Rethinking Hatoyama's essay

Hatoyama Yukio's essay in VOICE has officially become a problem for his government-in-waiting.

The latest sign of discord is a New York Times article documenting fears in Washington about the incoming Hatoyama government and the DPJ more generally. Indeed, the article reads like a catalog of the myths and exaggerations surrounding the DPJ in the US — and even identifies the main reason for Washington's profound unease in the face of a new government: "While American officials and academics have spent decades cultivating close ties with the Liberal Democrats, who have governed Japan for most of the last half century, they have built few links to the opposition."

The VOICE essay was, of course, cited as a source of greater uneasiness in the US government, which is trying to figure out what precisely the new government intends to do in regard to the US-Japan relationship.

But the DPJ's ideas on the alliance — and foreign policy in general — are not actually all that hard to understand, despite Michael Green's insistence in the article that "it was an indication they still haven’t figured out what they’re going to do in power."

As I have argued before, I do not have much problem with the content of Hatoyama's essay — outside of the bizarre Coudenhove-Kalergi references, the flighty rhetoric, and the use of the straw man of "American-led" globalization. But this article shows why the essay was a tactical mistake on the part of Hatoyama and his advisers. Many in the Japan policy establishment expect the worst from the DPJ, and Hatoyama's essay will no doubt continue to be a critical point in the indictment, trotted out any time Hatoyama's government strikes a chord that displeases Washington. While it is difficult to discern the precise chain of events, as far as I can tell (1) Hatoyama did not actually write the essay, and it is difficult to tell the extent to which he was involved; (2) Hatoyama's office translated the essay in full and made it available for abridgment to the foreign media, i.e. his staff did not draft the abridgment; (3) Hatoyama's office seemed unclear on how syndication works, and thus was surprised to see how the essay spread in the foreign media. I think it is also troubling that the relevant actor in this instance was Hatoyama's personal staff, not the DPJ itself.

Ikeda Nobuo has been on top of this story and adds more details in this post. Ikeda says that according to a DPJ official VOICE received a request from the LA Times, VOICE then contacted Hatoyama's office, which arranged for the translation, the LA Times then abridged the essay, which went into syndication and was eventually picked up by the Christian Science Monitor, the Huffington Post, and the International Herald Tribune, and through the IHT, it made its way to the New York Times website. Ikeda confirms that no one involved on the Japanese side was clear about the process of syndication. Ikeda draws the same conclusion as I do from this episode: the government needs a stronger PR system, which includes the government's links with foreign media. The one bit of good news that I've heard on this front is that Hatoyama may be considering appointing Uesugi Takashi, a quite good freelance journalist who was once a secretary for Hatoyama Kunio and worked for the New York Times in Tokyo, as a secretary to the prime minister for media affairs. Uesugi has made a career of critiquing the media, and has evinced a sophisticated understanding of the workings of both the domestic and foreign media. Young and well-spoken, he would make an excellent public face for the Hatoyama government. Uesugi himself has said that he has heard nothing.

The point remains that the new government will need all the help it can get controlling its public image and using the media space to its advantage.

But enough about the Hatoyama government's potential difficulties with the media. I'd like to turn my attention to the reaction to Hatoyama's essay, which I think reveals more about what some people in Washington are predisposed to think about the DPJ than about how the DPJ will govern.

The reality is that Hatoyama's essay, again, despite some of its rhetorical excesses, does not mark nearly as much of a departure from LDP rule as commentators and editorialists in the United States think it does.

Let's step back just over a year to another statement on foreign policy by a Japanese leader, in this case the underappreciated Fukuda Yasuo. In May 2008, then-Prime Minister Fukuda delivered a speech on Japan's place in the future of Asia at a conference hosted by Nikkei in Tokyo. It was, I remarked shortly after he delivered his speech, "stunning in the breadth of his vision, his clear assessment of the challenges and opportunities facing Japan today, and his recognition that Japan needs to make serious changes if it is to retain power and influence in Asia." Like Hatoyama, Fukuda referenced a relatively obscure European thinker (Fernand Braudel) to make his point about turning the Pacific Ocean into an "inland sea." Like Hatoyama Fukuda barely touched upon the alliance with the US, but what he did say was important: Fukuda outlined the idea of the alliance as a crucial actor for stability in the region, but the stress on the alliance's role in providing stability was a remarkable departure from his predecessor, who along with the Bush administration stressed shared values and cooperation among democracies. Like Hatoyama, Fukuda spoke at much greater length about the importance of cooperation in Asia in part as a means to resolve Japan's domestic difficulties. (Hatoyama's discussion of a regional community was premised on the idea of regional cooperation as a means to cope with the consequences of globalization.) I grant that there is a vast difference in tone between Hatoyama and Fukuda: despite his insistence that his essay was about fraternity, Hatoyama's essay is more negative and defensive. Fukuda's vision was more open and generous. Hatoyama could have published something in the same vein, but perhaps the difference can be chalked up to events that have transpired since Fukuda gave his speech.

This vision of Japan's foreign policy could be called that of a "middle power," in that, as Hatoyama noted in his essay, Japan faces a serious challenge in the new Asia: "How can Japan, caught between an America struggling to remain a hegemon and a China wanting to be and planning to be a hegemon, maintain its political and economic autonomy and defend its national interests? The international environment is which Japan will be placed from now on is not straightforward." As I noted in my initial (critical) response to the Japanese edition of Hatoyama's essay, this was perhaps the most accurate point in the essay: Hatoyama puts his finger precisely on the problem facing Japan, regardless of which party is in power. His response to it may be a bit woolly, but it stems from the obvious realization that Japan's leaders, like the other middle powers in the region (Australia, South Korea, the ASEAN countries, etc.), do not want to have to choose between the region's two giants, because Japan benefits from its relationships with both. The challenge is to find the right equilibrium in its relations between the two — Samuels's "Goldilocks consensus," in other words. Finding the equilibrium will entail constant effort on the part of the region's governments, and, as the countries of ASEAN have learned, multilateral cooperation amongst themselves and with the region's other powers is a useful means for calibrating the relationships. It is for precisely this reason that I don't take Hatoyama's ideas about an Asian community especially seriously because it does not strike me as a welcome substitute for ASEAN-centered regional cooperation.

In this approach, Hatoyama no doubt speaks for many in his party, an overwhelming number of whom approve of a shift to Asia as found in a Mainichi survey mentioned here. The DPJ does desire a new alliance that is part of Japan's Asia policy — the "US in Asia," not a choice between the US or Asia. Again, there are strong similarities with Fukuda's approach in this way of thinking. And why shouldn't the alliance change? During the fifty years since the revision of the US-Japan security treaty, the alliance has been as much a domestic institution propping up LDP rule as any other, with the US acting a silent (and at times not-so-silent) participant in Japan's domestic politics and policymaking. Is that normal? Why shouldn't the DPJ want a more equal relationship with the US? Naturally the relationship looks fine from the US perspective (although, of course, Japan could always stand to do more).

Despite the impression of Japanese free-riding, Japan asks for little from the US, even as US officials have asked for more defense spending, looser restrictions on Japanese security policy, and, during the depths of Japan's prolonged economic crisis, offered unsolicited advice on how Japan can save itself by simply following the US model. (On this last point, it is easier to understand the schadenfreude of Japanese politicians after the Lehman shock.) Yes, Japan has benefited greatly from the alliance, but the US has not provided security for Japan as a matter of charity.

It is completely beyond me why some Americans think that the DPJ should change whatever institutional legacies of LDP rule it wants so long as it does not touch the alliance. Why should the alliance be exempt? Why shouldn't Japan's government stress the need for a relationship that dovetails with Japan's Asia policy, respects Japan's constitutional and legal limits, and includes more than simply a security dimension, if that's what the Japanese public prefers? It is worth stressing that the DPJ is opposed not to the US, but to the traditional security-centered alliance. The inclusion of the call for an FTA in the section on the US-Japan relationship was an important symbol in this regard, and stands in stark contrast to the LDP's policy of being willing to talk about security while scaring the Japanese people with talk of the threat posed by trade with the US. Talking economics is the perfect way to create a more equal relationship: a security-centered relationship is bound to be forever asymmetrical, because Japan can never hope to equal the military power of the US.

A Japan that can and will occasionally say no to the US is a good thing, despite the New York Times's "concern" that Japan will bring its refueling ships home when the enabling law expires in January. Contrary to the Times's argument, the refueling ships have long since served their purpose: their purpose was not to help the US, their purpose was to expunge Japan's guilt over its diplomatic failure in 1991 in response to the Gulf War. Their purpose was served once Koizumi acted quickly to send them in the first place, showing that Japan is capable of reacting to a security crisis. Even in 2008, when they temporarily returned to Japan, it was clear that coalition activities in Afghanistan could survive without Japan's symbolic contribution. The Obama administration has already suggested that Japan can help in other, non-military ways.

The DPJ will challenge the Obama administration, at least on the realignment of US forces in Japan. The State Department may have already ruled out the possibility of renegotiating the deal on Futenma, but I don't think the State Department will have the final word on the matter. The DPJ finds the current deal unacceptable — on this issue there is little disagreement among the party's "former LDP politicians, ex-socialists and civic activists." (See here for my take on this frequently repeated canard.) At some point, the US will have to acknowledge, without panic or alarm, that a new party is in control of Japan, that it does not want to scrap the alliance (nor could it even if it wanted to), and that make the alliance more equal, more transparent, and more acceptable domestically will be beneficial for the alliance in the long run.

The DPJ is here and they are more ready to govern than many in Washington seem ready to acknowledge. As Takashi Yokota of Newsweek argues, "they should relax."

This Hatoyama's for turning?

As the campaign has progressed, the DPJ has shown that it is willing to be flexible as far as its manifesto is concerned. While it has taken the work of building a manifesto that is the result of a consensus within the party — and which a DPJ government will give due consideration when formulating policy — the DPJ has adjusted its program in response to criticism.

Perhaps it has been a bit too willing to adjust.

On Tuesday, the party issued several amendments to its manifesto, which DPJ policy chief Naoshima Masayuki said were not policy changes, but "clarifications." The amendments — available here — largely conform with Naoshima's explanation. The party did not fill the vacuum in the manifesto as far as future of the Japanese economy is concerned, but now stresses that its various spending programs (child allowances, free high school, free highways, lifting the "temporary" gasoline surcharge) are intended to stimulate domestic consumption and so begin the long-term transformation of the Japanese economy. (Okada Katsuya stressed the importance of domestic consumption for growth in a meeting with Keidanren last week.) While I don't think these measures go far enough, they're at least a start, and the party has the right idea in mind.

What bothers me is the party's decision to soften its stance on an FTA with the US. Okada tried to spin the change as cosmetic; it changed the language from "conclude" to "begin" negotiations in recognition of the fact that negotiations depend on one's partner. The DPJ isn't in a position to promise the conclusion of an FTA. But if the edit didn't "change anything fundamental," why bother with editing the proposal? The reality is that by revising the proposal the DPJ gutted it, because it added a clause suggesting that an FTA won't happen unless domestic agricultural production can be safeguarded, with an eye towards increasing Japan's rate of self-sufficiency and the security and safety of the food supply. As Ozawa Ichiro argued in opposition to the revision, the change is solely about the power of Japan Agriculture (JA), the association of agricultural cooperatives. In other words, JA raised a fuss, and the DPJ altered its position accordingly. If there is one benefit to the DPJ's taking power, it should be a degree of independence from the interest groups that have traditionally sustained LDP rule. Ozawa further stressed that there is nothing contradictory between the party's proposal for income support for farmers and its proposal for an FTA with the US. He resisted the idea that free trade with the US will destroy Japanese agriculture, arguing that consumers care about more than price — meaning that an FTA with the US would mean more options for Japanese consumers, but not necessarily doom for Japanese farmers, who in any case would be supported by the DPJ's system that would kick in should the market price fall below production costs.

I can understand why the DPJ, afraid of the LDP's exploiting the FTA proposal to sow doubts among rural voters, would soften this position, but as Ozawa has shown, the original position is not indefensible. And public opinion polls suggest — see MTC's analysis here — that there is something more at work in rural Japan than approval or disapproval of party policies. Voters may be interested in "policy," but that can mean a lot of things, and by panicking the DPJ made its manifesto that much worse. The bottom seems to have fallen out of the LDP's traditional support, of which JA was a critical part. It may be the case that the DPJ is attributing power to the JA that it no longer has. By adding the line about not concluding a deal prejudicial to Japanese agriculture (or is that Japanese Agriculture), the DPJ will make it that much harder to begin negotiations in the first place. It should have limited its edits to "beginning negotiations" with the US, or changed nothing at all.

(As an aside, Ozawa's criticism of the change is another reminder of the Ozawa problem. The problem isn't that he disagrees with the changes — it is unreasonable to expect unanimity in any party — but that should Ozawa not join a DPJ-led cabinet and instead remain as a party leader, his comments about the cabinet's policy decisions will have the effect of widening the gap between cabinet and ruling party, undermining the DPJ's aim of creating transparent and accountable government. There will inevitably be points of disagreement: Ozawa simply has too many ideas about how things should be for there not to be. The point is that his disagreements should be aired as part of the policy process within the cabinet, not in the course of negotiations between cabinet and ruling party that play out in part in back rooms in Nagata-cho, in part on the pages of the nation's newspapers.)

But the agriculture dispute is a comparatively minor problem. I am more bothered by Hatoyama's changing position on the three non-nuclear principles. In a comparatively short period of time, Hatoyama has gone from publicly considering a revision of the non-nuclear principles to proposing that they be written into law. Speaking in Nagasaki to a group of atomic bomb survivors, Hatoyama suggested that in consideration of Japan's status as the only country attacked with nuclear weapons the non-nuclear principles should be written into law. Of course, five days earlier Hatoyama said precisely the opposite: that if the principles were written into law, there is a danger the law could be changed. Hatoyama muddied his position further Tuesday at a press conference for foreign journalists: "To the extent that a DPJ government continues, Japan will forever not possess nuclear weapons. We will stick to the three non-nuclear principles. I think that the three non-nuclear principles are national policy stronger than law." But will the party make the principles into law? "We want to investigate..."

In other words, Hatoyama has completely side-stepped the issue of what to do about the non-nuclear principles now that the "secret" treaty between the US and Japan allowing the introduction of US nukes into Japan is no longer secret.

This may be less a DPJ problem that a Hatoyama problem. Hatoyama is clearly prone to "foot in mouth" disease, and, being a weak leader, is susceptible from pressure from others, in this case the Social Democrats.

So what will the DPJ actually do about the non-nuclear principles? Well, before next year's upper house election, nothing. Like the incumbent government, it will continue to pretend that the three non-nuclear principles are completely sacrosanct, that the Japanese government has no knowledge of the introduction of US nuclear weapons into Japan. It can hardly do otherwise. It will not waste political capital on an issue that is important for the Social Democrats but risks dividing the DPJ. It will not request that the US remove nuclear weapons from its ships before entering Japanese harbors.

This episode highlights my two greatest concerns about a DPJ government: Hatoyama as prime minister and the Social Democrats as a coalition partner. Hopefully the DPJ can find ways to manage both.

I suppose it's too late to bring back Ozawa. Perhaps a Hatoyama-Ozawa cabinet wouldn't be so bad after all.

The DPJ needs to hone its message

By any measure, the DPJ enjoys a considerable advantage over the LDP with less than two weeks until the campaign officially begins on 18 August. It is ahead in polls, Hatoyama Yukio, its leader, is uniformly preferred to Prime Minister Aso Taro, and there is a widespread feeling that the public is disgusted enough by LDP rule that it is already to throw the bums out (finally!) and put the DPJ in power in its place.

But despite all that, the DPJ has not sewn up the general election. While I think Nakagawa Hidenao's argument that the DPJ has already peaked in public opinion polls is a bit of wishful thinking on his part, there are an awful lot of undecided voters whose decisions over the next few weeks will determine which way the wind blows on 30 August.

But beyond the existence of undecided voters, the DPJ could lose the general election simply because it has been generally poor at political communications. This is not a new problem. (Remember this?) The DPJ has had so much help from the LDP over the past several years that it has had to do relatively little communicating of its own in order to put itself in a position to win this month. The party has done a decent enough job at devising a realistic manifesto that, whatever its shortcomings, does show that the DPJ is serious about governing. But the manifesto won't sell itself. And it won't counter the LDP's charge that the DPJ cannot be trusted with power because it won't defend Japan.

Watch this video of Aso speaking outside Sakuragicho station in Yokohama Tuesday:



From about the eight-minute mark, the prime minister goes into a long discourse on the importance of defending that which must be defended, on the importance of a forthright national security policy in the face of a nuclear North Korea and the contrast between the DPJ and LDP on this front. While I think Aso's claim that the general election should be a choice based on policy is a bit silly (elections are always about more than just policy), Aso is working hard to redefine this election campaign along terms more friendly to the DPJ. "Defend what should be protected." Repeated enough, this message could sink in among the public and make the public think twice about turning over power to an untested DPJ.

Contrast Aso's remarks in Yokohama with Hatoyama Yukio's remarks Tuesday next door in Kamakura.



While Hatoyama does address Aso's leadership deficiencies, at times it seems as if he's campaigning against the bureaucracy instead of the LDP. His stump speech is a bit all over the place. He begins getting to the kind of message the DPJ needs to deliver about eight minutes in when he asks why Japan has become a world leader in suicides among its young people. But then he starts talking about Aso's anime "palace," which, while a bit humorous, is a bit off message. Hatoyama and his party need to be angry. They need to meet the LDP's talk of the DPJ as an irresponsible party with anger at what Japan has become under LDP rule. They need to tap that sense of anger which is clearly abroad among the public. The message needs to be focused on the LDP. It shouldn't veer off into attacks on the bureaucracy or this or that instance of wasteful spending. It must answer the LDP's description of the DPJ as dangerous with a message that stresses the danger of returning the LDP to power again.

For the moment, I think the LDP is controlling the campaign narrative. Messages like Yosano Kaoru's claim that for the DPJ to deliver on its manifesto it will have to raise the consumption tax to 25% may, regardless of their truth, prove effective at hammering home the dangers of electing the DPJ. Repeated enough, that figure could prove devastating for the DPJ, which is why it must answer it now, before it sticks.

Meanwhile, the DPJ has clearly mishandled the flap over a US-Japan FTA. At the first sign of criticism, it folded: it has announced that it will revise the manifesto to clarify that agriculture will be excluded from negotiations, and it will soften the language to "conclude an FTA" to "promote negotiations for an FTA." In revising its position that DPJ will stress that the income support system will take priority over FTA negotiations. Of course, by doing so, the DPJ's position is now incoherent. As Sasayama Tatsuo suggests, if agriculture were excluded from negotiations, why would the US bother with FTA negotiations?

It's possible that the DPJ could have sold rural voters on the idea of an FTA packed with comprehensive support, if it had explained itself properly. But by sneaking the proposal into the manifesto with little fanfare, the DPJ gave its critics an opportunity to define the party's position. Now it has given a gift to LDP candidates across the country, especially in rural areas in Chugoku, Shikoku, and Kyushu, where the DPJ needs to do better than it ever has done before: the LDP can wave the original manifesto before voters as evidence of the DPJ's desires to destroy Japanese agriculture. It may not be true, but as with Yosano's line about the consumption tax rate, repeat it enough times and enough people may eventually believe it. By vacillating and not defending its own positions, the party looks squishy and weak, and so ends up making mistakes for fear of making mistakes.

The time to answer the LDP's and its allies' criticism is immediately: if the DPJ believes in its manifesto, then it should defend it when attacked. As of now, the LDP, desperate to retain power, appears to have more fight in it than the DPJ. There is plenty of time for the polls to turn.

The DPJ will bring the ships home — and open Japan's economy to the US?

After weeks of signs that the DPJ might wholly embrace the foreign policy status quo, Hatoyama Yukio announced on Wednesday that, when the current special measures law for the deployment of Maritime Self-Defense Forces (MSDF) refueling ships in the Indian Ocean in support of coalition activities in Afghanistan expires in January, a DPJ-led government would not extend the mission or draft a new law. Hatoyama's statement met with the approval of the Social Democratic Party, the DPJ's likely coalition partner — not surprisingly, because it is perhaps the first indication of how the SDPJ could be able to manipulate the DPJ if they enter into government together. The SDPJ claims that it is untroubled by the DPJ's new realism and that it is highly likely that the party will join a DPJ-led coalition should the DPJ win next month, but we've just gotten a glimpse at the dynamics of such a coalition, at least on foreign policy.

This is not particularly surprising, nor, I would argue, is it particularly troublesome. As I've argued previously, the DPJ's extensive agenda requires its lasting long enough in power to implement it, which means compromising with the SDPJ long enough to score some legislative victories to bring into the 2010 upper house election campaign. Taking the refueling mission off the agenda is an easy concession to make, and barring an international crisis, ensures that the DPJ can focus on matters of greater concern to the Japanese public in the months leading up to the election.

As for the refueling mission itself, I expect that the Obama administration would not make much of a fuss in response to a DPJ government's decision to bring the ships home, provided that the DPJ replaced the symbolic MSDF mission with something more substantive in support of coalition activities in Afghanistan. As Richard Holbrooke suggested on a visit to Tokyo in April, "something more substantive" does not have to be boots on the ground. Indeed, the Obama administration would prefer real economic and political assistance to the Afghanistan and Pakistan governments over the token contributions that satisfied the Bush administration as far as Japan was concerned. If the DPJ wins, it better have an idea of what it will offer instead by January.

It appears that the Obama administration may be both a blessing and curse for the DPJ. In the Obama administration the DPJ faces a US administration that has more often than not showed itself to be not particularly alarmed by the possibility of a DPJ victory and interested in a more "hands-off" approach to Japan than the Bush administration's. At the same time, however, the DPJ has had to abandon the rhetoric on the alliance it used when George Bush was still president. With Bush the DPJ could have run a campaign like Gerhard Schröder's in 2002 and done quite well. Not so with Obama. If the DPJ wins, I am convinced that the mere existence of the Obama administration will pressure the DPJ to be more constructive in the US-Japan relationship. Treating the Japanese government with respect and dignity — as the equal partner that the DPJ wants Japan to be, whatever the reality of the underlying power dynamics — seems to take gaiatsu in a whole new direction.

It is in this context that I find the DPJ's call for negotiations of a US-Japan FTA of considerable interest (discussed here). If the DPJ is serious about this proposal — serious to the point of actually making it a priority and expending political capital on it — it would give some substance to the DPJ's desire to focus on the non-security aspects of the relationship while contributing to the structural transformation of the Japanese economy and weakening the power of the bureaucracy. Naturally the fight over a US-Japan FTA would be brutal, especially in agricultural policy. In that sense, this proposal must be viewed in tandem with the party's proposal for direct income support for farmers. As Ozawa Ichiro has argued, trade liberalization and direct income support should go hand in hand, supporting farmers as Japan liberalizes its markets. For the same reason the agriculture lobby responded vociferously to the DPJ's manifesto (documented by Nakagawa Hidenao here). But not just the agriculture lobby: the LDP went on the offensive against the idea of a US-Japan FTA, issuing a statement that detailed the dire consequences of agriculture trade liberalization with the US.

In the event that the DPJ concludes an FTA with the US that liberalizes agriculture, it is estimated that the importation of prodigious amounts of agricultural products from the US will snatch away the domestic agricultural market with an impact on the scale of trillions of yen...This would inevitably be a lethal blow, which would be equal to selling out Japanese agriculture.

The DPJ, the LDP argues, stands for the destruction of Japanese agriculture and is a "dangerous political party."

The LDP's nōrin zoku are convinced that the DPJ has handed them a gift with which to save their seats, if not the LDP. But is this a glimpse of the LDP's future? What future is there for the LDP if the election hits reformists in urban and suburban areas disproportionately harder than LDP members in the rural areas attached to the traditional agriculture machine? I suppose that would be one way for the LDP to clarify its internal contradictions. But if the LDP shrinks to a rural base, it loses in the long term. Indeed, Koizumi's vision for the party was arguably intended to prevent this outcome, because an LDP that can depend on votes in aging, depopulating rural districts is an LDP with a bleak future.

But regardless, I'm not sure that this plan is an election loser for the DPJ in rural areas. At this point, an FTA with the US is single proposal that would take years of negotiations and might not even include serious concessions on agriculture — Kan Naoto responded to the LDP's complaints by suggesting that the DPJ would demand that rice and other major crops be treated as an exception. The DPJ's direct income support plan, however, is a major piece of the manifesto and has been one of the party's most prominent proposals for years. The LDP, meanwhile, has been shedding support from farmers for much of this decade and is still trying to shed the party's association with Koizumi Junichiro, who is widely blamed for Painting the DPJ as plotting to destroy Japanese agriculture might help, but it assumes that farmers have very short memories.

Perhaps this issue provides an answer to the pressing question of what to do with Ozawa should the DPJ win next month. The problem with Ozawa is that if he is allowed to remain outside the cabinet, he will undermine the party's plan to include major party politicians in the cabinet and will be in a position to freelance in ways that could hurt the government. If he is in the cabinet in an executive position — deputy prime minister, for example — Hatoyama would be vulnerable to the criticism that he is Ozawa's puppet. If he were given an ordinary ministerial post, it would be a waste of his considerable political talents. If he were given a minister-without-portfolio position, it would give him too much freedom. Accordingly, perhaps a special post should be created for Ozawa: minister with the special mission of negotiating a US-Japan FTA. This job would be inter-ministerial, involving cooperation at minimum with the foreign minister, the agriculture minister, and the economy, trade, and industry minister; it would have both domestic political and foreign policy components, enabling Ozawa to both negotiate directly with the US and to make the case directly to the Japanese public of the importance of the FTA. Accordingly, it would be a specific mission, to keep Ozawa occupied (and therefore not devising schemes independent of the government) while still using his considerable political talents. Given the political sensitivity of an FTA with the US, it may take someone of Ozawa's stature to manage it. And if the DPJ is serious about this proposal, appointing Ozawa would send a costly signal of the party's intentions about negotiating an FTA (and ensure that Japan had a tough pol representing it in talks).

To return to the question of the alliance, Washington should be aware of the LDP's response to the DPJ proposal. From one side of its mouth the LDP criticizes the DPJ as a danger to the US-Japan alliance for wanting to bring Japanese forces home and reopen the realignment of US forces in Japan; from the other it warns that the DPJ will kill Japanese agriculture by allowing in cheap US agricultural goods. In other words, token, symbolic contributions that involve the JSDF? The alliance has never been closer. Negotiations for a US-Japan FTA that would have dramatic consequences for the bilateral relationship and probably the global trading system? Traitors!

The LDP's reaction has me convinced that the DPJ may be on the right track with this proposal. I am no less dubious about the possibility of concluding such an agreement — especially given the obstacles in Washington — but it might be worth the effort.