Recommended Book: The Peninsula Question, Yoichi Funabashi

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The problem with foreign policy

George Washington University's Henry Nau has an essay in Policy Review in which he discusses the challenges posed by debating foreign policy (via RealClearPolitics).

I am posting largely without comment, but I want to note that Nau's question is something I've thought about for a while. Ideas about foreign policy depend much more on abstraction and making broad generalizations based on whatever facts are at hand. As the world has gotten "bigger" -- what Raymond Aron called the "dawn of universal history" -- the number of facts needed required to have a coherent picture of the world increased simultaneously, meaning both more abstraction and more reliance on media to provide the basic facts necessary to piece together an understanding of international affairs. Both of these trends are problematic.

I've always liked a passage from an essay by Nathan Glazer on this problem from the May 1971 issue of Commentary entitled "Vietnam: The Case for Immediate Withdrawal":

When an administration does anything in domestic affairs, it affects its own people directly. Someone is helped, someone is hurt, and in a democratic polity, those who are helped and those who are hurt have ways of letting the government know quickly and clearly...Domestic policies get responses, and governments and legislators are sensitive to them. Ideology and elaborate reasoning play a relatively minor role in domestic affairs...None of this happens when a big country fights what for it is a small-scale war. There the destruction and killing are concentrated in a distant country.

What lessons can we conclude from this? For starters, I think it would behoove all actors in US foreign policy debates to speak with greater humility about foreign policy issues, to realize the limits of their (and our) knowledge about the world, and to recognize that while ideological simplifications provide a foundation for thinking about the world, tactical flexibility is imperative. And, of course, they must never forget that all actions have unintended consequences.

Japan's multilateral blues

Yesterday I wrote about rising concerns that Japan will be criticized regarding the cheap yen at the G7 meeting this weekend in Germany; Japan, however, may also be running into trouble at the six-party talks due to restart this week in Beijing.

This article in the FT hints at growing signs that Washington is increasingly open to an agreement with the DPRK, including normalization, this following reports of positive exchanges between US and North Korean envoys in preparatory meetings in Berlin.

I remain incredulous that the talks will result in a denuclearized North Korea -- and this article confirms my incredulity, as it only touches on the nuclear issue.

If I was sitting in the Kantei now, I would be worried. You have a Bush administration desperate for a victory, on any front, that can help cement the president's legacy. You have signs of irritation on Washington's part with critical comments from Japan's foreign and defense ministers, and the festering sore in bilateral relations that is the Okinawa bases issue. Ultimately, you have an administration that's thinking about bigger things than Japan's comfort.

Yes, if I was Prime Minister Abe, my concerns would be shifting to the "abandonment" side of Glenn Snyder's abandonment - entrapment axis, because any agreement that fails to guarantee a denuclearized Korean peninsula -- or secure greater conclusiveness on the abductee issue -- is a defeat for Japan. I expect that a Bush administration that seems desperate for an agreement is not going to let a handful of abductees from the 70s and 80s stand in the way.

So for all Abe's groundwork in Asia, his fate may be sealed by his cabinet's snubs on the US. I doubt, after all, that Seoul and Beijing are going to push to toughen any agreement from the six-party talks to satisfy Japan. As such, the distinct chill that has settled in between Tokyo and Washington could have significant consequences in the resolution of the North Korean crisis, to Japan's detriment.

The annual foreign policy survey, pt. 1

Nikkei reports today on the results of the Japanese government's annual survey of public opinion on Japan's foreign relations. The results are not particularly surprising. Nikkei leads by reporting that the ratio of respondents (57%) who thought that Japanese-South Korean relations were bad was the highest since the survey began in 1986 -- this likely reflecting the influence of the "Kenkanryu" (the hate-Korea wave).

Nikkei also notes that the survey found a big jump in the percentage of respondents who thought Japan's relations with Russia were bad (eleven percentage points, to 68.2%), attributed by Nikkei to Russia's shooting of Japanese crab fishermen earlier this year. The survey also found that the ratio of respondents who thought Japan's relations with China were good remained low, hovering around 20%.

What surprises me, however, is that when asked about North Korea, respondents said they were more concerned about the abduction of Japanese citizens (86.7%) than the nuclear problem (79.5%) or the missile problem (71.5%), this despite the survey's being conducted from 5th to 15th October, as North Korea tested a nuclear weapon and the international community weighed the best response. I find this number shocking. I knew that the Japanese people felt strongly about North Korea's abduction of Japanese citizens during the 1970s and 1980s, but to feel more concerned about that -- which is a question of righting past wrongs -- than about a very clear and very present danger is mildly unsettling.

This probably reflects efforts by Abe Shinzo during his time as chief cabinet secretary to call attention to the kidnapping issue, but perhaps Gerald Curtis was right: maybe the government needs to back down slightly on this issue and focus the public's attention on more current problems with North Korea. Naturally the survey shows that the public is concerned about North Korea's burgeoning arsenal, but that should be the foremost concern, not the abductions issue, which is a relatively minor symptom of the major problem that is the DPRK.

In any case, the government survey is quite substantial, so I will provide more analysis as I make my way through it.

Another take on the abductions issue

The Japan Times reported yesterday on comments by Columbia's Gerald Curtis at a forum at the Korea Society in New York, in which he suggested that the abduction issue -- the dispute that has followed upon North Korea's 2002 admission to having abducted Japanese citizens in the 1970s and 1980s -- has isolated Japan.

It's worth considering whether Japan is wise to expend diplomatic effort on an issue that may not have much traction. Unlike Curtis, I don't think the abductions issue is necessarily isolating Japan -- there are plenty of other issues by which Japan can be isolated from its neighbors -- but the real concern would be if the US and North Korea actually began trading concessions (unlikely but not impossible). In that case, Japan would be isolated, because it would be pushing a hard line just as the US softened.

Of course, a lot needs to happen for this scenario to unfold, but it's interesting to consider whether Japan should back off on an issue that is, after all, wrapped up with the whole package of North Korea's atrocious behavior.

But then, this is one of those foreign policy issues where the public has, in part, led rather than followed. While Prime Minister Abe has taken the lead on this issue since 2002, the public has demanded action, and moreover the issue carries sentimental weight, to which posters, lapel pins, and films attest.

Summiting in Hanoi

So President Bush and Prime Minister Abe have had their first meeting, in the wake of the APEC summit in Hanoi.

As the recap provided by the White House indicates, the agenda of their conversation was not particularly surprising and the meeting provided no major changes in US-Japan alliance policy. (Although, as this Yomiuri summary indicates, the two leaders spoke of a Free Trade Area of the Asia Pacific, which, if it could be achieved, would be a significant development.)

What is interesting in the recap is that it is Prime Minister Abe who spoke of the importance of the alliance's fundamental values of "freedom, democracy, basic human rights and the rule of law." This is the continuation of a trend, noted by Michael Green, that began under Koizumi; Japan has begun to speak more of the alliance's values and of Japan's commitment to spread freedom and democracy as a way to contrast itself with China, which may be an important market but is still governed by a one-party dictatorship and has yet to become a responsible stakeholder in Asia and the world. Also interesting in Mr. Abe's remarks is that he suggested that the "globalization" of the alliance, which intensified under Mr. Koizumi, will continue.

There is no indication, however, as to whether the strong personal rapport that characterized the Bush-Koizumi relationship will also characterize the Bush-Abe relationship. We may have to wait until this week's issue of the Prime Minister's email magazine to learn more.