The US and the history wars in Asia

Jeffrey Bader, former senior director for Asia at the National Security Council earlier in the Obama administration, has drawn attention for remarks criticizing comments made by Abe Shinzō and other Japanese leaders about Japan's wartime past. As Kyodo reports:

Bader...also warned the U.S. government could be more "vocal" if Japan reviewed past statements in which the government formally apologized for wartime aggressions in other Asian countries.

Bader's statement provides an interesting contrast to more enthusiastic accounts of US-Japan cooperation under the second Abe administration.

On the one hand, the US-Japan alliance will not be fundamentally undermined by Abe and other senior LDP politicians' questioning past apologies for Japan's wartime behavior. US-Japan security cooperation is too important regionally and too institutionalized to be much affected by impolitic statements. The US military and the Japanese Self-Defense Forces will continue to train together no matter what Japanese politicians say.

On the other hand, the US-Japan alliance is not the only US relationship in East Asia and if other allies, say, South Korea, voice their disapproval about Japan's leaders directly to the US president, the US cannot be indifferent. (Japanese right wingers say the US cannot be indifferent because of the influence of Asian-American interest groups, but I don't think it's necessary to cite the nefarious influence of lobbying groups to explain why the US might have a problem with tension between its two major allies in Northeast Asia.)

So what can the US do about the "history wars" in East Asia? Is being more vocal the answer? Ideally, the first step to US involvement would be to establish just what kind of comments or behavior would draw reproach from senior US officials. Would Abe's remarks about whether Japan "invaded" its neighbors qualify? Or the US only step in when the Japanese government undermines official apologies? Would visits to Yasukuni by the prime minister or cabinet ministers draw rebuke? What about statements like Osaka Mayor Hashimoto Tōru's comments about comfort women? Would Hashimoto be criticized even though he is not a national official?

Second, would the US response be limited to rhetoric action, or would it be matched by symbolic gestures? Would the US administration withhold state dinners or invitations to Camp David?

However, the more one thinks about Bader's suggestion and its implications, the more it seems that the US is already fairly vocal about Japanese prevarication about history. In recent years there is no shortage of examples of legislators and administration officials criticizing the words and actions of Japanese leaders. As Dennis Halpin writes (pdf) in a note on President Park's address to a joint session of Congress last month, when an address by Koizumi Junichirō to a joint session was being mooted during Koizumi's valedictory trip to the US in 2006, the late Congressman Henry Hyde wrote to Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert, saying that to have Koizumi, a regular visitor to Yasukuni Shrine, speak in Congress would "an affront to the generation that remembers Pearl Harbor and dishonor the place where President Roosevelt made his 'Date of Infamy' speech." Of course, the House of Representatives also rebuked Japan in 2007 when it passed House Resolution 121, calling on Japan to "formally acknowledge, apologize, and accept historical responsibility in a clear and unequivocal manner" for the wartime "comfort women." The executive branch has done its part as well. For example, during Abe's visit to Washington earlier this year, Danny Russel, Bader's successor at the NSC, called for Japan to do more to encourage historical reconciliation.

A more interesting question, then, is what effect US intervention has had thus far on Japanese leaders. I think one can make the case that statements by US officials have at least helped blunt talk of revising or replacing the Kōno statement on the comfort women and the Murayama apology for the war. Perhaps it has also kept Abe from visiting Yasukuni while serving as prime minister. However, it is hard to imagine US intervention in the history wars achieving more than it already has. It is unlikely that US intervention will change what anyone thinks about history, and it may even result in more provocative statements by right-wing Japanese politicians and commentators outside government, the kind of Japanese conservatives who have found a political home in Hashimoto and Ishihara Shintarō's Japan Restoration Party. These conservatives, after all, already believe the US holds Japan in contempt — as Air Self-Defense Forces General-turned-talking-head Tamogami Toshio writes (jp) in his defense of Hashimoto — and so would perhaps even make a point of defying US criticism. To the extent that Japan's neighbors treat all provocations equally, more active US involvement in the history wars could exacerbate tensions.

Being "more vocal" may not, therefore, be without risks. There may not be much the US can do other than prevent Japanese leaders from changing the status quo in the history wars. Resolving the history issue may ultimately depend on the Japanese people themselves. As Stanford's Daniel Sneider argues in a new article in Asia-Pacific Review (discussed here), the revisionist narrative is by no means the dominant historical narrative in Japan. The only way for Japanese to change the incorrect image of Japan as a nation of revisionist warmongers is for Japanese speak up when their leaders try to rewrite history, as encouragingly happened after Hashimoto's remarks. To the extent that the US can encourage and praise Japanese behavior in pursuit of historical reconciliation, it might actually be able to do more good than if it were to step up its criticism of Japan's leaders. Of course, whether reconciliation happens will depend on the willingness of Japan's neighbors to acknowledge that most Japanese recognize the wrongs committed by their country and to come to see Japan's right wing as aberrant, not representative.

Cognitive biases and the rise of China

Harvard's Alastair Iain Johnston has a must-read article in the Spring issue of International Security in which he dissects the spread of a meme of China's "new assertiveness" spread among policy analysts, the media, and scholars in the US in 2010. (Available for free as a pdf, at least for the time being.)

As Paul Pillar notes, Johnston not only raises questions about whether China's foreign policy has become more assertive since the 2008-2009 financial crisis, citing numerous examples of continuity, but he provides an important examination of how foreign-policy narratives form in the twenty-first century. By using memetics — the process by which an idea or belief spreads from mind to mind — Johnston provides a new way of thinking about how conventional wisdom forms. As Johnston notes, the media has played an agenda-setting role before, but with the emergence of the blog and the rise of Twitter as a medium for the exchange of serious ideas, foreign-policy discourse, especially in the US, seems qualitatively and quantitatively different, not just moving faster but also occurring in much greater volume than ever before.

After all, not too long ago to receive the latest conventional wisdom on foreign policy you had to wait for the latest issue of, say, Foreign Affairs to arrive in the mail, with a steady diet of newspaper op-eds and weekly magazine articles to tide you over. Now in the time between issues of Foreign Affairs you can read daily the fifteen blogs at the website of the Council on Foreign Relations (which publishes Foreign Affairs), not to mention the fifteen blogs at Foreign Policy's website and numerous other blogs hosted by think-tanks and publications, and the Twitter feeds of the contributors to these blogs and magazines. This all amounts to what Johnston calls a "discursive tidal wave."

Johnston talks about first-mover advantages and herding when it comes to the formation of prevailing narratives in foreign-policy discourse, but there is another, related problem Johnston doesn't explicitly mention but more or less illustrates in his essay. Namely, with so much data streaming past our eyes, the dangers from the cognitive biases are surely heightened. As Daniel Kahneman writes in Thinking, Fast and Slow, the human mind is "a machine for jumping to conclusions." Presumably the more information analysts must sift through, the more they're likely to fall victim to confirmation biases, the halo effect, the availability heuristic, and other mental shortcuts that can lead to erroneous conclusions. Human beings did not need to invent the Internet to struggle with these biases — and one can easily argue that policymakers have always fallen prey to them — but the Internet is uniquely suited to encourage Kahneman's "fast thinking" (intuitive thinking in the face of uncertainty).

Johnston's article, then, is a note of caution to be sensitive to how foreign-policy narratives form today, a warning to analysts to not take shortcuts but instead to use careful scientific reasoning before reaching conclusions and, in the case of China, to be sensitive to history, to avoid making inferences from a small sample size, and to be clear about what they think is driving China's behavior. There probably isn't much that can be done about the state of foreign-policy discourse today, but one can hope that the high-speed, high-volume discourse is at least more amenable to self-correction than the older discourse.

(For other comments on this essay see Daniel Drezner and Graham Webster. Drezner's comment that Johnston falls victim to ahistoricism himself is probably right — I would have liked to see a bit more discussion of how conventional wisdom formed in US foreign policy in the past, beyond a handful of references to media studies articles on the media's role as agenda setter.)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

More on the Roos appointment

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

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

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

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

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

Roos to Japan

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

(Click here to read this post in Japanese.)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The beginning of benign neglect?

Aso Taro has returned from his meeting with Barack Obama, the first such meeting between Obama and a foreign leader at the White House, as the Japanese media has repeatedly emphasized. The LDP website invokes this phrase like a mantra in its summary of the prime minister's visit, as if citing the name of the US president could save the party from ruin: "Prime Minister Aso Taro — the first among the world's leaders to meet with President Obama at the White House." (I feel like the phrase needs an exclamation point.)

Others have been less effusive.

The Sankei Shimbun, a leading cheerleader for a more active security alliance, is perhaps foremost among media outlets in voicing its doubts about the visit. Far from celebrating the visit, Sankei notes that Aso's visit was overshadowed by media coverage of Obama's Tuesday evening address to Congress, an address that shortened Aso's visit. The paper also notes that unlike Murayama Tomiichi's 1995 visit to Washington, another short, informal visit by a Japanese prime minister, Aso stayed at a hotel away from downtown Washington instead of at Blair House.

But behind these questions lurks a greater concern: that far from being indicative of the new administration's interest in a stronger alliance, Hillary Clinton's making her first stop in Tokyo and Aso's being Obama's first foreign guest are signs that the new administration will be devoting little attention to Japan from now. Uesugi Takashi calls this Japan's "unrequited love" foreign policy and questions the notion that the US will be devoting all that much attention to Japan. (At the same time, Uesugi provides a useful corrective to the "sky-is-falling" school of conservatism that says that the US is itching to abandon Japan for China. "The US," he says, "will not simply discard Japan for China.") Uesugi instead takes a similar position to that in an article I wrote with Douglas Turner last year: "In short, in the US-Japan alliance both excessive hopes and affinities, and excessive disappointments are useless." It pays, in other words, to correct unreasonable expectations in the relationship, especially on the Japanese side.

Richard Lloyd Parry of the Times captures Japan's "unrequited love" well in this post. As he suggests, almost by process of elimination Japan was the perfect country for Obama and Clinton to deal with first: "Where better to start than Japan, where there are no serious bilateral problems, no danger of demonstrations, and where the press never asks aggressive or embarrassing questions?" Japan, in other words, is diplomatic low-handing fruit. For all the fretting during the late Bush administration about the alliance drift, the headaches are comparatively small compared to other items on the foreign policy agenda — and most of Japan's leaders are unable to consider an alternative to the present relationship with the US, Ozawa Ichiro, of course, being an exception. The Obama administration, in other words, may have just checked the "Japan" box on the agenda and can now turn to more serious matters. Considering that nominees for a number of working-level positions and the ambassadors to Tokyo and Beijing remain unconfirmed, it may be months before the Obama administration even looks in Japan's direction.

All of which goes to suggest that the administration may be prepared to follow through on an unstated policy of benign neglect: having given Japan its assignments (civilian reconstruction in Afghanistan, progress on realignment, etc.), the administration will now turn its attention elsewhere.

Little wonder that Ozawa and the DPJ want a bit more distance from the US. An alliance based on unrequited love is an unhealthy alliance. As such, Aso's twenty-four-hour visit, as wasteful as it was (anyone find it a bit hypocritical for the prime minister to fly halfway across the world for a day to discuss, among other things, climate change?), was still useful. A new relationship is being born, even as US officials remain sensitive to the symbolic politics of the US-Japan alliance.

The birth of the post-1996 alliance

Prime Minister Aso Taro has arrived in Washington in advance of his meeting with President Barack Obama Tuesday.

Despite Obama's welcoming Aso as the first foreign leader to meet with him in Washington, and despite Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's visit to Tokyo last week, the Japanese establishment continues to fret about the new administration's approach to Japan. Sankei, for example, notes the "exceptionally warm welcome" being bestowed on Aso by Obama — especially considering that the president is due to give a State of the Union address Tuesday evening — but wonders whether the Obama administration is as committed to Japan as appearances would suggest.

I have been somewhat irritated with the lengths to which the Obama administration has gone to demonstrate its commitment to the alliance (I still think this visit to Washington by Aso is a mistake). But looking at the agenda for the meeting between Obama and Aso, it appears that the new administration is preparing to embark on a new course for the alliance even as it preserves the old forms of alliance reassurance.

Obama is preparing to make winning in Afghanistan a top priority for his administration, making the war in Afghanistan, in Stephen Walt's words, "Obama's war."

The expectation is that Japan will be a part of that effort. But unlike the previous administration, the Obama administration looks unwilling to praise Japan for marginal, symbolic contributions to the effort. While respecting Japan's constraints on the use of force abroad, the adminstration appears ready to take Japan at its word. Japanese leaders talk of the need to contribute abroad even as they are reluctant to commit the Self-Defense Forces? Fine, then make a meaningful civilian contribution, the new administration has signaled. As Walt wrote in regard to NATO in Afghanistan, "Is Obama able to persuade our NATO allies to increase their own efforts there, or will they mostly free-ride on Uncle Sam? (And watch out for token deployments intended to signal that the rest of NATO is with us on this one, but that have no real effect on the ground)." The same applies to Japan, with a substantial civilian reconstruction contribution in place of military efforts.

The new administration will surely be watching, and it will surely not accept political instability at home as an excuse.

But beyond the Afghanistan question, reports suggest that the Obama-Aso meeting will address more than the usual bundle of security questions: the security relationship will be on the agenda, but it will share pride of place with the global economic crisis and climate change (although Yomiuri reports that Aso plans to keep the abductees on the agenda and will give the president a blue ribbon, the symbol of the abductee rescue movement). The Japanese government will get a closer look at a president who wants to solve global problems, and will not be content with symbolic and rhetorical nods in the direction of these problems. As MTC suggests, Aso could be in for a rude surprise Tuesday. This administration will most likely not share the Bush administration's seemingly endless patience with Japan, patience that faltered in the final years of the administration as it struggled to implement the 2006 realignment agreement and keep Japan committed to the six-party talks.

The Obama administration has work to do, and it will cooperate with any government in the region ready to come along. This is the message that came out of Clinton's Asia trip, especially her final stop in China.

I hope that the DPJ is paying attention. In the Obama administration the DPJ has a potential partner in building a new, more equal partnership, if not the perfectly equal partnership desired by Ozawa Ichiro. (It is arguable whether it is possible for any US ally to enjoy a perfectly equal partnership with the US given the inevitable gap in capabilities.)

Some in the party clearly understand the possibilities should the DPJ form a government this year. Okada Katsuya, once and possibly future DPJ leader, spoke at a Mainichi forum on Monday at which he stated, "[The US-Japan alliance] should be a framework to deal with global warming and poverty; it is wholly unnecessary to limit it to military affairs." That's not to say that he fails to appreciate the military importance of the alliance — in the same speech he acknowledged the importance of US bases in Japan not just for the defense of Japan, but for activities in the broader Asia-Pacific region — but like the Obama administration, Okada seems prepared to take the alliance in a different direction, acknowledging that with Japan's constraints unlikely to be lowered anytime soon, it is a waste of the alliance to continue to insist on more security cooperation.

The question is whether enough DPJ members, not least Ozawa, share Okada's assessment.

Hatoyama Yukio, DPJ secretary-general, also delivered a speech Monday, in English, to a meeting of foreign businesspeople, in which he said that a DPJ government would shift from "foreign policy subservient to the United States to an emphasis on international cooperation." Japan, he said, would speak frankly to the US in the event of foolhardy military activities if the DPJ gets the opportunity to form a government. This kind of comment may look anti-American — and is certainly red meat for a skeptical public — but it does not appear inconsistent with the Obama administration's approach. It matters less under what auspices Japan's global contributions occur than that they occur. Similarly, I do not think the Obama administration would find much to reject in Ozawa's statement Monday that foreign policy under his watch would stress the Sino-Japanese relationship, a development that would clearly help the US work more closely with China and serve to stabilize the region further.

I remain convinced that reports of the DPJ's "anti-Americanism" are overblown, that the DPJ is anti-alliance only if one takes the alliance to have one ideal form, that articulated under the Bush administration in cooperation with Prime Ministers Koizumi and Abe.

Hence the title of this post. The Obama administration is clearly interested in making something of the alliance, but it appears disinclined to continue down the path of the security-above-all-else alliance that emerged out of the 1996 Clinton-Hashimoto joint security declaration and was pushed hard by the Bush administration. Why should it, when to do so means continuing to slam into the wall of Japan's reluctance to untie its hands on security policy?

The DPJ, at least rhetorically, may be a more suitable partner for the Obama administration, but ultimately it will make little difference who is prime minister and what party is in power. Japan's constraints are here to stay, at least for the time being, and the Obama administration is prepared to get more out of the alliance even while respecting Japan's limitations. Japan has a US president willing to respect Japan's limitations and perhaps even listen to the Japanese people; I hope Japan's leaders recognize that and act accordingly.

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.

Alliance addenda

After seeing the response to my recent post on the US-Japan alliance, I find it necessary to develop a few ideas further.

First, MTC rightly points out that an alliance based on the partnership of Japanese conservatives and their counterparts in Washington is by no means doomed, because the organizations pushing this line "deal death as a matter of course. They will not be deterred by mere logic, economic constraints or human feeling." I fully grant this point. Just because history (or perhaps, History) does not favor their argument does not mean that the conservative grip on the alliance will weaken. The advocates of an alternative vision of the alliance — a vision of the alliance that does more than prepare for a worst case scenario with China that may never come (or that may be hastened by the decisions of the alliance) — must push back, fighting back in the halls of academia and think tanks and in the pages of journals.

Second, I must correct myself: technically speaking the 1996 alliance is not rooted in an alliance between Japanese and American conservatives. It is rooted in an alliance between Japanese conservatives and the American foreign policy establishment (FPE). There is sadly a dearth in creative thinking on the alliance in Democratic corners of the FPE, the think tankers and academics who will likely fill important Asia policy positions. In particular, Joseph Nye, who as assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs in the mid-1990s gave his name to the initiative that produced the 1996 bilateral security declaration and with it the 1996 alliance, and Kurt Campbell, who worked deputy assistant secretary of defense for East Asia during the late 1990s, are the Democratic Party's senior Asia hands and both view the alliance along similar lines as Richard Armitage and Michael Green, their Republican counterparts. Campbell has in fact praised the work of his Republican successors in strengthening the alliance.

Jun Okumura captures precisely this reality on this post regarding a meeting between senior DPJ officials and the "U.S. Democratic Party," as reported in the Yomiuri Shimbun. On a visit to Tokyo, Nye and John Hamre, president of CSIS (home to Michael Green) and an undersecretary of defense in the Clinton adminstration, as well as Green and James Kelly, assistant secretary of state for East Asia and the Pacific in the Bush administration, met with Hatoyama Yukio, Kan Naoto, and other DPJ officials. The point of the meeting, as Jun notes, was to deliver the message to the DPJ that the bipartisan consensus on the alliance is intact — the DPJ should not expect that it will get much traction in its desire to redefine the terms of the 2006 realignment agreement.

The reality, however, might be more complicated. As Jun notes, none of the aforementioned mandarins is in President-elect Obama's inner circle. Is this a message from Mr. Obama? From the Democratic Party? From the FPE? Perhaps we should read this meeting and its message as a message from the guardians of the 1996 alliance, nothing more, nothing less. Confident that they remain responsible for the alliance in Washington, they are apparently planning for the possibility that their conservative partners are forced to cede power to the DPJ. While the media is reporting this as the beginning of an exchange of opinions between the US and Japanese Democratic parties, the presence of Messrs. Green and Kelly suggest that it was nothing of the sort: the alliance mandarinate was issuing a warning.

Finally, I want to respond to comments to my previous post.

First, one anonymous commentator argues that the idea that China has any influence over Washington as a result of its debt holdings is "ridiculous." A second commentator argues that the fundamental arrangement of the alliance — bases for protection — is unchanged, and that not too much has changed with the decline of the 1996 alliance. I will address these comments together because they're linked.

The alliance today is about China. The 1996 alliance was one way of thinking about China. While the alliance managers vary in the extent to which they support engagement with China, they uniformly support strengthening the security relationship, extending the alliance to distant conflicts, improving alliance interoperability, and broadening the alliance to include cooperation with other US allies in East Asia. They are in agreement about the importance of dismantling domestic constraints on Japanese security policy, although naturally they respect the Japanese democratic process. It is an approach to the alliance that sees the alliance as "the core of the United States’ Asia strategy." (For an outline of the consensus on the alliance, see the second Armitage-Nye report — discussed at length in these posts.) They believe that the alliance is important as an end in and of itself, because of shared interests and shared values, which is another way of saying that no matter how much it appears that the US and China have common interests regionally and globally, the Sino-US relationship can never replace the US-Japan relationship because of shared values.

I think the "shared values" approach to the alliance is mistaken. It seeks to create distance between the US and Japan on the one hand and China on the other when what the three countries must be do is find a way to bridge the wide differences that separate them. As the current economic crisis is illustrating, the fates of the US, China, and Japan are linked. The US-Japan-China strategic triangle is a non-zero sum relationship. America's loss is Japan's loss is China's loss; and the impact of the economic crisis within China will likely be felt in Japan and the US.

None of this is to say that the nineteenth-century liberal argument that free markets will lead to perpetual peace is right. What the liberals failed to appreciate is that while global commerce may transform national interests, those interests are not translated into policy without concerted effort on the part of national elites. Elites have to recognize that economic links have transformed their nations' interests and then act to protect those interests. Both Japanese and American conservatives — especially Japanese conservatives — have chosen to minimize the significance of their countries' dependence on the Chinese economy. Accordingly their vision of the alliance emphasizes the security hedge against China rather than efforts to diminish the need for a hedge against China.

I am not arguing that the US-Japan security relationship is dead. Nor am I arguing that it should be dissolved. The alliane is an important aspect of US Asia policy, but for too long the US FPE has failed to asked why. If it is important only because Japan gives the US bases, then frankly the alliance is a necessary but insufficient guarantor of the future stability of the region. The value of the alliance must be measured by how it contributes to regional stability, namely the incorporation of China into a leadership position in East Asia with as little friction as possible. The 1996 alliance has strengthened those actors in Japan most averse to cooperation with China, which has the ironic consequence of diminishing Japan's importance to the US as an ally.

What is needed now is a new alliance that seeks more than just a hedge against a violent turn in China's rise. Accordingly, the alliance needs to be more than just a partnership of national security elites in the US and Japan. Japan and the US ought to be talking about more than just the proper arrangement of US forces in Japan or how Japan can make its token contributions to missions abroad; the focus of every US-Japan bilateral meeting of any significance should be finding new ways to build a trilateral relationship with China. An alliance that's simply a matter of bases for forward-deployed US forces and some tactical and operational cooperation between US and Japanese armed forces is an alliance that increasingly irrelevant to the future of East Asia.

Guam recedes into the distance

A US official has finally admitted that it is unlikely that the US and Japan will meet the 2014 target date for initiating the relocation of US Marines from Okinawa to Guam.

Admiral Timothy Keating, commander of US Pacific Command, was in New York City last week, where he reviewed the state of the Defense Policy Review Initiative (DPRI). In his remarks, he acknowledged that in light of the financial situation in both countries, it is likely that "it'll take a little bit longer to effect – we won’t be done by 2014, or maybe even 2015, but it’s about a decade in execution."

Admiral Keating's admission is the first such admission — to my knowledge — from a senior US official involved with the process. It confirms the picture presented by the Government Accountability Office in its report on Guam. I still think the official view is too optimistic. I see too many potential obstacles to be confident that the process will be implemented according to schedule and according to plan. The biggest question in my mind is what happens if and when the DPJ forms a government. The DPJ's "Okinawa vision" paper — discussed in this post — strongly suggests that should the DPJ take power, it will seek to revise the 2006 agreement.

For now, the extent of the delay will depend on the makeup of President-elect Obama's Asia policy team. If the bulk of Asia policy positions go to China or Korea hands, I would suggest that the outlook for realignment is grim indeed. Realignment will proceed smoothly only if the foreign policy team is seeded with individuals intimately familiar with the issues at stake and capable of making the case for why it is essential that the realignment must proceed as soon as possible. (And, I hope, be willing to consider doing it unilaterally if Japan drags its feet.)

But even with the right people in place the outlook isn't good for Guam. In the current environment, it will be hard to get the necessary support from Congress and the upper levels of the administration.

Japan may have to accept that the Marines may be in Okinawa for longer than expected.

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.

Japan just as invisible as always

MOFA has released its latest Gallup-conducted poll of American public and elite attitudes concerning Japan. (English summary here; more detailed Japanese documents available for download here.)

Gallup conducted a telephone poll of 1500 Americans over age 18 in February and March of 2008, and telephone interviews with 250 "opinion leaders" in "the fields of government, business, academia, mass media, religion and labor unions."

The results are more or less unchanged. Both the public and elites view Japan as the most important US partner in Asia, with China trailing by roughly ten points among the public and twenty points among elites. Japan is still seen as a dependable ally, although the number among the public dropped seven points from 74% to 67%, even as the elite figure remained strong, improving one point to a record-high of 92%. Both public and elite see Japan as more of an economic power, and believe that the US-Japan relationship is sound, and will either improve in the future or remain just as sound as they think it is today. Elites are well disposed to Japan playing a more assertive role internationally, and have a stronger sense of shared values between the US and Japan than the public at large has.

Of interest to me, however, is that in every question that gave general public respondents the option of "don't understand/no opinion," that response gained. In the "dependable ally" question, the percentage of the general public answering "no opinion" rose from 5% to 15%. Asked whether Japan is playing an appropriate international role given its economic power, the percentage of the general public answering "don't understand" rose from 6% to 14%. Asked about the importance of US bases in Japan, the number of general public respondents with no opinion rose from 3% to 11%. The number who responded "don't understand" when asked whether the US should support the current US-Japan mutual security treaty more than doubled, from 7% to 15%. And I suspect that these numbers probably only measure those who are willing to admit that they either don't understand or have no opinion. How many American citizens have opinions about these questions before being asked by a pollster?

In short, Japan became that much less familiar to the American public from February-March 2007 to February-March 2008. Interestingly, when general public respondents were asked where they get information about Japan, every category but education (improved one point from 51% to 52%), friends and neighbors (improved one point from 29% to 30%), Japanese friends (held steady at 29%), and experience of visiting Japan (held steady at 12%) fell. The big four — TV, magazines, newspapers, and Internet — all fall. TV fell from 80% to 74%, magazines from 72% to 64%, newspapers from 71% to 63%, and Internet 43% to 39%. The impact of these drops are magnified by the paucity of Japan coverage (i.e., not only are the news media providing less Japan coverage, but fewer people are seeing what little they cover). The drops were less significant or non-existent in terms of the elite, but elite awareness of Japan still suffers from the spareness of Japan coverage.

The survey ought to include a question along the lines of "did you have any opinions about the US-Japan relationship before being asked these questions." It might also have been helpful to ask about public awareness of events that transpired in the relationship over the past year (political changes in Japan, the abductee problem, the comfort women resolution, etc.). Without asking these questions, there is no context for these responses. This doesn't say much about what the American people think about the US-Japan relationship in comparison to a host of other foreign policy issues and bilateral relationships.

Komori on US China policy

Komori Yoshihisa, veteran correspondent and Washington-based editor of the Sankei Shimbun, was invited to speak to Nakagawa Shoichi's "True Conservative Policy Study Group" last Friday, where he explained the reality of US China policy and contemporary attitudes in Washington towards the US-Japan alliance.

He provides a summary of his remarks at his blog.

For the most part, they're innocuous. He notes that Congress and Washington in general are alarmed about China on a number of fronts: China's military modernization, trade practices, intellectual property violations, and human rights violations are causes for concern among US elites. (Indeed, according to Pew's November 2005 survey of public and elite foreign policy attitudes, US elites are far more concerned about China than the public at large. This may have changed after several years of media reports about shoddy Chinese imports, but I still expect that the US public as a whole remains more sanguine about China than Washington.) He reports that while the US-Japan alliance is rarely discussed in the media, it enjoys a solid bedrock of support from both the Republican and Democratic parties.

Broadly speaking, Mr. Komori's picture is accurate.

But there are a few problems. First, whatever the fears of US elites about a multi-dimensional Chinese "threat," I think US policymakers, especially in the executive branch, are willing to silence their fears and work with China when necessary. This is consistent with the enduring pattern of Sino-US relations since 1972. Congress has been obsessed with threats from China and aggressive in its criticism of human rights violations, threats against Taiwan, etc.; the White House, whatever its unease with China and regardless of the party affiliation of the president, has sought closer coordination with China. There is an enduring realism in US China policy that is entirely absent from Mr. Komori's remarks.

This realistic tendency will likely become even more pronounced in coming years, because — and this is my second qualm with Mr. Komori's remarks — the US obsession with Iraq and the Middle East more broadly will not abate anytime soon. Mr. Komori seemingly provides no context for US thinking about China, which for most of Washington remains of secondary importance to more urgent Middle Eastern questions, meaning the US will be ever more inclined to work with China on a range of regional and global problems.

While naturally there are China hawks in Washington who share the views of Mr. Komori's audience, it would be a mistake to suggest that their viewpoint is dominant and commonly accepted. Their viewpoint certainly hasn't been dominant under the Bush administration, despite early indications to the contrary, and the next administration will be forced to embrace a sort of "resigned realism." Even if a McCain administration were to talk about the importance of cooperation among democracies in Asia, such rhetoric would most likely not be backed by a decisive shift in how the US-Japan and US-Australia alliances interact with China.

I would add that Mr. Komori and other Japanese China hawks, much like their American compatriots, have nothing constructive to say about how the US and Japan should deal with China. Mr. Komori says that it is "appropriate to identify and criticize, frequently and clearly" China's military activities and human rights violations. Maybe so, but that cannot be the sum of a China policy, especially for Japan. As Fareed Zakaria argues, criticism and outrage can backfire if they promote a popular backlash among the Chinese people. A China policy that amounts to little more than jabbing China repeatedly with a pointy stick is no China policy at all.

Meanwhile, Mr. Komori has not been paying enough attention in Washington. He notes that he concluded his remarks saying that in other countries principles like "building a country in which the people have pride in their country" and "steadily defending the national interest" are not conservative at all: they are accepted by all as a matter of course. I wonder what country Mr. Komori has in mind. China maybe? Both examples cited by Mr. Komori are fiercely contested in US public discourse. Both the definition of the "national interest" and how to defend it are in constant flux. As for a country of which people can be proud, once again, "pride" means different things to different Americans. To some, including Senator Obama, being proud of the US means being proud of its ability to correct its own flaws; as Senator Obama said in Montana earlier this month, "I love this country not because it’s perfect, but because we’ve always been able to move it closer to perfection."

If anything, Japan needs more of this: more discussion about what its national interests and more discussion about how to secure those interests, but above all, more discussion about what it really means to be proud of one's country — and what it means for a Japanese to be proud of Japan.

Recommended Book: The Peninsula Question, Yoichi Funabashi

In the year since Funabashi Yoichi, editor-in-chief of the Asahi Shimbun, finished The Peninsula Question, the US and North Korea made an agreement that restarted the Six-Party talks, overcame the Banco Delta Asia obstacle, and issued a joint statement with the other parties that included a promise by North Korea to account for its nuclear program and disable related facilities, before progress stalled at New Year's. In the process, the Abe government ensured that Japan would not play a constructive role in the talks.

Dr. Funabashi's book does not suffer from leaving off at North Korea's nuclear test in October 2006. Indeed, The Peninsula Question anticipates much of what's happened over the past year.

The Peninsula Question is, according to its subtitle, "a chronicle of the second Korean nuclear crisis." This is not a polemic — Dr. Funabashi does not deviate from his measured tone except in a few spots in which he criticizes US hawks — and he provides few answers to the titular question. But as a chronicle of the Northeast Asian crisis since 2002, it is nonpareil. Dr. Funabashi interviewed dozens of policymakers in the governments of five of the six parties, providing an intimate look at how the US, Japan, China, South Korea, and Russia approached North Korea in the Six-Party talks.

The result is of interest to both general readers and international relations specialists, as Dr. Funabashi shows the constraints that impact foreign policy decision makers. Dr. Funabashi shows that neither international politics nor domestic politics is the primary constraint on policy makers: both are important, with some variance from country to country. Policy makers are also constrained by history, ideology, and geography. This is not to deny the role of human agency in policy making, but it suggests that policy makers operate exercise their agency within a narrow band. The main protagonists of Dr. Funabashi's book were further constrained because they were, for the most part, not heads of state and government. Perhaps the only figure willing and able to defy the constraints was former prime minister Koizumi Junichiro, who traveled twice to Pyongyang in pursuit of the normalization of diplomatic ties with North Korea.

As a result of his interviews, Dr. Funabashi draws special attention to the domestic constraints on each country's North Korea policy. While Washington and Tokyo were perhaps the most divided of the six parties, each government — North Korea included — had divisions that undermined the pursuit of an agreement. These domestic divisions resulted in first the rift between South Korea, and the US and Japan, and then in the rift between the US and Japan in 2007 as the Abe government took a firmer line on North Korea at the moment that the US approach softened.

Ultimately, though, it may be the international constraints that will undermine any agreement. North Korea, perhaps for good reason, believes that a nuclear weapon is the key to its security. Neither the US nor Japan is willing to live with a North Korean nuke; neither government, however, is in a position to take decisive action to end the North Korean nuclear program. China is clearly annoyed by North Korea, but appears willing to act only so far as to prevent a war on the Korean peninsula. Russia has little influence in Northeast Asia, as illustrated by Dr. Funabashi's chapter showing the failure of Russia's attempt to offer itself as an "honest broker" in the talks.

The result? North Korea will continue doing exactly what it's been doing. In the meantime, the five parties should be strengthening cooperation in preparation for the collapse of the DPRK, because post-DPRK North Korea may be the source of more trouble in the region than the DPRK itself, albeit trouble of a different sort.

To a second-rate Japan

Continuing the theme of Japan's vanishing global presence discussed in this post (and this post by Gen Kanai last week), it's worth looking at what may be this year's hot foreign policy article-turned-book (cf. Paul Kennedy, Francis Fukuyama, Samuel Huntington, Robert Kagan), "Waving Goodbye to Hegemony" by Parag Khanna, a fellow at the New America Foundation.

In both this article and the forthcoming book, Mr. Khanna looks at the emerging contours of the new world order from the perspective of the second world: "Lying alongside and between the Big Three, second-world countries are the swing states that will determine which of the superpowers has the upper hand for the next generation of geopolitics. From Venezuela to Vietnam and Morocco to Malaysia, the new reality of global affairs is that there is not one way to win allies and influence countries but three: America’s coalition (as in 'coalition of the willing'), Europe’s consensus and China’s consultative styles. The geopolitical marketplace will decide which will lead the 21st century."

There is considerable value in this piece, not least in its warning to US policymakers that American hegemony is finished. Over the course of the Bush administration, it has become clear that the US, for all its military strength, is woefully deficient in other areas of power, making it difficult for Washington to solve critical problems. It's not entirely the fault of President Bush, but his administration's actions made it plain the limits of American power, hastening the emergence of a new order.

Mr. Khanna makes clear that competition between the US, China, and the EU will not be primarily in the military realm, but rather over energy, markets, and natural resources. The other point of interest is that the second-world countries might actually hold the upper hand in their dealings with the superpowers. These countries can pocket concessions and aid from all three, maximizing their security in the process. This dynamic is already at work in Southeast Asia, where countries like Vietnam are happy to trade with China even as they deepen their security ties with the US (an example not lost on Mr. Khanna). As a result, this piece is not simply a reincarnation of fears from the 1980s and 1990s about the creation of three exclusionary economic blocs.

Not surprisingly, however, Japan is absent from this piece (except in passing, with Japan's interest in regional monetary cooperation cited as an example of how "Asians are insulating themselves from America’s economic uncertainties").

Where does Japan fit in a tripolar world? Presumably as its population shrinks over the coming decades, Japan will increasingly come to resemble second-world countries busy playing the superpowers off each other. Granted, Japan will likely remain wealthier and more politically stable than the other countries in this group, but as a result of its security and economic needs, Japan will likely engage in the same behavior. In managing its relationships with the US and China, Japan is, in fact, already playing one power off the other, one moment strengthening security cooperation with the US, the next exploring new avenues of economic cooperation with China, ASEAN, and others that exclude the US. It will take some time before Japan fully embraces this "small Japan" path — I suspect there remains too much fear of China and too much dependence on the US — but it may be only a matter of time, with the process hastened by external changes like a mellower China or a prolonged economic downturn in the US that leads it to reconsider its defense spending and foreign deployments.

The question is the extent to which Japan can remain prosperous and dynamic and preserve some modicum of influence in the competition for energy and natural resources. That will depend, of course, on decisions made today to transform Japan's moribund political and economic systems.

Haass on allies and rivals

Richard Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations, had an op-ed in the Financial Times this week (excerpted from a forthcoming article in The National Interest) in which he reconsiders the nature of US relationships with traditional allies and perceived enemies.

Calling it the emergence of a "Palmerstonian moment," Haass wrote, "We are entering an era of foreign policy and international relations where countries are neither automatically predictable adversaries nor allies. They may be active partners on one issue on one day and largely inactive observers on another issue the next. Or they may carry out alternative or opposing policies."

There is considerable value in his argument, especially from the perspective of the US-Japan relationship, in light of the ongoing debate over Japan's involvement in Afghanistan operations. (Ambassador Schieffer has reminded the Japanese once again — in case they forgot — that the US thinks that it would be a "real tragedy" if Japan were to opt out of the war on terror.) A coalition of the willing is a double-edged sword: if the US is going to wage war without seeking the formal approval of its allies, then those allies are free to opt out, without Washington's throwing a tantrum (i.e., "freedom fries").

As I've argued in earlier posts, strategic flexibility is becoming increasingly important in international relations, in Asia especially. The more potential partners, the greater the ability of a great power to achieve desired ends. Haass cited the example on the role played by China in the six-party talks: "Beijing, in this case – not Nato – was and is the most important partner for Washington in its efforts to denuclearise North Korea. This does not, however, mean China is on the verge of becoming a US ally on other issues."

Haass' op-ed also touches the idea that no matter how cordial relations between the US and its allies become thanks to leadership changes, the US and its allies will not see the world the same way anytime soon. I think that the perceptual gap between a global superpower and regional powers is simply too great, making it difficult for the US and its allies to agree not just on courses of actions, but even on the shared interests supposedly underlying alliances.

A dangerous word

AEI's Michael Auslin, weighing in on the feud over China's denying US Navy ships access to Hong Kong at Contentions, argues that US credibility has suffered from a failure to respond to China's behavior other than by sending the USS Kitty Hawk back to Japan via the Taiwan Straits.

He says, "A number of my Asia-wonk acquaintances in Washington have expressed their concern that Washington is sending a signal of weakness by making no response to the Chinese provocations (sailing the fleet back through the Taiwan Straits doesn’t quite cut it)—even canceling some meetings would have been seen as something."

I would be more concerned if he was citing comments made by "our Asian allies" than by his "Asia-wonk acquaintances."

"Credibility" is a dangerous word, a word that led the US to overextend itself during the cold war, with disastrous consequences. Are US allies in Asia really worried about the US not standing up to China's unpredictable behavior over the past year? Do they really doubt that if China actually posed a threat to their security, the US would be unwilling to act? Do security treaties with Japan, Australia, and other countries in the region obligate the US to "stand up" to China, even if doing so might actually undermine the security of China's neighbors by deepening the PLA's paranoia and strengthening the hand of PLA elements in favor of more confrontational policies (not to mention potentially provoking China to retaliate in other fora)?

The emergence of China is one long, unpredictable, iterative game, and the US, as the prevailing maintainer of stability in East Asia, will not benefit from "defecting" and initiating a game of tit-for-tat that could go on for years. Indeed, as the leading power in the region, the US has an obligation to demonstrate forbearance, to refrain from retaliating against China's bewildering violations of diplomatic and maritime custom and continuing to find ways of coaxing China to play a more constructive regional and global role. To do otherwise could hasten the decline of the US as a regional power and make the neighborhood more dangerous for US allies, a perverse consequence of actions purportedly taken in the interests of US alliances in Asia.

Fukuda should mention Iran

In the past week, the Bush administration has raised the intensity of its rhetoric on Iran to dangerously absurd levels.

Last week, President Bush suggested that Iran's possession of nuclear weapons could lead to World War III, which White House press secretary Dana Perino later played down as suggesting nothing more than the seriousness with which the president views the threat posed by a nuclear Iran.

More recently, however, Vice President Cheney said in a speech to the Washington Institute for Near East Policy on Sunday, "The United States joins other nations in sending a clear message: We will not allow Iran to have a nuclear weapon," and that Iran faces "serious consequences" for its pursuit of nuclear arms.

Between talk by Mr. Bush — head of state of a country that has somewhere between 5,000 and 10,000 nuclear weapons — of World War III and Mr. Cheney's using the same language that he used in advance of the Iraq War (Hat tip: Andrew Sullivan), observers in the US and elsewhere cannot be blamed for wondering whether the US will be at war with Iran in the waning months of the Bush administration. (Niall Ferguson dismisses the idea that war is imminent — imminent being a few weeks — but that's little comfort to me.) Even if the talk is bluster designed to make Iran give in somehow, the LA Times wonders whether the Bush administration, its credibility all but spent, can achieve anything but more Iranian recalcitrance with this approach.

For my part, like Fareed Zakaria, I'm not convinced that Iran is somehow beyond deterrence:

When the relatively moderate Mohammed Khatami was elected president in Iran, American conservatives pointed out that he was just a figurehead. Real power, they said (correctly), especially control of the military and police, was wielded by the unelected "Supreme Leader," Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Now that Ahmadinejad is president, they claim his finger is on the button. (Oh wait, Iran doesn't have a nuclear button yet and won't for at least three to eight years, according to the CIA, by which point Ahmadinejad may not be president anymore. But these are just facts.)

How does Japan enter the picture?

Prime Minister Fukuda will, of course, be in Washington next month to meet with President Bush. I think that the November summit might be a good opportunity for Mr. Fukuda to distinguish himself from his predecessors and state in no uncertain terms that Japan finds the Bush administration's rhetoric counterproductive to the resolution of the crisis, that Japan, as a state with official ties with Iran, wants to play a greater role in finding a solution, and that Washington cannot count on Tokyo's support in the event of war unless all other options are exhausted first.

In other words, for the US-Japan alliance to be more equal, Japan has to act like an equal of the US, making demands of its own on its ally.

Of course, given the Bush administration's expectations from its allies (i.e., seen and not heard), an interjection by Mr. Fukuda would probably have little impact on the administration's plans for Iran — and it's unclear to me how Japanese mediation could help resolve the crisis — but at least Mr. Fukuda could stake out a firm Japanese position now and perhaps prevent Japan from getting overwhelmed by events should a war come, all while signaling to the Japanese public that Japan's foreign policy will not be conducted from Washington.

The vanishing ally

Candidate Clinton has penned her contribution on foreign policy for the ongoing feature in Foreign Affairs on the foreign policies of the major presidential contenders.

I haven't found much of value in the contributions thus far, and Senator Clinton's is no exception. Her world view essentially emphasizes "power and principle." I'm not entirely clear how that differs from, say, Francis Fukuyama's "realistic Wilsonianism" — which perhaps says more about the narrowing of American foreign policy options in the waning months of the Bush administration than it does about Mrs. Clinton's foreign policy perspective.

But Tokyo is paying close attention, because Mrs. Clinton writes, "Our relationship with China will be the most important bilateral relationship in the world in this century." That may be disconcerting for Japan, used to hearing US officials insist on the importance of the US-Japan relationship, but it also happens to be true. The Japanese government should be more concerned that Japan receives even less attention than India, in a section purportedly about America's alliances. Note that India isn't an official ally — and is struggling over whether to accept the Bush administration's gift to India that offers civilian nuclear cooperation, potentially a kind of down payment on a more formalized partnership.

Indeed, in foreign policy statements like this, Japan increasingly appears simply as one ally among many, a tool in the US foreign policy toolbox that no longer merits special attention. This is a shame, because the US-Japan relationship could be an essential part of the US approach to China, helping smooth China's ascension to regional and global leadership (and hold China accountable). Senator Clinton hints at this — she mentions cooperation on clean energy — but no policymaker or presidential candidate has discussed a Sino-US-Japanese triangle.

Japan, it seems, will have to demonstrate its value to the next administration, at least if the Democrats win.

How did it come to this? Some may be tempted to blame Japan, particularly following the bizarre spectacle that is the feud over the MSDF refueling mission in the Indian Ocean. But the US — and the Bush administration — are far from blameless. For all the talk about deepening alliance cooperation, it is clear that the purpose of deeper security cooperation has been to make Japan better able to serve Washington. As Ambassador Schieffer's response to DPJ opposition to the refueling mission shows, the Bush administration has expected Japan to follow along quietly; under Messrs. Koizumi and Abe, Washington wasn't disappointed.

The implication of Senator Clinton's essay is that this kind of relationship, in which Japan is seen and not heard, is unsustainable and of not particular value to the US. Henceforth, for Japan to merit special attention from Washington it will, ironically, have to find its voice and learn to act more independently of the US. It will have to demonstrate its ability to undertake political initiatives independent of and even (occasionally) in opposition to the US. Meanwhile, Japan must have a serious discussion on security policy, determining just how dependent Japan should be on the US for its security as the US reconfigures its presence and just how prepared Japan is to contribute its forces abroad, if ever. Any discussion on security policy must be accompanied by a discussion on how Japan can pay for it all — no small matter.

The next administration can play a role in this discussion, not least by changing the tone: no more bullying, no more demanding. Instead, Washington and Tokyo urgently need to discuss the political ends of the alliance, the "constitution" of the alliance in the post-9/11 era. What are the ends to which the US expects Japan to contribute with the JSDF, and to what ends is Japan willing and able to contribute? The gap between the two visions must be openly acknowledged, and shrunk through negotiation as much as possible — but it is in that gap that Japan's future as a political power in East Asia lies, the role to be played outside the formal bounds of the alliance. The more the allies acknowledge that their interests diverge, the more space for Japan to articulate its own interests and carve out its own leadership role in East Asia.

Japan, of course, has often been more than pleased to free ride, because while the US has occasionally tried to cajole Japan to do more, it has never tried very hard or for very long. Demanding that Japan be independent — forcing Japan to be free, as it were — and treating Japan as an equal partner in the alliance (whatever the actual disparities) may be the only way to make Japan think about political ends and means and the role of the alliance in its foreign policy, and raise its value to the US as an ally.