Obamania

Leaving a meeting at Japan's House of Representatives this morning, I happened upon a group of schoolchildren on a field trip at the Diet, who proceeded to greet me by shouting "YES WE CAN!"

Can you feel the change?

Obama says what Aso can't

The impression I got from watching President Barack Obama's inaugural address is that he is acutely aware of the burden that has now fallen upon his shoulders.

But I also think that in this address he accomplishes what Prime Minister Aso Taro has thus far failed to do. He does not hesitate to state his appreciation of the darkness of the hour, but that does not stop him from maintaining that the United States can and will overcome its problems and emerge stronger for it. In his remarks Mr. Aso hurries through the first part to give vague assurances of a speedy recovery.

As President Obama said:

Our economy is badly weakened, a consequence of greed and irresponsibility on the part of some, but also our collective failure to make hard choices and prepare the nation for a new age. Homes have been lost; jobs shed; businesses shuttered. Our health care is too costly; our schools fail too many; and each day brings further evidence that the ways we use energy strengthen our adversaries and threaten our planet.

These are the indicators of crisis, subject to data and statistics. Less measurable but no less profound is a sapping of confidence across our land - a nagging fear that America's decline is inevitable, and that the next generation must lower its sights.

Today I say to you that the challenges we face are real. They are serious and they are many. They will not be met easily or in a short span of time. But know this, America - they will be met.

Importing the construction state?

Amity Shlaes, a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and author of a recent attempt to discredit the New Deal, has an op-ed in the Washington Post in which she looks at President-elect Barack Obama's newly announced public works plan.

Seeing the phrase "public works," she naturally thought Japan, and wrote a piece about Japan's construction state.

During the 1990s, in the midst of the lost decade (which appears to be turning into lost decades), Ms. Shlaes maintains that "Japan traded its export complex for an edifice complex." She argues that Japan became a construction state while trying to revive its faltering economy during the 1990s. The economy didn't recover, so naturally the construction state is the direct cause.

Her story of Japan's transformation to a construction state in the 1990s is a complete fairytale.

The following is from Jacob Schlesinger's Shadow Shoguns, in a chapter entitled "The Public Works State:"

In the headlong rush to rebuild after the war, construction became the main pillar of the economy. Beginning in the early 1960s, construction spending equaled about one fifth of Japan's gross national product, and by the 1980s, it created nearly one tenth of the country's jobs. So much of the business — from 30 percent to 40 percent a year — was underwritten by the government that many Japanese referred to their country as the "public works state." Indeed, Japan's public works spending as a percentage of GNP was by far the largest in the industrialized world, exceeding America's by a magnitude of four.

But of course, it doesn't help Ms. Shlaes argue against a Keynesian stimulus package focused on public works projects if she writes that the glory days of the construction state were well before the bubble burst. Indeed, Shadow Shoguns is largely the story of Tanaka Kakuei (see MTC's post on Tanakaism), who without question was the father of the construction state — whose glory days largely mirrored his time at the apex of Japanese politics, first as prime minister (1972-1974) and then as the LDP's kingmaker until the mid-1980s when he suffered a stroke. Japan had both an export complex and an edifice complex.

In short, Ms. Shlaes is egregiously dishonest in this piece. Even during the 1990s the construction state had less to do with Keynesianism pump priming — although it was a convenient front, and so much the better if it actually stimulated the economy — than with out-of-control clientelism and corruption.

So in the end Ms. Shlaes is comparing apples and oranges. Simply pointing to Japan's post-bubble construction projects is insufficient to prove that both Japan's 1990s public works and Mr. Obama's emerging public works program are both rotten apples.

The U.S. might even benefit from a sustained effort to improve its infrastructure.

Voters are a foreign country

At The Monkey Cage, a group blog authored by four political science professors at George Washington University, John Sides dissects surveys that attempt to illustrate just how much (or little) Americans know about politics.

He points to a study that shows that respondents who were given more time to respond and/or a financial reward for correct answers performed better than a control group of respondents who had only a minute to respond (and no reward).

The post is worth a look, but reading it brought to mind a bigger dilemma that I face a political analyst and political scientist-to-be.

I find it exceedingly difficult to understand the thinking of the "average" voter not just in Japan, but in my own country. As someone whose days are spent following the news and reading and writing commentary, I find it impossible to imagine what facts, ideas, and prejudices shape voter decisions, and as this study shows, the US news media — which often reports on surveys illustrating the ignorance of the American people and I suspect skews its political coverage accordingly — probably doesn't have any better idea about what voters think.

That said, as Professor Sides notes, "If the average respondent in every group answered about 5 or 6 out of 14 questions, is this 'sweeping generalization' really that inaccurate? Is most of the variance in knowledge really explained by, well, knowledge, rather than by a lack of effort or ability to recall the answers correctly?"

I don't doubt that the average voter, who maybe glances at the headlines of the daily newspaper a few times a week and watches a few minutes of evening news a week, has a limited knowledge of political trivia, but what does that mean for voting behavior? Do ignorant voters equal bad voters?

The Iowa winners

I am back to New York after my sojourn in Tokyo.

In honor of my return to the US, here are links to a couple posts at The Reality-Based Community on Barack Obama and former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee, written by Steven Teles, a former professor of mine. I particularly like his dissection of the sheer insanity of Huckabee's policy ideas.

Can anyone say straw man?

Komori Yoshihisa, defender of Japan's honor Sankei Shimbun's editor at large based in Washington, has "exposed" the alleged activities of Chinese-American groups in putting the screws on House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Tom Lantos (D-CA-12) and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA-8) to get them both to support rapid passage of the comfort women resolution.

Komori argues that Lantos, who was supposedly content with Prime Minister Abe's remarks during his visit to Washington in late April, has changed his mind due to pressure from Asian-American groups, including the Global Alliance for Preserving the History of World War II in Asia and Chinese Americans for Democracy in Taiwan. He seemingly bases his argument on an article from the Bay City News Service in early June, in which Ignatius Ding, executive vice president of the aforementioned Global Alliance, complained about being ignored by Lantos and Pelosi, and that if Lantos did not change his course, "it would be time for new representation" in California 12, which the article notes is 33% Asian-American.

That is a very thin basis for claiming that the passage of the bill in Lantos's committee and its likely passage by the whole House is the product of the activism of Asian-American groups.

First, what is the basis for thinking that Lantos, who was re-elected with 76% of the vote in 2006 and has never be re-elected with lower than 66% of the vote, is concerned that an interest group has threatened to challenge him next year? Even assuming that Asian-American voters united to unseat Lantos, would that be enough to remove him?

Second, and more insulting, why does Komori not even entertain the possibility that perhaps Lantos came to see the merit in passing the resolution after a bunch of Abe's cronies chose to remind Washington why the resolution needed to be considered in the first place?

It is simply too easy a dodge to point at Asian-American activist groups and blame them for what Congress does, and it is fallacious to argue that Congress and its members are simply cat's paws at the mercy of lobbyists. H.Res.121 passed the House Foreign Affairs Committee by a 39-2 margin, with Congressmen Paul and Tancredo, the lone dissenting votes, opposing on constitutional grounds, not out of sympathy with Japan. H.Res.121 now has 151 co-sponsors from both parties and from all parts of the country. Are there some members who have signed on to this resolution because it is a risk-free way of (potentially) gaining the support of Asian-American voters? Sure. Is it all a conspiracy by Asian-American groups, acting in cahoots with Seoul, Beijing, and Pyongyang, to turn the US against Japan (a Manchurian resolution, in other words)? I, for one, am skeptical of this argument, which has been advanced in one form or another all across the non-Japanese Japan blogosphere. (Try here and here to start.) As hard as it is to believe, maybe members of Congress actually think that "Japanese public and private officials have recently expressed a desire to dilute or rescind the 1993 statement by Chief Cabinet Secretary Yohei Kono on the 'comfort women', which expressed the Government's sincere apologies and remorse for their ordeal."

Maybe, just maybe, Japan has yet to make proper amends from its crimes, and that saying so does not necessarily make one a Japan basher. While at one point in this process it was reasonable to ask whether Congress should be sitting in judgment of history, now that the H.Res.121 has been passed on to the full House and waits in the pipeline, that question is moot.

Like it or not, Congress will consider this resolution — and if it must, I would rather it act on the side of historical justice than not act and shield the revisionists, relativists, and outright deniers of Imperial Japan's systematic crimes against its neighbors.

Fukuyama on democracy

Francis Fukuyama, in a brief essay posted at the Guardian, argues against connecting his "end of history" thesis with the Bush administration's foreign policy. (Hat tip: Andrew Sullivan)

I can think of few contemporary ideas that have been more misunderstood than Fukuyama's argument in his original essay "The End of History?" in The National Interest and his subsequent book, The End of History and the Last Man. His argument was not a triumphalist paean to liberal democracy at the end of the cold war. Rather, as the appending of "the Last Man" to the title of the book suggests, Fukuyama sought to spell out the full implications of an increasingly liberal democratic world, and by using Nietzsche as a starting point, clearly presented a more nuanced view than those who often refer to "the end of history" realize.

In any case, I especially liked the conclusion to Fukuyama's essay:

I never linked the global emergence of democracy to American agency, and particularly not to the exercise of American military power. Democratic transitions need to be driven by societies that want democracy, and since the latter requires institutions, it is usually a fairly long and drawn out process.

Outside powers like the US can often help in this process by the example they set as politically and economically successful societies. They can also provide funding, advice, technical assistance, and yes, occasionally military force to help the process along. But coercive regime change was never the key to democratic transition.

Democratization cannot be primarily a military project, nor, ultimately, can it be primarily a foreign project. Democracy can only emerge when a nation desires it, and is willing to work towards a democratic governance, at which it is fitting and proper for the developed democracies to give their support.

Fukuyama's point about the US and other developed countries serving as examples for aspiring democracies is interesting in light of something I heard the other day at a campaign rally in Zushi. With the first wave of unified local elections scheduled for this Sunday, 8 April, Japan is in the throes of an intense bout of campaigning, with candidates presenting themselves before the public at railway stations throughout Japan. On Tuesday I observed Kanagawa Governor Matsuzawa Shigefumi, who is up for reelection, outlining his goals for political reform in Kanagawa. Interestingly, in talking about the need for term limits, he pointed respectfully to the American political system, saying that although President Clinton was extremely popular, he was still constitutionally required to retire. The point is that while it has become popular to speak about how little foreign countries respect and admire the US, I think this is exaggerated: at its best, the American political system still is a model for democracies everywhere, something all Americans -- but especially American elected officials -- would do well to remember. The rest of the world is watching closely.

Finally, a more profound and older expression of the ideas found in Fukuyama's essay was penned by British political philosopher Michael Oakeshott, who wrote the following in his essay "Political Education":

When a matter of attending to arrangements is to be transplanted from the society in which it has grown up into another society (always a questionable enterprise), the simplification of an ideology may appear as an asset. If, for example, the English manner of politics is to be planted elsewhere in the world, it is perhaps appropriate that it should first be abridged into something called 'democracy' before it is packed up and shipped abroad. There is, of course, an alternative method: the method by which what is exported is the detail and not the abridgment of the tradition and the workmen travel with the tools -- the method which made the British Empire. But it is a slow and costly method. And, particularly with men in a hurry, l'homme á programme with his abridgment wins every time; his slogans enchant, while the resident magistrate is seen only as a sign of servility. But whatever the apparent appropriateness on occasion of the ideological style of politics, the defect of the explanation of political activity connected with it becomes apparent when we consider the sort of knowledge and the kind of education it encourages us to believe is sufficient for understanding the activity of attending to the arrangements of society. For it suggests that a knowledge of the chosen political ideology can take the place of understanding a tradition of political behavior. The wand and the book come to be regarded as themselves potent, and not merely the symbols of potency. The arrangements of society are made to appear, not as manners of behavior, but as pieces of machinery to be transported about the world indiscriminately.

"Nobody running in 2008 is qualified to be president"

So says The New Republic's John Judis, in an article that more or less sums up my take on the US presidential election that is still more than a year and a half away.

Judis makes the case that foreign policy being the unique preserve of the presidency, the main criteria by which to evaluate presidential candidates should be the candidate's foreign policy experience. Wrote Judis:

...For a century now, America has played a large, and since World War II, the largest role in global affairs; and by the the Constitution's delegation of military leadership and initiative in treaty-making and appointments, the president rather than Congress has the chief responsibility for America's role in the world. Congress and the public can stop a president from privatizing social security, but the president regularly wages war without a declaration from Congress--and sometimes, as in the case of American intervention in the Balkans, without significant public support. It would seem that the first question voters should be asking is about a candidate's foreign policy experience. And with the war in Iraq still raging, and America's relations with the rest of the world in disrepair, that's particularly true in the forthcoming presidential election. But you wouldn't know if from the current frontrunners.

It is for that reason that I am particularly dismayed about this presidential campaign already.

The US needs to have a serious, sustained national discussion about the US role in the world, and it seems that a presidential campaign would be the ideal time to have such a discussion. But, as Judis, notes, barely any of the candidates have serious, comprehensive ideas about American foreign policy, in part because so few of them have ever been in an important foreign policymaking position. The exception is Senator John McCain, who has long been involved with US foreign and defense policy in the Senate, and as an Asian specialist I'm especially inclined to support Senator McCain because he actually has a clue about the changing shape of the Asia-Pacific region. (It is telling that McCain called attention to the publication of the second Armitage-Nye Report on the floor of the Senate.)

But, that said, I don't think McCain has necessarily risen to the challenge of the moment, which demands a serious reconsideration of American power and the ends to which it can and should be used in an international system that is more complex, a system in which the traditional tools in a state's toolbox (read military power) are harder to use. I'm with Daniel Drezner in this post: the problem is bigger than the perceived failure of American stewardship. It's also not simply a function of setting up the proper international institutions, as this post at Winds of Change seems to suggest in reference to the same piece to which Drezner was responding.

So I will continue to wait for a candidate (or candidates) to outline a more comprehensive foreign policy perspective, but I am not getting my hopes up. I fear that the US will continue to muddle through in response to changing circumstances, rather than pausing to consider the best course of action.

The 'comfort women' issue explodes

The news today is that the Abe Cabinet, while apparently still respecting the 1993 Kono statement on the 'comfort women' issue, will not issue another apology, even if the US Congress passes a resolution calling for Japan to apologize.

As suggested by two articles in South Korea's Chosun Ilbo -- found here and here -- Abe's remarks last week may have nullified any progress he has made since coming to office in forging a rapprochement with Seoul.

Once again the failure of the postwar Japanese polity to account fully for the totality of Imperial Japan's crimes during the war continues to haunt Japan and cast a shadow over its efforts to become a more substantial contributor to regional and international security.

But Japan's failures still do not justify the US Congress passing this resolution. I want to respond to a comment made on this previous post, which challenges the view presented by Michael Green in the Yomiuri article I translated.

Before I go respond, however, I must emphasize that I have deep sympathy for those who suffered at the hands of Imperial Japan, just as I have deep sympathy for the victims of each and every of the twentieth century's brutal regimes. That does not mean, however, that I want my representatives in Congress meting out historical justice. That is the issue with which I'm concerned, not the substance of the resolution.

So first, the poster -- who signs her post as 'Shrinegirl' -- launches an ad hominem attack on Green for being "quite uninformed" and lacking "understanding of the American political process." She accuses Green of "McCarthyism" -- that old smear -- for suggesting that some of the NGOs involved in pushing for the resolution having North Korea's backing. Having seen no evidence one way or the other, I'm not inclined to dismiss this immediately; it seems entirely plausible that at least one NGO involved in this debate has received support from North Korea. He did not name any organization in particular, so it's foolish to read that to mean Amnesty International or any other interested organization.

The poster goes on to write: "It is wrong to call it a history issue. The Comfort Women is among the many unresolved historical issues still having a profound impact on regional relations. Cooperation and stability is fundamental to ther success of the 2 Party Talks and to overall security. The US Congress has every right to be concerned about how its major ally in Asia represents itself, especially to other US allies like South Korea, Australia, and Singapore. In terms or women's rights this issue has very contemporary resonance."

I take exceptional issue with the argument that this is not a "history issue." That is all this issue is (or should be). The question of historical fact -- and judgments about historical right and wrong insofar as the behavior of foreign governments and peoples are concerned -- are not matters to be resolved by legislators, in any legislature. (Congress is free to apologize for whatever mistakes it feels the US government has made.) The twentieth century was a terrible century, perhaps the worst in human history in terms of the crimes committed by humans against others. I strongly doubt that a panel of US representatives is competent to determine which group of twentieth century victims is most deserving of justice (which also assumes that the US Congress is in a position to deliver "justice"). Who is to determine which cause is most worthy of congressional support? At the moment, it seems that the victims that are best organized get Congress's help in their pursuit of justice, as a similar dynamic is at work in a current debate on a similar congressional resolution condemning Turkey for the Armenian genocide, discussed in this Washington Post op-ed by Jackson Diehl. (It's strikingly similar: proposed by a Democratic congressman from a California district heavily populated by the aggrieved minority group, the Turkey resolution has prompted lobbying by the Turkish government, angry denunciations, and the potential for geopolitical consequences.)

This is a matter for the historians, because that is exactly what is at issue: Japanese leaders have yet to face up to the whole weight of burden of Japanese history. Japan's skeletons have been allowed to hang in the closet for too long, in part because after the war the Japanese people could tell themselves that they were victims too, because of the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. As described by Ian Buruma in The Wages of Guilt, his excellent book on German and Japanese efforts to cope with their wartime behavior, Japan's unique status as the only country to date attacked with nuclear weapons meant that Japan's wartime past was not dealt with openly in the same way that postwar Germany dealt with the crimes of the Third Reich.

One measly congressional resolution is not going to make up for six decades of failing to address Japan's past properly. That is a job for historians, ideally Japanese historians: to end the obfuscation of Japanese politicians, Japanese historians must not hesitate in documenting the facts of the war as well as possible. I know, however, that in recent years the academic environment surrounding Japan's wartime behavior has become decidedly unfriendly to those unwilling to toe the nationalist line -- but this means that Japanese historians will have to look abroad for venues in which to document the truth of Japan's wartime behavior. (A tiny disclosure: I have been assisting with one such effort.)

This congressional resolution has already had the unintended consequence of leading the Japanese government to dig in its heels in resisting the resolution, complicating efforts to put East Asian international relations on a more stable ground -- and surely making it less likely that Japan will fully accept the facts of its wartime misbehavior. (As this debate rages, Tokyo Governor Ishihara Shintaro's film glorifying kamikaze pilots -- I Go to Die for You -- is on the brink of its debut.) I have no doubt that the groups pushing for this resolution are well-intentioned, but in politics good intentions can have disastrous consequences, and this may well be one such case.

Finally, this poster suggests, "The heart of the resolution is regional reconciliation, and Mr Abe successfully ended that." I don't disagree with the latter half of that statement, but I strongly dispute the former. Whatever the intentions of this resolution, it will not result in regional reconciliation. For genuine reconciliation requires that the parties involved want to be reconciled. Beyond Japan's failures in regard to its history, for all their moralizing about Japan's past, do Korea and China really want to be reconciled with Japan? Arguably both find the issue of Japan's history to be a useful safety valve for domestic discontent.

This post has gone on for far too long, but seeing as how this is the hot-button issue of the moment, a long post was required.

Negroponte chides Congress

The Japan Times reports that US Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte has criticized Congress for the comfort women resolution, saying, "Our view is what happened during the war was most deplorable. But as far as some kind resolution of this issue (is concerned), this is something that must be dealt with between Japan and the countries that were affected."

Thus the medium- and long-term implications of this resolution are unclear. Should it pass, it may produce some momentary unpleasantness -- but once again the executive branch will be in a position of defending Japan from critics in Congress, suggesting that the resolution will probably not result in undue harm to efforts to transform US forward deployments in Japan or strengthen the alliance.

Preserving American dynamism

As the 2008 US presidential election ramps up, it seems that the biggest looming question -- perhaps even bigger than Iraq -- is the question of how to preserve America's economic dynamism in the face of intense competition from the BRICs and others. Will the US economy and society be able to adapt successfully to the post-industrial world?

It seems that Barack Obama hasn't quite accepted that the challenge facing the US will not be solved by the same tired policies, at least according to this piece by economist Thomas Sowell (via RealClearPolitics). Simply easing the pain won't work; nor, for that matter, will propping up the old pillars of the Democratic Party. The Democratic Party needs to become a post-industrial party, that not only pushes for relief to those harmed by globalization, but also realizes the importance of reconstructing the American economy from the ground up, to ensure that younger generations have the tools to compete.

Bill Gates -- perhaps the poster boy for the post-industrial economy -- has an op-ed in the Washington Post pointing to how the American education system needs to change. He writes:

Our schools can do better. Last year, I visited High Tech High in San Diego; it's an amazing school where educators have augmented traditional teaching methods with a rigorous, project-centered curriculum. Students there know they're expected to go on to college. This combination is working: 100 percent of High Tech High graduates are accepted into college, and 29 percent major in math or science. Contrast that with the national average of 17 percent.

To remain competitive in the global economy, we must build on the success of such schools and commit to an ambitious national agenda for education. Government and businesses can both play a role. Companies must advocate for strong education policies and work with schools to foster interest in science and mathematics and to provide an education that is relevant to the needs of business. Government must work with educators to reform schools and improve educational excellence.

Compare that with what Sowell notes about Obama's views on changing the American education system:

He thinks higher teacher pay is the answer to the abysmal failures of our education system, which is already far more expensive than the education provided in countries whose students have for decades consistently outperformed ours on international tests.

This sounds like a great way of rewarding teachers, who, through their unions, have remained one of the biggest pillars of support for the Democratic Party, but not a particularly great way to reconstruct the American education system. Changing American education means changing how and what American students are taught -- not simply pumping in more money for teachers or computers. It will actually require people to think about what's best for America's future, instead of doing what Washington does best: throwing money at problems.

For all of Obama's talk about how he wants to do things differently, is there actually any substance to his rhetoric? And, if not him, is there anyone else in the field who gets it?

Bush, Sr. meets Abe

Former US President George H.W. Bush visited Japan on Saturday and met with Prime Minister Abe Shinzo (and, incidentally, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who was in Tokyo for meetings with Abe).

I can't help but laugh at the symbolism of Abe meeting with George H.W. Bush, with whom I compared Abe in this post. Abe -- the grandson and nephew of prime ministers and the son of a strong contender for the premiership, raised in politics but utterly lacking a common touch -- meeting with George H.W. Bush, US president, son of a senator, father of a president and a governor, who was famously described by the late Ann Richards as being born with "a silver foot in his mouth." A truly priceless photo-op.

But seriously, the more I think about the comparison between the two, the more valid it seems: Abe, groomed for the premiership, seems to have no idea what to do now that he's moved into the Kantei. Bush, for all his acclaimed successes in foreign policy, by self-admission lacked "the vision thing," and could never articulate the larger purpose of his presidency.

Maybe Bush was giving Abe pointers on how to be charismatic...

The paranoid fantasies of Lou Dobbs

This morning before work I caught Lou Dobbs on CNN International while flipping through the news channels. In the span of the few minutes I watched, he reported on grassroots efforts to fight illegal immigration quashed by the US corporations and the government, US cooperation on policing with "totalitarian" Red China, "the march of the leftists" in Latin America, and the specter of Putin's menacing new Russia.

Much attention has been focused on his staunch economic populism and anti-globalism. This attention is not misplaced or unwarranted, but just from watching a few minutes of his show I discerned a much broader and much more dangerous worldview than simple economic nationalism.

As the stories mentioned above indicate, Dobbs essentially believes that America is a haven amidst a sea of troubles. The countries of the world are dysfunctional and/or dangerous. Unfair economic competition is only one facet of the dangers posed by the rest of the world. Foreign governments and peoples are hostile to America, and therefore we must retreat within our borders, tend our own garden, and watch the world fall to pieces.

Even if this approach were possible, it would be undesirable. Despite apparent disorder in the short term, the world may be on the brink of true peace and prosperity, as the likelihood of great-power war diminishes and billions of people are pulled out of debilitating poverty by economic liberalization. The US has an interest in using its power to usher this new era into being, and interdependence means that it has little choice in the matter. Thus to view the world as a cavalcade of threats to the American way of life is paranoid to the extreme.

Take his views on China. His report on US cooperation on policing and law enforcement expressed bafflement at the "contradictions" in US China policy. This reporting is gravely misleading, given that as every observer of US-China relations knows, US policy vis-a-vis Beijing has been riddled with contradictions ever since Nixon and Kissinger went to China. "Coopetition" is the watchword of the relationship, as every US administration since 1972 has found in China a potential partner in the management of regional security and, post-1978, a trading partner of ever-growing importance, even as the same administrations saw a looming threat to Taiwan and a brutal oppressor of its own people. But China is changing rapidly, and in unknown ways -- it's impossible to know what it will look like in ten, or even five, years. So to talk of "Red China" like some kind of 1950s newsreel is unhelpful in the extreme. The US should cooperate wherever possible and criticize and cajole only when necessary, but most importantly it must not view China as a kind of unmitigated enemy of America.

In short, America must not succumb to Dobbsian paranoia. The challenge of my generation -- indeed of every generation of American leaders -- will be to use American power to help usher in a more peaceful, prosperous world, which necessarily means rejecting the fear peddled by Lou Dobbs and his ilk.

Final roundup on the Democratic victory

In the past day several writers have produced worthwhile post-mortems on the elections that have echoed my concerns about the Democratic victory.

First, at the New Republic website (free registration required), John Judis -- who must be happy now that he can return to his "emerging Democratic majority" trope -- provides a sober review of the election that suggests that the Democrats benefited in 2006 from "Perot voters":

In the South, independents tend to be former Democrats who have begun to vote Republican but are unwilling to describe themselves as Republicans. In the North and West, however, they occupy a much more distinct political niche. They include libertarian-minded professionals and small-business owners--especially in the West--and white working-class voters in the Northeast and Midwest. They are equally uncomfortable with the feminist left and the religious right. What they dislike most is government interference in their personal lives. They see Washington as corrupt and want it reformed. They favor balanced budgets but also Social Security and Medicare. They worry about U.S. companies moving their plants to Mexico and about China exporting underpriced goods to the United States. They favor a strong military, but they want it used strictly against foreign aggression.

In the 1980s, these voters generally supported Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush; but, in 1992, many of them abandoned Bush for Ross Perot, who received 18.9 percent of the national vote. Perot did well in the West, Midwest, and Northeast, but not in the Deep South. In 1994, two-thirds of Perot voters, disgusted with what they saw as continuing corruption in Washington, backed the Gingrich revolution, accounting for much of the GOP's success outside the Deep South.

It's Perot's variety of anti-globalization -- if anti-globalization is the word for it -- that characterizes the positions of many members of the new Democratic majorities in the House and Senate. They support a kind of populism at home, populism abroad, that sees the struggle between Main Street and Wall Street as little different than the struggle of the US against foreign countries that supposedly play dirty: Japan in the 1980s, China and the other BRICs today. I doubt these voters would think of using the word "anti-globalization" to describe their positions, and compared to those who proudly wear that label, they're not. They just want the fair deal they think they deserve individually, and that the US deserves internationally.

While this position sounds innocuous enough, the policies that could result from this sense of insecurity -- whether retaliatory tariffs against countries with trade and exchange policies deemed detrimental to theUS or the rejection of bilateral trade agreements that have strategic as well as economic merit and multilateral and regional agreements that could assist development in benighted regions of the world -- could devastate the international economic order and effectively cede US leadership to...well, that's anyone's guess. (For an example of foreign fears of economic retaliation from the Democratic Congress, see this article in the English edition of South Korea's largest circulation daily, the Chosun Ilbo.)

So the question is what the Democrats will do to ease the insecurity of their new constituents. As Judis writes, "In this election, the Bush administration's failure in Iraq and the corruption of the Republican Congress allowed this heterogeneous group to find a temporary home in the Democratic Party. But it will take all the ingenuity and craft that Democrats can muster to turn this halfway house into a permanent residence for a long-term Democratic majority." Will they build their "permanent" majority by pandering to the fears of these homeless voters, or will they find a way to convince them to "buy in" to globalization, introducing reforms that alleviate their insecurity and convince them that they too can benefit from global economic openness? If they opt for the latter, the Democrats will be doing a great service to the country -- something that George Bush's Republican Party has yet to attempt.

Gerard Baker too suggests, in his column in The Times, that the results of the election hardly provide a clear policy mandate. He wrote:

Republicans lost not because the American people have suddenly seen the wisdom of the collective leadership of the European Union or the editorial pages of the world’s press but because they deserved to lose.

When you foul up as comprehensively as this Administration and Congress have done for six years you need to spend a period of time contemplating politics from the other side. The recent debate on these pages about whether Iraq was a bad idea in origin or just badly executed has been entertaining but jejeune from a political standpoint. It is literally impossible to know whether it was misconceived because what is absolutely certain is that is has been almost miraculously mismanaged from the moment Baghdad fell.

When you throw in “Heckuva Job” Katrina and a Congress that has devoted most of its time to enriching itself at the expense of every principle and value it was supposed to hold dear, you wonder why anyone even doubted that the good common sense of Americans would demand a change.

And how. It seems that all that mattered this year was that the candidate had a "D" next to his or her name on the ballot.

Baker ends with a note of doubt, however, suggesting that the (James) Baker survey on Iraq due in several weeks could, combined with the new Democratic majorities, spell the end of the line for the Bush administration's revolutionary project to transform the Greater Middle East.

Meanwhile, in the FT, former Harvard President Lawrence Summers suggests that previous "repudiation elections" in which the opposition parties made significant gains as voters rejected the sitting president's policies may provide a guide to the next two years in American politics. Summers too concludes that there is no clear way forward regarding domestic and foreign policies. He expects that both sides will be maneuvering to the center, with neither party getting everything that it wants. Bush may actually have to use the veto pen, or else make real efforts to compromise with the opposition.

The American political system will likely benefit from the change. One benefit may be that by no longer being locked out of power, the Democrats could shed the poisonous anti-Bush rhetoric that has characterized their past six years in the wilderness.

In any case, the only clear conclusion that can be drawn from this election is that the American electorate punished the Republican Party for a series of policy failures and for the shameless corruption of congressional Republicans. What the new majority will mean in terms of policy will remain largely unknown until next year.

Japan watches and waits

As the Election Day dust settles in Washington, foreign governments are watching closely to see what will change.

Japan is no exception. Arguably, for Japan and Asia as a whole (with the potential exception of congressional retaliation aimed at China), the impact will mainly be felt in its impact on how the Bush administration conducts foreign policy rather than in any substantive policy change emanating from Congress.

Sean, over at White Peril, comments on the Nihon Keizai Shimbun's comments the changes in Washington. Sean suggests that the Japanese are worried about the impact of the election results on the US-Japan alliance, and he's right to note that the Japanese trust the GOP more on the alliance, but I think "worry" might be too strong a word. The alliance remains the exclusive preserve of alliance managers at the Pentagon and, to a lesser extent, the National Security Council and State Department. Beyond that, there is a bipartisan consensus on the alliance, as indicated by this noted 2000 report on improving the alliance being the product of a bipartisan study group co-chaired by former Clinton administration Assistant Secretary of Defense Joseph Nye and soon-to-be (at that time) Bush administration Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage.

The Yomiuri Shimbun, in fact, in its editorial (in Japanese) on the election suggests that it may be an exaggeration to call President Bush a lame duck; it points to major foreign policy initiatives launched by Presidents Reagan and Clinton in the final years of their terms to suggest that Bush is not doomed to irrelevance yet. It argues, furthermore, that the presidency still retains considerable foreign policy powers, regardless of who controls Congress. The Yomiuri does express concern that the ongoing failure in Iraq may distract the administration from North Korea, allowing Pyongyang to continue developing a nuclear arsenal unhindered, but that is a danger regardless of which party controls Congress. If anything, should Iraq continue to crumble, Bush may turn to Northeast Asia in the hope that he might restore some respectability to his legacy by helping to ease the Kim Family regime out of power and create a new regional order. That may depend in part, however, on how Bush gets along with Prime Minister Abe, about which we'll learn more next week when they hold a bilateral summit on the sidelines of the APEC meeting in Hanoi.

Given that Japan hosts thousands of US military personnel, the departure of Rumsfeld -- a fanatical advocate of the global transformation of US forces overseas -- may prove more important to Japan than the transfer of power on Capitol Hill. Indeed, the Asahi Shimbun ran a long article speculating on the consequences of Rumsfeld's departure for the planned transformation of US deployments in Japan, agreed upon in May 2006. Asahi quotes Chief Cabinet Secretary Shiozaki as noting that the two governments have agreed on these matters together, so the policy remains unchanged, although Japan may have to continue to wait for progress in implementing the transformation plan. Shiozaki may be right, but given the wait that has followed the initial US-Japan agreement on Futenma in autumn 1995, a similar wait may be in the offing.

Given that Gates's appointment comes as something of a surprise, it is hard to know what his priorities will be (outside of Iraq) upon coming to office. He began his career as a Sovietologist, and does not appear to have any particular expertise or interest in Japan; with the US foreign policy apparatus lacking Japan hands in senior positions (unlike in the early years of the administration), US-Japan defense relations may be pushed down the agenda for want of a policy entrepreneur to push the issue forward. Much will depend on the Bush-Abe relationship. I doubt that it will be as strong as the Bush-Koizumi relationship, which could mean that the process of reforming the alliance will stall, as it did in the final years of the Clinton administration.

An end to openness?

Obviously the biggest stories of the day -- pretty much all around the world -- are the Democratic majorities in the House and the Senate and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld's resignation.

I gave my take on the former yesterday, in this post, but I want to call attention to comments on the election over at Maderblog, and a column by Jacob Weisberg appearing simultaneously in Slate and the FT. I think Weisberg nails it on the head. I am not going to be shedding tears for the departed Republican majority, but at the same time I think there are real worries that the incoming crop of Democrats could mean a significant turn away from the US commitment to free trade and other policies that undergird that spread of globalization. If the Democrats think they can fix structural problems in the American economy related to the transition from an industrial to a post-industrial society by scapegoating foreigners, whether in the form of Mexican illegal immigration or those scheming cadres in Beijing, they are in for a shock.

The US and other developed economies are in the midst of a major shift to an economic model that for the most part is not rooted in the production of tangible items. For people in developed countries still engaged in these activities, the shift is proving painful, as developing countries have out-competed them. But US economic policy must not be "Ohioized"; the only way is forward, with the federal government acting to limit the destructive impact of the reordering on citizens employed in sunset industries and easing the transition to the new economic order. Meanwhile, the US needs to maintain its liberal trade policy, using access to its market as a carrot to induce developing countries along the path to capitalism, and ultimately liberal democracy. (Daniel Drezner has more on this meme here.)

Congress alone may be unable to implement an agenda detrimental to economic openness, but it can stymie the administration's effort to promote openness, most notably by withholding trade promotion authority from the president, as noted by Weisberg. This means that the White House must redouble its efforts to secure a multilateral trade agreement (with regional and bilateral trade agreements second-best options). And it means, as I've said before, that Henry Paulson will be the most important cabinet official during the final two years of Bush's presidency, especially now that Rumsfeld has resigned.

The importance of Henry Paulson

So the Democrats reclaim the House. And the Senate remains within reach, with results from two races pending.

There's not much I can say about this that isn't being said elsewhere, but what I will say is that Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson may now be the most important man in the Bush administration, if not in all of Washington, because he now stands between China and congressional Democrats eager to punish China from growing. Paulson, who in recent months has emerged as the point man on US-China policy, will have to ensure that the Democratic House does not do something stupid, like imposing tariffs to goad China into raising its exchange rate.

Ironic that an administration that entered office determined not to view China as a "strategic competitor" is now in a position of defending China from China bashers in Congress. (Or maybe not so ironic, because since Nixon went to China it seems that the executive branch always finds itself defending China, while Congress bashes China, whether on human rights, trade, or national security grounds.)

Nevertheless, Paulson's significance remains. He will have his work cut out for him, but given that he has already performed well in office -- possessing more power in the administration than both of his Bush administration predecessors combined -- I expect that he will be up to the task.

Pre-election doubt

I said that I would try to limit my discussion of American politics, but I read a few pieces today upon which I couldn't resist commenting.

First, in the FT Alan Beattie writes about American attitudes towards globalization, noting that despite the common perception that Americans are much more tolerant than Europeans of the "negative" consequences of globalization for the American economy, Americans have many of the same fears and doubts as Europeans when it comes to dealing with the dislocation caused by economic openness.

Why is this important?

Well, as this analytical essay by Edward Luce and Krishna Guha, also in the FT, suggests, the Democratic party appears to have turned away from the commitment to economic liberalization that characterized the Clinton administration's international economic policy (also discussed in this New Republic essay [free registration required] by Peter Beinhart on the liberal flirtation with populist CNN broadcaster Lou Dobbs). Should the Democrats abandon a commitment to globalization, the US will see a partisan divide reminiscent of the 1890s, as the central political issue becomes the degree to which the US partakes in the global economy.

If the stakes were high in the 1890s, they are innumerably higher now, with the US now a leading engine of growth for the entire global economy. The danger is that should the perception that large numbers of middle-class Americans are being devastated by globalization take hold, the beleaguered defenders of an open economy and open global economic system may be able to do little to stop the US from undertaking a populist rampage, turning on other economic powers for their "cheating" and scaling back the US commitment to globalization, with untold consequences for the US and the global economy.

At the same time, however, even as this issue looms over the political landscape, America's political class seems to have no interest in actually discussing how to ensure that the US remains committed to furthering globalization. As Christopher Hitchens writes in an op-ed in the Times (of London) -- a piece that expresses my thoughts exactly -- the election campaign this fall has been fought over trivial questions, not the great national questions that must be answered.

The behavior of America's political class and its various hangers-on on K Street and in the media this year show them all to be incapable of leading the country properly, but sadly I don't expect them to be replaced anytime soon (and no, a Democratic pickup of one or both houses will not qualify). America needs real, fundamental change in how it thinks and talks about politics, and, in particular, how it talks about America's place in the world. The dividing wall between domestic and foreign policy in the US has broken down, and America's leaders need to start talking and acting as if they recognize that fact.