Who is missing from this group?

In Abe's Magical Democracy tour, there was lots of talk about cooperation between Japan, India, the US, and Australia — glorious Pacific-spanning cooperation among democracies.

But what about South Korea, which last time I checked was a vibrant democracy whose people struggled to achieve it after decades of authoritarian rule?

It seems that any organization of democracies in Asia would be incomplete without a democracy that also happens to be a significant economic power. Is South Korea's inclusion implied in any such organization? Or was Mr. Abe signaling that he expects that if given a choice, South Korea is bound to choose China (and its northern brother) over its fellow democracies, so why even bother extending a hand?

Now, granted, South Korea could do a better job trying to bridge the divide with its Japanese neighbor (like, for example, not arms racing with it). But to me this strikes me as just another sign that no one should take Mr. Abe's proposal all that seriously — as MTC wisely suggests in his "Magical Democracy Tour" post, the community of Asian democracies is more about Mr. Abe's personal and political needs than a serious effort to reorganize the regional security environment.

For Abe, it's still February 2003

Gordan Chang, the anti-China polemicist writing at Commentary's Contentions blog, has a very different take than I on Mr. Abe's dangerously irresponsible community of Asian democracies.

Abe's proposal, Chang thinks, is simply grand: "Is Tokyo becoming the leading proponent of a free world? Since July of last year, Japan, among the democracies ringing the Pacific Ocean, has adopted the most resolute foreign policy positions on Asia. For instance, the United Nations Security Council’s resolutions on North Korea’s missile and nuclear weapons programs were unsatisfactory, but they would have been weaker still if Tokyo had not persuaded Washington to adopt a stiffer attitude. Now, Abe is pushing a grand coalition that Washington should have proposed."

Abe is "the most interesting leader in the free world."

To Chang, the Bush administration has been cowardly, sucking up to China and Russia in an effort to, I don't know, keep the peace. Instead it seems that the US should be needling those enemies, ensuring that they have even less interest in maintaining some semblance of order in the region, and bravo to Shinzo for doing what Washington has lacked the courage to do.

For Chang — and his admirer Ampontan, it seems — it is still early 2003 and the US and allies can do anything they please when it comes to promoting the spread of democracy abroad. Remember what President Bush said at the American Enterprise Institute in February 2003:

Much is asked of America in this year 2003. The work ahead is demanding. It will be difficult to help freedom take hold in a country that has known three decades of dictatorship, secret police, internal divisions, and war. It will be difficult to cultivate liberty and peace in the Middle East, after so many generations of strife. Yet, the security of our nation and the hope of millions depend on us, and Americans do not turn away from duties because they are hard. We have met great tests in other times, and we will meet the tests of our time.

We go forward with confidence, because we trust in the power of human freedom to change lives and nations. By the resolve and purpose of America, and of our friends and allies, we will make this an age of progress and liberty. Free people will set the course of history, and free people will keep the peace of the world.

Democracy promotion is a luxury from a more carefree age. After four years of learning just how limited American power is as a transformative force, returning to such rhetoric is dangerously naive. Mr. Bush may want to, but with the shift in the balance of power in his administration — at least as far as Asia policy is concerned — the US is less apt to rely on the heady rhetoric of liberty and democracy for all in East Asia. The US has more urgent interests at stake.

Mr. Abe, however, never got the memo about scaling back the democracy rhetoric, outlining how too much rhetoric coupled with too little action (or even worse, wholly counterproductive action) actually diminishes a country's influence and ultimately its security.

The (most interesting) leader of the free world? More like the most dangerously naive leader in the free world. At a time when the shifting international environment — especially in Asia — demands nimble foxes, Mr. Abe is a stubborn hedgehog, a relic from a time when the developed democracies thought they could do whatever they wanted without having to sully themselves in dealings with unsavory regimes.

Mr. Abe's half-baked scheme

As expected, Mr. Abe went to Indian Parliament on Wednesday and called for "a 'broader Asia' partnership of democracies that would include India, the United States and Australia but leave out the region's superpower, China." (Reuters)

At an earlier point in my intellectual development, I might have praised Japan's pushing for an organization of Asian democracies, with a significance leadership role for Japan. But at this point, this gesture is futile, and as a concept it might be shorter-lived than Mr. Abe’s government.

First, on a personal level, I have a problem with Mr. Abe's calling for an organization of democracies when it is clear from his book (and his actions over the past month) that he has only a passing acquaintance with the meaning of a democratic society. As seems to be his wont, Mr. Abe is once again trying to play Winston Churchill. (As much as I admire Mr. Churchill, I sort of hope someone will write a new, devastatingly revisionist account of Churchill that will diminish his reputation for a while so that the moral midgets governing democracies today will stop trying to appeal to his legacy.) It is more than a little pathetic for Mr. Abe, criticized at home even by his own party for failing to acknowledge the clear message sent by the people last month, to stand at the rostrum in New Delhi and hold forth about the virtues of democracy and the need for democracies to cooperate.

Second, as I wrote on Wednesday, I'm not exactly clear on how Japan or any other country would lead such an organization, because US leadership may not be forthcoming thanks to the black hole that is Iraq (more on this later).

Third, whether on a regional or a global scale, an organization of democracies suffers from the simple problem that it is wholly unclear to me what a "democratic" foreign policy is. No democracy conducts a purely democratic foreign policy; realpolitik in some form or another is unavoidable. Had Mr. Bush been more sensitive to this, he would not be talking of himself as a frustrated dissident. What exactly will an organization of Asian democracies be able to achieve that the member states won't be able to achieve within the other international organizations that dot the Asian landscape?

Fourth, what of China? Defenders of this idea might argue that it is a natural response to the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO). Is the best response to China's cooperation with the countries in its continental periphery really an organization of (maritime) democracies with a vaguely defined purpose that could rather easily take on the form of an anti-China military bloc? Will this community be strictly economic? If so, how can it exclude China, with which each democracy in the region has substantial ties? Will it be a security organization? If so, how will it avoid giving China the impression that it is being encircled?

Fifth, what of the US? Is the US in a position to commit the time and energy to make such an organization work? Washington is having a hard enough time cooperating with preexisting Asian organizations; there is little reason to believe that it will suddenly be able to dedicate substantial support to an organization that is redundant and/or dangerously provocative. Also, given that the environment in Washington of late has favored the "responsible stakeholder" approach to China, it seems that the Bush administration would be disinclined to go along with this at a time when it is trying to work with China on financial issues and the bilateral economic relationship, and North Korea. Now if Mr. Abe called for an organization without the US, that would be one thing, but calling for the US to be involved — borrowing US leadership to paper over the significant differences between Asian democracies (between Japan and South Korea, for example) — risks turning it into an anti-China bloc by another name.

At most, his scheme will result in yet another talking shop in the region to join the myriad already extant. The reality is that the region's democracies have no alternative to working with China to manage the region, and no regional power should harbor illusions to the contrary. Is there a substantive issue in the region that can be solved without China's involvement? All effort should go to making preexisting arrangements more effective and binding upon China, not excluding it from regional leadership and forcing it to make its own regional organizations and thus play by its own rules. If the US, Japan, and others want China to play by the rules, they have to let China participate in the rule-making process.

We should not, of course, forget the role played by Mr. Abe's domestic circumstances in producing this proposal, because Mr. Abe undoubtedly believes that appearing statesmanlike on foreign stages makes him appear to be a better leader back home. Or it could simply be that Mr. Abe likes being treated as an honored guest by foreign legislatures, instead of facing the hostile legislature waiting back home.

Whatever the case may be, I do not expect that we will hear much more of Mr. Abe's "broader Asia" democratic partnership after he returns home for his ongoing lesson in democracy.

What does Abe's trip mean for Japan and Asia?

Much is being made of Prime Minister Abe's trip to India, where he is scheduled to address India's parliament today.

The trip will likely feature lots of talk of the values shared by Japan and India, naturally to contrast both Asian powers with China.

I remain less than convinced that Japan and India will be able to build a "special relationship" that can function as a kind of pincer movement against China, not least because it is in the interests of neither country to court a Chinese reaction to a more formal partnership.

Economic ties? Sure. More military exercises? Fine. But joint Indo-Japanese leadership in Asian multilateral fora? What are their shared interests? A China that is a "responsible stakeholder" in the region? How exactly will an Indo-Japan partnership serve to make China more responsible?

There's nothing wrong with closer Indo-Japanese relations — and closer ASEAN-Japan relations— but it is important not to get carried away. It is not entirely clear what Japan's vision for the region is, and accordingly it is difficult to imagine Japan's playing anything but a supporting role as the region's map is redrawn over the coming decades. Japanese money will ensure that Tokyo always has a seat at the head table, but I don't think rhetoric about "democratization" and "good governance" constitute Japanese leadership in the region. That was the message Prime Minister Abe delivered to ASEAN in Jakarta, where he talked about the need for ASEAN to foster good governance among its member states and ensure that governments respect the will of the people (it would be nice if he tried that at home).

ASEAN will no doubt be thrilled to play Japan and China off one another, pocketing the investments of both, but I would hardly call that a leadership role for Japan. Indeed, the competition between Japan (and the US) and China over ASEAN suggests that regional leadership may in fact come more from ASEAN than from the great powers that are struggling to enhance their influence over the region, particularly if the US military presence in the region remains in place, providing an implicit security guarantee that keeps the peace, thereby creating the space in which ASEAN can push for a region-wide political and economic community.

So regardless of the rhetoric that the prime minister delivers in Delhi today, it is important to remember that Indo-Japanese cooperation will be but one facet of each country's approach to an increasingly complex Asia. The future of Asia will not rest in the hands of a concert of democratic powers.

Thinking about Japanese democracy

With the Upper House elections now a week away, it is worthwhile to step back and think about Japan's political system. At least that's what I did recently, reading Bradley Richardson's Japanese Democracy: Power, Coordination, and Performance — this month's recommended book.

Published in 1997, Richardson's book is obviously not the place to go for analysis of the latest developments in the Japanese political system. Rather his book is useful for his elaborate illustration of what is enduring in postwar Japanese politics. How is power distributed in the political system? How do actors reconcile clashing interests? What role for special interests? Political parties? Bureaucrats? Richardson provides a thorough portrait of the 1955 system, and with the LDP reverting to old ways, perhaps his book might be becoming more current by the day.

My biggest problem with it is that Richardson spends the book demolishing a straw man. He conceived the book as an argument against the idea, popular among polemicists in the 1980s and early 1990s, of a monolithic Japan, Inc. in which bureaucrats, the LDP, and big business collaborated to formulate policy that would make Japan "number one." While that idea may have gained popular currency at one time, enough academics — Richardson's audience, for this is an academic book — had done work illustrating the various ways in which Japanese politics were more pluralistic than commonly thought. As such, Richardson wastes plenty of ink explaining the straw man of a top-down, monolithic, "undemocratic" Japan and then demolishing it, when he would have been better off documenting the problems with Japanese democracy as he describes it (more on this later).

The thrust of his argument is that although the long, uninterrupted rule of the LDP made Japan appear to be less than democratic, the reality is that at each stage in the policy making process the LDP dominance was challenged and the party was forced to compromise (and even with the LDP there were, and are, considerable divisions that frustrate efforts to impose policy top-down).

For our purposes, the most useful chapter in this book is probably the second chapter, "Political Culture and Electoral Behavior." With scores of data breaking down Japanese voting patterns throughout the postwar period, Richardson provides an excellent look at how Japanese voting behavior has changed and become more unpredictable, concluding that there is considerably more to how the Japanese vote than economic actors lining up behind different parties, especially as Japan has urbanized. His discussion of "political alienation" in Japanese political culture particularly resonates for us watching this Upper House election campaign, with the two major parties both struggling to overcome strong negative perceptions among voters. His section on mobilizing Japanese voters is also useful, supplementing and updating the description of Japanese campaigning found in Gerald Curtis's landmark study Election Campaigning Japanese Style.

Meanwhile, one table — "Cosmopolitanism Versus Parochialism in Japanese Political culture" — suggests that the LDP may really be in trouble next week, with Mainichi finding the DPJ leading the LDP 31% to 21%. Why? Because according to Richardson's data, only 29% of voters surveyed said they voted on the basis of the candidate in Upper House elections, as opposed to 49% saying Lower House elections and 57% saying Prefectural Assembly elections. Of the 29%, slightly above-average percentages were found among farmers and those living in rural areas (as opposed to urban areas). In the years since Richardson compiled that data, I have to imagine that that figure might be even lower as party identification has fallen. All of which leads me to wonder if we might be witnessing the beginning of a new, more competitive era in Japanese politics (or perhaps it began earlier but had been obscured by Prime Minister Koizumi, and is now returning in his wake).

The most interesting thing about this book to me, however, is what's missing. Namely, the phrase "liberal democracy" does not appear outside of being part of the name of that impeccably liberal organization, the Liberal Democratic Party. It seems that the absence of liberalism would be worthy of comment, but Richardson is silent on this score. The differences between liberal democracy and plain, old democracy (or illiberal democracy or whatever other variety of democracy imaginable) are substantial, and if Richardson had taken his argument in this direction this book could have made a valuable contribution to discussion about democratization. It is this absence of liberalism — which for our purposes can be thought of as the expression of the individual citizen and his or her rights in politics — that makes Japanese politics problematic, especially when American advocates of democratization try to use the US occupation of Japan as an example of successful democratization (not to mention when the Japanese government talks about democracy promotion; I don't think this is what most people have in mind). In fact, Richardson's "bargained distributive" democratic Japan owes much to a style of social organization that existed in prewar Japan. For you see, it is groups that matters in Japanese democracy, even as elections are apparently decided on the basis of personality. The mechanism has worked to resolve differences between parties, interest groups, businesses, and government ministries, and the individual has been forced into the background.

This is not meant to be taken as criticism, but I still find that the absence of liberalism in Japan is not easily explained. Richardson indirectly points to that absence, but does not get any closer to giving a convincing account of why it's the case. Is it culture? Political culture? "Sticky" institutions? Education?

This is not merely an academic question. With politicians struggling to figure out how to make Japan a dynamic economy in which individuals "can challenge again and again," answering the question of why Japan is not a particularly liberal democracy can help predict whether and how efforts to reform the Japanese economy along more individualistic, dynamic lines can succeed.

(I will pick up this thread in my next post.)

UN tells Japan to tend its own garden

That's the message one could conclude from criticism of Japan by the UN Committee Against Torture, calling attention to Japan's justice and prison system, and even criticized Japan for dismissing comfort women cases on the grounds that the statute of limitations had expired.

As the FT's David Turner writes:

The report comes at an embarrassing time for Japan. The government has been trying to restore the country’s status as a nation with the moral and political authority of a world power, in addition to an economic powerhouse. Shinzo Abe has tried to accelerate this process since he became prime minister since last year, but with mixed results.

One element of Abe's — and Foreign Minister Aso's — "proactive diplomacy" has been an emphasis on "Value Oriented Diplomacy," which of course serves to contrast Japan with China.

But somehow I find it hard not to laugh when senior Japanese officials speak about Japan's creating an "Arc of Freedom and Prosperity" and similarly flowery language about democratization. I am not one to deny that Japanese is a democracy — but as readers of this blog will note, I do not think it's an especially healthy one. And while that should not stop Japan (or the US, for that matter), from using their wealth and influence to support developing democracies, it should stop them from being too loose in their rhetoric, because loose lips lead observers to question just how much the speaker's own country matches up, undermining the purpose of the rhetoric in the first place. Quiet, determined, and respectful of limits presented by conditions within the countries receiving aid: those should be the principles that guide support for democratization by mature democracies.

And as for the substance of the UN committee's criticism? Certainly not unmerited. I mean, really, a country with a 99.8 conviction rate? As the FT reports, in 2006 there were 77,297 convictions to 63 acquittals. Yet another indication of the governance problem present in every sector of Japanese society.

Idealism, realism, and US China policy

Over at Foreign Policy, China scholar David Lampton and journalist James Mann debate the argument presented in Mann's new book, The China Fantasy: How Our Leaders Explain Away Chinese Repression. (The subtitle really says it all.) (Hat tip: China Digital Times)

There is no love lost between Lampton and Mann in this debate, and its implications reach far beyond US China policy.

Lampton challenges the argument in Mann's book that politicians, academics, and corporate leaders are making excuses for Chinese authoritarianism to justify close engagement with Beijing. He argues that policymakers have no illusions about China, but emphasize engagement because "there are economic, security, and intellectual gains to be made from working together."

Mann reiterates his thesis in response to Lampton, saying that his purpose is not to propose a new framework for US China policy but to expose the rhetorical compromises made by American leaders.

Mann's point is well taken, although arguably this problem is a matter of cognitive dissonance: the interests of the US, as observed by Lampton, lead the US to favor engagement in one way or another with China, but China's failure to meet political and moral standards determined by American values mean that engagement with China carries a certain sort of moral repugnance. Democracies, like individuals, often have a hard time coping with the mismatch between their ideals and a reality that falls far short of those ideals, and so they find ways to explain away the contradictions — hence the behavior observed by Mann.

I would prefer that US opinion leaders and policymakers be less squeamish about the contradictions, but their response is understandable.

I ultimately have to side with Lampton in this debate, because, as he suggests in his second contribution to the debate, there are real doubts about the ability of the US to influence political change anywhere, whether through the use of force, sanctions, or rhetorical pressure.

As Lampton asks, "...Even if democracy were to rank first among U.S. goals in dealing with Beijing, could the United States achieve or effectively promote it? Again, consider the dispiriting U.S. interventions in Haiti, Afghanistan, Iraq, and elsewhere. Or if it’s verbal condemnations of human rights abuse Mann prefers, consider Myanmar, Cuba, Iran, Syria, North Korea, and Libya—all states that have blithely ignored the opprobrium of human rights advocates and U.S. politicians for decades."

As he subsequently suggests, the only way for the US — or perhaps more appropriately, Americans — to influence political developments abroad is through the patient support of individuals working to strengthen civil society and building capacity for institutions essential to the rule of law. But as for the pace and content of liberalization in foreign countries, there does not seem to be much that the US can do, which raises the question as to whether democratization deserves the priority in American foreign policy it has been given in recent years.

Does emphasizing democratization, irrespective of whether the US has the ability to advance democracy, serve any purpose other than to resolve some of the unease that comes from having to lead in a world that so often seems to fall short of the high standards demanded by American values? And does emphasizing democratization without being able to follow through undermine the value of the message?

The global order election

As commentators assess the results of the first debate among the (declared) candidates for the Republican nomination for the 2008 US presidential election (check out the summary by Slate's John Dickerson), it is becoming increasingly clear what the central question of the 2008 election ought to be.

Namely, how can the US, as the Washington Post's David Ignatius asks, midwife the complex multipolar order that is coming into being? Is it at all possible for the US, with the help of allies and rivals too, to craft the new global rules of the game?

This question went wholly unaddressed in Thursday night's debate — as Andrew Sullivan writes, "As for foreign policy, very little nuance, very little subtlety, almost no fresh thinking" — even by Senator John McCain, who gave an address at Stanford's Hoover Institution two days earlier that spoke directly to this issue. Instead, the debate seems to have been a cordial softball game, with the candidates trying to one-up each other as to who has the greatest claim to being Ronald Reagan's heir (not surprisingly, perhaps, since the debate was held at the Reagan Library).

Nevertheless, the US and the world need next year's election to be "about" foreign policy, but not a specific foreign policy issue like "Iraq" or "terrorism." Rather, the US is in dire need of a national conversation about when and how American power ought to be exercised; the manner in which the US interacts with countries like China, which may be illiberal at home but share an interest in regional and global stability; and the role of democratization in US foreign policy in the wake of the Iraq war.

The US, as the only country in the world with truly global interests matched with global reach (whether politically, economically, or militarily), desperately needs to determine what it wants the next new world order to look like, and how it hopes to achieve its goals — because no other single power can.

The US cannot, of course, shape the new order on its own, but it can present a vision and begin working with other great powers to hammer out a final version; in other words, what is needed is American leadership, not American dominance. As Ignatius wrote, "American power alone is demonstrably unable to achieve world order; we can't even maintain the peace in Baghdad. But no multilateral coalition has emerged as an alternative."

As such, it is worth looking at Senator McCain's remarks on this question.

McCain stated his theme early in his address: "Now it is our generation's turn to build." McCain is explicitly interested in institution building, domestically and globally, in a manner similar to the Truman administration in the early years of the cold war, a project that the current administration has almost willfully avoided. (And indeed, McCain paid tribute to Truman throughout the speech.)

Then he made a statement that seems like a no-brainer but in fact sets McCain apart from the Republican field: "Today the talk is of the war on terror, a war in which we must succeed. But the war on terror cannot be the only organizing principle of American foreign policy."

Finally, McCain outlined his grand proposal for international order: "a league of democracies." This idea was proposed by Ivo Daalder and James Lindsay, of the Brookings Institution and the University of Texas respectively, in the January/February issue of The American Interest, and debated by a number of senior foreign policy thinkers in the same and subsequent issues. In short, McCain — and Daalder and Lindsay — called for an organization of democratic allies that would be able to act when and where other international organizations, especially the UN, fail. As McCain said:

The new League of Democracies would form the core of an international order of peace based on freedom. It could act where the UN fails to act, to relieve human suffering in places like Darfur. It could join to fight the AIDS epidemic in sub-Saharan Africa and fashion better policies to confront the crisis of our environment. It could provide unimpeded market access to t hose who share the values of economic and political freedom, an advantage no state-based system could attain. It could bring concerted pressure to bear on tyrants in Burma or Zimbabwe, with or without Moscow's and Beijing's approval. It could unite to impose sanctions on Iran and thwart its nuclear ambitions. It could provide support to struggling democracies in Ukraine and Serbia and help countries like Thailand back on the path to democracy.

In short, to the question of what role democratization should have in American foreign policy, McCain answered strongly in favor of its playing a central role.

But, as Scott Paul writes at The Washington Note — echoing questions raised by discussants in the American Interest — there are serious questions about the desirability of such an organization, and whether it can be formed in the first place. What role would a League of Democracies play in cooperation with authoritarian China or illiberal democratic Russia to manage global order? More fundamentally, is such an organization even possible? An organization of democracies acting as a kind of global posse assumes that every democracy acts in favor of democracies in every face of every foreign policy issue. That's obviously not the case.

Think of the manifold cases when democracies act in ways that not only don't further the spread of democracy, but actually hinder it. (Western support for Pakistan's Pervez Musharraf may be the most prominent example at present.) Realpolitik, foreign policy based on the cold calculations of a state's security interests, remains an essential determinant of foreign policy in every democracy. And then there's the influence of history, nationalism, identity, religion, and so forth, intangible factors that shape foreign policy in unpredictable ways. (As an Asia scholar, a question that immediately comes to my mind is the Japan-South Korea relationship, where the fact that both are democracies seems to be the least important element.)

And McCain doesn't even begin to tackle the question of who would qualify, with the implication being that a relatively lax definition of democracy would render the organization too large and unwieldy to be the effective international actor that McCain desires.

So McCain deserves plaudits for daring to think about the future of American leadership in an increasingly multipolar world, but cooperation among democracies is not a panacea for the world's ills.

Instead, the only way the US will be able to rise to the challenge of the new multipolarity is by becoming more flexible, less reliant on old allies incapable of mustering the will to act, more willing to talk with rivals with which the US competes in some areas while sharing interests in others, and more willing to talk with and listen to all interlocutors in pursuit of a stable, peaceful global order — to ensure, in McCain's word, "a new global order of peace, a peace that can last not just for a decade but for a century, where the dangers and threats we face diminish, and where human progress reaches new heights."

But, ultimately, if strength was the watchword of the unipolar moment, then flexibility will be the watchword of the multipolar era that is coming into being.

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.

Green on US Asia Policy

I didn't catch this until today, but apparently Michael Green, CSIS Japan Chair and participant in the drafting of the latest Armitage-Nye Report, had an op-ed on US Asia Policy in the Washington Post last Tuesday (via CSIS).

The title pretty much says it all: "America's Quiet Victories in Asia."

Green's point is that the US position in Asia is quite firm, in part because it has been diligently built up over decades. Indeed, the US, as an Asian power, has been characterized in a large part by steadiness: steady commitments to allies through deployments in Japan and South Korea, the steady deepening of trade ties, and, since the third wave of democratization swept through the region, steady support for the solidification of democratic regimes. Over time, American steadiness has borne fruit. As Green wrote:

None of these leaders embraced democracy because it was imposed by the United States, nor are they contemplating imposing democracy on their neighbors. Many continue to have major governance and democracy challenges (Thailand's coup for one) and are torn over how to manage the undemocratic disaster that is Burma. Yet all recognize that their economic development and national security depend on the spread of democratic principles and good governance. As these values are consolidated across the region, they will inevitably affect China, Burma and even North Korea.

This sums up the aim of the latest Armitage-Nye Report. The authors clearly desire that the US continue to play a steady, largely silent role in the region, with a light touch, reassuring words, and a willingness to let a newly vibrant Asia make its own way to a more liberal regional order, even if that means that occasional setback along the way. Of course, part of the quiet US role is a continuing military presence in the region, to continue to provide an all-purpose deterrent and supply public goods (open sea lanes, etc.). But even that role is evolving to be less visible, as with the consolidation of US forward deployments in Japan and planned redeployment of Marines to Guam.

Breaking for book notes

Another day, another session of the budget committee, with the opposition once again raking the Abe Cabinet over the coa...by which I mean soberly discussing Japan's policy goals and requirements.

As such, I want to take a brief break from tracking the current Diet session to post some notes on a book I recently finished reading.

But first, I now have a dedicated email address for questions and comments concerning the content of this blog. Please direct your email to observingjapan@gmail.com.

As longtime readers of this blog will note, I have a particular fascination with China (er, who -- especially among observers of the Asia-Pacific -- doesn't these days). In any case, I have been reading as many books worth reading on China that I can get my hands on in order to get a more nuanced view of the country that may claim the twenty-first century in the same way that America claimed the twentieth. (Find a previous review here.)

In this vein, I have just finished reading journalist Ian Buruma's Bad Elements, in which he travels the Chinese world, from the suburbs of Washington, DC to Tibet, to talk with prominent and not-so-prominent Chinese dissidents, including dissidents who have resisted governments in Taipei and Singapore. While already several years old, Buruma provides a thorough look at the dynamics of resistance from which the successful removal of the CCP might spring. At the same time, however, Buruma should be credited for not writing hagiography. It is altogether too easy to lose one's critical eye when assessing individuals who have risked everything to resist tyrannical governments, and while Buruma gives the subjects of his book the credit they deserve, he doesn't not hesitate in his probing of their motives and their goals.

I drew several especially salient points from Buruma's book.

First, there is no question that the CCP will fall sooner or later. Having unleashed the tremendous forces of a modern market economy without having relinquished power, the CCP cleared the way for rampant corruption -- while at the same time ever so slightly giving citizens space to begin demanding accountability (how else does one explain this). The question is how long before demands for accountability metastasize into demands for greater political accountability. Buruma's frequent references to Chinese history -- which is filled with examples of long-ruling regimes overturned -- serve as a constant reminder that sooner or later each regime that has governed China has faltered and fallen, usually overwhelmed by systemic failures and flaws. The timeline at work in the demise of the CCP regime may not conform to the demands of the twenty-four news cycle, but the forces that will cause its downfall are already at work, and they were unleashed by the CCP itself when it opted for vast liberalization. (For a look at how this might happen, I strongly recommend Bruce Gilley's China's Democratic Future.)

Second -- this is a more philosophical point -- Buruma was surprised to find that many of the exiled dissidents with whom he talked converted to Christianity while in exile, which suggests that no matter how hard materialists like the CCP try to extinguish the human soul, that deep need to believe in something greater than oneself, it finds a way of re-emerging, often as religious belief. I suspect that the cadres in Beijing realize this, hence the promotion of nationalism in the wake of Deng's reforms.

Speaking of nationalism, Buruma expertly documents the twisted skein that is Chinese nationalism in the twenty-first century: sometimes racialist, sometimes cultural, sometimes political, often belligerent, the impact Chinese nationalism will have on the political and social evolution of China in the coming decades is probably the greatest wild card at present.

One final point that I found interesting is that in contemporary China, as in Eastern Europe during the 1970s and 1980s, when the ruling party has politicized everything, the act of carving out a place for the non-political in society becomes, paradoxically, imbued with great political significance (This phenomenon was deftly described in Tony Judt's Postwar).

I can very easily imagine research institutes in Beijing full of newly minted Chinese PhDs digging through the history of the demise of the Eastern bloc -- not to mention Chinese history -- looking for clues to avoid the same fate as the "people's democracies."

In any case, I give credit to Buruma for not simply writing a book that cheers China's dissidents and looks to post-CCP China with rose-tinted glasses. China's democratic transition, when it comes, is bound to be a messy and potentially bloody affair, and Buruma successfully treads the thin line between realistically assessing the future and worshipping the present power on the throne in Beijing. The picture that emerges from his account is of a China that's more than ready for a change, thanks to a population more politically astute than observers often suggest.