China in charge

The FT ran an article on Wednesday dissecting the process of releasing the frozen $25 million to North Korea. I was especially struck by this line:

Several people familiar with the debate said Hank Paulson, Treasury secretary, agreed to overrule officials responsible for terrorism financing, who objected to the move, after Beijing warned that a failure to return the North Korean funds would hurt the Sino-US strategic economic dialogue.

(This line also caught Daniel Drezner's eye, as seen in this post; he wonders what is going on in the strategic dialogue that would give this linkage weight.)

In case anyone forgot, this agreement is in many ways China's baby -- so it shouldn't be surprising to see China effectively using linkages to pressure the US to change course. I wonder if China has been applying similar pressure to Japan on the abductions issue behind the scenes, particularly as Premier Wen prepares to visit Japan next month.

Meanwhile, the FT article shows that the administration's critics on North Korea policy are more or less powerless. The State Department -- and Christopher Hill -- are in the driver's seat as far as the six-party talks are concerned.

I have to wonder, though, how the Bush administration's turn on North Korea will affect the wide-open race for the 2008 Republican nomination. I have no doubt that the conservative movement agrees with the National Review's assessment of diplomacy with North Korea. Will someone break from the field and secure the support by running against President Bush's new approach to Pyongyang?

Seoul speaks up -- how about Washington?

The Jiji wire service carried two articles today that report on South Korean officials criticizing Japan for its focus on the abductions issue in the multilateral de-nuclearization talks.

First, Yu Myong-hwan, South Korea's newly appointed ambassador to Japan, said at a press conference with Japanese journalists in Seoul that the resolving the nuclear issue must take priority in the six-party talks.

Subsequently, Jiji reported that the Song Min-soon, Korean Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade, criticized Japan for raising the abductions issue -- what he argued is a bilateral issue -- in the multilateral talks on North Korea's nuclear program, and urged Japan to contribute to energy support for North Korea.

Altogether sound advice: I cannot see how Japan will come out looking good if its insistence on putting the abductions issue before the issue of North Korea's nuclear weapons, which arguably threaten Japan more than any other country, scuttles this agreement. I certainly do not expect that the Bush administration, which has already demonstrated that it is making a good-faith effort to reach a lasting agreement, would be altogether pleased with the Abe Cabinet. If anything, the departure of Robert Joseph, under secretary of state for arms control and international security, means that the Bush administration is that much more committed to seeing the six-party talks through to fruition.

So when will Washington follow Seoul's lead and question Tokyo's abductions obsession publicly, reminding Japan that a de-nuclearized Korean Peninsula is in its interests?

Or maybe Japan has decided to base its North Korea policy on Dr. NakaMats's promise to develop a missile shield that will "make missiles turn around"?

Alliance or agreement?

Talks resume in Beijing on the de-nuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, and the big story is that Japan and North Korea came to blows over the abductions issue.

This was always the danger of Japan's pushing the abductions issue at all costs in the face of the North Korean stone wall: the US will have to choose between standing alongside Japan on abductions or urging Japan to back down in the interests of the push towards a nuclear agreement. The US has already paid a price to get to this point, having decided to release the frozen $25 million at Banco Delta Asia in Macau -- for which it is facing criticism, especially from the right, as seen in this FT article. As a result, it is hard to imagine the Bush administration slamming on the brakes, holding up talks until North Korea satisfies Japan's demands.

So essentially, North Korea laid the trap -- and Japan has taken the bait, putting tremendous pressure on the US to choose between its ally and a potential deal. Now, an agreement that actually disarmed North Korea, however unlikely, would be in Japan's interest, but if the process to reach the agreement produced significant friction and bad blood between the US and Japan, the long-term consequences could be devastating, leading to a more isolated, fiercely independent Gaullist Japan that sought its own conventional and nuclear deterrent capabilities.

And if you think I'm being alarmist, look at the cover story of Tuesday's Yomiuri Shimbun: a long reconsideration of the US nuclear umbrella that ends with an (envious) look at Britain's recent decision to renew its nuclear submarine program.

As I have maintained before, Japan's decision to emphasize the abductions issue above all else risks causing serious damage to the alliance with the US, and, consequently, greater instability in the region. Accordingly, the time for political coordination on the six-party talks between the US and Japan is now, before the talks move closer to an agreement.

China is not creating its own risk fleet...yet

In the years before World War I, Imperial Germany developed its "risk fleet" -- a large fleet of relatively little utility -- to force the Royal Navy to focus on defending the British Isles, a textbook example of the concept of a fleet in being.

It is with this in mind that I read this op-ed by the Heritage Foundation's Peter Brookes -- via RealClearPolitics -- about reports of a Chinese program to build an aircraft carrier, leading Brookes to conclude, "This isn't good news."

And yet the reasons he gives to demonstrate why this is so can easily be used to reach different conclusions.

Brookes suggests that a domestically produced Chinese aircraft carrier would mark a pronounced turn from asymmetry in Chinese military doctrine -- but I fail to see why a shift away from platforms and planning that seeks to deny American advantages in a potential conflict in the Taiwan Straits would be a bad thing. Brookes suggests two possibilities: a desire by Beijing for a more balanced fleet capable of projecting power at greater distances or a desire by Beijing for a naval force capable of showing the flag. I suspect it's a combination of both.

But I repeat my objection: why is either development necessarily a bad thing?

Specifically regarding the latter, it's entirely appropriate that China would want to have a blue-water navy capable of showing the flag. As Brookes admits:

China is, without question, a rising power - world's largest population, No. 2 energy consumer, No. 3 defense budget, No. 4 economy. And so on. It's an up-and-comer. Beijing may well think the time is ripe to unmistakably proclaim to the world: We're not just a regional power anymore.

That was the message of President Teddy Roosevelt's Great White Fleet 100 years ago. Flush with success in the Spanish-American War - defeating a major European power and adding possessions in the Atlantic and Pacific - TR sent a large naval task force on a global circumnavigation in 1907-09.

I especially like that Brookes refers to the US Navy's Great White Fleet, because, as I've argued before, I think the position of the US at the turn of the twentieth century may provide the best historical example for assessing China at the turn of the twenty-first century.

But, again, why is this a problem? Brookes suggest one way a Chinese "prestige" fleet could have real consequences: he argues that China may seek a carrier force so as to be able to secure unobstructed access to oil moving along sea lines of communication (SLOC) currently protected by the US Navy. But the mission of securing SLOCs that serve East Asia may well be an opportunity to deepen cooperation between the US Military and the PLA, being an area in which US and Chinese interests overlap.

The US should view Chinese aspirations for a blue-water navy -- which is still more dream than reality, at least according to the Pentagon's own assessment in the 2006 Annual Report on the Military Power of the People's Republic of China -- as an opportunity first, the basis for Sino-US cooperation to secure SLOCs. That doesn't mean the US shouldn't hedge at the same time, but naval cooperation could serve to give China a "stakeholder" role in providing public goods to the region, a point made by Thomas Barnett, among others.

Assertive Japan

Michael Green's review of Kenneth Pyle's Japan Rising in the March/April issue of Foreign Affairs, is now online here (via RealClearPolitics). I previously discussed a draft version of Pyle's book here.

I find Green's review interesting because it gets at the ambiguities of Japan's re-emergence. Green (and Pyle) are correct to point out that Japan's strategic culture is fundamentally realist: Japan has long been sensitive to the distribution of power in its region and internationally, so sensitive that on multiple occasions its domestic institutions have been remade due to international circumstances. (This was well documented in Pyle's earlier book The Japanese Question.) But, at the same time, since the end of the cold war the impact of the international environment has been uncertain. Should Japan cling ever closer to a unipolar United States? Should it seek ever closer union economically with its Asian neighbors? Should it become a more independent, Gaullist wild card in the East Asian balance of power? And beyond these strategic questions, the significant question of how Japan's domestic institutions need to change to enable Japan to remain a significant regional and global power remains unanswered.

Japan, meanwhile, is trapped between the region's challenges and opportunities -- as in the second Armitage-Nye Report's formula -- and its "rise" is, therefore, hardly a linear process. As such, I find Green's conclusion convincing:

Ultimately, Japan is not all that inscrutable, nor is management of U.S.-Japanese relations all that complicated. Japan's political elite will always harbor some ambivalence about its junior-partner status with the United States, but the current generation of political leaders clearly wants the U.S.-Japanese alliance to work better for both nations. They are no longer reticent about doing more -- or asking for more in return. The important thing is that Washington continue to listen. Japan's public is intensely worried about North Korea's nuclear weapons, China's growing influence in Asia, and the United States' preoccupation with the Middle East. The alliance between Washington and Tokyo remains the centerpiece of Japanese foreign and security policy, but as Pyle notes, Japan is no longer sheltered from the Sturm und Drang in Asia or passive about deciding its own course. As a result, there is much less room for error when it comes to maintaining the credibility of the U.S. commitment to this most successful of alliances.

This illustrates what I've argued before: it is imperative, now more than ever, that the US and Japan exert significant effort forging institutions to facilitate smooth political cooperation. As the allies become more engaged in hashing out the political future of Asia, the lack of political coordination could have serious consequences for the alliance, and for the region as a whole.

The future of American power

I found this post by Suzanne Nossel at Democracy Arsenal fascinating, in that it is a fair, reasonable critique of the Iraq War that does not indict the very idea of the US using its power in support of its values abroad.

I particularly like her points "the US Military has limits" and "military power can't accomplish everything." Both seem self-evident, and yet in some circles these points may well be controversial. It is essential that conservatives scale back their triumphalist rhetoric -- as noted by Jacob Weisberg in his response to AEI's 2007 banquet (aka the neocon prom) -- and begin to acknowledge the limits of American power. It doesn't mean embracing isolationism: it means acknowledging that the use of force abroad has unintended consequences that must be taken into account when making policy, that regardless of American ideals and good intentions negative consequences may still result from intervention abroad. It doesn't mean retreating: it means that American policymakers must be prudent in considering how best to apply American power.

I was led to think this in part after seeing Charles Krauthammer's speech at the 2004 AEI banquet, in which he spoke of American power as if the previous year's difficulties in Iraq had never happened. Francis Fukuyama, in attendance at the banquet, had the same response, resulting in his supposed "break" with his fellow neoconservatives, played out in the pages of The National Interest and culminating in his book America at the Crossroads, in which he cites Krauthammer's speech as an important moment leading him to reconsider his ideas.

The American foreign policy establishment must continue to reassess the tools available in the foreign policy toolbox, in the process de-prioritizing the use of force as a means of achieving US foreign policy goals. Force is a blunt tool, the use of which has numerous unforeseen consequences. The work of building a new "new world order," in which the US Military plays quieter, less visible but still important roles, will require greater nimbleness and flexibility on the part of the US government in its relations with allies and rivals. It's a tragedy that it took disaster in Iraq for the adjustment to begin, but it has begun in earnest.

Seeking options

I found this op-ed by Gregory Clark in last Thursday's Japan Times fascinating. Clark suggests that North Korea may well be more open to an agreement with the US than commonly assumed, because Pyongyang is looking to expand its foreign policy options: "Even less is there any realization of an even more important factor possibly at work -- namely, the strong hints now surfacing that Pyongyang is eager to embrace Washington as a way to distance itself from Beijing and possibly even from Seoul."

I think Clark gets to an important idea in the foreign policy making of any country. Success in foreign policy is often means a state's expanding its options in a given situation, because, essentially, the more options, the more power. Of course, the number of options a state has at any given moment is finite, limited by norms and values, domestic institutions, material capabilities, the international environment, and so on. But for a state like the DPRK, whose very existence hangs in the balance, having the option of looking to another great power -- slightly more distant than Beijing or Seoul -- for reassurance and aid is a major diplomatic coup, and could well be worth the cost (i.e., giving up nuclear weapons).

And yet as Pyongyang and Washington look to expand their options in Northeast Asia, Japan is going the other direction: drastically limiting its options by staking its Korean diplomacy on the resolution of the abductions issue. As Clark wrote:

That Japan still seems unable or unwilling to grasp these possibilities is a measure of many things. One is its chronic weakness in diplomatic strategy and tactics. Another is the anti-North Korea emotion whipped up here over the abductee issue. Even Pyongyang's insistence that at least one of the claimed 12 abductees -- Megumi Yokota -- is dead, and that this can be easily proved if Tokyo cooperates, is being ignored.

I think Clark nails the point. As I've said before, conditions are such that there is real potential for both a major about-face by Pyongyang that results in its embracing Washington, and for Tokyo's being isolated in the region through its inflexible North Korea policy (even if it gains from a denuclearized Korean Peninsula).

With the signs coming out of the recent working group discussions on security in Northeast Asia and denuclearization showing the US willing to work towards an agreement -- reportedly agreeing to release frozen DPRK funds in Macau -- and North Korea apparently moving toward satisfying requirements to freeze its nuclear activities, alarms should be going off in Kasumigaseki that Japan needs to change course.

Is anyone there paying attention?

The california rolls are safe

After announcing plans to institute a certification system for Japanese restaurants overseas back in November, Japan's Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry, and Fisheries, headed by the beleaguered Matsuoka Toshikatsu (the subject of this superb book -- more on this soon), has decided to abandon these plans after opposition from citizens' groups and after a panel chaired by Ogura Kazuo of the Japan Foundation concluded that it is difficult to determine what exactly Japanese cuisine is.

So ends a bizarre attempt by Japan to flex its muscles in the cultural arena. Given that Japan remains a perennial favorite in this annual BBC survey, it's probably best not to give foreigners another reason to dislike Japan in light of the comfort women issue, which appears to be going from bad to worse, with the Abe Cabinet once again denying evidence of coercion, prompting US Ambassador to Japan Thomas Schieffer to criticize the government's position.

As I've said before regarding soft power: difficult to measure, difficult to wield, and highly sensitive to the slightest change in perceptions. Between the ongoing disputes over whaling and the comfort women issue, I wouldn't be surprised if the BBC finds Japan to be slightly less popular next year.

China's Good Cop?

When I read articles such as this one from the IHT, I have a hard time figuring out if China's Premier Wen Jiabao is simply playing good cop to the PLA's bad cop or if Wen actually believes the argument he advances at every opportunity.

If it's the latter, then the bureaucratic infighting within the PRC's government may be greater than it appears to the outside world, in which case every country in the region must be extremely careful not to act in ways that do not strengthen the PLA's hand within internal policy debates.

For IR wonks, I'm led to think of a book like Jack Snyder's Myths of Empire, in which Snyder looks for correlations between the unity of a regime and its tendency towards an "overstretched" imperial foreign policy. That's not to say that China is imperial, but the concern that the more divided the Chinese government it is, the more its neighbors have to fear is, I think, very real.

All of which suggests that, as I wrote in this post, every country in the region, the US included, must think very carefully about the decisions they make now. Pushing too quickly for an organized "hedge" option without a parallel move towards an Asian "OSCE" risks encouraging elements within the PRC who favor antagonism -- resulting in self-fulfilling prophecies about Chinese behavior and producing a vicious cycle that could rapidly spiral out of control.

The Economist on the Japan-Australia agreement

The Economist this week weighs in on the Japan-Australia Security Declaration, the main point of which can be found halfway into the article: "...The louder the denials from both sides, the more evident is the main catalyst for the security pact: the rise of China."

It's hard to deny that China's rise loomed large over security talks between Japan and Australia this week, but then China's emergence looms large over every discussion of Asia, and will continue to do so for the indefinite future. As I argued in this post, the joint declaration muddies rather than clarifies the regional balance of power, because no observer can exclude the extensive economic ties both Australia and Japan have with China. There is no indication of what either party would do in a crisis involving China. In short, making too big a deal out of a paper agreement is a mistake. Is it an important agreement on paper, especially for Japan? Indubitably. Does it transform the region in a stroke? Hardly.

I find the article's comments on Japan interesting, but flawed:

As for Mr Abe, the pact is of a piece with a more robust foreign policy for Japan that was begun by his predecessor, Junichiro Koizumi. Before sending troops to Iraq, Mr Koizumi had also dispatched supply ships from Japan's so-called Self-Defence Forces to the Indian Ocean to help with the war in Afghanistan in 2001.

Since he came to office last September, Mr Abe has redoubled Mr Koizumi's commitment to Japan's alliance with the United States, but wants to do more than just shelter under America's wing. He has pushed for faster deployment of missile-defence systems in the face of North Korean provocation. He has turned the Japanese Defence Agency into a full ministry, with a seat in the cabinet. And he wants the pacifist article nine of the constitution to be revised. Mr Abe has sought a new partnership with India, while building security ties with South-East Asia.

It all amounts to a strategy of balancing China's geopolitical reach: Japan, in other words, is not about to roll on its back to let China be the region's top dog. Mr Abe's domestic ineptitude may mean a short term in office, as the ruling Liberal Democratic Party and its coalition partner face crucial elections for parliament's upper house in July. Even if so, Japan's emerging regional posture is likely to survive him.

I think one can just easily find examples from Abe's tenure that show how Japan is still a long way from becoming more assertive in anything but rhetoric.

I have no doubt that the Japanese government's rhetoric has changed. The prime minister and members of his cabinet are much more inclined to talk about Japan's actively contributing to resolving regional and global problems, in a much more assertive way than earlier governments. A recent example is this recent speech by Foreign Minister Aso, which borrows the US strategic concept of the "arc of instability" to outline a role for Japan.

At the same time, however, there are many examples that suggest that Japan's actions -- and the legal framework to act-- do not yet match the ambitious rhetoric. One could point to the twice-delayed 2 + 2 meeting of the US-Japan Security Consultative Committee, the kerfuffle surrounding Defense Minister Kyuma's (and Aso's) remarks about US policy in Iraq -- oh, and the six-party agreement that has left Japan more or less isolated in the multilateral effort to disarm North Korea. And then there's the fact that Japan's defense budget continues to be constrained by demands for budgetary restraint. And the continuing difficulty in implementing the April 2006 agreement on the realignment of US forces in Japan. And how about the backlash to Abe's comments on the comfort women issue, which appears to have undermined the initial positive steps achieved by Abe in relations with Korea and China.

Even the examples cited by the Economist to support its arguments have problems. The elevation of the Defense Agency to full ministry status? Long planned -- Koizumi submitted legislation in early 2006 -- but I guess Abe deserves credit for guiding it to passage. Abe wants Article 9 revised? OK, but he first needs to pass a national referendum law, and then convince not only his own party, not only the opposition but also the Japanese public that his vision of post-pacifist Japanese security policy should be written into the constitution. (And what is his concrete vision anyway?) That's without even considering whether his faltering government will last long enough to see the national referendum law to passage, let alone a revised constitution.

And then there's this point: "Japan, in other words, is not about to roll on its back to let China be the region's top dog." I'm not altogether sure there's anything anyone can do to prevent this outcome, least of all Japan, which despite it's economic recovery remains poorly governed and insecure. The best that the region's powers -- not least the US, Japan, and Australia -- can do is to shape the regional environment so that China is convinced to choose cooperation over antagonism. Does Abe realize this, or is he listening to Nakagawa Shoichi instead?

Meanwhile, a step like this report of enhanced cooperation between the US, Japan, India, and Australia -- without commensurate efforts to calm Chinese fears of encirclement -- would be disastrous at this stage. Every country in the region needs to think carefully about the consequences of its decisions in the region; when the US and Japan urge China to be more transparent about its security decision making, they must be equally transparent about their own decision making in the region.

So the US, Australia, Japan, India and any and all comers are free to talk amongst themselves, but they better make sure to talk clearly and frequently with China, because for all the threatening signals, there are plenty of signs of cooperation -- and not just in economics, as this post by the Arms Control Otaku about Chinese PKO contributions suggests -- that cannot be dismissed lightly.

"Nobody running in 2008 is qualified to be president"

So says The New Republic's John Judis, in an article that more or less sums up my take on the US presidential election that is still more than a year and a half away.

Judis makes the case that foreign policy being the unique preserve of the presidency, the main criteria by which to evaluate presidential candidates should be the candidate's foreign policy experience. Wrote Judis:

...For a century now, America has played a large, and since World War II, the largest role in global affairs; and by the the Constitution's delegation of military leadership and initiative in treaty-making and appointments, the president rather than Congress has the chief responsibility for America's role in the world. Congress and the public can stop a president from privatizing social security, but the president regularly wages war without a declaration from Congress--and sometimes, as in the case of American intervention in the Balkans, without significant public support. It would seem that the first question voters should be asking is about a candidate's foreign policy experience. And with the war in Iraq still raging, and America's relations with the rest of the world in disrepair, that's particularly true in the forthcoming presidential election. But you wouldn't know if from the current frontrunners.

It is for that reason that I am particularly dismayed about this presidential campaign already.

The US needs to have a serious, sustained national discussion about the US role in the world, and it seems that a presidential campaign would be the ideal time to have such a discussion. But, as Judis, notes, barely any of the candidates have serious, comprehensive ideas about American foreign policy, in part because so few of them have ever been in an important foreign policymaking position. The exception is Senator John McCain, who has long been involved with US foreign and defense policy in the Senate, and as an Asian specialist I'm especially inclined to support Senator McCain because he actually has a clue about the changing shape of the Asia-Pacific region. (It is telling that McCain called attention to the publication of the second Armitage-Nye Report on the floor of the Senate.)

But, that said, I don't think McCain has necessarily risen to the challenge of the moment, which demands a serious reconsideration of American power and the ends to which it can and should be used in an international system that is more complex, a system in which the traditional tools in a state's toolbox (read military power) are harder to use. I'm with Daniel Drezner in this post: the problem is bigger than the perceived failure of American stewardship. It's also not simply a function of setting up the proper international institutions, as this post at Winds of Change seems to suggest in reference to the same piece to which Drezner was responding.

So I will continue to wait for a candidate (or candidates) to outline a more comprehensive foreign policy perspective, but I am not getting my hopes up. I fear that the US will continue to muddle through in response to changing circumstances, rather than pausing to consider the best course of action.

Japan's governance problem

John Plender, columnist in the FT, has a column (subscription only) in Wednesday's edition talking about the "accountability gap" in Japanese corporate governance.

He wrote:

...There is a corporate governance vacuum. Before the economic bubble burst in the early 1990s, the postwar model of capitalism known as “Japan Inc” incorporated governance disciplines based on a main bank that monitored corporate performance, removed underperforming managers and choreographed turnrounds at ailing companies. This relationship system was buttressed by cross-shareholdings, which also had the effect of protecting companies from hostile takeovers. Lifetime employment was the norm in large corporations and the state provided a guiding hand. Boards rarely had outside directors and were largely ceremonial.

Since Japan’s banking crisis, main bank cross-shareholdings have been run down and the lifetime employment system has eroded. Now that the country is no longer in catch-up mode and the economy has matured, the state’s guiding role has become less effective. In some parts of industry and commerce there has been a greater focus on profits rather than market share, though not to the point where aggregate returns have risen to anywhere near US levels. Dividend pay-out ratios remain low even in mature industries.

I think there is great wisdom in Plender's analysis, but, at the same time, I think it's important to look beyond the Japanese corporate environment to Japanese society at large.

In recent months, Japanese newspapers have reported massive governance failures in every sector of Japanese life. The Abe Cabinet has been riddled with reports of corruption from ministers -- most recently Matsuoka Toshikatsu -- and poor management of the policy agenda. The opposition, too, has had its problems, most notably the improprieties of former Upper House Vice President Tsunoda (discussed here), DPJ President Ozawa's shady real estate development scheme, and now reports that DPJ member Nakai Hiroshi misreported funds in a manner similar to Matsuoka.

Of course, the long-standing relationships between bureaucracy and industry, via amakudari and bid-rigging, persist, even as authorities try to limit these practices.

Meanwhile, in recent months there have been reports of major cover ups across Japanese society: food (Fujiya), baseball (the Seibu Lions), securities (Nikko Cordial), and nuclear power (Tohoku Electric Power).

The problem is not that cover ups and inappropriate relationships between public and private sectors exist; no country is free of corruption and the misuse of power. What's different in Japan, however, is the lack of mechanisms to ferret out wrongdoing, to deter others from doing the same, and to create the impression that laws are not, in fact, made to be broken. In Japan, it seems that only real crime is getting caught; interestingly in all of the above-mentioned scandals, it seems that the illegal practices for which the guilty party is under fire are widespread in the industry concerned.

Japan is woefully lacking in the kinds of institutions and actors dedicated to exposing these misdeeds. Inspectors general, ombudsmen, NGOs, activist shareholders, and even investigative journalists backed by large media organizations: Japan is woefully lacking all of these means of keeping large, powerful institutions honest and accountable, and exposing their failures to the light of public scrutiny. (See Transparency International's excellent report on Japan's National Integrity Systems -- available for download here.)

Accordingly, for all the reports of Japan's economic recovery and greater assertiveness abroad, the foundations of the state are weak and crumbling. In this atmosphere of massive, persistent institutional failures, the Abe Cabinet's push to restructure the postwar institutions -- especially the constitution -- looks misplaced. Under Abe, Japan, flush with cash for the first time in a while, has decided to install a new kitchen and refurbish the facade, rather than focus on the crumbling foundation, the institutions of Japanese society whose persistent cover ups, fraud, and outright criminality have gravely damaged public trust and raise serious concerns about the ability of Japan to remain prosperous and growing in light of Japan's demographic problems and the changing regional and global environment.

This is not another mutual security treaty!

I take issue with the opinion cited in this post at Japundit, which cites Shen Dingli, Chinese academic, as arguing:

If China wanted to invade Japan, Australia would come to Japan’s aid, and if China were to invade Australia, Japan would come to its aid. But if we don’t invade either of them, such a pact doesn't really work against China’s legitimate interests.

I'm not quite sure what agreement Shen is talking about. There is nothing in the joint declaration that evens hints at its being a mutual security treaty along the same lines as the Mutual Security Treaty (MST) between Japan and the US, in which,

Each Party recognizes that an armed attack against either Party in the territories under the administration of Japan would be dangerous to its own peace and safety and declares that it would act to meet the common danger in accordance with its constitutional provisions and processes. Any such armed attack and all measures taken as a result thereof shall be immediately reported to the Security Council of the United Nations in accordance with the provisions of Article 51 of the Charter. Such measures shall be terminated when the Security Council has taken the measures necessary to restore and maintain international peace and security.

Take another look at the Japan-Australia agreement. Is there anything remotely resembling this kind of clause? Japan is still unable to promise any security reciprocity to the US. What makes him think that it is prepared to extend that kind of reciprocity to Australia, or that Australia is ready to commit fully to the defense of Japan in any and all circumstances?

Methinks that the international news media, which prefers the "conflictual" rather than the "cooperative" Asia in its news coverage, has blown this agreement far out of proportion.

Questions to think about

Novelist Thomas Mallon, writing at The American Scholar, provides a list of questions -- no answers -- about "the future of the humanities in America." (Hat tip: Andrew Sullivan)

For a short piece of ten questions, Mallon provides an awful lot to think about. I particularly like number ten: "Are we also willing to admit that the universalization of English is more apparent than real? And that our general failure to know foreign languages is an act of both laziness and arrogance — one that threatens America’s legitimate claims to leadership in the world?"

I'm sure that will resonate readers with experience in teaching in Japan or elsewhere, but Mallon hints at a larger problem. It's not just laziness and arrogance, it's a general inability to empathize with foreign peoples, to try to understand their concerns, hopes, and confidences instead of just assuming to inside every foreigner is a red-blooded American patriot. I fear that too often Americans -- or at least the American media -- tend to group other countries and peoples into "those who like us" and "those who hate us." The world, however, is far more complex than a public opinion poll.

If Americans cannot break this habit of simplifying the world outside of the US, the coming decades, in which the vaunted "American way of life" will be subject to events abroad more than ever before, then the US is in for a rough century.

Japan's second "ally"

As planned, Japan and Australia -- at a meeting between Prime Ministers Abe and Howard -- agreed to the Japan-Australia Joint Declaration on Security Cooperation.

The agreement, available at MOFA's website here, is as modest as the initial news reports have suggested. The concrete elements are all well within the prevailing constraints of Japanese security policy, and the agreement bears no resemblance to the US-Japan alliance, with its open-ended commitment on the part of the US to defend Japan.

But the value of the agreement is in its modesty. In particular, Japan needs to develop the habits of cooperating with partners other than the US. Australia, as a regional power with (limited) global reach, can help enhance Japan's ability to contribute to the missions outlined in the agreement, including maritime security, PKO, and humanitarian relief -- without the baggage that comes with security cooperation with the US, not to mention the thorny issues surrounding US bases in Japan.

At the same time, though, as I mentioned in this post, it is important not to overestimate the importance of this agreement. Paul Kelly, writing at the website of The Australian, provides one example of letting rhetoric run away from reality. Japan is normalizing, yes, but it is hardly a linear process -- nor is it clear to exactly the ends to which Japan's "normalization" is aimed. He wrote, "Japan is in the process of becoming one of Australia’s closest security partners. Nobody should have any illusions about the consequences. To believe this new agreement is a minor matter is to miss its import entirely."

But to accept Kelly's argument means accepting that hidden in the terms of this agreement is the core of a trilateral maritime alliance between Japan, Australia, and the US -- and accepting that Australia has chosen Japan over China. To the first point, I wonder if Kelly has watched the tortuous process of reforming the US-Japan alliance, which is strewn with seemingly ambitious agreements that proved hollow. And to the second, has Australia actually chosen Japan over China?

Kelly answers his own question: "...Australia is being sucked into the politics of a more complex Asia."

In other words, this agreement -- while perhaps an important milestone in the process of Japan's becoming a "normal" country -- is but another detail complicating the Asian balance of power, rather than clarifying it.

Free-for-all in the LDP

I want to call attention to this post by Adamu at Mutantfrog Travelogue, which thoroughly dissects the prevailing circumstances of the Abe Cabinet, including Abe's recent quashing of rumors hinting at a cabinet reshuffle.

I just want to add a couple points to his cogent analysis.

The problem, I think, with the Abe Cabinet is the Koizumi inheritance. Abe not only has had to act in the shadow of his much more charismatic predecessor, but he has inherited a party that was only half-destroyed by Koizumi. The traditional power centers appear to have been weakened by Koizumi's push to create a more programmatic, dynamic party, but new mechanisms have yet to be established. Similarly, the younger generation -- most significantly Abe and Shiozaki -- have risen to positions of prominence in the party, but their precociousness has not made them capable of forging a centralized mechanism to complete the LDP's transition to a disciplined, programmatic party.

The other point is, of course, that whereas Koizumi (or Koizumi and Takenaka) had a program that they forced upon the LDP, Abe seems to have decided that it's less risky to substitute poorly explained slogans for an actual program, which, combined with his lack of charisma, has resulted in a vacuum at the top and plummeting popularity numbers, apparently now dipping below 40%.

Of course, a dysfunctional LDP run by callow youngsters may be better than a LDP ran by the old men, devoted to divvying up the spoils.

At the same time, however, Japan may be in for another period of prolonged political instability, as during the mid-1990s, because -- as Adamu notes -- no party enjoys the public's favor at present.

Dr. Pacifist and Mr. War Crime?

The consequences of Prime Minister Abe's indiscretions on the comfort women question continue to unfold, with this editorial in Korea's Chosun Ilbo, suggesting that Abe may have completely undone all of his diplomatic efforts with his remarks.

Key paragraph:

...Abe is not listening. He is listening to the recommendations of nationalistic lawmakers and considered launching a new investigation on whether the mobilization of sex slaves was forced. He is trying to buy time by starting another long and tedious investigation, while overturning the apology made by former Cabinet secretary Yohei Kono in 1993. Not satisfied with simply lobbying to block the passage of a U.S. House of Representatives bill demanding an apology from Japan, Tokyo is seeking the right to refute the critical reports by U.S. media. These are the faces of Japan under Abe, who came to power with the support of an increasingly right-wing public.

Now, I don't doubt that the LDP's "study group" plan is intended to buy time and defuse the issue slightly. But I think the idea of an "increasingly right-wing" Japanese public more than slightly exaggerated. Undoubtedly, since the end of the cold war and the emergence of a new generation of leaders there has been a more pronounced nationalist streak in Japanese public discourse, but I don't think that explains Japan's reluctance to account fully for its historical mistakes, nor do I think it explains the supposed "hawkish" turn in Japanese foreign policy in recent years.

First, on the latter, one cannot understate the fact the contemporary Japanese society is profoundly insecure. Japan has been deprived of the security and predictability (and dullness) of the "1955 system," of competent management by politicians and bureaucrats, and of an unassuming position internationally; it now struggles to return to normalcy economically, watches its position in East Asia erode as China surges, and faces a multi-dimensional threat from North Korea just across the Sea of Japan, in addition to a government that appears to be completely unable to tackle the host of troubles at home (most notably an alarming rise in inequality). So if the government is increasingly driven to cut a more prominent figure in the region and globally -- and if public opinion appears to have taken a more belligerent turn on some issues -- observers should be less quick to attribute it to some kind of latent, militaristic tendency and try to understand the situation in which Japan finds itself at present.

Insecurity is also a factor in the comfort women issue, because undoubtedly the Japanese government and people look abroad and see riled-up nationalists in China and Korea, as well as in the Korean- and Chinese-American communities, and feel ever more alone, hemmed in by frightening circumstances. Images of anti-Japan rallies in South Korea and China, on this issue and others, serve as a constant reminder to Japan of the changing balance of power in the region.

Meanwhile, to play amateur sociologist briefly, Japan's being a "shame" society makes it difficult for Japan to account for its past mistakes to the degree that, say, Germany has, as suggested by Gregory Clark in this opinion piece from October 2005. Without defending Japan's actions, Clark tries to outline what Japan's past looks like to the Japanese. His Japan undoubtedly has a lot of work to do accounting for its past, but Clark implies the need for empathy from foreign countries: "Arguments that Japan as a shame society cannot admit past national mistakes make little impression on us foreigners brought up in guilt societies." If other countries are judging Japan out of good-faith, genuine concern for historical justice and not because interest groups (or the ruling party's interest) demands justice for self-serving ends, then they should at least try to empathize with Japan.

I don't doubt that the "shame" versus "guilt" question is relevant here. Japan does approach responsibility for one's actions differently: it's the common thread connecting the comfort women issue, the scandal surrounding the use of expired ingredients by Fujiya, and this recent story about cover ups at Japanese nuclear plants. Passing a congressional resolution demanding that Japan own up for crimes committed before the current prime minister was born will not reverse this tendency to shy away from unpleasant truths.

If the US Congress truly feels the need to interject itself into the morass of Asia's history problems, it should act less as an instrument of interest groups and more as a concerned observer, offering the good offices of the US to help resolve a thorny issue multilaterally -- coaxing rather than goading Japan to accept the monstrous crimes committed by Imperial Japan fully and unequivocally. Doing so might counter the impression of Japan's being "Dr. Pacifist and Mr. War Crime" that has formed due to the unfortunate connection between Japanese history and contemporary Japanese foreign policy.

Alliance-changing technology?

The image above comes courtesy of this article at Defense Industry Daily.

It illustrates the workings of Cooperative Engagement Capability (CEC), a system of pooling radar and sensor data among warships and other platforms to provide a more complete image of the battlespace:

The Cooperative Engagement Transmission Processing Set (CETPS) AN/USG-2 coordinates all task force Anti-Air Warfare (AAW) sensors into a single real time, fire control quality composite track picture which significantly improves battle force AAW defense. The CETPS distributes sensor data from each Cooperating Unit (CU) to all other CUs utilizing a real time, high data rate, line of sight (LOS), fire control quality sensor and engagement data distribution network. This CETPS is extremely jam resistant and provides very accurate gridlocking between units. The data is then combined into a common track picture by employing high capacity, parallel processing and advanced algorithms.

Of course, the first thing I thought of when reading this article was the prospective impact of such a system on the US-Japan alliance. Perhaps not profound in and of itself -- Japan has already struggled with the question of whether its Aegis cruisers operating in the Indian Ocean can participate in "collective defense" if a threat against coalition warships was detected, not to mention its ongoing struggle with the collective defense implications of missile defense -- CEC would be another element pushing Japan to interact with allies on a reciprocal basis.

At this point, every little bit helps.

Trilateral alliance or limited hedge?

With Australian Prime Minister John Howard set to arrive in Japan today for a four-day visit, Australia and Japan have reportedly agreed to a new security declaration that will likely (I say likely because it hasn't been released to the public yet) enhance bilateral cooperation on a range of defense issues, including intelligence sharing, PKO, and humanitarian relief. Prime Ministers Abe and Howard will meet on Tuesday.

It is probably a mistake -- for both Beijing and Washington -- to overestimate the value of this agreement, because Australia is especially trapped between the prospect of an antagonistic China and a cooperative China.

On the one hand, relations between China and Australia have enjoyed something of a renaissance in recent years (see this speech from 2004 by Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer). The economic relationship has been particularly strong, with China hungrily importing a range of primary products and services from Australia, as this overview of the relationship provided by the Australian government as background to a China-Australia FTA attests.

At the same time though, under Prime Minister Howard, Australia has strengthened its alliance with the US, acting as the third partner in a kind of global Anglosphere posse (the activities of which are, to say the least, distinctly at odds with China's vision of the global order).

Howard captured Australia's unenviable position in this mealy-mouthed comment in a joint press conference with Vice President Cheney during the latter's recent visit to Australia:

In relation to China, Australia, as you know, has striven over the last decade to build a very close relationship with China. But we've always done it against a background of being realistic about the nature of political society in that country. We have no illusions that China remains an authoritarian country. We have sought to emphasize in our relations with China those practical things that we have in common. And we do, I hope, with appropriate modesty regard it as one of the foreign policy successes of this country over the last decade that we have simultaneously become ever closer in our relationship with our great ally the United States, but at the same time built a very constructive, understandable relationship with China.

But we always look at these things from a practical standpoint. We have no false illusions about the nature of China's society. But we see positive signs in the way in which China and the United States have worked together, particularly in relation to North Korea. And nothing is more important to the stability of our own region at the present time than resolving the North Korean nuclear situation. And I think the way in which China and the United States have worked together on that is wholly positive and is obviously to the credit of both of those countries.

So to view this agreement -- together with last year's US-Japan-Australia Trilateral Strategic Dialogue -- as anything more than a slight hedging option in the midst of very real cooperation between all three countries and China is overblown. Each is trapped in its own way by mutual interdependence with China.

As overblown responses go, that includes China's, which, according to The Australian, has voiced reservations of the Australia-Japan declaration. If Australia, Japan, and the US are bolstering their hedge against Chinese belligerence, it's because China has given them enough reason for concern: hedging by these countries is a sign of Chinese policy failure, not belligerence on the part of the trilateral partners. If China were to sound slightly more conciliatory and look slightly less like a country eager for regional hegemony buttressed by military power, each party to the Trilateral Strategic Dialogue would be less likely to push for a hard hedge.

I can't help but wonder what post-Howard Australia will look like in terms of its Asia-Pacific policy. Will Australia, in some sense like post-Koizumi Japan, compensate for Howard's emphasis on strong ties with Washington by reorienting to continental Asia and placing less emphasis on the nascent tripartite maritime hedge?

Pilling interviews Fujiwara

The FT's David Pilling writing in Lunch with the FT -- easily my favorite regular feature in the FT -- interviews Fujiwara Masahiko, mathematician, professor at Ochanomizu University, and author of the bestselling book The Dignity of the State.

As Pilling suggests, the book revives Nihonjinron arguments for a new, more uncertain age. As with most books of this type, emphasizing the uniqueness of the Japanese requires a bit of historical revisionism.

My favorite paragraph is this:

The model of liberal democracy that Japan inherited is flawed, Fujiwara says. As well as putting faith in unreliable masses – he prefers a cool-headed elite – it overemphasises rationality. “You really need something more. You might say that Christianity is one such thing. But for us Japanese, we don’t have a religion such as Christianity or Islam, so we need to have something else: deep emotion.”

Can anyone detect the glaring contradiction in his quote?

In any case, I don't doubt the importance of "deep emotion" -- all too often manifested as a kind of maudlin sentimentality -- to the Japanese, but arguably "deep emotion" has contributed to a number of catastrophes throughout Japanese history.

In any case, read the whole thing.

And for more on Fujiwara's book, Marxy of neomarxisme blogged his reading of Fujiwara's book last summer. (I can't find permalinks to the posts, so you'll have to search; they are, however, well worth reading.)

UPDATE: Links to Marxy's posts are in the comments section.

Seen and heard at the Diet

I was in attendance at today's session of the Upper House's Budget Committee, where it was my boss's turn to question the government.

I managed to see a line of questioning derived entirely from my own research posed to Prime Minister Abe and Defense Minister Kyuma, which was satisfying -- although the acoustics of the chamber (and lousy mics) made it difficult to hear the replies.

Meanwhile, having sat in that room, I can understand why one often sees members in attendance asleep in the background; between the marathon length of the meetings and the excessive heating in the committee room, it's amazing that anyone can stay awake. (And let's not forget the prime minister's anti-charisma.)

One thing I've noted in watching Diet deliberations is how sensitive the Japanese political establishment is to (critical) commentary on Japan from abroad. In a short span of time today, both the recent NY Times editorial on the comfort women resolution, discussed in this post, and the recent Newsweek cover article on Abe's unpopularity were cited by questioners. This was not the first time that I've heard Diet members draw on Western coverage of Japan. (If anyone knows of a "political psychologist" who has studied Japan's national "neuroses" -- surely a rich topic -- please let me know.)

International criticism shows no sign of letting up. The latest publication is The Economist, which in the current issue has both a leader and an article about Abe's problems in the wake of his comments on the comfort women resolution. (Adamu beat me to writing about this article.) Abe remains in trouble, but he's also been fortunate in his enemies; despite weeks of opposition questioning in the budget committees of the Lower and Upper House, the opposition parties seem to have done little to hasten the pace of the decline in Abe's popularity . The Abe Cabinet has remained particularly defiant on the issue of Agriculture, Forestry, and Fisheries (AFF) Minister Matsuoka Toshikatsu's unusually large budget projections for "light, heat, and water" for an office at the Diet which had no utilities costs, with Minister Matsuoka still refusing to account for the irregularity (with no apparent pressure from the prime minister or other senior officials).

Matsuoka, for his part, is the subject of a recent book by Australian scholar Aurelia George Mulgan, called Power and Pork, which I am in the process of reading -- and which I plan to review.

Driving a wedge in the alliance

Once again a response to a post deserves a fuller response. Adamu of Mutantfrog Travelogue noted in reply to this post:

You keep saying that America is abandoning Japan, but wouldn't a grand nuclear bargain that works be more in Japan's interest than letting the whole thing fall apart over the abduction issue?

It's a fair point. Of course a grand bargain that meant North Korea's giving up nuclear weapons and becoming integrated into the region would be preferable than continuing to demand that Pyongyang come clean on abductions from decades ago, but then, that would depend on a government that was able to take a more balanced view of Japan's national interests.

The reason that Japan should be -- and, I think, is -- fearful of being abandoned is because given Washington's new realism, I don't think the Bush administration would turn down a deal that contained the possibility of a disarmed North Korea just to stand alongside Japan on the abductions issue. I think Pyongyang knows this, and is going to do everything in its power to entice the US to abandon its ally.

This just goes to show that the time for the US and Japan to reassess the political character of their alliance is long overdue. It may be necessary to revisit this idea, raised in the first Armitage-Nye Report, published in October 2000: "We see the special relationship between the United States and Great Britain as a model for the alliance." The first Armitage-Nye Report looked at the special relationship almost exclusively in military terms, but the US-Japan alliance should seek to emulate the US-UK relationship in political terms: for all the talk of Blair being Bush's "poodle," Britain has not hesitated to pursue its own political projects internationally, and has maintained a steady, if occasionally bumpy, relationship with Brussels on the side (i.e., Janus-faced Britain, as described by Timothy Garton Ash). But all of that is done in the confidence that the US and Britain share values and interests, and have in place the mechanisms to pursue both when necessary -- and they are capable of communicating when they have disagreements (once again, criticism of Blair notwithstanding).

The US-Japan alliance needs to move strongly in this direction, and the US can start by cautioning Japan against forgetting its other interests on the Korean Peninsula, instead of just telling Japan what it wants to hear, as it seems Cheney did on his visit. The same goes for Japan: comments by a cabinet member critical of one US policy or another should not be the cause for controversy. But clear, honest, and regular communication requires a mechanism or mechanisms -- and an attitude that sees openness between allies as an essential part of a more robust political alliance. On this foundation, the allies can craft an alliance in which each partner can pursue independent initiatives without fearing for the long-term durability of the relationship.

But there appear to be depressingly few signs that the allies are moving in this direction; rather, they seem to be playing a game whereby each ally pursues its own initiatives, while occasionally reassuring the other that the alliance is strong.

All going according to plan...but whose plan?

I can't say that I'm surprised to hear that North Korea delayed the start of normalization talks with Japan in Hanoi, right after reports out of New York suggested that the US and North Korea had positive talks.

The unfolding of events seems almost too scripted to be real: just as international opprobrium falls on Abe's head thanks to the comfort women issue, North Korea is simultaneously conciliatory in talks with the US and dilatory in talks with Japan, putting a wedge in position.

I can only imagine what would happen if Pyongyang put some kind of nuclear "grand bargain" on the table, while holding the line on abductions. Would the US turn down the nuclear deal to stand with Japan? Not too long ago I would have said that this administration wouldn't abandon Japan, but these days, in light of the administration's rediscovery of diplomacy, it's hard to say for sure.

With Abe falling hook, line, and sinker for Congress's bait, he may have made it easier for the Bush administration to distance itself from Japan, should the need arise. If Congress passes the resolution, prompting Abe to reveal his nationalist side again, Kim Jong Il may have the perfect opportunity to drive the wedge in the alliance, thereby deepening Japan's isolation in the region.

This is all speculative but it's not too far-fetched to think that Pyongyang is closely monitoring reports of friction between Tokyo and Washington, looking for a window of opportunity to exploit.

Of course, a grand bargain that did not include full and verifiable disarmament -- and I strongly doubt the possibility of such an agreement -- would still have potentially disastrous consequences for the region, particularly if it prompted a frightened and isolated Japan to nuclearize. That is the danger, as this op-ed in the Korean Chosun Ilbo suggests: an impotent US, desperate for a victory, consenting to another flawed agreement with North Korea, but this time one that leaves nuclear weapons in the hands of the DPRK.

For the moment, the US negotiating team seems to be keeping its head, but if the situation in Iraq continues to worsen -- and if Pyongyang dangles a sweet enough deal -- US resolve could weaken.

Developing...

The problem with history

The Sankei Shimbun's Komori Yoshihisa, editor-at-large based in Washington, DC, illustrates why the congressional comfort women resolution is so disastrous.

In response to this NY Times editorial, Komori, in this post, shows the defensiveness of Japanese nationalists -- and why Congress is not in a position to criticize Japan's treatment of its own history.

He wrote (my translation): "How arrogant! What about the inhuman acts that were the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki? What about the fire bombing of Tokyo?"

I have to imagine that he is not alone in that reaction to US criticism on the comfort women issue.

Once again, historical acceptance cannot be dictated, certainly not by a foreign government.

Fireworks in Hanoi?

On Wednesday, 7 March, talks in the Japan-North Korea normalization working group are set to resume in Hanoi.

I'm not entirely clear on what to expect. Since the six-party agreement last month, Japan has ratcheted up the pressure on North Korea to come clean on the abductions issue -- Abe once again urged North Korea to take concrete steps in today's session of the Upper House Budget Committee -- but I have seen no signs that Japan is any closer to having its demands satisfied.

What I find particularly interesting is that according to the Mainichi Shimbun article linked above, Abe said, "The US perfectly understands and supports the Japanese position [my emphasis]." Is this true? Do the US and Japanese governments have the same definition for what constitutes "progress" on the abductions issue? What happens if North Korea makes some initial offer on abductions, together with verifiable progress on nuclear weapons, that satisfies the US but not Japan? Will the US still be perfectly understanding and supportive?

Perfect storm over Taiwan?

At the talk I heard last week by Randall Schriver (discussed here), he referred to the possibility of a "perfect storm" in the dispute between China and Taiwan as 2008 approaches, 2008 being the year in which the US and Taiwan elect new presidents and China hosts its long-desired Olympic Games. He suggested that the storm has begun forming already, as candidates in both countries begin campaigning.

I was somewhat incredulous about the "perfect storm" idea, but over the past couple of days several stories have led me to wonder if the danger might be real.

First, China tells a visiting John Negroponte that the US should halt plans to sell missiles to Taiwan, at the same time that China announced a major increase in defense spending. Now, Taiwanese President Chen Shui-bian, at a campaign rally for presidential candidates from his Democratic People's Party, has apparently hinted at Taiwanese independence. (The Financial Times suggests that the verb he used could be "understood as 'will,' 'wants,' 'must' or 'should,' but regardless of the interpretation his statement -- "Taiwan wants independence, Taiwan wants name rectification, Taiwan wants a new constitution" -- is potentially provocative.) The brinkmanship will undoubtedly continue as what looks to be a hard-fought election heats up.

There is indeed real potential for a perfect storm.

The 'comfort women' issue explodes

The news today is that the Abe Cabinet, while apparently still respecting the 1993 Kono statement on the 'comfort women' issue, will not issue another apology, even if the US Congress passes a resolution calling for Japan to apologize.

As suggested by two articles in South Korea's Chosun Ilbo -- found here and here -- Abe's remarks last week may have nullified any progress he has made since coming to office in forging a rapprochement with Seoul.

Once again the failure of the postwar Japanese polity to account fully for the totality of Imperial Japan's crimes during the war continues to haunt Japan and cast a shadow over its efforts to become a more substantial contributor to regional and international security.

But Japan's failures still do not justify the US Congress passing this resolution. I want to respond to a comment made on this previous post, which challenges the view presented by Michael Green in the Yomiuri article I translated.

Before I go respond, however, I must emphasize that I have deep sympathy for those who suffered at the hands of Imperial Japan, just as I have deep sympathy for the victims of each and every of the twentieth century's brutal regimes. That does not mean, however, that I want my representatives in Congress meting out historical justice. That is the issue with which I'm concerned, not the substance of the resolution.

So first, the poster -- who signs her post as 'Shrinegirl' -- launches an ad hominem attack on Green for being "quite uninformed" and lacking "understanding of the American political process." She accuses Green of "McCarthyism" -- that old smear -- for suggesting that some of the NGOs involved in pushing for the resolution having North Korea's backing. Having seen no evidence one way or the other, I'm not inclined to dismiss this immediately; it seems entirely plausible that at least one NGO involved in this debate has received support from North Korea. He did not name any organization in particular, so it's foolish to read that to mean Amnesty International or any other interested organization.

The poster goes on to write: "It is wrong to call it a history issue. The Comfort Women is among the many unresolved historical issues still having a profound impact on regional relations. Cooperation and stability is fundamental to ther success of the 2 Party Talks and to overall security. The US Congress has every right to be concerned about how its major ally in Asia represents itself, especially to other US allies like South Korea, Australia, and Singapore. In terms or women's rights this issue has very contemporary resonance."

I take exceptional issue with the argument that this is not a "history issue." That is all this issue is (or should be). The question of historical fact -- and judgments about historical right and wrong insofar as the behavior of foreign governments and peoples are concerned -- are not matters to be resolved by legislators, in any legislature. (Congress is free to apologize for whatever mistakes it feels the US government has made.) The twentieth century was a terrible century, perhaps the worst in human history in terms of the crimes committed by humans against others. I strongly doubt that a panel of US representatives is competent to determine which group of twentieth century victims is most deserving of justice (which also assumes that the US Congress is in a position to deliver "justice"). Who is to determine which cause is most worthy of congressional support? At the moment, it seems that the victims that are best organized get Congress's help in their pursuit of justice, as a similar dynamic is at work in a current debate on a similar congressional resolution condemning Turkey for the Armenian genocide, discussed in this Washington Post op-ed by Jackson Diehl. (It's strikingly similar: proposed by a Democratic congressman from a California district heavily populated by the aggrieved minority group, the Turkey resolution has prompted lobbying by the Turkish government, angry denunciations, and the potential for geopolitical consequences.)

This is a matter for the historians, because that is exactly what is at issue: Japanese leaders have yet to face up to the whole weight of burden of Japanese history. Japan's skeletons have been allowed to hang in the closet for too long, in part because after the war the Japanese people could tell themselves that they were victims too, because of the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. As described by Ian Buruma in The Wages of Guilt, his excellent book on German and Japanese efforts to cope with their wartime behavior, Japan's unique status as the only country to date attacked with nuclear weapons meant that Japan's wartime past was not dealt with openly in the same way that postwar Germany dealt with the crimes of the Third Reich.

One measly congressional resolution is not going to make up for six decades of failing to address Japan's past properly. That is a job for historians, ideally Japanese historians: to end the obfuscation of Japanese politicians, Japanese historians must not hesitate in documenting the facts of the war as well as possible. I know, however, that in recent years the academic environment surrounding Japan's wartime behavior has become decidedly unfriendly to those unwilling to toe the nationalist line -- but this means that Japanese historians will have to look abroad for venues in which to document the truth of Japan's wartime behavior. (A tiny disclosure: I have been assisting with one such effort.)

This congressional resolution has already had the unintended consequence of leading the Japanese government to dig in its heels in resisting the resolution, complicating efforts to put East Asian international relations on a more stable ground -- and surely making it less likely that Japan will fully accept the facts of its wartime misbehavior. (As this debate rages, Tokyo Governor Ishihara Shintaro's film glorifying kamikaze pilots -- I Go to Die for You -- is on the brink of its debut.) I have no doubt that the groups pushing for this resolution are well-intentioned, but in politics good intentions can have disastrous consequences, and this may well be one such case.

Finally, this poster suggests, "The heart of the resolution is regional reconciliation, and Mr Abe successfully ended that." I don't disagree with the latter half of that statement, but I strongly dispute the former. Whatever the intentions of this resolution, it will not result in regional reconciliation. For genuine reconciliation requires that the parties involved want to be reconciled. Beyond Japan's failures in regard to its history, for all their moralizing about Japan's past, do Korea and China really want to be reconciled with Japan? Arguably both find the issue of Japan's history to be a useful safety valve for domestic discontent.

This post has gone on for far too long, but seeing as how this is the hot-button issue of the moment, a long post was required.

Yomiuri on Sunday

A couple articles caught my eye in today's edition of the Yomiuri Shimbun, both of which appear to be unavailable online. (Articles from Sunday's paper never seem to be posted online.)

The first was an interview with US Japan hand Michael Green, focused on the "comfort women" resolution, the title of which summarizes the interview fairly well: "Leave 'comfort women' to the historians." The points made by Green are more or less the same points I made in two previous posts on the congressional resolution. He argues, "The US Congress's involvement in this issue is a big mistake. In particular, for the Committee on Foreign Affairs there is a pileup of problems that should be dealt with, like North Korea's human rights violations and the challenge of a rising China." He also attributed Representative Honda's eagerness to push for this resolution to Koreans resident in California, as well as to the entanglement of North Korea-sponsored anti-Japanese and anti-American NGOs.

Published on the same page is an article discussing the outline of contemporary US-Japan-China strategic triangle, with reference to the new Armitage-Nye Report. I mention the article because I found an interesting phrase contained within: "Kim Jong Hill [キム・ジョン・ヒル]." The "Hill" referred to is, of course, Christopher Hill, US assistant secretary of state and representative at the six-party talks. This is the first use I've seen of such a phrase in English or Japanese, and a quick Google search revealed nothing. It certainly made me laugh, but there's a bit of truth in the quip.

In some ways, Hill -- and the agreement he helped forge in Beijing -- may be as indirectly harmful to Japan's interests as Kim is directly harmful, because the six-party agreement, essentially made between the US and China over Japan's head, forces Japan to choose between taking a stand on principle and isolating itself, or assenting to an agreement that does little to secure its interests. Of course, it's not really fair for Japan to blame Hill or the US -- the Bush administration is simply looking out for what it perceives to be US national interests.

Japan has no one to blame for its less-than-ideal decision except the Abe Cabinet, which has seemingly focused on the abductions issue to the exclusion of all else.

The muddy waters of the post-Koizumi era

For those who want a general overview of the present state of Japanese politics -- what's changed, what hasn't -- check out this article by Tokyo University professor Kabashima Ikuo and PhD candidate Okawa Chihiro. Published at Japan Echo, a monthly journal that publishes translations of scholarly articles originally written in Japanese, Kabashima and Okawa provide a competent account of the transition from Koizumi to Abe and the reasons for Abe's difficulties of late.

I particularly liked their account of urban-rural dynamics in the evolution of the Japanese political system:

The electoral reforms of 1994 rectified the rural prefectures’ overrepresentation in the Diet and increased the electoral importance of the urban districts, and the LDP was unable to win over urban voters. After the short-lived reformist administrations of Hosokawa Morihiro and Hata Tsutomu, the LDP returned to power by means of a coalition with the Social Democratic Party of Japan (formerly the Japan Socialist Party, now the Social Democratic Party) and the small New Party Sakigake (now defunct), and it formed other coalitions to weather subsequent threats. In the meantime, however, the depopulation and aging of the LDP’s rural support base and the decay of the LDP support apparatus had been accelerating. It was clear that the party could not hope to retain control of the government over the long term without building support in the urban areas.

This is the historical context in which Koizumi Jun’ichirô, an urban politician from the city of Yokosuka, was elected president of the Liberal Democratic Party in 2001. Koizumi ran for president of the LDP on the paradoxical- sounding promise that he would "smash the LDP," but what he was talking about was the old "LDP system." Persuaded by Koizumi’s call for a neoliberal program of structural reforms, Japanese voters—especially urban voters—entrusted him with the task of overhauling an obsolete socioeconomic system that had brought the nation to a dead end.

Thanks in part to his unusual personal popularity, a result of his unique style of leadership, Koizumi was able to leverage the "prime minister effect" to bring urban voters back to the LDP. It was Koizumi who cast light on the urban areas where the LDP had struggled and thus breathed life back into the LDP. The summit of his accomplishment was the 2005 general election.

Abe clearly lacks the effortless appeal to urban voters that Koizumi had, and I have serious doubts if Koizumi truly succeeded at converting the LDP into an urban party. That is the context for the upcoming local and Upper House elections. If Koizumi failed, and the DPJ, for all its incoherence and opportunism, remains the default party of urban Japan, then this summer might be especially painful for Abe's LDP.

Read the whole thing.

Negroponte chides Congress

The Japan Times reports that US Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte has criticized Congress for the comfort women resolution, saying, "Our view is what happened during the war was most deplorable. But as far as some kind resolution of this issue (is concerned), this is something that must be dealt with between Japan and the countries that were affected."

Thus the medium- and long-term implications of this resolution are unclear. Should it pass, it may produce some momentary unpleasantness -- but once again the executive branch will be in a position of defending Japan from critics in Congress, suggesting that the resolution will probably not result in undue harm to efforts to transform US forward deployments in Japan or strengthen the alliance.

The US Congress, thought police?

So Prime Minister Abe has commented upon the US House Resolution 121 -- the so-called "comfort women resolution" -- currently under debate in the House Committee on Foreign Affairs.

The resolution states that Japan

(1) should formally acknowledge, apologize, and accept historical responsibility in a clear and unequivocal manner for its Imperial Armed Force's coercion of young women into sexual slavery, known to the world as 'comfort women', during its colonial and wartime occupation of Asia and the Pacific Islands from the 1930s through the duration of World War II;

(2) should have this official apology given as a public statement presented by the Prime Minister of Japan in his official capacity;

(3) should clearly and publicly refute any claims that the sexual enslavement and trafficking of the 'comfort women' for the Japanese Imperial Armed Forces never occurred; and

(4) should educate current and future generations about this horrible crime while following the recommendations of the international community with respect to the 'comfort women'.

I'm not going to debate the facts of Japanese behavior during the war, but, rather, I'm going to question -- as Adamu of Mutantfrog Travelogue did in this post -- Congress acting as an arbiter of history, in part, it seems, due to pressure from ethnic groups in the US. My problem is not necessarily the usual "what would the US think if governments passed resolutions condemning American slavery," but rather the likely impact of congressional intervention in this matter.

I see two possible outcomes. The first is defiance. As noted in the BBC article linked above, Prime Minister Abe's response has been to question the historical facts. Rather than sheepishly accept the dictates of a foreign legislature, Japanese nationalists -- and perhaps even those who are not particularly fervent nationalists but still object to being told what to think about their history -- will likely stonewall, obfuscate, and fight the passage of the resolution, aggravating the issue, because no doubt the activists pushing for this resolution will redouble their efforts in response to Japanese defiance.

The other possible outcome is false acceptance, which at the moment seems less likely. But the larger point is that it is impossible to decree acceptance of historical wrongdoing. It is impossible to make people believe something they refuse to believe, regardless of the facts of the matter. Contrition that results from the goading of foreigners is, in my opinion, not contrition at all. Japan has a lot of historical soul-searching to do, but that soul-searching cannot -- and should not -- be the product of a decree from Washington.

Maybe the House Committee on, er, Foreign Affairs should spend more time thinking about the numerous problems in American foreign policy, instead of policing the thoughts of foreign governments; I'm not quite sure if that's what Tom Lantos had in mind when changing the committee's name.

And I wish someone could remind me where in the US Constitution Congress is empowered with the authority to dictate history to foreign governments. I keep flipping through my copy, but I can't seem to find it anywhere.

Two Chinas, two Asias

I spent Friday afternoon at the headquarters of the Keidanren -- a classic example of Tokyo-style brutalism if I've ever seen one -- at a symposium convened by the World Trade Center Tokyo and the Tokyo American Center on "China's Rise and the Emerging Architecture of Trade and Investment in the Asia-Pacific Economy." Keynotes by a Chinese and an American academic, with a panel of veteran Japanese diplomats.

The discussion ended up being very interesting, addressing the many varieties and possibilities of trade agreements in East Asia.

But I'm not going to summarize the discussion here. Rather, I found the contrast with the talk I attended earlier this week, on the evolving situation in the Taiwan Straits, jarring, but illuminating.

It seems that at present, two Asias exist side by side -- with observers seeing the Asia they prefer to see. The business leaders, academics and diplomats gathered at the Keidanren today prefer to see the Asia characterized by ever-deepening economic, political, and cultural integration, the "spaghetti bowl" of organizations and agreements, including ASEAN, ASEAN + 3, the East Asian Summit (ASEAN + 6), APEC, the Chiang Mai Initiative (connected to ASEAN + 3), the ASEAN Regional Forum, and a host of bilateral free trade agreements. It's an Asia marked by increasingly dense trade and investment ties within the region. At the heart of this Asia is China, the new "workshop of the world," which has become one of the world's biggest traders since joining the WTO, and has enthusiastically embraced regionalism. This is the China that showed up at Cebu earlier this year.

But then there's the other China -- the China that reacts defensively to US calls for military transparency (not to mention the ASAT test) -- that was the focus of Randy Schriver's talk on Wednesday. That's not to say that Schriver only described the belligerent China; if anything, his view, and the view of China in the Armitage-Nye Report, is much more balanced than the seemingly unbridled optimism I heard today. In any case, this second Asia contains the risk of conflict, as it is characterized by ethnic tensions, arguments over history, the possibility of zero-sum competition for energy (the Sino-Japanese conflict over EEZs in the East China Sea, for example), the potential for a nuclear arms race in Northeast Asia, and concerns about China's military buildup, especially as directed at Taiwan. This Asia is by no means inevitable, but every time China shows its belligerent side, the shadow of this conflictual Asia threatens to darken the bright, shining Asia of ever thicker regional ties.

I give the US government credit for not overreacting in recent years to the shadows of the latter Asia -- but sooner or later it is going to have to exert substantial effort to ensure that the former takes a shape that is in the interests of the US (i.e., an Asia that does not harden into a trade bloc that excludes the US). Having a hedge against the latter outcome, in the form of enhanced alliances with Japan and Australia and deeper ties with India, Vietnam, and other regional partners, is fine, but it can only be one facet of US Asia policy.

So I'm with Georgetown's Dennis McNamara, one of the keynote speakers on Friday: it is time for the US to begin working at shaping the cooperative Asia as best it can in a direction that favors the US. (See this Asahi interview for a summary of McNamara's views on this subject.)

But it is important to remember that the decision as to which Asia -- cooperative or conflictual -- will emerge will depend largely on decisions made in Beijing.