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.

A future for values diplomacy?

Daniel Twining, currently a senior fellow at the German Marshall Fund and formerly an Asia policy staffer at the State Department's policy planning staff and an adviser to John McCain, offers his recommendations to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton at Shadow Government, a new blog at Foreign Policy featuring the writing of conservative and Republican foreign policy analysts.

Twining is a dedicated believer in the idea of "values diplomacy," that catch phrase of the Abe government — with Aso Taro as foreign minister — that placed "universal values," at the center of Japan's foreign policy, at least rhetorically.

The US, Japan, and other democracies of East Asia, according to this view (common in neoconservative circles in Washington, see this post for example), must cooperate to promote the spread of democracy in the region. Accordingly, for Twining the first two goals for US strategy in Asia must be "Accelerate the rise of democratic great powers in Asia that are increasingly willing to help police the region" and "Encourage strategic cooperation among Asia-Pacific democracies." Democracy reappears in point eight, "Promote democracy." The contrast with Secretary Clinton's vision of US East Asia strategy could not be more pronounced. Recall that in her first statement on Asia policy, Mrs. Clinton barely mentioned cooperation among democracies and democracy promotion as important US goals in the region.

And yet Twining thinks that no goal is more important than binding the region's democracies closer together. Twining celebrates what he sees as a "trend" of "Asian nations...leading the effort to form democratic security concerts, a trend Washington should enthusiastically nurture."

There are several problems with Twining's proposal.

First, it is not clear that the trend he sees is actually a trend. He cites the "quad," the strategic partnership among the US, Australia, Japan, and India, as a leading example of this trend. Except that it appears that the quad barely survived the Abe government that spearheaded its creation. Similarly, while the Australia-Japan and India-Japan security agreements are unprecedented in Japanese foreign policy, it is still unclear what substance lies behind the agreements. The democracies may be talking to each other more, but it is too early to declare that Asian democracies have deepened their strategic cooperation in any substantial way to the point of promoting "regional peace and prosperity."

However, if we grant that Twining's assessment of the state of cooperation among Asian democracies is correct, he still makes what I think is an overly optimistic assessment of the gains from said cooperation. Twining concludes that strong, democratic states on the Asian littoral — the same democratic states who he believes are deepening cooperation amongst themselves — "could deter Chinese adventurism and help ensure its peaceful rise."

Does Twining really believe that, that China will somehow be so impressed by the strength of its neighbors that it will simply accept what is tantamount to encirclement, cease enhancing its military power, and trust the US and the other democracies on its periphery to keep the sea lines carrying vital resources to China open at all times? If China is, in Twining's words, "a prickly, insecure giant," why would it feel any less insecure in these circumstances? It does not take a considerable leap of imagination to wonder whether this view might be a bit fanciful. Why is Twining so sure that deepening security ties among democracies (and non- or semi-democracies, in the case of Vietnam and Singapore) arrayed around China's borders while trigger such a benign response from China? This isn't simply a matter of Chinese paranoia. Is there a country in the world that would respond benignly to the formation of ever closer security ties among surrounding countries that also stress the illegitimacy of the surrounded country's government?

In short, the policy proposed by Twining here and by US and Japanese officials at various points in time would amount to encirclement, whether intentionally or not. As Joseph Nye has said, "If we treat China as an enemy now, we’re guaranteeing an enemy for the future."

But it is unlikely that this scenario will come to pass, for another reason ignored by Twining. Even if the Asian democracies are talking more with each other, they are also talking more with China, because, much like the US, none of them can afford to let relations with China deteriorate. South Korea, a strong Asian democracy that barely figures in the flurry of strategic cooperation mentioned by Twining except in regard to NATO-South Korea ties, is often written off as destined for the Chinese sphere of influence if and when reunification occurs. Australia has worked to avoid giving the impression that new security talks with Japan are aimed at China. India certainly looks warily across the Himalayas and now out into the Indian Ocean at China, but that does not make India a reliable junior partner for the US in a league of Asian democracies.

As I've argued before, to understand the future of East Asia it is essential to look at the role of middle powers, the powers forced to maneuver between China and the US, working to minimize antagonism while preventing the two from reaching agreements prejudicial to their interests. The firm ties rooted in shared values envisioned by Twining make it more difficult to pursue the flexible diplomacy required by life as a middle power, and I do not expect we'll see substantial progress in security cooperation among the democracies qua democracies. Twining comes close to recognizing this: "They are less likely to fall under the sway of their giant neighbors when they have options for partnership with a benign, distant partner. America's staying power at a time of dramatic strategic change gives smaller Asian countries geopolitical options they would not otherwise have." But while small (and not-so-small) Asian countries are in no hurry to see the US leave Asia, they also do not want the kind of universal relationships envisioned by Twining. They want the US as an option: a hedge against Chinese expansionism, a market for their goods, and perhaps as a source for investment. But that does not mean that they support active containment of China or making democracy a top priority for the region. The desire of middle powers for an active US presence in the region is an asset for the US only insofar as the US doesn't overreach in its zeal to promote democracy and bend regional institutions to its ends.

Twining further calls for fostering a "pluralistic regional order" in East Asia but the reality is that East Asia is already pluralistic, checkered with a growing array of bilateral, mini-lateral, regional, and trans-Pacific organizations, in addition to the network of US bilateral alliances. These organizations are based not on shared values, as they feature ties between democracies and non-democracies, but shared interests, and one interest in particular: stability in East Asia. The US should be engaged as much as possible in these organizations, but it should also be willing to accept that there is not a seat for the US at every table, at least not if the US wants to dominate the discussion and, as Mrs. Clinton said Friday referring to past US governments, act "reflexively before considering available facts and evidence, or hearing the perspectives of others." While he recognizes the importance of "talking economics," it seems for the most part US engagement in the region would involve more talking — about democracy and security — than listening.

Meanwhile, given the existence of a pluralistic regional order, the US should not fear the creation of what Michael Green calls institutions based on "preserving Asian exceptionalism." Asian exceptionalism sounds like another way of saying, Asian countries working together to solve Asian problems without the US at the table. Is that such a terrible thing? If there are, as Twining says, so many burgeoning and established democracies in the region, why should the US fear organizations from which it is absent?

Finally, on the very question of democracy promotion, Twining includes it as a goal but does nothing to explain how to go about it except to say that democracy is on the march in the region and China is on the wrong side of history. (Sounds awfully Marxist, doesn't it?) How does Twining propose to make China (or Vietnam or Burma or North Korea) democratic? How does Twining propose for the US and other regional democracies to keep existing democracies from lapsing, as in the case of Thailand?

Meanwhile, there is also a bit of irony in Twining's enthusiasm for democracy promotion, in that the more developed the democracy, the greater the popular ambivalence regarding the country's ties with the US. For example, while Japan's leaders talk of the strength of the alliance — perhaps for want of anything else to say — the Japanese public is increasingly doubtful about the alliance after years of an approach to the alliance that dovetailed with Twining's vision. Skepticism regarding ties with the US in countries like Japan and Australia does not necessarily mean that the Japanese and Australian peoples are more trusting of China, it means they are moving in the direction of a middle-power foreign policy that looks at both regional powers with a certain degree of distrust, wary of Chinese intentions while concerned about US overzealousness that would entrap their countries in wars not of their choosing.

In sum, the emphasis on democracy is misguided, not just because there is little the US can do — and little US allies want to do — to promote democracy in the region, but because it assumes that the region can be neatly divided into democracies and non-democracies, which in turn risks alienating China and sending it down a more assertive and unilateralist path, the very future Twining says he wants to prevent.

"We are supposed to be the problem solvers"

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton spoke at the Asia Society in New York on Friday on the eve of her departure for a trip to East Asia that will include stops in Japan, Indonesia, South Korea, and China.

Her speech is worth a look, because I do think she succeeds at indicating how the Obama administration will differ from the Bush administration in its approach to Asia.

During the presidential campaign, I suggested that the difference between an Obama administration's and McCain administration's Asia policies would be the difference between problem-oriented and partner-oriented approaches.

At that time I wrote, "Mr. Obama...seems to share the outlook of Mr. Fukuda and Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, among others. Disinclined to divide the region into democracies and autocracies (or non-democracies), Mr. Obama would seek to work with any and all appropriate partners, not just formal allies, in addressing regional challenges — necessarily meaning more cooperation with China, because as the Bush administration has learned, few of the region's most intractable problems can be solved without China's involvement."

It bears recalling because the theme of "solving problems" ran throughout Mrs. Clinton's speech Friday.

The United States, she said, "is committed to a new era of diplomacy and development in which we will use smart power to work with historic allies and emerging nations to find regional and global solutions to common global problems."

This is a marked shift away from the "values diplomacy" used by the Bush administration to bind democratic US allies closer together, which in practice appeared to be a means of isolating China, banishing it to the rogues' gallery with Burma and North Korea. Mrs. Clinton did speak of shared values, but it was in the limited context of Southeast Asia, the values that bind the countries of ASEAN. She did not use the word democracy, and while she did speak of religious freedom for Tibetans and Chinese and political freedom for North Koreans, it is clear that Japan's leaders are not wrong to anticipate greater engagement with China by the Obama administration.

"As members of the Asia Society, you know very well," she said, "how important China is and how essential it is that we have a positive, cooperative relationship. It is vital to peace and prosperity, not only in the Asia-Pacific region, but worldwide. Our mutual economic engagement with China was evident during the economic growth of the past two decades. It is even clearer now in economic hard times and in the array – excuse me – in the array of global challenges we face, from nuclear security to climate change to pandemic disease and so much else."

In short, despite the lack of shared values — at least by the previous administration's assessment — the Obama administration sees in China an indispensable partner in solving the problems facing the region.

That does not mean that Japan will be ignored.

If anything, the Obama administration will challenge Japan. Mrs. Clinton signalled that the administration will shift the focus away from security; aside from mentioning a new accord regarding the relocation of US forces to Guam, she mentioned Japan's civilian contributions abroad, and said, "We anticipate an even stronger partnership with Japan that helps preserve the peace and stability of Asia and increasingly focuses on global challenges, from disaster relief to advancing education for girls in Afghanistan and Pakistan to alleviating poverty in Africa." In other words, it seems that the new administration will accept the political difficulties Japan has in sending its armed forces to contribute abroad, but it will ask for other, perhaps more meaningful contributions instead. The Japanese government may find that dealing with the Bush administration was easier, in that the previous administration set a fairly low bar for Japanese contributions, being more content that Japan was "showing the flag" and "putting boots on the ground" than in the gains from Japan's contributions. The Obama administration appears less interested in how Japan contributes than in the fact of Japanese involvement in solving regional and global problems.

While Mrs. Clinton will be meeting with the families of the abductees (an unfortunate legacy of the Bush administration), with this speech it does appear that the Obama administration is making a clear break with a Japan-centered Asia policy. Japan's value will not be valued intrinsically, as a bastion of democracy in East Asia, but for the role it plays in solving problems.

The LDP may have a problem with this, accustomed as the LDP's conservatives have become in recent years to using the alliance as a means to promote the long-standing revisionist agenda of remilitarization, constitution revision, and a hawkish foreign policy towards China and North Korea. They may find the idea of contributing abroad for the sake of solving global problems hard to swallow.

Is she or isn't she?

Despite reports that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will be going to Asia on her first foreign trip, none seem to have the State Department's confirmation that she will in fact be going to Japan, South Korea, and China in the coming weeks.

CNN cites "diplomats familiar with the planning."

The LA Times cites "a foreign diplomat knowledgeable about plans for the trip."

Sankei is even more vague, saying that "it is understood" that Secretary Clinton will be in Tokyo on Feb. 16th, where she will meet with Prime Minister Aso, Foreign Minister Nakasone, and Defense Minister Hamada. The agenda, Sankei says, will include talk of the economic crisis, Afghanistan and Iraq, the realignment of US forces, and, of course, North Korea.

There's a hole in your department, dear Hillary, dear Hillary...

Nevertheless, while I am still concerned about the new administration's pampering Japan, I suppose it is encouraging that the Obama administration recognizes that it has work to do in Asia.

Obama already passing Japan?

The US State Department has told the Yomiuri Shimbun that it intends to initiate a high-level "comprehensive strategic dialogue" with China that will address political, economic, and security issues and will include an exchange of visits by Vice President Joe Biden and Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao.

Naturally, Yomiuri's report is quick to note that many Obama administration officials worked in the former Clinton administration, conjuring up memories of "Japan passing." Yomiuri also includes the requisite quote from Michael Green, who warns that "it gives the impression of bipolar rule in Asia, causing a great disturbance among Japan, South Korea, India, and Australia, US allies."

The problem with this view is that it only tells one side of the story. Of course, governments in the region worry about a US-China condominium that might lead to their interests being slighted. But do they really worry more about the US and China talking than they worry about war between the US and China? This is the reality of life for the region's middle powers, Asian countries with close and important ties with both China and the US (in many cases security relationships with the US of one form or another): they want China and the US to be cordial, but not too cordial; the US should be involved in the region as a force for stability, but should not try to encircle China.

Japanese officials should welcome efforts by the US to open new channels of communication with China, just as the US should welcome Japanese efforts to do the same. This idea that Japan loses just by the US government talking with China is a relic of the cold war that needs to be retired.

Tokyo has no reason to be dissatisfied with the Obama administration, despite Komori Yoshihisa's fears about President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton "being in agreement" about putting China first. (His analysis reads more like American conservative talking points than genuine analysis that considers what's happened during the transition and the early weeks of the new administration.) The Obama administration — apparently after months of hearing reports about Tokyo's fears regarding the incoming administration's ideas regarding Japan — has done more than enough to reassure Japan's leaders that the new administration will not deviate from the Washington establishment's Japan consensus. Most recently, Susan Rice, the US ambassador to the UN, told her Japanese counterpart that the president and secretary of state are in agreement about the need to strengthen the US-Japan alliance, and indicated that the Obama administration will basically continue the Bush administration's Japan agenda: requesting help in Afghanistan and in regard to other international crises, while promising US support on North Korea and UN security council permanent membership. Even more than that, the State Department has announced that Secretary Clinton's first foreign trip will be to Japan, in mid-February.

All of this is on top of a host of appointments favorable to Japan. The national security adviser, the director of national intelligence, and the secretary of the treasury are all familiar with one aspect of the bilateral relationship or another. Most of the major Asia-related jobs have gone to Japan specialists. And now Secretary Clinton is taking every opportunity to reassure Japanese officials that she does not intend to "pass" Japan.

If anything, the Obama administration is doing too much to reassure Japan.

The US needs the aforementioned dialogue with China; there is too much to discuss to wait or to defer to the fears of select members of the Japanese establishment and their allies in Washington.

I hope on her visit to Japan Mrs. Clinton emphasizes the importance of direct talks among the US, China, and Japan. I hope she makes clear that smoother Sino-US relations are actually in Japan's interests, even if some Japanese think otherwise. I hope fears of angering a portion of the Japanese establishment do not lead the Obama administration to back away from reorienting US Asia policy from being overly focused on the US-Japan security relationship.

This administration needs to exorcise the ghost of Richard Nixon from the US-Japan alliance: it needs to make clear to Japan (and China) that the US-Japan and the US-China relationships are not zero sum.

Obama's Asia team takes shape

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The alliance is dead, long live the alliance

Barack Obama's inauguration is just about a month away. His transition team is gradually filling in cabinet-level positions. His Asia and Japan policy teams are as of yet unknown, however, leaving Japanese elites to continue to fret about Japan's place on the Obama administration's agenda.

They have good reason to worry.

The reasons to worry have nothing to do with the myth of the Democratic Party's hostility to Japan and predisposition to China. After all, Richard Nixon, the pioneer of Japan passing, was a Republican, and Bill Clinton inherited his trade agenda from George H.W. Bush. No, the reasons for concern are far greater than the Japanese establishment's irrational fear of Democrats.

The post-cold war US-Japan alliance, born in 1996, is dead. It is far from certain what will take its place.

The 1996 alliance — born out of the 1996 reaffirmation of the alliance signed by President Clinton and the late Hashimoto Ryutaro — sought to restore security to its position of prominence in the alliance and rebuild the Chinese wall that had separated security and economics in US-Japan relations until the 1980s. Japan's economic slump made it a less worrisome partner, and China's bullying of Taiwan appeared to provide a target for greater security cooperation, with North Korea's playing a supporting role.

The process of bolstering the alliance stalled after the conclusion of the new guidelines for security cooperation in 1997, but the Clinton administration bequeathed to the Bush administration a framework for deeper security cooperation with Japan. Specifically, it was bequeathed to the group of alliance hawks, led by Richard Armitage, who assumed important positions in the new administration in 2001. Mr. Armitage and his colleagues took the baton passed from their predecessors and developed a particular form of security cooperation following 9/11. As the US prepared for the global war on terror, the US would treat Japan as a first-rank ally, akin to the United Kingdom; learning the lesson of the Gulf War, the US would not issue marching orders to Tokyo but would appeal to Japan's conscience as a major world power to do the right thing by supporting US efforts in some form. The material value of Japan's contribution was inconsequential; what mattered was Japan's showing the flag, not how much oil it was pumping in the Indian Ocean. In exchange, Japan under Koizumi Junichiro became a trusted ally of the Bush administration, which after 2003 needed all the friends it could get. Of course, the US wouldn't be perpetually satisfied with refueling missions and unarmed humanitarian relief missions, but by encouraging Japan with high praise (the frequent refrain during the first half of this decade about the alliance being "the best ever") the US could gradually push Japan in the direction of a more active security role.

This new partnership was cemented not in the Middle East but in Northeast Asia, as the US and Japan moved in lockstep in the six-party talks after 2002, taking a hardline against North Korea on nuclear weapons, missiles, and Japan's abductees, a pact sealed by Ambassador J. Thomas Schieffer's March 2006 visit to Niigata — to the beach from which North Korea abducted Yokota Megumi — and President George W. Bush's meeting with Megumi's mother Sakie in April 2006. In the background loomed China, resulting in the inclusion of the peaceful resolution of the Taiwan Straits crisis as a common strategic objective for the first time in the February 2005 Security Consultative Committee (2+2) statement. It was also cemented via ever deeper cooperation on missile defense in Japan and broader cooperation between US Forces in Japan (USFJ) and the Japanese Self-Defense Forces (JSDF).

This partnership was not nearly as durable as it appeared. First, it was more a partnership of elites than a partnership of nations. Alliance hawks in the US forged a strong relationship with their resurgent Japanese counterparts to promote an alliance agenda that served both their interests. As William Overholt wrote in Asia, America, and The Transformation of Geopolitics (reviewed here):

As the 21st century began, the United States decided to bet its entire position in Asia on the alliance with Japan. In effect, it has bet not just on the Japanese nation but in particular on a newly assertive national-security elite that represents a rather narrow and unrepresentative slice of Japanese society. In all of American history, the United States has never before made such a bet anywhere in the world, with the arguable exception of the bet on Britain in World War II. The current bet is not on the Japan of 1945 or 1975 or 1989 (the year before the bubble burst) or 2000, but on a rearming Japan with an economy, a polity, a foreign policy, and a military evolving faster and more unpredictably than those of any other advanced country, under a new and increasingly right-wing leadership that wants to rebuild national morale by reengineering a failed vision of the first half of the 20th century rather than through an inspiring new vision of the future. Rarely in world history has such a power made such a consequential bet.

Abe Shinzo was the symbol of the US bet on the Japan's neo-conservatives. As Sunohara Tsuyoshi, a Nikkei reporter, documented in the introduction to his book Japan Hand, Michael Green, then National Security director for Japan, Korea, Australia, and New Zealand, saw potential in Mr. Abe, who was deputy chief cabinet secretary at the start of the Koizumi government. Mr. Green effectively made Mr. Abe a project, working to give the future prime minister a direct pipeline to the top of the US government. While serving as LDP secretary-general, he visited Washington in April 2004, where he delivered a speech at the American Enterprise Institute hailing the alliance's new golden era and making the case for constitution revision. On that visit he also met with Mr. Green, Mr. Armitage, Donald Rumsfeld, then-National Security Adviser Condoleeza Rice, and Republican congressional leaders, at which time he was effectively branded a future prime minister of Japan. Mr. Abe had to still be selected by the LDP, of course, but the backing of the US administration surely helped propel Mr. Abe to the premiership despite having no ministerial experience aside from serving as chief cabinet secretary. Mr. Abe, in short, was a direct product of this alliance between US conservatives and Japan's "newly assertive national-security elite."

The death of the 1996 alliance began with the decline and fall of Mr. Abe. The conservative partnership did not expect the Japanese people to deal so harsh a blow to Mr. Abe in the 2007 upper house elections. They failed to appreciate that the Japanese public would have little interest in a debate on constitution revision while Japan's regions stagnated, while the pensions system collapsed, while the national debt prompted questions about how the government would meet its liabilities. (See this post for a discussion of the binational conservative establishment's shock at Mr. Abe's defeat.) They also didn't expect that the DPJ would have considerable success in undermining the illusion of the robust security alliance by forcing a debate on the MSDF refueling mission. The DPJ ultimately lost the battle to block the mission's extension, but in their opposition they exposed how farcical the whole thing was: the lack of accountability in how the mission was conducted and the mismatch between the rhetoric and the reality of the mission (i.e. the contrast between rhetoric that focused on Japan's responsibilities to the international community and the reality of heavy-handed US pressure on Japan to extend the mission, spearheaded by Ambassador Schieffer). By forcing a debate on the refueling mission, the DPJ punctured the image of a golden era. Far from being a sign of how far the alliance had come, the refueling mission became a sordid affair, marked by the whiff of corruption on the part of Japan's defense trading companies and the newly formed ministry of defense and the cowardice of the Japanese establishment, which despite bold rhetoric about contributing to the war on terror was actually not prepared to make real sacrifices to help the coalition in Afghanistan.

But the 1996 alliance was doomed for reasons beyond Japanese domestic politics. The post-1996 security partnership was designed for a unipolar world. Naturally it flourished after 9/11, in the heady days of "shock and awe," as the Bush administration swaggered and flexed the US military's muscles. Accordingly, in some sense the 1996 alliance was a casualty of the Iraq war.

First, US difficulties in Iraq altered the US calculus globally. Would the Bush administration have made such a drastic about-face on North Korea had Iraq gone successfully? If the US could still credibly threaten regime change in North Korea, would Christopher Hill have been given the freedom to negotiate a new agreement? The shift on North Korea, occurring in the immediate aftermath of both North Korea's presumed nuclear test and the aforementioned US-Japan "pact" on North Korea by which the US signaled that the abductees were a priority for the US, has had profound consequences on the alliance, not least of all on the neo-conservatives who now wonder whether they can rely on the US security guarantee.

The shift on North Korea coincided with a pronounced softening in Sino-US relations. The US increasingly needed China as a "responsible stakeholder." With the US bogged down in the Middle East, it needed calm in East Asia — and found that China was the key to maintaining the status quo in North Korea and the Taiwan Straits, the two greatest flashpoints. Accordingly, US North Korea policy increasingly amounted to beseeching China to intervene with Pyongyang to keep North Korea committed to the six-party talks and leaning on Taiwan not to provoke China. At the same time, the US became increasingly indebted to China, thanks in part to the Bush adminstration's decision to finance the Iraq and Afghanistan wars via deficit spending, creating what Niall Ferguson has called "Chimerica." As Admiral William Fallon, formerly head of US Pacific Command, noted in an interview with the Boston Globe last month, China's position as the number one creditor for the US alters the Sino-US agenda. As Fallon said, "The size of the country and its influence is staggering. So we've got to figure this out. There were people who warned me that you'd better get ready for the shoot 'em up here because sooner or later we're going be at war with China. I don't think that's where we want to go."

With both the US and Japan economically interdependent with China, the 1996 alliance's vision of a security partnership that would essentially be preparing for the big war with China has become increasingly unrealistic. Indeed, the global economic crisis may completely transform the strategic landscape by making it clear just how much the three corners of the East Asian triangle need each other. How can the 1996 alliance possibly survive a new system in which China plays "the role of a vigilant creditor" vis-a-vis the US? Negotiations on trade imbalances and the relative values of the dollar, renminbi, and yen will be thorny, but next to these issues the security agenda pales in significance.

And so the 1996 security-centered alliance is dead.

The shell of the alliance will continue to exist, barring the outbreak of war in Northeast Asia. (I don't think the alliance would survive a shooting war.) But will the Obama administration and the Japanese government — whoever is at its head — be able to find a way to build a new alliance?

There are a variety of opinions on how the allies should proceed. Japan's conservatives may be the most confused about the future of the alliance. They had invested their energy in using the alliance as a vehicle for promoting their desire for an independent Japan — greater security cooperation with the US would lead to constitution revision, collective self-defense, and normalization — and a de facto cold war with China, but with the US shift in its relations with North Korea and China the US appears to be as less reliable ally for the Japanese right. Under the Obama administration, conservatives will likely shift to a position on the alliance akin to General Tamogami Toshio's, arguing for a more independent Japanese defense posture and more vocal disagreement with the US, particularly on issues like North Korea. Indeed, General Tamogami may literally become the posterchild of this line of argument. As he argued in his APA contest essay, while "good relations between Japan and the United States are essential to the stability of the Asian region," Japan needs its own preventive strike capabilities and greater diplomatic clout. It is difficult to imagine what the alliance would look like were this scenario to come to pass, but I can imagine that one consequence of Japan's developing independent deterrent capabilities (conventional or nuclear) would be to push the US closer to China, in effect balancing between the two.

If the Obama administration decides to press Japan on history questions — which Sakurai Yoshiko believes is in the offing — it will give the Japanese right a convenient excuse for pressing for a more independent defense posture, but the seeds of that shift were planted in the Bush administration's about-face on North Korea.

It may take years before we learn the extent to which the Bush administration's shift on North Korea affected Japan's hawks, who were "shocked" by the US decision earlier this year to remove North Korea from the list of state sponsors of terrorism. But judging by their initial reactions, the impact has been profound. The impact has also been felt at the popular level. The Cabinet office's annual foreign policy attitudes survey, released earlier this month, recorded a new low in respondents who view US-Japan relations favorably: 68.9% said they see the relationship favorably, compared with 76.3% who answered favorably last year, and 28.1% who see the relationship unfavorably (an increase of eight points from 2007). Mainichi claims that the US government attributes the drop to the US shift on North Korea, hardly surprising considering that the greatest source of concern for the Japanese public in Japan's relations with Noth Korea remains the abductions issue (among respondents, 88.1% see this as an object of concern, compared with only 69.9% who see the nuclear issue as a cause for a concern, a five-point drop from 2007). A recent Yomiuri poll on the US-Japan relationship recorded a similar slip in Japanese public trust in the US, with North Korea explicitly cited as a reason for lower trust in the US.

In the short term, however, it is difficult to say what impact any of this discontent will have on the relationship. Aso Taro is handicapped by the crumbling economic situation and is in no position to devote considerable effort to reimagining the alliance. The LDP is working to build ties with the new administration, but it seems to be driven more by the need to build links where none exist than any particular policy agenda. The DPJ, anticipating that it will have the opportunity to work with Mr. Obama, is working on deepening its links with the incoming administration; Okada Katsuya, possibly Ozawa Ichiro's successor as DPJ president, visited Washington earlier this month for meetings with people in Democratic foreign policy circles.

The Obama administration and a DPJ administration might cooperate well in building a new alliance less focused on purely security matters. The challenge is calibrating the right level of security cooperation so the allies can focus on other, more pressing matters. Security cooperation must be downgraded to but one conversation among several in the alliance. Getting Okinawa and Guam right will help — I'm encouraged by reports that Mr. Obama's Japan team is open to renegotiating the 2006 realignment agreement. Seeing as how the 2006 agreement is already delayed, the US and Japan might as well get it right. This point will undoubtedly be debated at length in the debate over the 2009 budget, which will include a request from the ministry of defense for 100 billion yen for realignment. I expect that DPJ will strenuously resist this request, perhaps using the economic crisis as an additional pretext for opposing it.

But there is still the need to develop a bilateral agenda that encompasses more than security. With the 1996 alliance dead, what will take its place?

My problem with the new AEI report from Michael Auslin and Christopher Griffin is that the answer they provide to this question is basically to deny that the 1996 framework is dead. While acknowledging that the alliance is in a new era, their answer is more of the same: ever greater security cooperation whether in East Asia or globally. Rather than seeing the golden age of the 1996 alliance as having passed, never to return as the result of structural changes, they maintain that the problem is the Japanese domestic political situation, which has halted the process of reforming Japanese national security policy and the national security establishment. The task is to press forward with more and closer security cooperation, creating what they call a "normal alliance." This normal alliance would be a vehicle for the promotion of liberty in East Asia, in cooperation with other democratic alliances in the region (reminiscent of Mr. Abe's arc). As they write, "...The U.S.-Japanese alliance should reorient itself to become an active promoter of political, social, and economic liberalization. Tokyo and Washington should seek to enhance and promote the goal of making democracy, free markets, and transparent security policies the norm in Asia."

This statement is wholly at odds with Asia as it exists today. I'm not certain that the alliance is capable of promoting democracy in Thailand, let alone in Burma, North Korea, or China. And China, as the region's leading trader is a more critical partner as far as free markets for goods and investment are concerned. Of course, Auslin and Griffin are largely concerned with China. In their words, "China is also the only legitimate military threat to long-term stability in the Asia Pacific." They cite China's plans to build a blue-water navy, a distant prospect at best and something that does not necessarily threaten the US or Japan. They acknowledge economic interdependence, but are much more interested in preparing for the worst-case scenarios with China than with getting the trilateral relationship with China right so to stave off the worst-case scenarios. They are trying to resurrect the partnership between conservatives in Tokyo and Washington that produced the "golden age," only it is unclear who is still willing to sign on to this agenda in either Washington or Tokyo. Having been burned in North Korea, I suspect Japan's neo-conservatives will be less enthusiastic about ever deeper security cooperation that has proven to be one-sided in favor of the US. Moreover, I'm not clear whether there is public support in Japan for the kind of alliance they envision. The Japanese people may view East Asia as a frightening neighborhood — see the aforementioned Cabinet Office poll — but that doesn't mean that they're ready to support remilitarization and more vigorous security relationships regionally and globally.

In Washington, the pendulum appears to have shifted away from the China hawks, particularly with Secretary of Defense Robert Gates slated to stay on in the Obama administration. The emphasis appears to be increasingly on stability and order in Asia, instead of the "freedom" agenda desired by Auslin and Griffin. Of course, the greater the emphasis on stability, the greater the need to cooperate with China.

It is still unclear to me what the US-Japan alliance will become, but I'm convinced that what it won't become is the normal alliance outlined by Auslin and Griffin. It may ultimately be the case that the alliance is destined to be limited to ensuring the defense of Japan but little more, with Japan providing token contributions internationally and playing a slightly greater role in providing for its own defense, but little more. As long as Japan is hamstrung by structural problems — its demographics, its shambolic economy, its public finances — it will be unable to be the vigorous partner that, as Sheila Smith argues, Washington needs in the midst of the crisis. But if Japan cannot find a way to overcome its problems, it will not be the partner Washington (and Beijing) need in Asia as they try to build a new, stable regional order.

The US finally goes through with delisting North Korea

The thinkable is finally the actual.

After more than a year since it became plausible for the US to remove North Korea from its list of state sponsors of terrorism as a reward for cooperation in negotiations over the North Korean nuclear program, the US State Department has announced that it will remove North Korea from the list. With the global financial system melting down, this move appears to have been timed in the hope that it would receive less scrutiny than it would otherwise. The US move may also been in response to signs that North Korea may be preparing another nuclear test.

Whatever the Bush administration's reasoning, the usual suspects in Japan once again reacted with shock at the US decision. Finance Minister Nakagawa Shoichi, in Washington for talks related to the financial crisis, reverted to his role as conservative hatchet man to criticize the US government for failing to consult with Japan, for abandoning the abductees, and for being played for a fool by North Korea. The media is reporting this as a demonstration of Japan's being "left out," observing that Prime Minister Aso received notice from Washington a mere half hour before it announced its decision. (Asahi described this as "a nightmare for the Japanese government.") Mainichi suggested that the decision illustrates the need for a rethink by the Japanese government. The abductee families characterized the decision as "an act of betrayal."

My sentiments are little different than they were in June 2008, when the Bush administration indicated that it was prepared to move forward with the delisting (before North Korea failed to follow through). Whatever the wisdom of the decision — there appear to be considerable holes regarding verification in the agreement, among other problems, as outlined by Victor Cha, former director for Asian affairs at the National Security Council — the rift between the US and Japan is the product of fundamental misunderstandings going back several years that have gone unaddressed by successive Japanese prime ministers and the Bush administration.

First, the Japanese government has mistakenly placed too much emphasis on the abductees and too little emphasis on the nuclear question. In emphasizing the abductee problem, Japan also came to really excessively on US pressure on North Korea. The alarm expressed above is symptomatic of this dependence: without US pressure, Tokyo has little hope of using sticks to force North Korea to be more cooperation on the abductions issue. Japan can keep extending its sanctions, but absent simultaneous US sanctions, they have little chance of working (not that joint US-Japan sanctions have had much effect).

Second, in connection to Japan's emphasis on the abductions issue, the Japanese government has also placed far too much emphasis on the US state sponsors of terrorism list, a designation which Secretary Rice called "a formality," thus making this step "completely meaningless" in practical terms. The Japanese government attached great importance to the designation because it took it literally. North Korea is a state sponsor of terrorism thanks to its abductions of foreign nationals. Until it makes amends for the abductions, it is still a state sponsor of terrorism and therefore still belongs on the list. For the US, the designation was just another bargaining chip in the pursuit of a denuclearized North Korea. It appears that the US did little to disabuse Japan of its impression.

Discussion of the strengths and weaknesses (mostly the weaknesses) of the agreement will undoubtedly rage in the coming days. But the significance of this agreement is simple: the Bush administration has made it resolutely clear that US North Korea policy is not "action for action" as suggested by President Bush in June. Rather, the US has decided that it will buy North Korea's participation in the six-party talks and non-escalation of its nuclear activities through gradual concessions. Bowing to the reality of the situation in which the US has few alternatives to committing to negotiations, bilateral and multilateral, the Bush administration has made clear that bribery is now the essence of US North Korea policy. That's not necessarily a bad thing. Given that North Korea's price isn't particularly onerous and given that the alternatives (a war on the Korean Peninsula, unchecked nuclear proliferation, collapse of the DPRK before the US and North Korea's neighbors are prepared to respond) are all worse than bribery, this may be the best possible approach.

Naturally Japan won't see it that way. Instead there will be talk of betrayal, abandonment, and potentially the need for greater Japanese independence from the US (recall Mr. Aso's role in the debate over a debate on nuclear weapons that raged in the early days of the Abe cabinet). But I don't see how this turn of events helps Mr. Aso. Having been blindsided by the US decision, Mr. Aso looks little different from his predecessors, despite his foreign policy experience and his purported Washington connections. Despite his commitment to resolving the abductions issue, the US finally decided to proceed with delisting under his watch. I still maintain that foreign policy will have little impact on the next general election, but at the very least it's possible that voters will wonder whether there is something to Ozawa Ichiro's critique of the LDP's foreign policy as subordinating Japan to the US without getting anything in return. The US has furnished Mr. Ozawa with a resonant example with which to make his case.

Meanwhile Japan has little reason to hope that the US will shift again on North Korea in the future. Should Barack Obama win the presidency next month, it is conceivable that he will embrace the "bribery" approach. Indeed, his approach — at least in the statement his campaign released in response to the delisting — is a succinct summary of the Bush administration's approach: bilateral and multilateral diplomacy, a commitment to complete, verifiable denuclearization, and addressing the abductees issue at some point in the future. If John McCain wins, he will likely tack back to the Cheney line, reversing concessions to North Korea and restoring the US-Japan partnership on North Korea that prevailed 2002-2007. Senator McCain's response emphasized the failure to consult with "our closest partners in Northeast Asia," which presumably means Japan followed by South Korea. (The candidates' statements can be found here.)

Little wonder that Japanese conservatives are cheering for Senator McCain. (And little wonder that Komori Yasuhisa is repeating Republican talking points verbatim on Senator Obama at his blog.) (For more on the likely differences between an Obama and a McCain administration on Asia, see my article in the current Japan Inc.)

A problem-oriented or a partner-oriented US Asia policy

The Asahi Shimbun has published an op-ed by Richard Danzig and Joseph Nye, who as foreign policy advisers to Senator Barack Obama outline how an Obama administration will approach relations with Japan.

Superificially, there are not too many points of divergence with the Yomiuri op-ed penned by Senators John McCain and Joseph Lieberman last month.

Both Danzig-Nye and McCain-Lieberman argue that the alliance rests on both shared interests and shared values. Both see the alliance as central to US policy in Asia. (Danzig-Nye end their piece by saying, "Close cooperation with Japan is the starting point for US policy and interests in Asia.") Both acknowledge the need for a broader bilateral agenda, although the Danzig-Nye piece is more explicit about what that agenda might contain.

Beyond the repetition of the standard mantras about the alliance, however, there are significant differences in the role they envision for the alliance in the region. The difference can be summarized thusly. Mr. Obama's Asia policy would be problem oriented: he sees problems in the region that must be solved, and is not especially discriminatory as to how they're solved. Mr. McCain's Asia policy would be values oriented, or, more precisely, partner oriented: who the US works with matters more than what it works on. Accordingly, Mr. Obama recognizes the value of the US-Japan alliance and other standing alliances in the region, but it seems that he would proceed from problem to partner; Mr. McCain would start by consulting closely with partners, and then, in cooperation with democratic allies in the region, would proceed to address regional problems and work with other countries in the region (i.e. China).

The difference in these perspectives can be seen in how the candidates responded to the latest development in the six-party talks. Mr. Obama hailed the "progress" but suggested that the degree to which sanctions are lifted should depend on the degree to which North Korea cooperates (i.e., his concerns are problem oriented); Mr. McCain cited the fears of Japan and South Korea to question whether the time is right to lift sanctions (i.e., prioritizing relations with US allies over the problem-solving process).

One can also see this difference in the respective op-eds.

First, the "Obama" op-ed makes no mention of China as a issue area for the alliance. The McCain-Lieberman op-ed, however, argues that a stronger alliance is critical to working with a stronger China, noting, "It is precisely by strengthening our alliance and deepening our cooperation that Japan and the United States can lay the necessary groundwork for more durable, stable, and successful relations with China." Note that in regard to China, a McCain administration would work with Japan first, and then proceed to build a new framework for relations with China.

Second, a McCain administration would revive the now-dormant effort to enhance cooperation among "the great Pacific democracies," citing Japan, Australia, and India specifically (interesting how India, a country that is nowhere near the Pacific, is mentioned but South Korea, a burgeoning democracy actually on Asia's Pacific littoral, is presumably included among "others"). A bulk of the McCain-Lieberman op-ed addresses the importance of democracy (and its promotion) in East Asia, meaning that "shared values" would inform a McCain administration's Asia policy. For Mr. Obama, it seems, shared values serve as a basis for the US-Japan relationship but not necessarily as the center of the bilateral agenda.

Indeed, echoing Prime Minister Fukuda's recent argument about the alliance's role in the region, Mr. Obama sees the value of the alliance in terms of whether it promotes stability in the region, and seeks to embed the alliance in a broader regional organization that will help restore regional confidence in the US.

As Messrs. Danzig and Nye write, "It is essential that both countries cooperate closely to develop a new regional framework that will protect our essential interests and values. Mr. Obama, in a debate last autumn regarding the construction of an international framework for Asia, said, 'America ought to be regarded as a partner with a high degree of credibility.' Without reducing the US-Japan alliance's central role as the 'foundation for regional stability,' it is possible to create new frameworks and dialogues."

(Also absent from the Danzig-Nye piece is any of the protectionist rhetoric that Mr. Obama recently directed toward South Korea and Japan, an indication that it is awfully difficult to be both protectionist and a regional leader, a lesson that Japan ought to understand well.)

In short, there are differences in how an Obama administration and a McCain administration would approach Japan and Asia.

A McCain administration would have a number of points of continuity from the Bush administration in its Japan policy. While abjuring from explicit containment of China, it would emphasize shared values and seek to deepen ties among the region's democracies. It seems, however, that Mr. McCain has at least learned that the alliance is weakened if the US leads and Japan follows: "If we are to ask more of each other, we must also pay greater attention to each other's concerns and goals." He cites greater cooperation on climate change as one way in which his government would listen more to Japan.

Mr. Obama, meanwhile, seems to share the outlook of Mr. Fukuda and Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, among others. Disinclined to divide the region into democracies and autocracies (or non-democracies), Mr. Obama would seek to work with any and all appropriate partners, not just formal allies, in addressing regional challenges — necessarily meaning more cooperation with China, because as the Bush administration has learned, few of the region's most intractable problems can be solved without China's involvement.

In practice, the difference between a problem-oriented and a partner-oriented Asia policy may not be all that great, provided that Mr. McCain does not go overboard in pursuing an Asian alliance of democracies and provided that Mr. Obama doesn't take up Japan passing like the last Democratic president and remembers that formal allies are important tools too.

The challenge for Japan, meanwhile, is the same regardless of which candidate wins in November. It needs to articulate its goals and interests in Asia and learn to say no to the US when it disagrees with US policy.

Recommended Book: Asia, America, and The Transformation of Geopolitics, William Overholt

With the prime ministers of Japan and Australia, the US secretary of defense (and other defense ministers in the region), and the Republican presidential candidate issuing statements on the future of Asia over the past month, it has been a fascinating time to ponder the shape of the region over the coming years, especially as the US transitions into the post-Bush era.

William Overholt, director of the RAND Corporation's Center for Asia Pacific Policy, has produced an indispensable contribution to that discussion in Asia, America, and The Transformation of Geopolitics.

In this book, Mr. Overholt examines the transition from the post-cold war to the post-post-cold war period in Asia. He has a clear purpose in doing so: Mr. Overholt thinks that the US did an extraordinary job winning the cold war in Asia by contributing to the development of Japan, South Korea, and countries in Southeast Asia (putting development before democracy), and using its alliance with Japan to stifle Sino-Japanese antagonism (defending Japan from China, while restraining Japan to ease Chinese fears). He fears that the US insufficiently appreciates the scale of its achievement in Asia — the creation of a peaceful, stable, and prosperous Asia — and risks blundering down the road that leads to war and ruin for the region because of misguided fears of China. The result is a thoroughly researched polemic, one that may not sit well with American policymakers (or Japanese policymakers, for that matter).

I am deeply sympathetic with Mr. Overholt's purpose in this book. Like him, I think the task for US Asia policy is to continue to guarantee stability in the region, and must abjure from policies that undermine stability (i.e., values-based diplomacy, a league of democracies comprised of members conveniently located on all sides of China, etc.). Accordingly, the US-Japan alliance's purpose must reflect the overall US mission in Asia — the alliance must also abjure from destabilizing actions.

Mr. Overholt fears that the Bush administration's Japan policy — and Asia policy more broadly — has deviated from the goal of ensuring stability and prosperity throughout Asia. He is concerned that the US-Japan alliance has become an alliance with the Japanese right, and increasingly serves their goals, many of which are prejudicial to stability in the region. He does not make the mistake that some do in equating the ideas of Japanese conservatives with those of the Japanese public at large. He argues instead that the Japanese conservatives have gained prominence because they're operating in a vacuum: "The Japanese public generally does not have strong views or even strong awareness of foreign-policy and national-security issues. In this situation, Prime Minister Koizumi's appointment of hawkish nationalists to key positions, U.S. pressures for a stronger military and a more explicitly anti-China military posture, and China's nationalist excesses have permitted the nationalists to gain a disproportionate influence over Japan's national-security policies" (81). He is fearful that the alliance between US and Japanese conservatives that has deepened since 2001 risks explicitly directing the alliance against China, and consequently setting the region down a more confrontational path.

He is also concerned about Japan's continuing regional and international diplomatic, economic, and intellectual isolation, which the conservatives have done little to reverse in their pursuit of a "beautiful country."

The final two paragraphs of his section on Japan bear quoting:

If they wished to, Japan's leaders could inspire their people and the world with a vision of social maturity; of increasingly wise employment of women and older people and of competition and globalization to achieve grwoth in an economy with a graying and declining population; of peace through integration with and understanding of their neighbors; and of sustainable environmental practices in which Japan is poised to lead the world. Elements of all these are in place. But so far, instead of inspiring their people with a grand vision of the future, the new era's leaders have preferred to prettify a difficult past.

As the 21st century began, the United States decided to bet its entire position in Asia on the alliance with Japan. In effect, it has bet not just on the Japanese nation but in particular on a newly assertive national-security elite that represents a rather narrow and unrepresentative slice of Japanese society. In all of American history, the United States has never before made such a bet anywhere in the world, with the arguable exception of the bet on Britain in World War II. The current bet is not on the Japan of 1945 or 1975 or 1989 (the year before the bubble burst) or 2000, but on a rearming Japan with an economy, a polity, a foreign policy, and a military evolving faster and more unpredictably than those of any other advanced country, under a new and increasingly right-wing leadership that wants to rebuild national morale by reengineering a failed vision of the first half of the 20th century rather than through an inspiring new vision of the future. Rarely in world history has such a power made such a consequential bet.

(I made a similar argument in this post, although probably less effectively than Mr. Overholt does here.)

The picture is of a Japanese leadership that has squandered opportunities, and in doing so not only put the region at risk but failed to provide a secure future for the Japanese people.

Turning to China, Mr. Overholt is optimistic, seeing a regime that is cautiously exploring political reforms to follow its economic reforms. He views China as better placed to serve as a regional leader, precisely because of its openness, economic and otherwise. He does not reject the possibility that China's foreign policy could move in a belligerent direction, but he is confident that barring major disruptions China will moderate politically and become a responsible leader in the region. While not excusing China's overblown responses to Japanese revisionism (overblown in light of China's own historical revisionism), Mr. Overholt suggests that the "militarization" of the US-Japan alliance may be more destabilizing than the rise of China. In short, the US needs to achieve a better balance in its relationships with Japan and China.

In subsequent chapters he looks at conditions on the Korean peninsula and the Taiwan strait, in Southeast Asia, India, Russia, and Washington, D.C. (i.e., US foreign policy). The thrust is the same throughout: for a hopeful Asian future in which war becomes unthinkable, the US needs to focus on how it was able to stabilize Asia during the cold war, and adjust its Asia policies accordingly. It needs to demilitarize its foreign policy, embedding its defense policy in a broader context instead of letting defense policy determine the whole of foreign policy. Doing so will enable the US to marshal its influence in the region and solidify its position as "resident power" for decades to come.

Asia's future is in the hands of its middle powers

Hugh White, a professor at the Australian National University (ANU) in Canberra, has been waging a determined fight against Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's Asian regional vision in a series of articles and blog posts.

The crux of his critique can be found in the title of a speech he gave in Tokyo earlier this month: "War in Asia remains thinkable." He points to the existence of two, overlapping contemporary Asian realities. One is the Asia in which cooperation and integration are proceeding apace as the region's economies continue to develop. The other is the Asia of arms race, nationalist feuds, border disputes, security dilemmas, and possibly war. Professor White then focused on what the region's powers can do to ensure that the latter reality is Asia's future, positing that the options for a new regional order are (1) EU-style Asian integration, (2) enduring American primacy, (3) a balance of power, or (4) a concert of powers to run the region, with the US, China, and Japan at the center. He advocates the last, suggesting that the first is too optimistic, the second possibly unsustainable (especially because — and this is a key point — "The fear is that for many Americans primacy has become, not (as it was) a means to the end of peace and stability, but an end in itself. That raises the real risk that Americans will find themselves undermining stability in Asia in order to preserve their primacy"), and the third too dangerous.

But a concert will be difficult to achieve, because the US, China, and Japan would have to concede much to make it workable. The US would have to accept China as an equal, China would have to concede important roles to the US and Japan, and Japan would have to drop its antagonism towards China.

I would argue that Japan has the most to gain from such an arrangement: it would take a seat at Asia's head table, would still have the US engaged in the region, and it would have the option of cooperating with China to restrict the US when the latter is out of line. In fact, I think Professor White vastly overstates Japan's hostility to China. In a column in The Australian last week, he suggested that Prime Minister Rudd "flubbed" his Japan trip because he failed "to tell Japan that Australia wants a vibrant, strategic relationship with a strong and active Japan, but we also want the same kind of relationship with China." I think his vision of Japan's China policy is a bit dated (i.e., it's a better description of the revisionist conservative approach to China than the Fukuda approach to China). Japan's conservatives may ultimately win the fight over China policy, but for now Japan's approach to China is no less contested than Australia's (or India's or America's). Not all Japanese are as afraid of distance from the US as Professor White seems to think (in this post for example) — and thanks to the US shift on North Korea, even conservatives in the LDP who might have been reluctant to consider a looser alliance may now be willing to think otherwise.

Meanwhile, I think he's too quick to dismiss a balance of power for Asia. We can already see how the Asian international system will develop in the behavior of ASEAN, which has maneuvered among China, Japan, and the US and made itself the hub for a variety of regional mechanisms. ASEAN and the region's other middle powers (including the bigger middles, Australia, Japan, and India) will ultimately be responsible for keeping the peace in Asia, hedging against China by maintaining active security ties with the US to ensure that the US remains present in the region, hedging against a US attempt to stifle China by conceding a greater regional leadership role to China in the economic realm (and exploring new security ties with the PLA). In the meantime, regional integration would continue. Professor White says little about Asia's middle powers in his Tokyo address, but I think that it will be the middles who determine Asia's future because it is they who are stuck between the US, the longtime security guarantor, and China, their most significant economic partner. It is they who have the greatest need for stability and a sustainable balance between the US and China, moderating the extremes of each country's behavior.

Japan, despite the size of its economy, fits the profile of an Asian middle power (in part because it is not open enough, and thus lacks the influence that comes with economic openness); despite the vitriol of the conservatives, Japan is not in a position to choose between the US and China.

There is still hope for peace in Asia, but it will depend on the middle powers to restrain the great powers and keep them from opting for policies that will drag the whole region into a conflagration.

Gates in Asia

Robert Gates, the US secretary of defense, is in Asia for the Shangri-La Dialogue, an annual meeting of defense ministers in Singapore. Mr. Gates has also stopped in Guam, and will visit Thailand and South Korea before returning to the US.

Before addressing the substance of the secretary's swing through the region, it is worth pointing that there is something unfortunate about Gates's tenure at the Pentagon. Like Fukuda Yasuo, Mr. Gates may be the right man for his job, but at the wrong time, coming into power too late to implement the changes that he feels must be made in US defense policy. Mr. Gates has given considerable thoughts on the way forward for US defense policy more broadly and US Asia policy specifically — but he may ultimately have too little time at the Pentagon to make a lasting impact on policy.

At Shangri-La, Mr. Gates showed that he has given serious thought to the changing nature of US Asia policy, and acknowledges that US power in Asia may be best applied in concert, not just in the postwar bilateral alliances, but in multilateral vehicles that may even include China. He clearly rejects a simplistic "stop China" approach to US Asia policy.

In his speech in Singapore he spoke in detail about the changing nature of the US role in Asia. He called for a continuing commitment to an open Asia, with transparent security relations that reduce the potential for misperceptions and misunderstandings (remarks undoubtedly aimed at China) and emphasized that the US is a "resident power" in Asia and will thus remain committed to an active role in Asia. The note Mr. Gates sounded is not of an America in retreat from Asia but of an America playing a quieter but no less effective role in the region as it allows its Asian partners to take the lead in shaping the regional security environment. (Perhaps this is a Nixon Doctrine redux.)

Accordingly, the US will work to strengthen and utilize all available foreign policy tools, not just its military power: "Asia in recent years marks a shift that reflects new thinking in overall US defense strategy. We are building partner-nation capacity so friends can better defend themselves. While preserving all of our conventional military deterrence abilities as traditionally understood, we have become more attentive to both 'hard' and 'soft' elements of national power, where military, diplomatic, economic, cultural, and humanitarian elements fold into one another to ensure better long-term security based on our own capabilities and those of our partners."

Mr. Gates clearly appreciates that US power must be used in connection with the broader aim of preserving stability (and thus promoting further economic growth) in Asia. While the US and Japan repeated their call for greater transparency from China, Mr. Gates's message was on the whole positive and constructive.

To his credit, Ishiba Shigeru, Japan's defense minister, emphasized the need for Japan to contribute to stability in the region in his remarks at Shangri-La. Mr. Ishiba acknowledged that Japan's qualified acceptance of its wartime wrongdoings has complicated relations with its Asian neighbors, complications that must be addressed if Japan is to use the JSDF to contribute to peace and stability in the region.

The challenge of making the case for a responsible Japan will become more urgent as 2014 approaches, as US Marines leave Okinawa for Guam and necessarily yield greater responsibility for the defense of Japan to the JSDF.

It is no clearer, however, whether Guam will be ready by 2014.

Secretary Gates acknowledged the importance of the realignment in his Shangri-La address — "Our Asian friends, whether or not they are formally allied to us, welcome our growing presence on Guam. As the island’s new facilities take shape in coming years, they will be increasingly multilateral in orientation, with training opportunities and possible pre-positioning of assets" — and while touring Guam on his way to Singapore.

In Guam, the secretary met with local officials, including Felix Camacho, the governor, to discuss the daunting infrastructure project facing the US and Japanese governments, as well as the government of Guam, in preparing Guam to receive a massive influx of US military personnel (the bulk of which will be Marine elements relocated from Okinawa). The question remains whether the job can be done by 2014.

In a meeting with Ishiba Shigeru, his Japanese counterpart, in Singapore, Mr. Gates and Mr. Ishiba agreed that the realignment must proceed as scheduled. But there are a number of potential bottlenecks that could delay or derail the whole process: the environmental impact assessment in Okinawa related to the construction of the Futenma replacement facility (FRF); the environmental impact assessment in Guam, not due to be completed until 2010; the budget processes in both the US and Japan (neither government has appropriated funds for Guam construction yet); and Guam's civilian infrastructure, which left as is could hinder the effectiveness of relocated US forces. These obstacles are by no means fatal, but they will not be overcome without sustained attention from Washington.

That is the challenge for Asia policy as a whole. While Mr. Gates is right to note that the US is a resident Asian power (i.e., it will not be withdrawing from Asia anytime soon), the quality of US engagement in Asia can clearly vary. Sustained, high-level attention is essential if the US is to play a constructive role in Asia along the lines envisioned by Secretary Gates.

The US in Asia and the world

Princeton's G. John Ikenberry has a long guest post at the Washington Note addressing Kishore Mahbubani's arguments in The New Asian Hemisphere: The Irresistible Shift of Global Power to the East. Not having read Mr. Mahbubani's book yet, I can't speak directly to his argument, but I do want to address the points raised by Professor Ikenberry.

The crux of Professor Ikenberry's argument is that the rise of Asia does not necessarily mean the decline of the West, or, more specifically, the decline of the US. He does not deny Asia's growing influence, but he suggests that while power is flowing Asia's way, the Asian powers have not proposed new organizing principles for world order. He suggests that what might happen — and what will probably be the best possible outcome — is a modified version of the American-led postwar system, a postwar system with an Asian flavor in which China and the other Asian powers recognize that maintaining the system is in their interests. As Professor Ikenberry writes:

China may well be tomorrow's greatest supporter of the American-led postwar system. That system provides rules and institutions for openness and nondiscrimination. These are features of order that China will want going forward as its growing economic weight will be greeted by efforts by others (including some governments in the West) to close and discriminate. Rule-based international order is not a Western fixation. It is a system of governance that all states - East and West - have some interest in maintaining, China not least.

There is considerable value in this argument. Given that China most likely will not have the opportunity to remake the international order anew in the manner that the US and its allies did in the aftermath of the World War II, China, India, and the other rising powers will have little choice but to jury-rig preexisting institutions to reflect their power and their interests.

It's also possible to overstate US decline, both in Asia and globally. As an "Asian" power — the US unmistakably is a great power in Asia — the US will have a stake in shaping the "Asian" world order. Washington will have to reconsider how it exercises its power regionally and globally, of course, becoming less reliant on its military power and more willing to listen to others, but the US has not begun its Recessional yet.

The emphasis needs to change, however. Since the US expanded its role in Asia at the end of the war, its Asia policy has been schizophrenic, divided between a crusading, transformational tendency and a stabilizing tendency. This schizophrenia persists up to today, with the crusaders keen to paint China as the next great threat to the US. But the time for US crusades in Asia is past. For the first time in nearly two centuries, Asian powers are in a position to manage the region's affairs themselves. That doesn't mean there is no role for the US; in fact, it means the US role as stabilizer and pacifier is more important than ever. I think, for example, that the presence of the US military, especially the US Navy, has ensured that political tensions have risen inexorably despite the ongoing Asian arms race. In short, US power should be used less for dictating terms and more for underwriting the efforts of others to create international order. The US should participate in the latter process, but only as one country among many. Its alliances in the region should shift accordingly, measured more in terms of how the support this US role. Transformational ideas, like Abe Shinzo's and Aso Taro's "arc of freedom and democracy" have little place in this order. Asian countries are in no hurry to see the US evacuate Asia; if anything, they want the US to be more involved, to be less obsessed with terrorism and more willing to listen to their concerns. It is imperative that the US start thinking seriously about how it will play this stabilizing role in Asia over the long term.

The US role globally will be more central than in Asia, but the question will be the same: as Professor Ikenberry writes, "...the United States should be asking itself: what sort of international order do we want to have in place in 2040 or 2050 when we are relatively less powerful?" Extending US influence, if not predominance, will depend on developing foreign policy tools other than military power (and with it, a shift in attitude that acknowledges that the US is less able to dictate terms to other countries).

Meanwhile, it is a mistake to refer casually to "Asia" in this discussion. Whose Asia? Is Asia a codeword for China? For India? For ASEAN? Each of these players has a different vision for the region, which redounds to the advantage of the US. Just as the Asian regional future is unknown, so to is the future of an Asia-centered world order unknown. The US is still in a position to shape the Asian and global orders.