A perfect storm for security policy change?

The great puzzle in Japanese security policy is why despite the consensus within the LDP in favor of a more robust, independent security and persistent worries about North Korea and China among the public at large Japan has failed to spend more — or the same — on defense and made legal and doctrinal changes that would enable Japan to meet threats originating from its neighbors.

Will 2009 be a turning point at which Japan opts for a new security policy?

The response to North Korea's rocket launch has been revealing. As I have already discussed, LDP conservatives have responded to the launch by dusting off old proposals and pushing for them with renewed vigor. Abe Shinzo is back in the spotlight. The conservatives, marginalized when public discussion focused solely on the dismal state of the Japanese economy, have been experiencing a bit of a surge going into the Golden Week holiday.

Prime Minister Aso Taro is revisiting plans from the Abe administration to revise the constitutional interpretation prohibiting the exercise of the right of collective self-defense. On Thursday, Aso met with Yanai Shunji, who headed a private advisory group under Abe to consider the question of collective self-defense, to revisit the question in light of recent events. Aso has previously expressed his desire to tackle collective self-defense, but it appears that North Korea may have given him the opportunity to move forward with it.

He will have plenty of help from his conservative allies. On Saturday, Abe spoke in Aichi prefecture, where he stressed the importance of collective self-defense and called for including reinterpretation of the prohibition in the LDP's election manifesto this year. As is the standard line when talking about collective self-defense, Abe stressed that if Japan is unable to engage in collective self-defense, the alliance will be finished the moment North Korea fires a missile in the direction of the United States.

Of course, it is still an open question whether Japan would be able to shoot down a missile. And in the Obama administration's defense budget proposal, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates will push for cuts in research into boost-phase intercept technology, in part because, as Nathan Hodge notes at Danger Room, Gates believes that midcourse and terminal phase missile defense systems are sound. In other words, at the same time that Gates has shrugged off the North Korean missile threat, Japanese conservatives are using the supposed threat to the US and the US-Japan alliance posed by North Korean missiles to move their agenda.

Meanwhile, other conservatives are using the US response to argue that instead of collective self-defense, Japan should be more focused on acquiring the capabilities necessary to defend itself. A recent Sakurai Yoshiko article from Shukan Daiyamondo, reprinted at her website, is a classic of the genre. Sakurai looks at Gates's nonchalance towards the North Korean launch as a signal to Japan that it is on its own. Therefore, "For defense procurement, Japan has until now consistently cut its defense budget by two percent a year. This must stop. We should quickly change course and increase the defense budget." This is a been a consistent theme in her writing, especially of late. Another article, this one in Shukan Shincho, covers much of the same ground but focuses more on how the US is moving closer to China and, by shifting its defense priorities (i.e., by cutting orders of the F-22), will leave Japan vulnerable to China's new model fighter jets. Japan, she argues, is in a tough spot as it picks a new fighter for the ASDF, this despite Japan's having no option to buy the F-22 in the first place — Japan would be in a tough spot regardless of US budgetary decisions. (Sakurai actually backs away from the argument that the US is somehow weaker militarily and focuses on the dangers of Obama's naivete.) Yet another article by Sakurai, this one in the current Shukan Daiyamondo, picks up where her Shincho article left off, castigating the Obama administration for its "unrealistic" China policy and complaining about nuclear disarmament and the F-22 cuts.

(Yes, the conservatives are obsessed with the F-22. This article by Noguchi Hiroyuki, a defense reporter for the Sankei Shimbun, lavishes praise on the F-22 in a manner surely unmatched by all but the US Air Force and Lockheed Martin. Noguchi's article contains many of the same complaints as Sakurai's articles, in particular complaints about the threat posed to Japan by the US government's love for China. Noguchi's article is also of note because he chides Gates for talking about the F-22 as a cold war program; the cold war in Asia, he says, never ended. Which is precisely how Japan's conservatives see Asia, despite economic interdependence with China that dwarfs anything seen during the cold war.)

This is all fairly typical coming from these sources. The difference is that now these calls for a more robust, autonomous Japanese security posture dovetail nicely with the push within the LDP, which in turn has benefited from the emergency drill conducted courtesy of North Korea earlier this month. We are seeing a concerted push by Japan's conservatives to make the case for bigger defense budgets, and, in the case of some of them, greater autonomy from the US. Surely China's fleet review this week will provide more grist for their mill, not unlike the current debate over defense policy in Australia.

The DPJ, it seems, does not want to be left behind in this discussion, and so Asao Keiichiro, the defense minister in the DPJ's next cabinet, on Saturday called for conventional capabilities that would enable Japan to strike North Korean launchers preemptively. (Full disclosure: I previously worked in Asao's office.)

I have no problem with Japan's having this discussion — at this point any discussion about security policy is meaningful. But there are a number of questions that none of Japan's jingoes have answered. For example, to Asao, Abe, Yamamoto Ichita, and the others who have used North Korea's launch to call for preemptive strike capabilities, what specifically do you envision for this role? And, as Jun Okumura asks, can Japan actually find and hit North Korea's mobile launchers? Have you at least considered the consequences of an independent preemptive strike capability for the alliance? By how much should the defense budget be increased? The Japanese people deserve to hear their answers to these questions. It's an election year, after all. It's also the year of the drafting of the latest National Defense Program Outline, which this debate will surely impact.

But I wish the debate wasn't so one-sided. I do wish there was someone willing to argue against the idea that East Asia is in the midst of a new cold war with China, with North Korea's being a sideshow to the main event. I wish there was someone of sufficient stature willing to flood the Japanese media space like Sakurai, except with nuanced arguments about the nature of the East Asian security environment and the "co-opetive" relationship most countries in the region have with China.

Nevertheless, I hope Japan has this discussion, and I hope that public pays attention to it. I'm skeptical that it will produce dramatic changes — there is that whole economic crisis after all — but the conservatives now enjoy the most favorable conditions in which to advance their arguments that they've enjoyed in years.

Ambassador Schieffer's farewell

J. Thomas Schieffer, US ambassador to Japan since 2005, left Japan Thursday.

To mark his departure, Ambassador Schieffer gave a farewell address at the National Press Club in Tokyo Wednesday, followed by a long press conference that ranged over a host of topics, not all of them having to do with Japan and US-Japan relations.

The central message of the address — and the Schieffer ambassadorship — is that Japan should do more internationally.

"Now, more than ever," he said, "Japan needs to focus on what it can do in the world. In a few days Barack Obama will be sworn in as the 44th President of the United States. He electrified America and the world with a simple slogan – 'Yes, we can!' Japan's first response to this new administration must not be, 'No, we can't.'"

Press coverage focused on Ambassador Schieffer's latest appeal for Japan to reinterpret the use of the right of collective self-defense, although in the ambassador's defense, his call for collective self-defense was but one portion of his call for a more active Japan, and he demurred from calling for constitution revision: "There is much more that needs to be done by the international community in trouble spots like Afghanistan and the horn of Africa. And Japan can do it...Some people will argue that Japan is prohibited from doing those sorts of things by its constitution but I would argue that Japan can fulfill the promise of its constitution by doing those things."

Nevertheless, as the Bush administration passes the baton to the Obama administration next week, it is worth asking whether the Bush administration should also pass on this method of conducting US-Japan relations by urging Japan to do more internationally.

Does calling publicly on the Japanese government to do more actually make any difference? Gaiatsu emanating from the embassy might give encouragement to certain Japanese politicians and bureaucrats, as gaiatsu always has, but in January 2009 Japan is probably further from revising the constitution or changing the collective self-defense interpretation than it was in April 2005, when Mr. Schieffer arrived in Tokyo. Japan is in the grips of a painful recession growing worse by the months, and the goal of a balanced budget is receding into the distance. Meanwhile, the Japanese establishment has been burned by the Bush administration over North Korea, despite Mr. Schieffer's best efforts to make the abductions issue a priority for the US. (He devotes a good portion of the introduction of his address to the plight of the abductees.) Japanese troops have returned from Iraq, proposals to play a greater role in Afghanistan have been scuttled, and the government is proceeding gingerly regarding the dispatch of JSDF vessels to fight pirates by the Horn of Africa. Despite Mr. Schieffer's best efforts, Japan is no closer to becoming the partner desired by many in Washington.

The problem is not political gridlock in Tokyo, which has become a convenient scapegoat for a number of deferred goals. Rather the problem may be that while Ambassador Schieffer talks of contributions to the international community, what many Japanese see are contributions to the US-Japan alliance, with Japan's serving as a spear carrier in US campaigns but receiving little in return for its contributions other than expressions of gratitude from US officials. Mr. Schieffer claims to desire an "alliance of equals," but in practice his ambassadorship and the administration under which he served did little to make an equal partnership a reality. An equal partnership appears to be the prize awaiting Japan after it has made the changes desired by Washington.

But to paraphrase Donald Rumsfeld, you go to war with the ally you have, not the ally you want.

All too often under the outgoing administration pushing for a new (or "beautiful") Japan substituted for working with the Japan that exists, accepting its limitations and acting accordingly. While the Bush administration pushed for a new security relationship, little changed in the economic relationship, with, it seems to me, the greatest economic accomplishment being the avoidance of the "destructive aspects of trade disputes that plagued our relationship in the ‘80s and ‘90s." Moreover, the ambassador had little to say about China or the region more generally. This last point is revealing: while naturally as ambassador to Japan Mr. Schieffer's remarks were concerned with developments in the US-Japan relationship, it is unfortunate that so few of those developments concerned the alliance's role in the broader region.

This is the picture of an underperforming relationship. It is not underperforming solely or largely because of Japan's reluctance to bear a greater burden. It is underperforming because neither Washington nor Tokyo has put too much effort into building a relationship that acknowledges Japan's limitations and sought to find a bilateral approach to constructive engagement with China. The US government needs to stop pushing so hard for Japan to become a "normal" nation and let Japan find its own way. By pushing Japan, the Bush administration has created the unmistakable impression that contributing more to the international community means in practice contributing more to the US-Japan alliance. The Obama administration must work to undo this impression — and by doing so, it may find that Japan may be willing to contribute to alliance cooperation. A less "close" alliance could be a more productive alliance.

To that end, I strongly reject a recommendation included in AEI's new report, "An American Strategy for Asia," that the next administration should "press Japan, albeit quietly and with the requisite delicacy, to move forward in addressing the legal restrictions that still encumber and inhibit its security policy." If the US government is serious about Japan's contributing more to the international community, it should stop telling Japan's leaders how to do it.

Barring a miracle for the LDP, the US may be dealing with a DPJ-led government by year's end. Seeing as how a DPJ victory will likely depend in part on its skepticism towards the alliance as it has been managed under the LDP-Komeito coalition, the Obama administration should start thinking now how it will manage the relationship with a DPJ government. The Bush era methods of pushing for Japan to do more — quietly or loudly — will not do. Washington will have to be serious about treating Japan as an equal, which means leaving it to Tokyo to figure out how it will contribute to the international community and what role it wants the alliance to play internationally. Under a Prime Minister Ozawa, Japan might be surprisingly willing to play a greater international role, but it will not do so if it appears that Washington is issuing Japan's marching orders.

The trouble with collective self-defense

Yomiuri ran an editorial on reviewing the prohibition on the right of collective self-defense today, arguing that debate "ought to deepen."

The occasion for this editorial is the government panel's recommendation that MSDF vessels be permitted to counterattack if, when sailing with US warships, the US vessels come under attack. In this case and the case of a missile potentially bound for the US, the panel, rather than simply declaring that collective self-defense is permissible, has suggested that the right of individual self-defense and the provisions of the JSDF law permit a Japanese response, regardless of the prevailing interpretation of the right of collective self-defense.

Not being a lawyer, I am not in a position to question the legal soundness of the panel's recommendations. What interests me is the politics of collective self-defense, and what it means for the US-Japan alliance.

At the heart of Yomiuri's position is the argument that failure to allow collective self-defense in some form will destroy the alliance: "For example, if Japan, by virtue of constitutional restrictions, was an idle spectator to an attack on the US, the alliance would collapse." I do not disagree with that assessment. Once Americans realize that the alliance is actually a one-way alliance, their tolerance for it would disappear quickly, particularly if that realization came about in the aftermath of an attack on the US.

My problem is the idea that the solution to the collective self-defense problem is Japan's simply changing the constitutional interpretation (or revising the constitution). The Japanese people, insofar as they think about collective self-defense, are undoubtedly concerned that changing the interpretation could result in Japan's being forced to march alongside the US in American wars of choice (or war that may be necessary for the US, but not exactly in Japan's interests). This obviously transcends the limited cases under consideration, but it is an essential problem when looking at the road to a more active US-Japan alliance.

The politics of the alliance are such that it is hard to envision Japan standing up in the UN and publicly disagreeing with the US on the need for a war. (I am thinking, of course, of the actions of certain European allies prior to the Iraq war.) Wars of choice ought to mean that allies have a choice too; indeed, that seems to have been the lesson of the Iraq war, given that transatlantic relations seem to be steady again.

Accordingly, the alliance needs to change politically to be capable of handling collective self-defense.

The key is probably Japan becoming more capable of defending itself without the US. As long as Japan needs US military power for its own defense — even excluding nuclear deterrence — collective self-defense will feel like Japan is being press-ganged into helping the US because it feels it has no choice lest it risk the US loosening its commitment to defend Japan. This kind of anticipatory reaction was certainly a part of Japan's commitments to coalition efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq (which leads me to wonder how long Japan will be able to resist pressure from the US to put boots on the ground in Afghanistan). As a result, collective self-defense would be less the product of two allies working together than one ally feeling pressured to help as a way to ensure its security.

All changes flow from this, because as long as Japan depends on the US for its security, it is assigned, implicitly if not explicitly, a subordinate position politically. Creating an alliance council equivalent to the North Atlantic Council in the absence of Japan's being able to defend itself without the US would be futile, because the same psychological pressures that shape Japan's decision making vis-a-vis the US today would come into play.

Of course, the process of Japan becoming able to defend itself largely without the US is a process fraught with risk due to the likely reactions of Japan's neighbors, and constrained both by constitution interpretation and the budget. Indeed, these challenges have been enough to retard the process to date.

But the time is come to make Japanese self-reliance an explicit goal, and work to overcome the aforementioned challenges as much as possible.The US need not be a "cap in the bottle" any longer. It should want a capable, relatively equal ally, an ally that is able to articulate and defend its interests, even if there is divergence with the US. The goal should not simply be for Japan to become a more capable, subordinate ally. As such, permitting collective self-defense beyond the most basic cases, without a major shift in the balance between allies, will ultimately be politically unsustainable in Japan. The risk of being pulled into a US war that the Japanese people feel is not their concern will be enough to derail it. But if the Japanese government were positioned to articulate those fears publicly in the event of a crisis, collective self-defense would mean not an unconditional arrangement whereby each ally promises to aid the other in any and all cases, but an arrangement whereby the allies are capable of airing concerns and opting out if need be (for example, if Japan were in a skirmish with China or Korea over contested islands).

Creative thinking on the alliance is needed as Japan considers how to change its defense posture. Repeatedly restating commitments to one another — renewing vows over and over again — may have been fine during the 1990s, but it is no longer good enough today.

How many angels fit on the end of an SM-3?

James Auer, director of Vanderbilt's Center for US-Japan Studies and Cooperation, spoke tonight at Temple University Japan to a large audience composed of US and Japanese diplomats and policymakers, scholars, and others interested in the US-Japan alliance.

Auer is one of the elder statesmen of the alliance, having served in Japan while in the US Navy (including time spent as a liaison officer between US Naval Forces Japan and the Japanese political community), formulated US Japan policy while serving as Special Assistant for Japan in the Office of Secretary of Defense for nearly a decade spanning the Carter and Reagan administrations, and studied the alliance as a scholar, not to mention mentoring alliance leaders from both countries, including many of the defense policymakers responsible for the alliance during the 1990s. He is steeped in the lore of the alliance, and it would not be an exaggeration to call him the alliance's oral historian.

It was for this last reason especially that it was interesting to listen to his talk. But the question-and-answer session dissolved into a classic "angels-on-pinheads" discussion of Japan's position on its non-exercise of the right of collective defense, illustrating just how stunted the alliance is.

Unlike NATO, the members of which having debated since the end of the cold war the meaning of the alliance in the absence of a clear external enemy, the US-Japan alliance has not really moved beyond debates about how the alliance can fully meet its primary purpose: the defense of Japan, as enshrined in Article V of the Mutual Security Treaty. (Auer argued, with good reason, that the terms of the security treaty constitute de facto collective defense.) While some policymakers and intellectuals would like the alliance to be more global in scope, and Japan to bear a greater burden as a global security provider, the alliance is far from being able to address that question adequately, because policymakers from both countries — but Japan in particular — still debate the theology of the Cabinet Legislation Bureau's constitutional interpretation. Collective defense, especially in the limited cases being considered by Abe's advisory group (most significantly for the US the case of a missile that may be bound for the continental US), is still more about enhancing the ability of the US to defend Japan, not about projecting bilateral power in the region or neighboring regions. (Note how little discussion there is of how collective defense might work in an Article 6 situation, involving the "maintenance of international peace and security in the Far East.")

At the same time, it seems that alliance transformation is stuck, because without some discussion of what the alliance will be for beyond the mere defense of Japan, if anything, the process of reconsidering how Japan should contribute to the alliance is inadequate. The Japanese debate has been and will continue to be more concerned with figuring out what Japan cannot do than devising a new legal framework to support what Japan, in concert with the US, has decided it wants to be able to do.

Reading Packard on the US-Japan Mutual Security Treaty

On my way back to Japan, I began reading Protest in Tokyo, a classic account of the crisis surrounding the approval of the 1960 revision of the US-Japan Mutual Security Treaty by George Packard, president of the United States-Japan Foundation.

As Prime Minister Abe forges ahead in his campaign to abandon the postwar regime, I think it's worthwhile to look back at how exactly the postwar regime came to be. How did Japan shape its future in the years after independence was restored, when Japan became the anchor of US policy in the Asia-Pacific region? Arguably the cleavages rent during those formative years of Japan's postwar democracy were the fundamental battle lines in Japanese politics throughout the cold war, and while the end of the cold war deprived those cleavages of some of their potency, the debates of the 1950s and early 1960s remain relevant to understanding Japan today — both in terms of the unresolved questions about Japan's place in the world, and the impact they've had on Japan's current leaders.

Consider what Prime Minister Abe wrote about the anti-treaty demonstrations in 1960 (forgive my rough translation):

The encircling of my grandfather's house by demonstrators

On June 18, 1960, the day before the automatic passage of the US-Japan Security Treaty, the Diet and the Kantei were surrounded by demonstrators whose numbers approached 330,000.

My grandfather, confined at the Kantei, was conscious of death, but said while drinking wine with my great uncle (Sato Eisaku, at that time finance minister), "I am by no means mistaken. Even if it kills me, I am satisfied." Immediately after signing to begin the work of revision, forces of opposition around the Socialist Party intensified conflict inside and outside the Diet.

At that time, I was still six years old, and it was before I had entered primary school. To my grandfather, I was, together with my older brother, who was two years older, very cute. We would always go to play at my grandfather's home in Shibuya's Nanpeidai district.

But, there too was often surrounded by demonstrators. "Ampo, hantai!" was shouted in unison repeatedly, and stones, screws, and burning newspaper were thrown at the house. At that time, my father, who was a member of the House of Representatives, was also confined there, and my grandfather, who could not go outside and was bored, summoned us.

My brother and I, with our mother, boarded a newspaper company's car flying the company flag and went to my grandfather's house.

My brother and I, as children, heard the voices of the demonstrators from afar, and thought that it sounded like the band at a festival. We stamped out, as a joke, before my grandfather and father, "Ampo, hantai, ampo, hantai!," to which my father and mother joked, "You should say, 'Ampo sansei.'" My grandfather, while smiling at that, seemed happy.

I asked my grandfather, "What's ampo?" I dimly remember that thereupon he answered, "The Mutual Security Treaty [ampo] is a treaty so that Japan will receive protection from America. Why everyone is opposed to it, I don't understand."

(Utsukushii kuni e, pp. 21-23)

For the prime minister, for all Japanese politicians, the questions surrounding the constitution and the alliance are fundamental to their identities as politicians, not to mention Japan's identity as a nation. It is a mistake for Japan to rush into revision — and for the US and foreign observers to urge Japan on — without a clear sense of what's a stake and what the participants bring to the table.

One point that comes out early in Packard's book, in his discussion of the 1951 ratification of the initial US-Japan treaty and the debates on Japan's foreign policy that followed, is that the pursuit of independence was the fundamental goal shared by all participants in the debate, even as they differed tactically. (Conservatives, whether of a pragmatic or revisionist variety, felt that independence could be achieved via alliance with the US; socialists sought de jure independence via unarmed neutrality and rapprochement with Beijing and Moscow.)

While the rhetoric might lead observers to think otherwise, I think there's good reason to think that independence has been the consistent goal of all Japanese governments throughout the postwar era right up to today, even as successive prime ministers have talked about how valuable the US-Japan alliance is to Japan. While Japan has evinced fears of abandonment often and continues to do so today, fears of entrapment, if voiced less frequently, are just as real and are perhaps more important as a determinant of Japanese alliance policy over the long term.

All of which goes to say that American alliance managers should approach revision with a sense of caveat emptor: alliance managers may think that a Japan that has accepted collective self-defense via revision of article 9 will result in a kind of "roles-and-missions plus" arrangement (roles and missions being the new ideas about an alliance division of labor pushed in the early Reagan administration), but the US may be getting an ally that is eager to break out of the old framework and flex its muscles. That need not be a disaster for the alliance, if the US is prepared for a Japan that might become more like De Gaulle's France after revision. If the US is unprepared for a more independent Japan, however, the alliance could break at the first sign of a crisis during which the US expects Japanese support — which Tokyo fails to provide.

I will be writing more about this as I read through Packard, especially his notes about Prime Minister Kishi.

The revisionists ascendant

Western commentators who only intermittently pay attention to Japan seem to be befuddled by the Japanese constitution. They seem to have a hard time grasping the difficulties associated with changing it, the totemic significance it has been made to bear by both pacifists and revisionists — and thus tend to assume that revision is easy, right, and only a matter of time. One example is Thomas Barnett's glib comment about the inevitability of revision, discussed here. Another is this post at Commentary Magazine's Contentions blog by Gordon Chang, who tells readers that "article nine has not been enforced for decades." True, perhaps, but missing the point entirely. Citing one of Japan's "most prominent journalists," [I have a hunch; do readers have any guesses?] Chang argues, "The constitution stigmatizes the past and...prevents Japan from becoming 'a normal country.'"

Think about that: people don't stigmatize the past, the constitution does. In other words, if the constitution were revised, Japan would be able to have an honest debate and there would be no more obfuscation or outright denial regarding atrocities committed by Imperial Japan during World War II.

Rather than continue to pick apart Chang's argument, however, I would rather call your attention to an excellent monograph that spells out the history of Japan's constitution revision debate and tries to answer the question of why, despite persistent pressure from revisionists, the constitution has gone unrevised to this day.

Written by J. Patrick Boyd and Richard Samuels in 2005, Nine Lives?: The Politics of Constitutional Reform in Japan outlines, in a mere sixty pages, the contours of Japan's contested constitution (a book by that name, collecting primary sources related to revision, is this week's book of the week [see link at right]). The Boyd and Samuels monograph is available from the East-West Center here.

What I especially liked about their argument is that it cuts through the flighty rhetoric that all sides have employed when talking about revision. Their rather elegant, parsimonious argument is that while pacifist norms and the global and regional balance of power have played a part in the revision debate, the constitution — and Article 9 in particular — has survived unchanged due to a balance of power among political forces within Japan during the postwar era.

Boyd and Samuels show that a triangular balance between revisionists, pragmatists, and pacifists has prevented the revisionists from succeeding, with the pragmatists — the school of Prime Minister Yoshida and his successors — holding the balance against revision in tacit alliance with the pacifists throughout the cold war. In other words, while for some Japanese the importance of the constitution has been its deeming Japan a "peace state," the pragmatists defended it — sometimes by rejecting revision entirely, other times by pushing re-interpretations or compromises that preserved the essence of the amendment — as a means of avoiding the costs of alliance with the US that other "normal" allies had to bear. Accordingly, throughout the cold war, the pragmatists and revisionists battled for primacy in the LDP and thus in the Japanese political system, with the pragmatists holding the upper hand for much of the postwar period. Even during the Gulf War, when revisionist LDP Secretary-General Ozawa Ichiro wanted to commit Japanese soldiers to the coalition, the pragmatist wing managed to defeat him and commit only funds to the campaign (with the perverse consequence that international backlash against Japan's checkbook diplomacy fed into the revisionist argument that a newly wealthy Japan had to contribute more internationally).

Moving into the 1990s, Boyd and Samuels note that the pragmatist-pacifist dam holding the revisionist flood waters in place collapsed, with the Japanese left breaking down and the pragmatists in the LDP outmaneuvered and isolated by revisionists, who were encouraged by the more uncertain post-cold war international environment. Symbolic of this was the end of the "YKK" trio of Yamasaki Taku, Kato Koichi, and Koizumi Junichiro, an alliance between the pragmatic Yamasaki and Kato and the revisionist Koizumi. The pragmatists are not gone, of course — Yamasaki criticized the collective self-defense study group the other day — and with the Komeito an essential coalition partner for the LDP, pacifism still has a voice within the government. But the balance is undeniably shifted.

And so we see the revisionists ascendant, first under Koizumi, and now under Abe. Disagreeing with Graham Webster, slightly, I think the difference between Koizumi and Abe is not so much a matter of "sentimental" versus "practical": it's more a matter of political style. As in Isaiah Berlin's useful (but perhaps over-used) dichotomy, "The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing." Koizumi was a classic fox, jumping from subject to subject, sometimes seeming to care more about style and image than substance. Abe, meanwhile, is obsessed with the constitution (and the "post-war regime) — his "one big thing." Accordingly, although both Koizumi and Abe have seen disorder grow among opponents of constitution revision grow even as revisionists consolidated their control of the LDP, Koizumi abjured from striking directly at Article 9. Obviously, Abe has not, thanks in part to the LDP majority assembled in the September 2005 "postal reform" election.

Interestingly, as Boyd and Samuels note — and as I've argued before — that with the collapse of organized opposition to revision within the political system, the only potential source of opposition is from the Japanese people themselves. Whether they can or will is another question entirely, but the push for revision is an opportunity for the Japanese people to raise their voices and claim the process for themselves.

Another point they raise relevant to the situation today is that even as the revisionists gained power during the 1990s, they opted to hold off from re-interpreting Article 9 to permit collective self-defense, arguing that it was a waste of political capital to push for re-interpretation — reversible by a future government — when revision, a more permanent change, was so close at hand. And yet we see Prime Minister Abe pushing simultaneously for both revision and collective self-defense in limited cases. Is his ambitious agenda simply a function of his obsession, or is it a natural product of fifteen years of revisionist ascendancy? With Abe, are the revisionists not merely ascendant but triumphant?

Samuels and Boyd, wisely, hesitate to predict if and when revision will occur, arguing simply that Japan's political dynamics over brought Japan to a critical turning point.

Meanwhile, they make an interesting point about a potential consequence of revision. Namely, if Abe succeeds, if Japan embraces collective self-defense and revises Article 9, Japan's long-standing fears of entrapment by the US — an important part of the pragmatist position — will be more justified than ever. It becomes that much harder to say no to a US determined to go to war with Japan by its side without having Article 9 to hide behind. Given the tremendous unease with the alliance and with the prospect of Japan contributing to America's wars that I've seen evinced by the Japanese people time and time again during my time here, changing Japan's constitution to enable Japan to be a better ally of the US may have the unintended consequence of leading Japan to balk when asked (with all the attendant consequences).

With three years of debate to come, I strongly hope that if and when revision occurs, it will take into account the doubts and questions outlined by Boyd and Samuels — and that the ultimate form of any proposed revisions reflect the input of actors other than the revisionists.

Hopefully now that the Diet has passed the referendum bill, Samuels and Boyd will do some revising of their own and release a new version of this monograph that reflects the changes under Abe.

Gaiatsu revisited

After reading this post by Matt Dioguardi at Liberal Japan. and reading that MTC was "not thrilled" with yesterday's admittedly dyspeptic post about gaiatsu and constitution revision, I feel that it is necessary to clarify about what the US should do over the coming years as Japan debates constitution revision.

Pace Matt Dioguardi, gaiatsu is not simply a matter of the US government communicating to Japan what it would prefer Japan to be able to do in the alliance. In the case cited by Dioguardi, this article in the Japan Times, Secretary Gates telling Defense Minister Kyuma that the US would like Japan to be able to exercise its right of collective self-defense so that it would be able to shoot down, hypothetically, a missile fired in the direction of the US is simply a restatement of a long-standing US position — as is telling Japan that if it did not try to shoot down a missile in that scenario, it would have serious repercussions for the alliance. That's not a threat; that's a fact.

Can you imagine how quickly the phrase "free rider" would be on the lips of every single member of Congress if that were to happen?

It seems that Gates was simply taking a page from the 2000 Armitage-Nye Report, which said:

Japan's prohibition against collective self-defense is a constraint on alliance cooperation. Lifting this prohibition would allow for closer and more efficient security cooperation. This is a decision that only the Japanese people can make. The United States has respected the domestic decisions that form the character of Japanese security policies and should continue to do so. But Washington must make clear that it welcomes a Japan that is willing to make a greater contribution and to become a more equal alliance partner.

That also happens to be my position on what the US can do. The prohibition on the right of collective self-defense is the most significant obstacle to further alliance cooperation, but the days of press-ganging allies must end. (Isn't that the meaning of coalitions of the willing?)

The US can make its desires known through bilateral diplomatic channels, but gaiatsu — which involves actively supporting advocates of policies desired by the US in domestic policy debates — should not be used. While that may seem like a fine line, statements by Secretary Gates and Ambassador Schieffer on what the US would like Japan to be able to do fall within the realm of diplomacy.

But that's it. The US should communicate its desires, but it should not use its power to bend Japan to its will, lest any new settlement on the constitution and the alliance be as tainted as the old. I am thinking, of course, of the demonstrations surrounding the passage the 1960 Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security between the United States and Japan; while Japan and the US will not be drafting a new treaty, the potential changes resulting from the reinterpretation of the prohibition on the right of collective self-defense and constitution revision could be of the same importance as the treaty. They must be — or be perceived — as the result of decisions made by the Japanese people, not decisions made or perceived to be made as a result of collusion between Japanese politicians and the US.

Japan's long road to normalization

Richard Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations and director of the State Department's Policy Planning Staff early in the Bush administration, has an op-ed on the occasion of Abe's visit that title of which says it all: "Asia's Overlooked Great Power." (Hat tip: Project Syndicate)

Most of Haass' essay is innocuous, typical proposals about more regional cooperation and a more apologetic stance on the history question, but one point he made strikes me as problematic.

He writes, "Intellectuals, journalists, and politicians are now saying and writing things about Japan’s role in the world that were unthinkable a decade ago. It is a question of when, not if, the Japanese amend Article IX of their constitution, which limits the role of Japan’s armed forces to self-defense."

I don't disagree with the former point. One of the more interesting pieces of Japan's normalization has been the normalization of the security policy debate, with the removal of taboos on what security policies can be considered and an eagerness to discuss the regional and global security environments. But a more robust security debate has not necessarily resulted in -- nor resulted from -- an abiding change how the Japanese people think about their nation's role in the world. While fears of North Korea have enabled the Japanese government to deepen missile defense cooperation with the US, it is unclear the extent to which the abductions issue -- as opposed to direct concerns about North Korea's ballistic missiles and nuclear arsenal -- has shaped Japanese public opinion on North Korea. And beyond North Korea, the Japanese people aren't exactly clamoring for their country to take on more risky missions abroad that could result in combat deaths.

Will this reluctance ultimately give way?

I don't think so. The process of normalization has not been, and will not be, a linear process. It has proceeded with baby steps and the occasional step backwards -- and lots of standing still. While the younger generation of politicians, bureaucrats, and commentators has shown itself to be far more willing and eager to see a more robust Japanese global role, they operate in a policy environment in which change happens slowly and in which compromise is a matter of course. And there are a number of politicians who may favor a more prominent Japanese role abroad, but would prefer to be a European-style "soft power" great power. (I suspect that that stance will not be tenable given Japan's highly uncertain regional environment.)

As such, Haass should not be so quick to assume that constitution revision is a foregone conclusion. Given falling support for revision and given that Abe's government may not last the year, Article 9 may live long beyond the sixtieth birthday that it is celebrating this year. I am convinced that re-interpretation is far more likely, but while re-interpretation of the prohibition on the right of collective self-defense would resolve some of the ambiguity surrounding Japan's defense role, especially in the US-Japan alliance, doubts would remain -- and doubts mean that every proposed action (outside of actions requiring immediate response, i.e. a missile launch) will be subject to endless debate in the Diet, parsing whether the proposed mission fits with the new interpretation.

So change is happening, and will continue to happen, but not in the direct, clear-cut, expeditious manner expected by Haass.

The offensive continues

Yesterday I wrote that the Abe Cabinet launched an "offensive" on the question of collective self-defense.

It seems that that offensive continued today, with Prime Minister Abe meeting with Richard Armitage, former deputy secretary of state, co-chair of the groups that produced the two reports on the US-Japan alliance that bear his name (alongside Joseph Nye), and all-around advocate of greater US-Japan cooperation. (At present, it seems that Sankei is the only major daily covering this story.)

The article reports [my translation]: "Armitage said after the talk, 'If the conclusion leads to more flexibility, it will be good for Japan. He indicated his hope that Japan will become able to exercise its right of collective self-defense. On the other hand, he pointed out that 'it's Japan's decision' and he stressed that Japan is struggling [with the issue] itself."

I expect that in advance of this weekend's summit, Armitage will inform the president about the contents of his conversation with Abe -- and whoever else he happens to meet while visiting -- making clear to the president that Abe is committed to overcoming the prohibition on collective self-defense, the biggest obstacle standing in the way of greater US-Japan security cooperation.

Thus Armitage's meeting with Abe is as much a part of the offensive as remarks in the Diet by Abe's senior advisers, helping to clear the ground in Washington for changes that could be in the offing.

Those changes are far from guaranteed, however, as Komeito Secretary General Kitagawa Kazuo made clear in his remarks in the Diet today, in which he warned the government to be "prudent" in its reconsideration of the prohibition on the exercise of the right of collective self-defense, suggesting that the current interpretation provides for the cases under consideration.

Nevertheless, as I said yesterday, the push for reinterpretation may prove more important than constitution revision, which remains a distant prospect, the national referendum bill notwithstanding. Washington must be ready, however, to work with Tokyo to determine the structure of the alliance should Japan become able to act as a full (or fuller) ally.

Collective self-defense offensive

In the past day, the Abe Cabinet has been on the offensive on the question of the review of the prohibition on the right of collective self-defense.

Yesterday, Prime Minister Abe said at a press conference, "As the era changes, I want to have a debate about how the constitution should be interpreted."

At the Diet, controversial LDP PARC chairman Nakagawa Shoichi gave a speech explaining the thinking behind the collective self-defense study group. (The same article reports that in accordance with Chief Cabinet Secretary Shiozaki's reassurance that any recommendations made by the study group will go through the normal LDP policy channels, Ishiba Shigeru, JDA director-general under Koizumi and currently chairman of the LDP-PARC National Defense division, Defense Policy Investigative Subcommittee, will spearhead the debate.)

Then, today, Defense Minister Kyuma reiterated to the press the points made by Abe yesterday about the importance of reviewing the constitutional interpretation that prohibits the exercise of the right of collective self-defense.

The Abe Cabinet's push behind the review is important, perhaps more important than the push to revise the Constitution -- because reinterpreting the constitution to permit collective self-defense, even in limited cases, is a far easier way of strengthening Japanese security policy than revising the constitution. Should the government succeed, it will impact the US-Japan alliance immediately, directly, and concretely.

Perhaps this reflects a tactical shift by the cabinet, recognizing that with constitution revision a distant prospect, the government's efforts are better spent trying to realize a very real policy shift in the short term. There is probably a PR element too, allowing Abe to demonstrate to President Bush this weekend that his government is pushing all-out for a more generous reinterpretation of the constitution.

But make no mistake: reinterpreting the constitution would be a hugely important step in the normalization of Japanese security policy.

Reviewing collective self-defense

While all of political Japan continues to discuss the assassination of Nagasaki Mayor Ito -- which I discussed here -- I am interested in the ongoing preparations for Prime Minister Abe's visit to Washington at the end of the month.

Today, the Sankei Shimbun reports, Chief Cabinet Secretary Shiozaki addressed questions about the Cabinet's study group on whether to permit the exercise of the right of collective self-defense. Namely, Shiozaki confirmed that no changes will be made to the constitutional interpretation prohibiting collective self-defense without the ruling party's approval. He said, "Naturally, policy cannot be changed without getting the ruling party's understanding." He added, "While the security situation changes, should we not effectively reconstruct the legal foundation? The relationship with the Constitution is being investigated within the administration. Prime Minister Abe Shinzo's position is that we should think together with Komeito about what legal foundation is necessary."

Shiozaki uses the word 与党 (yotoo), which can be translated as "ruling party," "government party," or "majority party," but I have a hunch that when push comes to shove, Shiozaki really means to say 自民党 (LDP). While the statement about including Komeito suggests that he might mean ruling coalition, is Abe really going to let Komeito -- which has declared its opposition to both constitution revision and the exercise of the right of collective self-defense -- determine his government's agenda on the normalization of Japanese security policy?

Beyond that, the important point to derive from Shiozaki's statement is that Japan's security policy, unlike that of every other major power, is legislature-directed. Normalization is a legislative process; over the past fifteen years, Japan has -- aside from token, though important, PKO and reconstruction operations -- done little more than pass laws that expand Japan's security policy potential, starting with the International Peace Cooperation Law and continuing on through the series of laws to implement the revised US-Japan Guidelines and permit Japanese contributions to coalition efforts in the Indian Ocean and Iraq.

Despite the "presidentialization" of the Kantei, the Diet remains the place to watch for developments in security policy.

Friction in the coalition?

The Mainichi Shimbun reports in a brief article that the New Komeito Party, the LDP's coalition partner, wants to maintain clauses one and two of Article 9 and does not seek the ability to exercise the right of collective self-defense.

Surely a disagreement within the LDP-Komeito coalition on constitution revision and the related question of collective self-defense is not insignificant, given the priority Prime Minister Abe has given these issues. Since the LDP does not hold the necesssary two-thirds majority in either house that it would need to pass constitution revisions, Komeito's support may be the deciding factor in whether and how the Abe Cabinet decides to push forward on constitution revision. I suspect that opposition from Komeito -- the political affiliate of the Buddhist Soka Gakkai organization, which believes in a kind of conservative pacifism -- might temper the ultimate shape of a revised constitution, if revisions manage to take shape under the Abe Cabinet.

Perhaps the prospect of all of Japan's political parties uniting against Abe's government would be enough stop his efforts -- or at least make the government substantially more deferential to the wishes of the Japanese public and opinions from across spectrum of the Japanese political system.

Yet another reason for observers not to overreact to steps being taken towards constitution revision.

A gift to Bush?

Prime Minister Abe has announced the formation of a special study group chaired by former Japanese ambassador to the US Yanai Shunji to study rolling back restrictions on Japan's exercise of its right of collective self-defense in limited cases, including, according to the Yomiuri Shimbun, (1) the use of missile defense to destroy a ballistic missile targeting an ally (i.e., the US, (2) in the event of an attack on allied ships sailing with MSDF ships on the high seas, (3) in the event of an attack on another country's forces engaged in reconstruction (i.e., in a situation similar to the ASDF deployment in Iraq), and (4) to resist in the case of efforts to obstruct UN peacekeeping operations.

The prohibition on the exercise of the right of collective self-defense is the product of a long-standing constitutional interpretation drafted by the Cabinet Legislation Bureau, which means, of course, that a re-interpretation can make collective self-defense permissible in these cases. But the study group is informal and its recommendations non-binding; as reported in the Japan Times, a move to permit collective defense in any circumstances is likely to draw opposition both within and outside the government.

This is an important step, because it is the prohibition on collective self-defense that has prevented the US-Japan alliance from becoming a proper alliance in which each ally is committed to the defense of the other. It signals that the bounds of acceptable discourse on Japanese security policy continue to expand, and that the expansion of the Kantei's top-down policy making powers -- which may soon include a national security council, the legislation having been submitted to the Diet last week -- continues unabated in security policy. Just how much stronger the Kantei has become will depend, of course, on how the collective self-defense review process resolves.

The timing of this study group, meanwhile, is important, giving Abe concrete evidence of his government's steps to strengthen the alliance to present to President Bush at the end of the month. (The Japan Times thinks that Abe may be trying to change the subject away from comfort women.)

In the case of the latter, at this point I doubt there is much that Abe can do to change the subject, and as for the former, I don't think the US government will be assuaged by the creation of a study group, given that there is still a long way to go before Japan can be called a "normal" country. The obstacles to embracing even limited collective self-defense are many.

(The editorial cartoon left, from Yomiuri, shows Bush and Abe embracing each other, bound by "falling rates of support"; the captions reads "Believe in each other?")