The LDP opts for fear

With less than a month to the general election, Aso Taro and the LDP continue to face what looks like certain defeat. The DPJ continues to enjoy a sizable and solid lead in public opinion polls, the latest being an Asahi poll that showed the DPJ favored in the proportional representation race by a margin of 39% to 22%.

More significantly, as August began, a meeting of nine private-sector groups (the Twenty-First Century Rincho) — including industrial groups, think tanks, and unions — declared that the LDP-Komeito coalition government had largely failed to deliver on its promises from the 2005 general election. Criticism from Rengo, the private-sector union associated with the DPJ, is not surprising, but the Keizai Doyukai was scathing in its criticism, castigating the coalition for failing to reform how the government taxes and spends as well as the strained social security system. The LDP was lambasted for failing to exercise political leadership, for letting power flow back to bureaucrats and their zoku allies in the LDP. All in all, a failing grade for the government.

What's the LDP to do to pick up some momentum and possibly turn the tide in the two weeks before the election campaign officially begins?

Scare the public, of course.

Aso began his national tour over the weekend with a visit to Niigata, to — you guessed it — the site where Yokota Megumi is said to have been kidnapped from in 1977. Paired with the prime minister's rhetoric — "the DPJ is clearly an irresponsible party" — the message couldn't be any clearer. The LDP, the responsible party, will not only restore growth, but it will bring the abductees home, "defend that which should be defended," including tradition, history, the Imperial Family, the Japanese language, and the national flag. Will the DPJ, he asked at an event in Aichi, fly the flag given its alliance with Nikkyoso [the teachers' union]? Given the results of the aforementioned Asahi poll, which showed that respondents favor the DPJ over the LDP on fixing the government's finances and restoring growth by sizable margins but favor the LDP over the DPJ on foreign and defense policy by a 49% to 27% margin, perhaps the LDP can make up some ground stressing the danger of trusting the DPJ with power — except that of course the public cares about the other two areas (and welfare state issues, not included in this poll) far more than they do about foreign policy. How many voters will be voting on the basis of foreign policy, after all? (Incidentally, while Aso was visiting Niigata and talking solemnly about bringing the abductees home, the abductees' families were alarmed that the LDP had "buried" the abductee issue in the manifesto, as they insist that rescuing the abductees is the "greatest national issue.")

But the LDP will be happy to run with this line — and it will undoubtedly be happy for the support from friends in Washington echoing the party line on the "irresponsible" DPJ. For example, Armchair Asia points to remarks from Michael Green about the DPJ's having "no plan for transferring power," a statement that is an outright lie. One could argue about the quality of the party's transition plan but the plan's existence is not a matter of opinion. And, incidentally, its plans for transition are not secret. It has been making the plan's contents known in the months leading up to the election.

The LDP stands naked before the voters as a party that stands for nothing more (or less) than staying power. This is true of all political parties to a certain extent, but most parties do a better job covering their naked ambition with ideological or programmatic clothing. Accordingly, the coverage provided by the LDP's manifesto is thin indeed: LDP rule will endure on the basis of green policies to draw in urban voters and outright protectionism and subsidies for the traditional supporters among farmers and small- and medium-sized enterprises.

How long is it, however, before the DPJ responds to the relentless LDP attack on the DPJ's ability to wield power? This campaign is far from over, after all. DPJ President Hatoyama Yukio has begun taking a more aggressive line of attack, criticizing the LDP for its "failures" in campaign stops over the weekend. He characterized the LDP's manifesto as "utter nonsense" and ridiculed Aso's plans for an "anime palace" as wasteful. It's a start, but the DPJ needs to remind voters that the LDP — in its mismanagement of government over the past four years, not to mention the years prior — is the dangerous party, the party that has run up the national debt, postponed social security reform, tax reform, labor-market reform, and so forth. The message is simple: the only dangerous course of action is trusting the LDP with power for another term.

A new course on the abductees

Kawamura Takeo, the chief cabinet secretary, told reporters Monday that the government is working to arrange a meeting between US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the families of Japanese abducted by North Korea.

As MTC wrote of a dinner Secretary Clinton had with Asia experts in advance of her trip, "Members of the Bush Administration Asia team committed a major blunder in failing to speak bluntly to the Japanese government and the Japanese people about the DPRK abductions issue. Having the Yokotas visit with President Bush was a nightmarishly bad decision, setting the stage for an ultimate, inevitable 'betrayal' of Japan over the DPRK terrorism delisting."

I cannot stress this point enough.

The Bush administration, for all of its good work on behalf of the alliance, nearly allowed itself to get entrapped by the Japanese right. Japanese conservatives sought not only to make Japan's North Korea policy center on the abductees — a goal largely achieved — but also to center US North Korea policy on the abductees. The US was to be the instrument by which the Japanese people would be made whole again, because US pressure in tandem with Japanese pressure would force North Korea to provide a full account of its abductions and release any surviving abductees.

Of course, if the conservatives were really focused on recovering the abductees, they would have been making overtures to China, presumably the only country with enough leverage over North Korea to get it to do anything (which may overstate the extent of Chinese influence in Pyongyang). They did not look to China for help on the abductees. Could that be because they had little interest in recovering the abductees but rather in using the abductees as a lever to take a harder line against both North Korea and China, a way to justify a more hawkish foreign policy?

Similarly, the abductees were also used as a bludgeon against the US. Consider that once the US opted to embrace the abductees by scheduling face-to-face meetings with the families for former President Bush and former US Ambassador J. Thomas Schieffer, it became difficult for senior US officials — even the vice president — to question openly the Japanese government's emphasis on the abductees. Naturally some Bush administration officials believed in the importance of abductee issue, but as the about-face on North Korea showed, not everyone believed it, because ultimately the US was able to break the bargain on the abductees and commit to negotiations with North Korea. Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill, however, was left to take much of the blame for "betrayal," with the president reassuring Japan even as the US proceeded to remove North Korea from the list of state sponsors of terrorism.

The point is that if the Obama administration is going to rest on symbolic gestures, like meeting with abductee families and taking care to stress the problem at every opportunity, it better be prepared to follow through on those gestures — or be prepared to damage the alliance.

My frustration with last year's "crisis" in the alliance was that it was completely foreseeable, and yet the Bush administration did nothing to soften the blow, nothing to convince Japanese officials to shift their focus and try to turn the attention of the Japanese public from the abductions to other pressing concerns regarding North Korea. The administration wasn't wrong to treat other issues as more important; it was wrong to continue to signal to Japan that the abductees were important to the administration when clearly the administration had other priorities in its final years.

I only hope that Secretary Clinton is conscious of this dynamic. Yes, Japanese are wondering about the durability of the US commitment to Japan following the "betrayal" of 2008. But is the way to renew the US commitment simply repeating the same empty promises that led to the sense of betrayal in the first place? It would be one thing if the Obama administration were prepared to commit political capital to solving the issue (although if it were I would have grave concerns for the administration's priorities). But I suspect that the abductees — and the alliance in general — are not among the top five priorities. So why continue the game of using the beleaguered relatives of the abductees as pawns to show that the US cares about the abductees? The alliance is desperately in need of a reassessment of each ally's expectations of the other.

Accordingly, I hope when Mr. Kawamura speaks of Mrs. Clinton's "busy schedule," he is preparing the way for the secretary's not meeting with the abductee families, for the good of the alliance of course.

The US finally goes through with delisting North Korea

The thinkable is finally the actual.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bush tries to reassure Japan

US President George W. Bush spoke with Japanese journalists before heading to Japan for the Toyako summit, and while he spoke about the summit, it seems that his interlocutors were more interested in last week's announcement that the US will proceed in removing North Korea from the list of state sponsors of terrorism.

In what Mainichi describes as an effort to still Japanese fears of "abandonment," the president insisted that he remembers his meeting with the Yokotas and that the abductees will not be forgotten.

In his attempt to reassure Japan, Mr. Bush stated that the abductions issue should be resolved within the framework of the six-party talks (presumably as opposed to the framework of Japan-North Korea bilateral talks).

Will Japanese leaders and the Japanese public be reassured by the president's words? It seems that the time of relying on the president's words has passed, and even conservatives — who, if Abe Shinzo's reliance on Mr. Bush's promises on the abductees, once put considerable stock in the president's words — are no longer content to rely on the promise of President Bush. And why should they? How does the president propose to resolve the abductions issue in a multilateral setting? Are China and South Korea prepared to pressure North Korea on the abductees. If not, the president's desire to see the abductions issue solved multilaterally is meaningless. All it means is that Japan will continue to look to others for the answer to the problem instead of looking at its own policy and asking, "What constitutes 'progress' on the abductions? What will constitute 'resolution' on the abductions?" What if the proof Japan wants doesn't exist?

There are few signs that Japan is prepared to reckon with the consequences of putting its North Korea policy in the hands of the families of the victims — and fixing that mistake. As tragic as the abductions are, Japan has squandered its influence and outsourced its North Korea policy to the US as a result of this issue. Now that the US has changed course as a result of its — or the State Department's — assessment of US national interests, Japan's leaders are left with nothing, no plan B, no new ideas, nothing but railing at the US for its abandonment of Japan.

Is there a leader in Japan — aside from this man — with the courage to challenge the abductions-centered consensus, to tell the families that as sad as it is to say, they might not get the truth until after the collapse of the DPRK, and in the meantime Japan has other goals to pursue in the region that mean shelving the abductees for now, like North Korea's nuclear program? The prevailing deal is far from perfect, and only a first step, but why shouldn't Japan be engaged in seeing the deal through in the hope that this agreement will stick? Does Japan have nothing to gain from a stabilized Korean peninsula? As Sam Roggeveen noted, even if the agreement doesn't disarm North Korea — an unlikely goal — it might result in a less belligerent North Korea, which will in turn buy China, South Korea, the US, Japan, and Russia time to plan for what to do when Kim dies, a process in which Japan ought to be deeply engaged.

Yamasaki's lonely fight

What a difference fifteen years make.

In his memoir, Abe Shinzo wrote of his lonely fight — alongside Nakagawa Shoichi and a handful of other LDP conservatives — to oppose normalization with North Korea and place the abductions issue at the center of Japan's North Korea policy. They battled against the LDP, the media, academia, and the foreign ministry to force them to consider the plight of the abductees before providing North Korea with aid and clearing the way to diplomatic recognition.

Here we are in 2008 and Mr. Abe got his wish. Resolving the abductees issue has become a primary goal of Japan's North Korea policy, a goal that enjoys substantial support in the public, the media, and the LDP. The US is pilloried for giving (symbolic) ground to North Korea without resolution of the issue — and the Fukuda government is pilloried for letting the US shift happen. Mr. Abe, Hiranuma Takeo, and other conservatives set the tone on North Korea.

And Yamasaki Taku, an advocate of normalization with North Korea, is left to fight a lonely battle against a public largely opposed to his proposal.

His fight has become a personal one, as Mr. Abe has decided to make a mission of demolishing Mr. Yamasaki's argument.

Mr. Yamasaki appears happy to reciprocate. Appearing on a Western Japan TV program Saturday, he called Mr. Abe "the howling dog" of North Korea policy, whose baying has accomplished nothing. He further insisted that it was a mistake for Japan's North Korea policy to depend largely on US pressure; Japan, he said, had to take more proactive action itself in negotiations with North Korea.

Mainichi provides a longer quote from this appearance, that makes his argument even clearer: "America's greatest national interest is stopping North Korea's nuclear development, and compromise on the nuclear issue is possible. The Japanese abductee problem is a problem in Japan-North Korea relations, and it is not an appropriate attitude to depend on another country for the solution."

What a sensible — and rare — argument for a Japanese politician to make in the midst of the moaning about the "shocking" US shift. How ironic that conservatives, interested in an independent, assertive foreign policy, cannot tolerate the US government's taking a different position. Does Japan really need the US in order to solve the abductions issue, as implied by conservative dismay over last week's announcement (Japan has lost its "America card," Mr. Hiranuma said)?

Unfortunately there are few signs that Mr. Yamasaki's view will win out. The government is proceeding gingerly, emphasizing that nothing has changed yet and declaring that the Fukuda government will continue to make a priority of the abductions issue. (See statements by Machimura Nobutaka on Fuji TV's Hodo 2001 program.) But according to Mainichi, ambiguity surrounding the details of the recent agreement with North Korea to re-investigate the abductions has made the prime minister a target of public dissatisfaction.

Of course, the Fukuda government isn't alone in taking the blame. Plenty of blame is being directed towards the US. Over the weekend, Mr. Abe called on President Bush to honor his promise to the abductees. Ibuki Bunmei, the LDP's secretary-general, added his opinion, suggesting that the US has been "deceived" by North Korea. He suggested that the Bush administration may betray Japan further by repeating the Clinton administration's decision to send a senior official to Pyongyang.

Is there no other significant LDP official willing to support the Yamasaki line?

Another illustration of how the LDP has changed since the cold war ended. The party belongs to the revisionists now. Pragmatists like Mr. Yamasaki are tolerated but marginalized.

No surprises

When is a shock not a shock?

Sankei Shimbun's front cover this morning proclaimed, in large print, "Shock to the Japanese nation."

The headline, of course, referred to President Bush's announcement Thursday that, in keeping with the principle of "action for action," the Bush administration will (1) lift "the provisions of the Trading with the Enemy Act with respect to North Korea" and (2) inform Congress of its intent "to rescind North Korea's designation as a state sponsor of terror in 45 days."

Is there a set of criteria to determine when an event counts as a shock to the Japanese people?

This has been a shock more than a year in the making. As early as May of last year, there were rumors that the US government was prepared to link the "terror sponsor" designation to the nuclear issue, instead of the abductions issue (i.e., a "terrorism" issue). While the rumors last May were subsequently denied, the possibility had been broached that the US would reward North Korea for progress in nuclear negotiations with removal from the list. Japan has had a year to either dissuade the US from doing so — as recently as February, conservatives were prepared to do a victory dance over the carcass of the six-party talks — or to shift its position accordingly in preparation for a move by the US.

Is a crisis still a crisis if it is wholly predictable well in advance?

The response of each of the actors was equally predictable. The abductee families responded with anger and disbelief. Prime Minister Fukuda emphasized that US-Japan cooperation on the abductions issue and North Korea policy more generally will be unaffected by the announcement. The response in the Japanese political system was equally predictable. Yamasaki Taku's study group for normalization with North Korea welcomed the step; Hiranuma Takeo's abductee problem study group warned about cracks in the alliance; Ozawa Ichiro said the US was ignoring Japan; and unspecified young LDP Diet members warned that if the delisting proceeds without North Korea taking appropriate actions, Mr. Fukuda's popularity will suffer yet another blow.

As I argued previously, this is unquestionably a positive step, even if the report filed by North Korea left out information related to missile production, nuclear testing sites, the uranium refinement program, or possible proliferation activities. It was unreasonable to expect that the process would wrap up in one fell swoop, with North Korea handing over information about all of its dubious activities and the US responding by rushing to full diplomatic recognition. This is a complicated dance, now moving forward, now back, now standing still. Secretary Hill and the State Department more generally deserve credit for their perseverance, not just in the face of North Korean intransigence, but also sniping from Japan (the "Kim Jong Hill" moniker, for example) and from within the Bush administration.

This process is not about full disarmament, but buying time, finding a way to reduce tension on the Korean Peninsula, freeze North Korea's nuclear programs as much as possible (and prevent proliferation), and possibly get North Korea to open its door to the world ever so slightly. Yes, there is also the possibility — based on North Korea's behavior in the past — that North Korea will not keep its end of the bargain. But lacking good alternatives (sanctions are useless as long as China opts out, war is extremely unlikely both because of the US position in Iraq and because of the immorality of America's launching a war in which South Korea would bear the brunt of the costs) negotiation is the last bad option. North Korea doesn't follow through? Fine, then it doesn't receive any of the benefits of negotiating with the US. North Korea delivers something concrete? Okay, the US responds by lifting one of its many sanctions on North Korea.

As President Bush said Thursday, "North Korea will remain one of the most heavily sanctioned nations in the world. The sanctions that North Korea faces for its human rights violations, its nuclear test in 2006, and its weapons proliferation will all stay in effect. And all United Nations Security Council sanctions will stay in effect as well."

In short, North Korea is only slight less of a pariah today than it was yesterday. But the process will move forward.

So I second Steve Clemons's congratulations to Christopher Hill, John Negroponte, Condoleezza Rice, the former Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs R. Nicholas Burns and his successor William Burns. They have made the best of a bad situation, even if their opponents in Japan and the US will not pay them the slightest compliment for their deft work.

UPDATE: In this post, Sam Roggeveen at The Interpreter asks a question I meant to ask.

"...What I'm not seeing from the critics is a plausible alternative plan. Nobody is suggesting military action to disarm North Korea, because given the geography, Pyongyang effectively holds the city of Seoul hostage. Isolating the regime also seems to have done very little good.

"And what harm can be done by this approach? Yes, North Korea gains economic aid and a sense of legitimacy from being brought out of its pariah status, but those are favours that can easily be stopped or revoked.

"To paint these negotiations as if the US is being held over a barrel by the crafty Stalinists in Pyongyang is at best a partial reading. The US and its negotiating partners have a lot of what North Korea wants — wealth. That remains an important point of leverage."

UPDATE TWO: It seems that Machimura Nobutaka, in a phone conversation with Stephen Hadley, US national security adviser, informed Mr. Hadley that the Japanese people were "shocked" by the US decision.

Again, assuming that it's true that the Japanese people are shocked — and having seen no evidence showing how they're shocked, I'm not accepting this claim at face value — why didn't the Japanese government do more to prepare them for the US decision, given that the US has advertised its willingness to remove North Korea from the list for nearly a year now? The Fukuda government will try to shift as much blame to the US as possible, but will anyone buy it? The conservatives certainly won't: they'll be happy to blame both the US and the Fukuda government.

The consequences of the US-Japan rift on North Korea

With North Korea expected to deliver its account of its nuclear program Thursday — excluding its existing nuclear weapons, which Chris Hill has said will be addressed in the next round — the US is prepared to move forward in removing North Korea from the list of state sponsors of terrorism.

The long-awaited blow to the US-Japan alliance has been landed, even as the Fukuda government has agreed to go along with the US move.

On Tuesday, Prime Minister Fukuda said that he hoped this would contribute to progress on the nuclear front, even as he said that he looks forward to further cooperation with the US in resolving the abductions issue. At the same time, Machimura Nobutaka, in a press conference Tuesday morning, cautioned the US to examine the North Korean report carefully before proceeding, a lame statement of the sheer helplessness of the Fukuda government's position.

The US will go forward, and the Japanese government will follow along meekly behind — ignoring the wishes of the conservatives (and a bulk of the Japanese public) that North Korea should stay on the list until it follows through on the latest agreement on the abductees. They want North Korea's position on the terrorism list to remain linked to acts of terrorism (however long ago they occurred); the US, perhaps acknowledging that North Korea is no longer a state sponsor of terrorism (at least against other countries), is prepared to link removal to another, arguably more important issue. As argued in an article in this week's AERA, this latest move may trigger a spasm of protest from the public. It will be the latest and perhaps greatest charge in the conservative case against Mr. Fukuda: giving in to both the US and North Korea and abandoning the abductees, while getting nothing but an oral promise from the US that it will continue to pressure North Korea on the abductees. This probably destroys whatever chance Mr. Fukuda had of staying in power long enough to lead the LDP into the next general election.

That said, it is worth asking how Abe Shinzo would have handled this had it happened under his watch as prime minister.

His admirers seem to think that he would have been able to say no to the US. The bloggers at Pride of Japan ended a post on this issue with the statement, "I think that the time demands the appearance of a politician with backbone, like former Prime Minister Abe."

But would Mr. Abe have stood up to the US in this case and said no, his government will not support removing North Korea from the list? What would he do instead? What could he do instead? Would he respond by tightening Japanese sanctions even more? A US move to lift sanctions on North Korea makes Japan's sanctions, no matter how astringent, that much less effective. What would rejecting the US position at this point do but isolate Japan further and make it even less likely that North Korea would cooperate in resolving the abductions issue? Mr. Abe might have spoken in harsh terms, he might have appealed directly to President Bush for a promise that the US will continue to help on the abductions, but ultimately I suspect that Mr. Abe too would fall into line.

I am fine with the turn that the six-party talks are taking. I think that the gain of neutralizing North Korea's nuclear program is a worthy goal, and that it should take priority to issues like the abductions issue. If lifting sanctions bit by bit — effectively a series of small bribes — moderates North Korea's behavior and buys the region's powers some time to plan for the tsunami of instability that will likely follow Kim Jong-il's death by keeping the Korean Peninsula stable, then the talks will have been successful. The US has had little choice but to talk (and to talk with China's assistance) because it had no other option short of doing nothing. Mr. Hill has made the most of a poor situation. All of which is why I opposed the Abe government's pulling Japan out of this process. Japan, like the US, had no real way to compel North Korea to change its behavior. As the country that may be most threatened by a nuclear North Korea, it should have been in the lead, alongside the US and China, in finding a way to defuse the situation, if not disarm North Korea. Instead it opted out of the process, on the grounds of North Korea intransgience on the abductees.

I have little sympathy with the argument that the abductees are a primary "national interest," on the grounds that the Japanese government must secure the lives of every Japanese citizen. (Mr. Abe makes a variation of this argument at length in Utsukushi kuni e.) Does it rank somewhere on the list of Japanese national interests? Probably. Is it a top interest that should take priority over other interests like, say, stability on the Korean Peninsula, good relations with Japan's neighbors, and a diminished threat from North Korea? I would argue no. The deal may yet fall apart due to another shift by North Korea or domestic opposition in the US (Steve Clemons has the details on the situation in Washington) — but given the lack of other options, it has been a useful effort, one in which Japan should have played more than a begrudging role.

The failure of the US to explain its reasoning more fully — and the failure of Japan to be more flexible in its defense of its national interests — have resulted in a blow to the alliance, in that both Japanese elites and the Japanese public have lost confidence in the US as an ally. That blow may have been unavoidable: I suspect that part of the reason for the loss of confidence, especially among elites, is that after Japan gave its full-throated support to the US in Afghanistan and Iraq, it would receive equally full-throated support in dealing with North Korea. The US wasted opportunities to disabuse Japan of that idea and left Mr. Hill to bear the brunt of Japanese anger; the president should have made it explicitly clear why the US shifted on North Korea. But even then it is likely that there would still be a feeling of betrayal among Japanese.

Where will the US-Japan relationship go from here? The alliance will survive, but I expect that future Japanese governments will be less trusting of the US. I would not go so far as journalist Aoki Naoto (author of a book entitled A State That Could Become An Enemy: USA), who argues that this is the beginning of an antagonistic relationship between the US and Japan and the start of a US-China security relationship. In fact, the US shift on North Korea might prove to be a good thing for the alliance. As a result of having been "abandoned" in the six-party talks, Japan may finally learn to say no to the US, which could result in a stronger, more effective partnership in which Japan feels less obligated to do whatever the US asks. Much like Japan's 1990 failure in responding to the Gulf crisis led to a decade of soul-searching for Japan's foreign policy establishment, so too might this incident prompt soul-searching that leads to a Japan better able to articulate its interests to the US, even if it means disagreement between Washington and Tokyo.

As in the aftermath of the Gulf crisis, Ozawa Ichiro may show the way. Asked to comment on the developments in the six-party talks, Mr. Ozawa stated that Japan has little ability to influence US strategy, and added on the abductees, "The US has until now said good things to the abductee families, but it did not take our national strategy and our interests into account at all." I expect that should the DPJ form a government in the near future, it will be much less inclined to follow the US in the way that LDP governments have (especially LDP governments under Messrs. Koizumi and Abe).

As a result of the six-party talks, future LDP governments may share Mr. Ozawa's assessment.

Abe charges in

Less than a week after the Fukuda government announced a new approach to the North Korea problem, Abe Shinzo, self-appointed defender of the abductees, has charged into the fray to criticize Yamasaki Taku, head of a Diet members' group advocating a normalized relations with North Korea. Mr. Abe claimed that Mr. Yamasaki's comments have diluted the government's bargaining power in the midst of negotiations.

Responding to Mr. Yamasaki's dismissing his thinking as "infantile," Mr. Abe admonished Mr. Yamasaki to "think and act in the national interest."

Not surprisingly, Mr. Abe also admonished the government (and the US) not to act unless North Korea moves substantially first.

Mr. Abe and his conservative colleagues are undoubtedly displeased with a foreign ministry announcement Wednesday. The foreign ministry declared that the Japanese government would view the launch of a reinvestigation into the abductions issue by North Korea as "progress," a far lower bar for lifting sanctions than the conservatives want. I will be curious to see who stands up to question Machimura Nobutaka and Saiki Akataka (head of MOFA's Asia-Pacific bureau) in the lower house's ad hoc committee on the abductions problem at a hearing being held today. Will LDP conservatives rake the government over the coals?

It will also be curious to see what Christopher Hill, US assistant secretary of state for East Asia and the Pacific, will say when he arrives in Japan today for talks — especially in light of Secretary of State Rice's statement Wednesday that she expects North Korea to declare its nuclear weapons program "soon."

By lowering the bar on what constitutes progress, is MOFA clearing the way to assist the US on the nuclear question? And will Prime Minister Fukuda survive the storm of criticism that will greet such a move?

More stress headed Fukuda's way

Prime Minister Fukuda held a press conference Tuesday with journalists from foreign wire services at which he said in response to a question about whether it is fun being prime minister, "It's not fun! It's like a painful lump." To deal with stress, he told the reporters that he sleeps and drinks wine.

Little wonder that Mr. Fukuda is feeling stressed.

In the days since Machimura Nobutaka announced the tentative agreement reached with North Korea, Mr. Fukuda has faced the predictable uproar from the right.

On Tuesday, Hiranuma Takeo, chairman of a Diet members' league on the abductions problem and member (controversially) of Nakagawa Shoichi's conservative study group, visited the Kantei to appeal to Chief Cabinet Secretary Machimura on lifting sanctions. There should be no relief to North Korea without the recognition of concrete progress, he said.

The government will likely bend to their demands. Mr. Fukuda acknowledged Monday that the success of the agreement will depend on North Korea's follow through. That said, the conservatives haven't won yet. The meaning of "concrete action" is disputed. It is unclear what North Korea can do to please the conservatives (who may in fact prefer that the issue drags on); "realists" like Yamasaki Taku, head of a Diet members' league for the promotion of normalization of Japan-North Korea relations, seem willing to lower the bar. Mr. Yamasaki wants the abductions issue to be resolved within the year. In between Mr. Hiranuma and Mr. Yamasaki is the group for the promotion of a prudent North Korea policy, which supports a carrots-and-sticks approach to North Korea. Yamamoto Ichita, a member of the group, reports that it delivered a list of demands to Mr. Fukuda on Tuesday. Like Mr. Hiranuma, they do not want Japan to lift any sanctions until North Korea has made clear progress on its reinvestigation (again, clear progress is left undefined). They want the government to make clear to Washington that the Japanese government does not want the US to remove North Korea from the state sponsors of terrorism list yet. They continue to oppose normalization until progress is made on all fronts: abductions, missiles, and nukes.

In addition to pressure from within his own party, Mr. Fukuda also faces pressure from the public, which is circumspect about the new agreement. A Mainichi poll found that 34% of respondents "value" the government's agreement, while 55% do not value it. Considering that 88% of respondents in the government's latest foreign policy survey were concerned about the abductions issue (more than any other area of contention with North Korea), that's actually not terrible. If North Korea actually follows through — at least enough to allow the government to argue that there's been progress — the agreement might eventually enjoy a plurality of support, if not an outright majority.

Time to send some more wine over to the Kantei.

Japan ends its isolation?

After effectively opting out of the six-party talks under Abe Shinzo, Japan is set to return to participation in the process to neutralize (if not dismantle) North Korea's nuclear arsenal.

Machimura Nobutaka, chief cabinet secretary, announced Friday that in talks in Beijing, North Korea agreed to "reinvestigate" the case of Japanese abductees in North Korea and promised to transfer the remaining Yodo hijackers and their families to Japanese custody.

After months of ambiguity as to what exactly constitutes "progress" on the abductions issue, it seems that the Fukuda government is finally sharing with the world — in response to talks, the Japanese government announced that it would lift some of the sanctions imposed after North Korea's nuclear test in October 2006. North Korean ships will be allowed back in Japanese ports to pick up humanitarian relief supplies. Restrictions on charter flights will be lifted, and people will be permitted to travel between Japan and North Korea again.

This means, of course, that the Fukuda government is about to face howls of protest from the right. Members of the abductee families association greeted the announcement with "anger and dissatisfaction," dismissing the idea that this agreement might constitute a (small) sign of progress. If the families are displeased, then their LDP allies will undoubtedly share their displeasure. As this agreement sinks in, expect a wave of criticism claiming that Mr. Fukuda is "betraying" Japan (as asserted in this post at Pride of Japan, a blog maintained by conservative local elected officials).

Even would-be defenders of the move are skeptical. Yamamoto Ichita, a member of the association to promote the prudent advance of North Korean diplomacy, a Diet members' league that has called for an approach to North Korea that uses both pressure and negotiation with North Korea (as opposed to just pressure), expressed fears that the US will use the new agreement to claim that Japan and North Korea are making progress, thereby enabling the US to remove North Korea from the state sponsors of terrorism list. The group expanded upon that idea in this response to the government's announcement.

I hope the US will wait to see how North Korea (and Japan) follow through on this agreement before doing anything rash.

But it is revealing that even a natural defender of the government's use of diplomacy to extract concessions from Pyongyang has greeted Friday's announcement with skepticism for reasons having less to do with North Korea than with the US. The damage of Mr. Abe's year in office, during which the US and Japan went opposite directions on North Korea without bothering to discuss it openly and frankly. Japanese have some right to be distrustful of the US — but at the same time, it was wrong for Japanese to think that there would be no consequences from the Abe cabinet's hard line on North Korea. It is time to repair the damage; Friday's announcement is a good start. After isolating itself from the other five, Japan is at the very least rejoining the process.

UPDATE: Japan's foreign ministry announced Saturday that it would commence an investigation of lifting sanctions next week. Yomiuri reports (of course, with passive voice) that "because objections are not scarce in the government and governing parties, it is anticipated that it will be a rough passage to the decision of the time for lifting [the sanctions]."

UPDATE, two: Okumura Jun argues that the US shift made Japan's shift more or less inevitable, and suggests further that since there will be no full accounting of the abductions until after the DPRK is gone, this agreement has less to do with hope for new revelations than with the Fukuda cabinet's have little choice but to follow the US.

More trouble headed Fukuda's way?

According to the Washington Post, in exchange for North Korea's "acknowledging" US concerns about its nuclear activities, disabling Yongbyon, and provide a full accounting of its plutonium stockpile, the US will be prepared to "remove North Korea from the U.S. list of state sponsors of terrorism and to exempt it from the Trading With the Enemy Act."

The domestic obstacles standing the way of the US government holding up its end of the bargain are considerable, but this "agreement" could still cause trouble for Prime Minister Fukuda in the meantime.

The LDP's conservatives, now for the most part embodied in the Nakagawa Shoichi's "true" conservative study group, have spent the fourteen months since the US-DPRK Berlin agreement trying to ensure that the US does not remove North Korea from the state sponsors of terrorism list until the abductions issue is resolved. As I noted back in February, Mr. Nakagawa and comrades were quite pleased with the lack of progress in the six-party talks and open warfare in the Bush administration over North Korea policy.

Now a deal is once again on the table that envisions North Korea removed from the list despite Japan's conditions not being met — in short, US abandonment of Japan on a fundamental issue for the conservatives. While they need not panic yet (their Washington allies will naturally do all they can to derail this latest attempt by Chris Hill to resolve the crisis), they will be watching Mr. Fukuda carefully in the coming weeks and months, ready to pounce on him if he deviates from the hard line on North Korea, which the prime minister embraced early in his term after suggesting that he might chart a new, more flexible course. At the same time, Washington — or the State Department, anyway — will likely be leaning on Tokyo to play a constructive role should the latest agreement go forward

Mr. Fukuda may be able to duck this pressure for the time being by claiming that his hands are tied thanks to the recently passed six-month extension of the economic sanctions originally implemented following North Korea's October 2006 nuclear test. But if this latest agreement somehow proves a success, that may not be a satisfactory answer for the US government, at which point the prime minister would be forced to choose between alienating the US or alienating the LDP's conservatives, one of whom is already measuring curtains for the Kantei. Provided Mr. Fukuda survives long enough to face that choice, will he buck the conservatives and follow the US? Or will he continue to hew to the Abe line of doing nothing until "progress" is made on the abductions issue, ensuring that Japan remains isolated within the six-party talks?

UPDATE: Gerald Curtis, Japanese politics specialist at Columbia University, visited North Korea last week and upon his return met with a nonpartisan Diet members study group to report that there is a "high probability" of Washington's removing North Korea from the terror sponsors list within the year.

The right laying low?

Since former prime minister Mori and Prime Minister Fukuda called attention to the crisis facing the LDP on consecutive days in mid-January — with Mr. Mori explicitly criticizing Nakagawa Shoichi's flirtations with Hiranuma Takeo — it seems that the ideological conservatives have backed out of the spotlight.

Part of the reason, I think, is because of the changing environment in the Six-Party talks. With North Korea recalcitrant since the start of the year, and the Bush administration seemingly in no hurry (or powerless) to restart the talks, the bilateral tension over North Korea has dissipated somewhat. With a lower risk of Washington's removing North Korea from the list of state sponsors of terrorism and pressuring Tokyo to follow along, the conservatives don't need to lean as hard on Mr. Fukuda to keep toeing the line on the abductions issue.

There is no doubt that Mr. Nakagawa is feeling confident regarding developments in North Korea policy. In a three-way discussion with Tahara Soichiro and Tanaka Hitoshi in the February issue of Chuo Koron (part one, part two), Mr. Nakagawa said, "Concerning the result, even Assistant Secretary Hill said last year while visiting North Korea, 'North Korea's level of verification is not good,' and as a result the agreement is delayed. I think that factors in President Bush's decision include statements of opposition to lifting the designation in both the House and the Senate in Congress, as well as the function of trends in Japanese public opinion. Lifting the designation in the face of this opposition would be too risky."

The Japanese right is probably thrilled at the fight over US North Korea policy growing after State Department criticism of a speech by congressionally mandated North Korea Human Rights envoy Jay Lefkowitz at the American Enterprise Institute — discussed in this Christopher Hitchens essay, in which he sides with Mr. Lefkowitz and dismisses the separation of human rights from denuclearization. After all, the greater the dissent in Washington, the less likely the administration will assume the risks of pushing harder for progress in talks with North Korea. The less the US pushes, the less the Fukuda government has to fret about gaps between the Japanese and US bargaining positions.

The other factor contributing to less conservative activism against Mr. Fukuda is, I think, good tactical sense on the part of Mr. Nakagawa and his comrades. After being criticized by party leaders last month and with diminishing chances of a general election being called before the autumn, I suspect that the "true" conservatives reasoned that unless they are prepared to take the ultimate step in undermining the government, joining with the opposition to pass an HR non-confidence motion, they are better off being loyal to the party and preparing for the fight for control of the party that will follow a general election. (For the record, I don't think that Mr. Nakagawa and his fellow conservatives are prepared to do anything so forthright as working with the opposition to bring down Mr. Fukuda.) The current environment on North Korea policy makes it easier to swallow their pride and support the prime minister.

Barring any radical changes in the policy environment, the stalemate will hold, with the conservatives plotting their restoration sub rosa.

The fantasies of "true conservatism"

For a glimpse into the twisted thinking of the Japanese right — the revisionist right — in the aftermath of the downfall of Abe Shinzo, there is no better place to look than the conversation between Sakurai Yoshiko and Hiranuma Takeo published in the January 2008 issue of Voice.

The bizarre, distorted facts and outright fictions published in this article brought me to the point of laughter on more than one occasion, although I didn't laugh nearly as much as the discussants apparently did, judging by the little parenthetical laugh marks that followed all too many of their remarks.

The discussion did, however, give me another reason to be glad that Mr. Abe was forced to resign (for whatever reason — these two think that fault for Abe's resignation lies not with Mr. Abe himself, but with his secretary, Inoue Yoshiyuki, who Ms. Sakurai describes as being "like [Koizumi secretary] Iijima," apparently a bad thing). It's not that their ideas are especially dangerous, it's that they're so irrelevant. They continue to insist that what they know what the Japanese people want, and that is the abductees brought home and the constitution revised. Ms. Sakurai at one point castigates Prime Minister Fukuda for failing to act on constitution revision, which, she reminds us, has been one of the core principles of the LDP since its founding in 1955. True, but so what? Why should a government in 2008 by following an agenda formulated before 1955 when it has to deal with the problems of 2008 and beyond?

How many elections does the LDP have to lose before they recognize that the Japanese people don't share their priorities? Did the July 2007 defeat not register?

Of course, the discussion inevitably turned to Mr. Hiranuma's planned "true" conservative party, because both the LDP and the DPJ are rotten (even if, they say, there are capable individuals within both parties). When asked about the timing of its formation, Mr. Hiranuma was reluctant to say whether it would occur before or after a general election. Undoubtedly he will have to make that decision with the cooperation of his friends within the LDP, who I suspect would prefer to wait until a general election before acting. Instead of forming a new party, it seems to me that the ideological right is starting to hope openly for an LDP defeat in a general election that will take down Fukuda and give them an opportunity to retake control of the party, purging "fake" conservatives in the process.

Towards the discussion, Mr. Hiranuma very nearly veered into relevance when he broached the question of economics, but it turned out he only wanted to castigate the Finance Ministry before directing the conversation back to more familiar ground, puzzlement over the reaction to Nakagawa Shoichi's 2006 calls for a debate about the acquisition of nuclear weapons.

I don't want to linger too much longer over this, but there was one more nugget worth mentioning. The two of course talked at length about the US about-face on North Korea and had a good laugh about Christopher Hill. Mr. Hiranuma also spoke about his recent trip to Washington along with other Diet members and the abductee families, where they spoke with members of Congress about resolutions in the House and Senate calling for a linkage between the abductions issue and the removal of North Korea from the state sponsors of terror list. For some reason, these ideologues really take congressional resolutions seriously. Mr. Hiranuma spoke with pride about how Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL-18) and Senator Sam Brownback (R-KS) promised to push for these resolutions, and was impressed that the House resolution already had a whopping twenty-eight co-sponsors.

That said, they acknowledged the shortcomings of Diet members' diplomacy, thanks in part — wait for it — the influence of the Chinese in Washington, whose embassy has ten times more political specialists in their embassy than Japan's and who have significant numbers of Chinese-Americans whose support Beijing can apparently mobilize at will, as in the case of the comfort women resolution.

You would think from reading this interview that Japanese society was healthy and that there was not a long list of problems facing the government for years to come. And you would be wrong, just as the ideological right is wrong. The decisions made by the Japanese government in the coming years will determine whether Japan remains influential regionally and globally, whether it remains an economic power with a voice in shaping East Asia. Its power will not rest on a new constitution that enables Japan to send its robust military to fight abroad. It will not rest on its children being proud of being Japanese. It will depend on Japan's becoming a country that is more open to the world, more willing to take risks, better able to provide security for its aging citizens, and better able to educate Japanese children for the world in which they will live.

The vision of Mr. Hiranuma, Ms. Sakurai, and their compatriots in the mass media and the Diet is a vision from 1950. (I guess that's what they mean by "true conservatism). Too bad it's 2008.

Hard road ahead

Prime Minister Fukuda, upon returning to Japan, was greeted with criticism by the association of abductee families, whose representatives were also in Washington last week (meeting John Bolton, among others).

Interviewed at a press conference upon arrival at Narita Airport on Sunday, Iizuka Shigeo, the deputy head of the family association said, "May not Japan, as an ally, voice its opinion a little more?"

Undoubtedly the complaints of the families will be echoed by abductee advocates within the ranks of the LDP, the self-appointed enforcers of an uncompromising negotiating position in the six-party talks.

Whatever glimmers of the hope there are for Japan's reengaging in the talks, Mr. Fukuda still has formidable obstacles in his way. I think that if he pushes too hard for a shift in Japan's negotiating position, Mr. Aso's retainers will cause trouble for him.

Mr. Fukuda has thus far smoothed over the divisions within the party that were in full view under Mr. Abe, but he has been helped by the DPJ's opposition to the anti-terror law, on which the LDP is by and large united. But once he starts trying to move an agenda forward — both within the Diet and in Japan's foreign policy — the need to keep the party united and challenges to that unity will rise in tandem.

After a period of calm following the LDP presidential election, the LDP right is organizing again. Nakagawa Shoichi, PARC chief under Mr. Abe and Mr. Abe's id, has announced the creation of a new conservative study group (with independent Hiranuma Takeo). That alone isn't troubling for Mr. Fukuda, but it is a reminder that he walks a fine line as the head of a party that doesn't exactly share his cautious pragmatism.

An unscripted summit?

Mere days before President Bush and Prime Minister Fukuda are scheduled to meet in Washington, a State Department spokesman has announced that the US will not give concrete consideration to the abductions issue when it comes to removing North Korea from the list of state sponsors of terrorism.

Now, I don't disagree with this policy — the US shouldn't let what it is a bilateral issue between Japan and North Korea interfere with what the US government feels is in its best interests. There seems to be little chance that progress towards delisting North Korea will stop, especially considering that the Israel-Syria-North Korea mystery seems to have vanished from the media space. Even John Bolton, of late the Bush administration's most vociferous critic from the right, admitted to a delegation of abductee advocates in Washington, "I agree with you completely, but the flow towards delisting will be extremely difficult to stop."

The problem with this announcement is the timing. Mr. Fukuda has in recent days and weeks suggested that the Japanese government might be prepared to re-engage in the six-party talks, despite its reservations (which in a sign of progress increasingly concern the problem of verifying denuclearization as well as the abductions issue). For a State Department spokesman to deliver this message prior to the prime minister's arrival in Washington strikes me as indicative of a gratuitous disregard of the difficult position that Mr. Fukuda faces in trying to shift Japan's bargaining position in the six-party talks. Style matters as much as substance; the US should be trying to coax Japan back to the table, not bludgeon it over the head until it concedes.

Of course, the gap between the US and Japanese bargaining positions may be unbridgeable, meaning that it is high time for the allies to discuss the implications of being unable to coordinate policy on the North Korea question.

In any case, that an announcement like this can be made this close to a major summit suggests that there may be a surprise or two in store this Friday. For once there might be a US-Japan summit that is more than a photo-op and a joint press conference that enables the two leaders to exchange sweet nothings about the alliance.

The quiet shift

Ever so quietly, the Fukuda government appears to be altering its position in the six-party talks. Last week, Foreign Minister Komura suggested that the return of some (but not all) of the remaining abductees would constitute progress on the abductions issue. That wasn't much of a concession, but it was the first attempt by the Japanese government to define what counts for "progress."

Now Asahi reports that Sasae Kenichiro, Japan's negotiator in the talks, said in a meeting with Chris Hill, the US negotiator in Tokyo on Friday, "The US is presently at the center of the work [of disabling North Korea's nuclear facilities], but we are also in the process of considering participation."

Once again, not a huge step, but considering that Japan has opted out of the process for most of this year, it's an important step.

Perhaps by the time Prime Minister Fukuda visits Washington later this month Japan will be ready to announce a serious and sustained commitment to the process of denuclearizing North Korea and creating a stable modus vivendi on the Korean peninsula that begins the tricky process of opening North Korea to the world.

The foreseeable crisis erupts

Ambassador Schieffer has, according to the Washington Post, sent a cable directly to the president (an unusual step) warning Mr. Bush of serious consequences to the US-Japan alliance should the US remove North Korea from the state sponsors of terrorism list without progress being made on the abductions issue. The ambassador also complained about being cut out of the six-party talks.

I hate to say I told you so, but I've been arguing for months that Chris Hill's Berlin agreement presented a serious problem for the US-Japan relationship, because while the US was determined to continue negotiations in good faith, Japan — first under Mr. Abe, now, apparently, under Mr. Fukuda — was unwilling to talk about anything but the unresolved abductions issue and essentially opted out of the negotiations. (Try this post from February, this post from March, this post from May, this post from July, this post from September, and this post from earlier this month.) This gap has grown as the negotiations with Pyongyang have matured, and now that there is a real chance of the US making a real concession to North Korea as a reward for progress on denuclearization, alliance managers in both countries are panicking.

Both governments must bear the blame, having missed opportunity after opportunity to discuss this gap and find a way to realign the US and Japanese positions.

Consider that since the February agreement, Vice President Cheney visited Tokyo, Prime Minister Abe visited Washington for a summit with President Bush, the US and Japan held a 2 + 2 ministerial on security, and Messrs. Bush and Abe met on the sidelines of the G8 summit in Germany and the APEC summit in Sydney. At the ministerial and sub-ministerial levels, Japanese officials have made frequent visits to the US, and US officials have been in Japan.

At each of these occasions, the allies could have had a frank and open discussion about the differences between the US and Japanese bargaining positions. (In Cheney's defense, he tried in February.) If Japan was unprepared to broach the issue itself, then the US government should have forced the issue months ago, and the man to do that should have been Ambassador Schieffer. It's too late in the game for the ambassador to complain about the consequences of the US bargaining position in the six-party talks. He should have seen this coming and worked with Japanese officials to try to close the gap or at least explain — loudly, clearly, and unambiguously — to Japan why the US is prepared to move forward. Part of the problem seems to be that Chris Hill is essentially on his own, meaning that the US bargaining position is more of a Rice-Hill bargaining position.

At the same time, I have no sympathy for the Government of Japan. It had months to anticipate this development, but chose to do nothing. Of course, the problem is that with Mr. Abe and the conservatives in charge, the GOJ lacked the flexibility to alter its position in tune with the US. What MOFA bureaucrat would stand up to Mr. Abe, when doing so ran the risk of being treated as a "traitor" by the conservatives, much like Tanaka Hitoshi, former deputy minister for foreign affairs. Perhaps Japan's conservatives wanted a crisis to happen, as an excuse for Japan to pursue a more independent course. For them, perhaps it's a win-win situation. If the US chooses an agreement over the alliance, they have an excuse to clamor for a more assertive, independent foreign policy; if the US chooses the alliance over an agreement, so much the better.

In other words, both governments have been in disarray. With intra-governmental coordination lacking, it is unsurprising that inter-governmental coordination has been stunted.

This problem is indicative of a serious flaw in the alliance. It seems that Japan has the idea that if it supports the US unconditionally in places like Afghanistan and Iraq (which it did from 2001 onwards), it deserves the unconditional support of the US in the showdown with North Korea. As I suggested in this post, Japan views the alliance as mutual entrapment. The US clearly does not. And so over the past six years the purpose of the US-Japan alliance has become muddled, and now each ally has different expectations for the alliance; given this, it is no surprise that in the face of a shared concern they not only cannot agree on a common position, but they have even been unable to admit that serious differences exist.

Now that negotiations with North Korea might finally be ready to bear fruit, both governments are panicking about damage to the alliance. Inexcusable, really.

Japan keeps free riding

Today marks the first anniversary of North Korea's presumed subterranean nuclear test, which initially prompted criticism and sanctions from the international community but has since — in some way — led to renewed attention from the US and thus the latest progress towards denuclearized North Korea.

One year ago, of course, Japan was praised for its swift reaction to the test, imposing a broad spectrum of economic sanctions on its pariah neighbor.

And now? The Japanese government has renewed its sanctions, which prohibit the import of all North Korean goods and bans North Korean ships from Japanese ports, for another six months. The reason, according to Chief Cabinet Secretary Machimura, is that there has been inadequate progress on the abductions issue (no surprise there).

Based on the Japanese government's actions, one could easily forget that four other countries have equal or greater stakes in resolving the situation on the Korean peninsula. And so Japan continues to free ride on the efforts and sacrifices of others, not least the US, its most important ally. The US — or more specifically Chris Hill, with the backing of Secretary Rice and the president — is pushing hard and is actually willing to deal with a regime that not too along was a charter member of the "Axis of Evil." Japan, the country with the most to fear from North Korea's arsenal, is also contributing the least to efforts to implement an agreement to neutralize it.

Looks like Mr. Fukuda will not be bucking the LDP's conservatives after all — not altogether surprising given his vulnerable position.

Meanwhile, I think the difference between Japan's approaches to the North Korea and Afghanistan issues is revealing. On the former, Japan is, of course, pursuing a hard line independent of the US; in addressing what its leaders (and many of its people) believe to be a multi-dimensional threat to national security, Japan is acting pretty much alone, with little or no consideration of its international reputation or the desires of its partners. In regard to the latter, the government claims to be acting out of deference both to the US but also to the international community, especially the countries participating in the reconstruction of Afghanistan. At the same time, however, the Japanese government supports doing the minimum necessary to earn the respect of other nations.

Accordingly, for all the talk of Japan's normalization, it turns out to be not only uneven across time — it has experienced lags and backsliding — but also across space: Japan is not prepared to risk anything substantial in an area in which its interests are not directly affected. This impression is reinforced when one considers that the implicit reasoning behind Japan's support for the Iraq war, for example, was that supporting the US would firm up US support for Japan vis-a-vis North Korea.

Of course, all this amounts to Japan's being a fairly typical middling power, concerned more about its fundamental security interests — which necessarily involve its periphery — than about abstract concerns for global order and stability. Japan's normalization will likely continue to be conditional, which is worth keeping in mind when reading more hysterical accounts of Japan's changing security policy.

The US, entrapped no longer?

The latest meeting of the six-party talks in Beijing is currently on hold, but that hasn't stopped Kim Kye Gwan, North Korea's plenipotentiary in the talks, from telling the press that the US is prepared to include a concrete timeline for removing North Korea from the list of state sponsors of terrorism.

Is Japan ready for the US to begin moving ahead on normalization with North Korea, despite George's persistent reassurances to Shinzo that the US wants the abductee problem solved first? I swear, the Japanese government better not point to Secretary of State Rice's saying last week that the US will take Japan's views on this into consideration as evidence that Japan has been betrayed.

But seriously, before anyone gets too misty-eyed about the greatness of the US-Japan alliance, it is necessary to ask about the health of an alliance in which the two allies have been unable to speak publicly about the growing gulf in their positions on an important issue. Mr. Abe, of course, bears some of the blame for the serious leap from Japan's side that the US is on the brink of taking — he wanted to talk abductions, and the US government told him exactly what he wanted to hear, over and over again.

But the US has been a bad ally in just going along with Japan's abductee obsession, knowing full well — at least for most of this year — that given a choice between an even remotely satisfactory deal with North Korea and Japan's satisfaction on the abductions issue, it would choose the Pyongyang deal.

I wonder if this is a function of reverse entrapment. Perhaps the US, having gotten everything it could have hoped for (and more, considering that Armitage and others didn't expect Japan to send troops to Iraq) from Japan over the past six years in matters related to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, found itself unable to criticize Japan on a matter of extreme importance to Tokyo. Of course, the underlying power relationship being what it is, the US may find it a bit easier to escape from being entrapped by Tokyo.

So brace yourself for the shock that has been so long in coming there can't possibly be anyone who will still be shocked by it. (Nevertheless, Will and Shokun! will still be full of vituperative essays about how Japan has been betrayed by the US.)

UPDATE — The can's been kicked down the road again. The latest joint statement included no specific terms for removing North Korea from the list. All it means is that Mr. Fukuda now has time to close the gap between the US and Japanese positions.

The restive right

In recent days I've argued that Japan watchers may soon find that Mr. Fukuda, who is ascending to the premiership with a hail of acclaim as a unity candidate, will turn out to be no such figure; he will likely face considerable opposition from within his own party.

As MTC notes in a brief but astute post, the meaningful division within the LDP — aside from urban-rural differences — is not along factional lines but along ideological lines (a division that to some extent follows generational lines). Except that there is little contest as to who holds the upper hand in the party: on social and foreign policy questions, the taka-ha (hawks) is in control.

The pragmatic Mr. Fukuda's surprising climb up the greasy pole notwithstanding, the LDP is increasingly an ideologically coherent party. As Richard Samuels and J. Patrick Boyd wrote in the monograph discussed in this post, the relegation of conservative ideologues to the LDP's anti-mainstream positions for the duration of the cold war (with few exceptions) has collapsed since the cold war's end, meaning that ideologically speaking, Mr. Fukuda and his hato-ha beliefs are actually anti-mainstream. He is only ascending to power today by virtue of a political crisis that has left the LDP paralyzed and scared, prompting the LDP's more moderate elders to turn to one of their own. As MTC notes, the hawkish youngsters did not feel the same, and gave Mr. Aso a surprisingly high tally in Sunday's presidential vote.

Komori Yoshihisa today provides another reminder that the ideologues and their allies in the media will not be forgiving of "lapses" by Mr. Fukuda. Mr. Komori digs up a record of a meeting between Mr. Fukuda and the abductee families after Mr. Koizumi's September 2002 visit to Pyongyang, when Mr. Fukuda was chief cabinet secretary, in which Mr. Fukuda apparently acted callous to the families. Just because Mr. Abe, an exemplary member of the young hawks, crashed and burned doesn't mean that the ideologues are marginalized — which means that the abductions issue, their pet issue, will not be abandoned without a fight.

How much slack will the restive ideologues give the pragmatic, flexible prime minister?