controversial, but at the same time few Japanese politicians have been more misunderstood than Ozawa. (See my explanation of his "Seventh Fleet" comments here, here, and here, and discussions of Ozawa's thinking on foreign policy here, here, and here.) Okada Katsuya is also pedestrian in his security policy views, and recently echoed the Obama administration's rhetoric when he stressed the importance of US-Japan cooperation in areas other than security (discussed here). Incidentally, the advent of the Obama administration has arguably forced the DPJ to soften its rhetoric on the US: it was a lot easier to criticize Washington under the Bush administration. With the Obama's administration's having made a point of not treating Japan with a heavy hand in its first months (what I've called benign neglect), the DPJ has changed its tone on the alliance, and will undoubtedly continue to do so should it win next month.

The DPJ's leaders are hardly radicals. At the very least, the US-Japan alliance will remain an indispensable pillar for the indefinite future, especially because a DPJ government will be no more inclined than an LDP government to spend more on defense. The presence of hawks within the DPJ will probably ensure that defense spending does not fall further than it already has under the LDP, but a DPJ-led Japan will not be gearing up for the development of serious autonomous capabilities. But beyond that, it does seem to be contradictory for Twining to question the DPJ's ability to address "structural conundrums" but then blithely assert that the DPJ will single-handedly threaten the institution that has been the centerpiece of Japanese security policy for nearly sixty years.

Where does this conclusion leave us? Will the DPJ ask questions of the US that the "deferential" LDP (I think Twining and Ozawa would agree on this point) has not asked of Japan's ally? Of course. Will it be less inclined to support the US in wars far from Japan's shores, especially without UN approval? Surely. Will it look to deepen its cooperation with other Asian countries independent of the US? Absolutely. But these positions hardly constitute radical change, and it is hard to see why the Obama administration should anticipate an impending "tsunami" for these reasons.

Incidentally, what Twining fails to realize is that creating some distance between the US and Japan (or "making the alliance equal") is perhaps the lowest common denominator in the DPJ. Even the DPJ's conservatives don't want Japan to be too locked in to the alliance framework.

Which leads to the bigger question: is the DPJ's position actually bad for the US? It may be bad for the US-Japan establishment, which depends on the idea that the alliance is "intrinsically important." But what would the US lose if a DPJ government says no from time to time, or if it seeks an international role in regional or international fora that might involve staking out positions at odds with the US? Twining says that the Bush administration sought a Japan that would be a "global security leader," but in reality it seems that Twining wants a militarily capable Japan subservient to Japan, a vassal not an ally. It seems that it is impossible for the US to have a Japanese ally that is both a "global security leader" and deferential to the United States. If Japan is going to be a more capable global leader, it will from time to time disagree with the US.

As noted previously, the harder edges of the DPJ's position on the alliance have softened since Barack Obama came into office — and they will likely soften further once the DPJ is faced with governing. The result will be a Japan still allied with the US and still a "pillar" of US policy in East Asia, but reluctant to support security cooperation far from Japanese shores and largely uninterested in values promotion or a crypto-containment policy for China. Japan has already moved in this direction in the years since the fall of Abe Shinzo. Notice, for example, how little the prime minister has discussed his "arc of freedom and prosperity." Japan has not moved any closer to "remilitarization" under Fukuda or Asō. It has been slow to move on the 2006 road map. It continued to support the token refueling mission in the Indian Ocean, but offered nothing more in either Iraq or Afghanistan. It did send ships to Somalia, but only after China did, and even then its commitment was presented as being in Japan's national interest.

Twining, of course, believes otherwise: he tells us that Koizumi's successors "have been good men, and several, including Shinzo Abe and Taro Aso, have possessed a clear vision for Japan in the world." Why he says several when the only prime minister not included on that list is Fukuda is beyond me. (And this is particularly insulting, because I think of the three, Fukuda had the most realistic assessment of the problems facing Japan and had the most clearly articulated vision for overcoming said challenges. See here and here.)

The era of Japan's becoming a deputy to the US sheriff in East Asia has passed, and the sooner that both Republicans and Democrats come to recognize this, the better it will be for the alliance.

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.