Ozawa Ichiro, Japan's Gingrich?

Alex Pappas at Japundit calls attention to this recent Asahi article on DPJ President Ozawa Ichiro.

When the political history of Japan during the two decades following the breakdown of the 1955 system is written -- although in The Logic of Japanese Politics, Gerald Curtis has already provided a fantastic account of change (or the lack thereof) in Japanese politics during the 1990s -- Ozawa will loom large. As LDP secretary general during the early 1990s, Ozawa fought a tough losing battle, arguing for Japanese participation in the international coalition to liberate Kuwait. He subsequently headed an LDP study group on foreign policy that called for a more significant Japanese role internationally.

In 1993, however, he bolted the party, created his New Frontier Party and assembled the coalition that became the first non-LDP government since the LDP's creation in 1955. Always more comfortable working behind the scenes, Ozawa's activities to isolate the Socialists in the coalition undermined the integrity of and ultimately destroyed the seven-party coalition government. His subsequent activities as head of the Liberal Party were equally opportunistic, as he joined a coalition government with the LDP -- and then, at least according to one person I've spoken with, drove the late Obuchi Keizo to his death by constantly threatening to leave the government.

The most recent twist to the Ozawa saga was, of course, his being elected president of the Democratic Party of Japan in the spring of 2006.

Ultimately, I think Ozawa may be remembered as a Newt Gingrich-like figure, his personal presence undermining his ideas for political reform. Ozawa must be given credit for having seriously thought about how to reform Japan, particularly Japanese foreign policy: the ideas discussed in his Blueprint for a New Japan, written in 1993 before Ozawa left the LDP, remain relevant even today. But his outsized ego and presence have undermined every party with which he has been affiliated, and ultimately undermined his efforts to advance the ideas he claims to hold dear.

As for the Asahi article, it discusses Ozawa's efforts to travel the country and bolster the DPJ presence across the country -- often by cooperating with the Rengo, Japan's Trade Union Confederation. The article notes criticism of Ozawa's neglecting Diet debates for his travels, but I would not be so quick to criticism him on this count. Focusing on building a local foundation for the DPJ may be a better electoral strategy, given that elections -- even to the Diet -- often depend on more parochial concerns, together with the candidate's personal background and relationships with voters; it is the kind of strategy that may not pay immediate dividends, but if pursued consistently could result in major gains over the medium to long term.

For the time being, I think a Diet-centered electoral strategy would fail, given that the DPJ remains trapped between its desire to obstruct the government's legislative agenda and its own reformist ideas, which often overlap with ideas pushed by the LDP. While the transition from Koizumi to Abe has lessened the tension somewhat, given Abe's apparent lack of commitment to structural reform, the problem remains. So why shouldn't Ozawa focus on developing a local presence, given that the size of the LDP's majority in the Lower House limits the opposition's ability to obstruct the government's agenda, and engaging in debate reveals the similarities between LDP and DPJ policy positions as well as the differences?

I am more concerned about the cooperation with Rengo, because compromises made to secure the support of labor unions could blunt the DPJ's reformist edge and make it even more like a mere imitator of the LDP: some reformers, but too many ties with interest groups that have a lot to lose from reform, dulling the party's progressive edge.

Ozawa has long desired a Japanese political system led by two major parties -- but a system in which the two major parties simply mirror each other is not a step forward (cf. France, Germany, Britain, etc. etc.) Hopefully this will not be Ozawa's final legacy.

The shape of months to come?

The Council on Foreign Relations links to a "major" foreign policy speech by former governor of Massachusetts and Republican candidate for president Mitt Romney, delivered at Texas A & M with former President George H.W. Bush in attendance.

Numbers of times China mentioned?

Zero.

Number of times Asia mentioned?

Zero.

How a serious presidential candidate can deliver a foreign policy speech and not reference the Asia-Pacific region once -- not even in passing -- is beyond me. The US is a Pacific nation; Asia's problems are America's problems, and the challenges posed by Asia (especially by China) are not going away.

I realize, of course, that Iraq is a problem that is only getting worse, but the strategic disaster that is Iraq will be compounded if it leads the US to devote insufficient attention to the rapidly changing and growing region that is the Asia-Pacific.

I hope the Democratic contenders can do better. I hope they realize that the foreign policy issue for 2008 cannot simply be "what is to be done about Iraq"; it has to be, as suggested in this post by David Shorr at Democracy Arsenal, what is the future role for American power in the world. Maybe, as Lexington suggests in this week's Economist, Barack Obama has some ideas up his sleeve.

Have China Scholars All Been Bought?

That's the question asked by Carsten Holz, economist at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, in an article in the Far Eastern Economic Review. (Hat tip: Arts and Letters Daily)

He asks:

Does it matter if China researchers ignore the political context in which they operate and the political constraints that shape their work? Does it matter if we present China to the West the way the Party leadership must like us to present China, providing narrow answers to our self-censored research questions and offering a sanitized picture of China's political system?

I'm not altogether sure if the situation for China scholars is nearly as bad as the picture painted by Holz, but the questions he raises are serious ones.

Read the whole thing.

The first day of a new Sino-Japanese relationship?

So after years of the Sino-Japanese leg being the weakest in the US-Japan-China strategic triangle, it seems that Premier Wen's visit will go a long way towards strengthening the Sino-Japanese relationship to a level similar to the Sino-American relationship.

Similar to the US Military's links with the PLA, Japanese Defense Minister Kyuma announced before Wen's arrival that the JSDF and the PLA are planning reciprocal port visits, a historical first during the postwar era. Otherwise, the agreements reached are extremely modest: China's lifting restrictions on Japanese rice, cooperation on the environment, and expanded cultural exchanges.

But summitry and high-level talks between senior Japanese and Chinese officials, regardless of the tangible benefits, ensure a regularized relationship, and will perhaps moderate each government's behavior in bilateral disputes.

So Wen speaks to the Japanese Diet, speaking frankly about the historical and other issues that divide Japan and China? Great. The evolving Sino-Japanese relationship is little different from China's relationships with other regional powers, the US included: equal parts challenge and opportunity. There's going to be tension, and the problems will not go away overnight. I like Representative Nagashima's response, which emphasized the structural challenge posed by a China rising in all areas (except demographics).

China is not going away -- and whether as a strong, unified great power or a weak, divided, corruption-ridden environmental disaster area, it will profoundly impact the region and the world. All of which calls for realistic expectations about what the Sino-Japanese (and Sino-US) relationships can achieve.

LDP gloom in Kanagawa

In an article in yesterday's Shonan edition of the Yomiuri Shimbun -- as usual, not online -- entitled "The governor's expanding clout," LDP members of the Kanagawa prefectural assembly sound despondent in the face of Governor Matsuzawa's landslide victory Sunday, and, more significantly, the victory of DPJ and independent allies in campaigns for prefectural assembly seats -- giving Matsuzawa support with which to push his agenda, outlined in detail in his manifesto.

I found the passage about LDP fortunes interesting more for what it portends for the LDP at large than for its particular significance in Kanagawa. My translation follows:

The LDP prefectural representative Kuniyoshi Kazuo said, "It is possible that we can adjust and become of the same mind, sharing political ideology and ideas." However, in the LDP there is a growing feeling of despair that "there is a high possibility of falling to second-party status," and a veteran LDP representative said, "Mr. Koizumi said, 'I will destroy the LDP,' but in his own home of Kanagawa the LDP has been destroyed."

Looking to the July Upper House election battles in every prefecture, the LDP, feeling a pressing need to repair its organizational structure, is getting desperate. Kobayashi Yutaka, the Upper House member standing in the Kanagawa electoral district in this summer's election, said, "The gubernatorial election differs from an election with parties [the candidates in the election last week were all officially independent]. The points at issue are also different," but the LDP prefectural party chapter is rushing its analysis of this election's votes.

Those two paragraphs offer a fascinating look at where the LDP is today in predominantly urban prefectures. After Koizumi's failed attempt to convert the predominantly rural LDP into an urban party, I wonder if this gloom in Kanagawa isn't reflected in other urban constituencies. Have urban voters across Japan reverted to their pre-2001 distrust of the LDP? If so, what consequences will that have for the LDP in July?

That said, as Kuniyoshi's comment suggests, never underestimate the flexibility of the LDP in its pursuit of power.

Seen and heard this evening

Frank Jannuzi, Hitachi fellow, China expert, and Democratic staffer at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee (on leave), spoke tonight at Temple University Japan on the second Armitage-Nye Report.

I'm not going to give a full summary of his talk -- much of it was spelling out the thinking of the report's drafters and explaining the points at which he diverged from his co-writers -- but it was worthwhile to get a peek behind the curtain, so to speak.

He did mention a few things worth relating here:

• According to Jannuzi, the average American family gains $1,000/month from US trade with China (presumably due to savings from having shelves stocked with cheap goods). This figure seems believable intuitively, but I'm curious as to how this number was reached. In any case, if it's true, I feel a lot more confident in arguing, as I did in this post, that the administration needs to start making the case for the Sino-American economic relationship loudly and clearly.
• Another figure cited by Jannuzi is that apparently sixty percent of Americans have a favorable view of China, while a survey of congressional staffers found that only approximately ten percent have a positive view of China. I find this surprising, and somewhat hard to believe (the former, not the latter), considering that nearly all reporting about China is negative in some way -- its arms buildup, its unfair economic practices, etc. Maybe Americans don't buy into Lou Dobbs's "Red China" rubbish.
• Among the Japanese in attendance, at least those who asked questions after Jannuzi's talk, there was a palpable sense of unease about the state of the US-Japan alliance. Questioners wondered if maybe the report was too sanguine about the alliance, reflecting my previously stated concerns about drift and a shocking lack of communication and coordination between Tokyo and Washington.
  

All in all, I like Jannuzi's optimism about Sino-American relations, but I wonder if the Armitage-Nye Report, rather than dividing its attention between the region and the alliance, might have been better off focusing on the alliance and exploring how it can dovetail with some form of US-Japan-China security cooperation, an arrangement mentioned in the report in passing.

Waiting for Wen

It seems that today is a China kind of day, as Chinese Premier Wen begins his three-day visit to Japan today.

The much-quoted purpose of this trip is to "melt the ice" between Japan and China.

Call me a skeptic, but I think I'm with the Carnegie Endowment's Minxin Pei, who wrote in an op-ed in the FT (subscription required), "...It would be naive to see the improvement in atmosphere between Tokyo and Beijing as a substantive step towards removing tensions between the two countries. Few detect a fundamental shift in either’s policy. Neither China nor Japan has made real concessions on key bilateral disputes."

I'm not all that convinced that negotiated solutions to many of the bilateral issues between China and Japan are possible, seeing as how they're rooted in the region's changing power dynamics. Let's not forget the insecurity that China's emergence spurs in Japan, even as interdependence between them grows.

But, that said, it is as imperative -- or more imperative -- for Japan to talk with China as it is for the US to talk with China. Regular Sino-Japanese summits -- with or without concrete progress -- have value in and of themselves; stability in the region depends on open communication within the US-China-Japan strategic triangle, and given the issues between Tokyo and Beijing, the Sino-Japanese leg of the triangle may be the most important.

Such is life in multipolar Asia, where every day brings another initiative to enhance communication and cooperation.

Is the Bush administration thinking about the China relationship?

With the Bush administration's recent move to press a suit against Chinese violations of intellectual property in the WTO sparking fears of a full-blown Sino-American trade war, I must ask the same questionI asked when the US Commerce Department announced tariffs on Chinese glossy paper: is this administration pursuing a coherent strategy in Asia, or is it just making things up as it goes along? Does the US really expect that friction on trade will not have consequences for Sino-American cooperation in other areas, most notably in the six-party talks?

The US, of course, should not hesitate to press China on matters of concern, but it must choose its battles wisely; with Congress breathing down the administration's neck on the economic relationship with China, I fear that prudence is becoming an altogether rare quality in US China policy. Moreover, I do not think the administration has made an effort to counter the public scapegoating of China and explain to the American public the substantial benefits of the relationship. That is a point made by the authors of a new Council on Foreign Relations study on the relationship with China. As co-author Carla Hills said at a press conference announcing the report, "We recommended that the president describe to the American public the various benefits that we derive from that relationship and that we state that our interests are furthered by a responsible and cooperative China that adheres to international norms, a prosperous and peaceful China that fuels global growth, and an equitable China that is accountable and cares about issues like the environment."

Whether this will happen is any one's guess, but I doubt that President Bush is particularly eager to defend China publicly.

Maintaining the US-China relationship requires work, and it requires vision. Neither country can afford to wait until January 2009 for either.

Reading the local elections with an eye on July

I have held off from posting on the results of Sunday's local elections because I am not entirely sure what conclusion should be drawn.

I think it would be a mistake to draw too-firm conclusions about the prospects for July's Upper House elections from the results.

Is Ishihara's reelection a clear precursor of LDP victory in July? What about reformist Kanagawa Governor Matsuzawa Shigefumi, who won by an even larger margin of victory than Ishihara (albeit in a less crowded race)? What about the results of elections for prefectural assemblies, which saw the number of DPJ seats rise by 205 to 375, at the same time that the LDP's seats fall 1309 to 1212? (That's not a typo.) While obviously the discrepancy in the number of seats is substantial, what counts is the trend.

So, if you're looking for certainty, you've come to the wrong place. It is important to remember, however, that the LDP may be in for a tough time regardless of what happens between now and then because a number of the LDP candidates up for reelection this year were elected in 2001 as a result of Koizumi's long coattails (the 2001 Upper House election was held in July 2001, when Koizumi's popularity was in the 80s and the LDP's popularity was breaking fifty percent for the first time in years). Of the twenty-two new candidates elected in 2001 (both from PR lists and electoral districts across Japan), twenty are running for reelection this year. They constitute roughly a third of the LDP's 64 Upper House candidates. Will they be as successful this year, without headwinds provided by an extraordinarily popular reformist prime minister? (Information drawn from Nikkei's 2001 election coverage, Yahoo's 2001 election results, and the LDP's list of candidates for this year's elections.)

I don't know what the answer is, but I strongly suspect that incumbents who benefited from Koizumi's coattails will suffer from Abe's failure to carry on Koizumi's legacy, signified by the return to the LDP of the "postal rebels," party members who voted against the privatization of the Japan Post.

The problem with foreign policy

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

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

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

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

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

The heart of the matter

What Japan Thinks published the results of a survey by the Cabinet Office of what the Japanese people think about their society.

In part two, posted here, the survey found that approximately 75% of respondents answered in the negative to the question "do you think the government takes into consideration its citizens' opinions and thoughts." The answers to the subsequent question -- "how do you think the government could most take into consideration its citizens' opinions and thoughts" -- show, however, that there is little consensus on how to change this state of affairs.

These questions get to the crux of Japan's political problem. As I argued in this post, genuine political change will not come about as a result of a new series of top-down grand reforms, a twenty-first century sequel of the Meiji Restoration. Japanese politics will change only if it ceases to be a spectator sport, in which the governing class talks amongst itself while the Japanese people look on, occasionally excited, occasionally agitated, but mostly bored. The tantalizing promise of Koizumi was that he might break the cycle by getting the Japanese people to take an active interest in how their country is governed; that promise was, of course, unrealized.

But the problem remains. Popular discontent with political parties and politicians of all stripes remains high, making it difficult to draw firm conclusions from Sunday's local election results. I strongly doubt whether any political party will be able to channel that discontent into a popular movement capable of taking power (in a manner similar to Hosokawa Morihiro's path to power in 1993). More than a decade later, the Japanese public seems more cynical, more worn out, and less likely to embrace a reformist alternative to the LDP uncritically.

In other words, the Japanese people will have to take power themselves, by voicing their discontent through protest votes (and protests), by running for office themselves or supporting other citizen candidates, and by demanding openness and accountability from governments local, prefectural, and national. At every turn Japan's governing elite need to be reminded that their mandate comes from the Japanese people and that they must ultimately be accountable to the Japanese people. Democratic governance requires a constant conversation between government and governed; it's time the Japanese people took their proper place in that conversation.

Asia's Rip Van Winkle

Georgetown's Casimir Yost, director of Georgetown's Institute for the Study of Diplomacy, was in Tokyo last week giving a series of talks. I saw him at the US Embassy's Tokyo American Center on Friday.

In the course of his talk, Yost made an interesting point about how the US has been distracted from Asia by Iraq, and now that the Bush administration's attention is returning to the region, it finds that the region has been transformed in its "absence."

While that might exaggerate matters somewhat, but there is a lot of truth in it. With the US not particularly focused on using its power to shape the region, the Asia-Pacific region became considerably more multipolar, and now the US has to play catch up to reassert its influence in a transformed region.

Whether this will happen during the waning years of the Bush administration is an open question, but there are signs that the US is adjusting to the new rules of the game. One sign is, of course, more constructive cooperation with China, on the part of both the US and Japan (sorry, FT subscription required). Another is that the US seems less willing to give a free pass to Japan on security.

This article from the Japan Times shows both changes at work. Both Washington and Beijing have asked Tokyo to clarify the meaning of "progress" on the abductions issue, which to date Japan has failed to do. (A point that I previously addressed here.) Given that the US and China are the major stakeholders in the six-party talks and have both invested considerable energy in seeing them to a successful conclusion, this step is long overdue. I expect that diplomatic pressure on this front will likely continue during Chinese Premier Wen's visit this week, and, if necessary, during Prime Minister Abe's visit to Washington later this month -- albeit surreptitiously.

So what's the lesson that Tokyo should learn from this? The US, increasingly interested in ensuring the right outcomes in Asia, will not tolerate obstructionism, not even from its ally Japan. Tokyo would do well to take that to heart.

A gift to Bush?

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

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

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

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

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

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

I love the smell of nuance in the morning

Robert Koehler of The Marmot's Hole writes of a talk by Park Yu-ha, a Korean professor of Japanese literature, at the Foreign Correspondents Club of Japan, in which she argued that Koreans are also to blame for the comfort women system.

And hence my problem with the congressional resolution condemning Japan and only Japan. History is more complicated than "good guys" versus "bad guys," and the whitewashing of history that would result from simply blaming Japan and moving on is little different from the whitewashing of history by Japanese nationalists.

In other words, let historians do their jobs.

The healing power of Dice-K?

Perhaps the baseball gods are smiling on the US-Japan relationship, with wunderkind Matsuzaka Daisuke's first start for the Red Sox a masterful performance.

What better way for the allies to change the subject away from all that nastiness about comfort women and North Korean nuclear weapons? State Department spokesman and Red Sox fan Sean McCormack evidently, according to Jiji, interrupted a press conference to thank the Seibu Lions for Matsuzaka. (Although Japanese Finance Minister Omi Koji criticized NHK for excessive coverage of Matsuzaka's debut -- hey Omi! get on message.)

Yes, baseball, what a nice way to paper over the serious problems facing the alliance in advance of Abe's visit. I wonder if Bush and Abe will be playing a game of catch at Camp David, just as Bush did with Koizumi on the latter's first visit to the US as prime minister.

Can you see this man playing a game of "catch ball" with President Bush?

Support for constitution revision falls

At least that's what the latest Yomiuri Shimbun poll on constitution revision revealed.

The results of the poll should serve as a reminder to the Abe Cabinet, Japan's neighbors, and the world at large that the politics of Japan's normalization are far from simple.

While the survey has shown a consistent plurality in favor of constitution revision since 1993, now that the public is actually faced with a prime minister committed to revision, the percentage in favor fell nine points, while the percentage opposed rose seven points.

And that's just the general question of constitution revision. When asked about revising Article 9, the text of which reads

1. Aspiring sincerely to an international peace based on justice and order, the Japanese people forever renounce war as a sovereign right of the nation and the threat or use of force as means of settling international disputes.
2. In order to accomplish the aim of the preceding paragraph, land, sea, and air forces, as well as other war potential, will never be maintained. The right of belligerency of the state will not be recognized

the respondents were strongly opposed to revising the first clause of Article 9, by a margin of 80% to 14%. As for revising the second clause, 54% were opposed, 38% in favor. The poll also showed that an increasing number of respondents value the postwar constitution as it approaches its sixtieth anniversary next month.

So what exactly is Abe hoping to achieve by constitution revision? The Japanese people aren't particularly clamoring for the Abe Cabinet to rollback the restrictions enshrined in the Constitution. The slightly greater level of support for revision of the second clause of Article 9 (as opposed to the first clause) may show that the Japanese people acknowledge the awkward position of having increasingly robust Self-Defense Forces despite the restriction on armed forces in Article 9. (The existence of the JSDF depend on legal gymnastics that argue that the JSDF do not exist for the purpose of using force to settle international disputes, so their exist is permitted.) But that does not mean that the Japanese are demanding total normalization of Japanese security policy.

Will Abe, if and when he gets around to presenting a draft revision, respect that?

Lawless departs: an opportunity for change?

In this post from yesterday about Prime Minister Abe's visit to Washington at the end of the month, I mentioned that one factor in the Bush administration's inability to focus on advancing the process of redefining the US-Japan alliance is the lack of experienced Japan hands in senior positions.

Now, according to OneFreeKorea, Richard Lawless, deputy under secretary of defense for Asia-Pacific security affairs, is stepping down. OneFreeKorea focuses on his role in the US realignment in Korea, but Lawless played as significant a role in the realignment of US forces in Japan, working tirelessly to conclude the agreement approved by the Security Consultative Committee last May -- ostensibly resolving an issue on which both sides had been actively seeking an agreement since 1995. (The transcript of the press conference announcing the agreement is available here.)

I have heard, however, that Lawless has been ill for some time, explaining in part the relative lack of progress since the May 2006 2 + 2 meeting confirming the agreement.

The question now is who will replace him. I wonder if Lawless's retirement will clear the way for Michael Green's return to the administration. Whatever the case may be, this is an opportunity for the Bush administration to right itself on Japan policy. Handing the Asia-Pacific portfolio to a Japan hand (as opposed to a Korea or China hand) would send a clear signal to Japan that while the US is seeking an agreement with North Korea and deepening its ties with China, the alliance with Japan remains the single most important element of US Asia policy.

I also wonder if discussion of Lawless's replacement will make it on the agenda for this month's summit.

UPDATE: Robert Koehler of The Marmot's Hole suggests that Lawless will likely be replaced by James Shinn, onetime National Intelligence Officer for East Asia at the National Intelligence Council, former senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, and current principal deputy assistant secretary of defense for Asia-Pacific security affairs. Shinn, perhaps unusually for someone in his line of work, had a long career in business after a stint at the State Department (see the biography provided here by the National Bureau of Asian Research [about halfway down the page]). Based on his publication record from his time at CFR, Shinn does not fall into one camp in the region, which might make him a suitable compromise candidate.

UPDATE, the second: The Yomiuri Shimbun's article on Lawless's departure is here. Yomiuri views it primarily as the departure of yet another North Korea hawk from the administration, and mentions Shinn as a possible successor, although it quotes "someone connected to the US government" as saying that Shinn is a "bureaucratic type whose negotiating skills are unknown." Don't think that the Japanese government isn't paying close attention. It is very much interested in who will fill the post responsible for the US realignment in Japan and represent the Pentagon in the six-party talks (and, as the Japanese government surely hopes, balance the waxing influence of Christopher Hill in US Asia policy).

Fukuyama on democracy

Francis Fukuyama, in a brief essay posted at the Guardian, argues against connecting his "end of history" thesis with the Bush administration's foreign policy. (Hat tip: Andrew Sullivan)

I can think of few contemporary ideas that have been more misunderstood than Fukuyama's argument in his original essay "The End of History?" in The National Interest and his subsequent book, The End of History and the Last Man. His argument was not a triumphalist paean to liberal democracy at the end of the cold war. Rather, as the appending of "the Last Man" to the title of the book suggests, Fukuyama sought to spell out the full implications of an increasingly liberal democratic world, and by using Nietzsche as a starting point, clearly presented a more nuanced view than those who often refer to "the end of history" realize.

In any case, I especially liked the conclusion to Fukuyama's essay:

I never linked the global emergence of democracy to American agency, and particularly not to the exercise of American military power. Democratic transitions need to be driven by societies that want democracy, and since the latter requires institutions, it is usually a fairly long and drawn out process.

Outside powers like the US can often help in this process by the example they set as politically and economically successful societies. They can also provide funding, advice, technical assistance, and yes, occasionally military force to help the process along. But coercive regime change was never the key to democratic transition.

Democratization cannot be primarily a military project, nor, ultimately, can it be primarily a foreign project. Democracy can only emerge when a nation desires it, and is willing to work towards a democratic governance, at which it is fitting and proper for the developed democracies to give their support.

Fukuyama's point about the US and other developed countries serving as examples for aspiring democracies is interesting in light of something I heard the other day at a campaign rally in Zushi. With the first wave of unified local elections scheduled for this Sunday, 8 April, Japan is in the throes of an intense bout of campaigning, with candidates presenting themselves before the public at railway stations throughout Japan. On Tuesday I observed Kanagawa Governor Matsuzawa Shigefumi, who is up for reelection, outlining his goals for political reform in Kanagawa. Interestingly, in talking about the need for term limits, he pointed respectfully to the American political system, saying that although President Clinton was extremely popular, he was still constitutionally required to retire. The point is that while it has become popular to speak about how little foreign countries respect and admire the US, I think this is exaggerated: at its best, the American political system still is a model for democracies everywhere, something all Americans -- but especially American elected officials -- would do well to remember. The rest of the world is watching closely.

Finally, a more profound and older expression of the ideas found in Fukuyama's essay was penned by British political philosopher Michael Oakeshott, who wrote the following in his essay "Political Education":

When a matter of attending to arrangements is to be transplanted from the society in which it has grown up into another society (always a questionable enterprise), the simplification of an ideology may appear as an asset. If, for example, the English manner of politics is to be planted elsewhere in the world, it is perhaps appropriate that it should first be abridged into something called 'democracy' before it is packed up and shipped abroad. There is, of course, an alternative method: the method by which what is exported is the detail and not the abridgment of the tradition and the workmen travel with the tools -- the method which made the British Empire. But it is a slow and costly method. And, particularly with men in a hurry, l'homme á programme with his abridgment wins every time; his slogans enchant, while the resident magistrate is seen only as a sign of servility. But whatever the apparent appropriateness on occasion of the ideological style of politics, the defect of the explanation of political activity connected with it becomes apparent when we consider the sort of knowledge and the kind of education it encourages us to believe is sufficient for understanding the activity of attending to the arrangements of society. For it suggests that a knowledge of the chosen political ideology can take the place of understanding a tradition of political behavior. The wand and the book come to be regarded as themselves potent, and not merely the symbols of potency. The arrangements of society are made to appear, not as manners of behavior, but as pieces of machinery to be transported about the world indiscriminately.

Comfort women, not on the agenda; how about drift?

So reports Jiji regarding the meeting between President Bush and Prime Minister Abe scheduled for the end of this month during Japan's Golden Week holidays.

This is not altogether surprising; despite Ambassador Schieffer's voicing concerns about Abe's response to the congressional comfort women resolution (mentioned in this post), I would be shocked if the issue was taken up by more senior administration officials, especially given the state of relations between the administration and the Democratic Congress. If anything, I would not be surprised if the US sends a new ambassador to Japan in the aftermath of Abe's visit.

The agenda, according to Chief Cabinet Secretary Shiozaki, will focus largely on security issues in the Asia-Pacific region. Without knowing more details about the agenda, I assume that the summit will be more or less boilerplate about the importance of the US-Japan alliance to the region, much like Vice President Cheney's visit to Japan in February, rather than frank and forthright discussion of the sources of the friction that has emerged between the allies since Prime Minister Abe took office.

As regular readers of this blog know, I am concerned about the clear signs of drift in the US-Japan alliance that have presented since former Prime Minister Koizumi visited Washington (and Graceland) last summer. The only cure for drift is sustained engagement by the senior leaderships of both countries, from the sub-cabinet level up to the chief executives and back down. I fear, however, that the Bush administration, under siege at home and abroad and lacking Japan experts in its midst, is inadequately prepared to dedicate itself to pursuing more open, constructive political cooperation with Japan -- and the Abe Cabinet, between its plummeting popularity and a general laxness in its approach to the US-Japan alliance, seems hardly capable of picking up the slack.

Accordingly, in the face of the challenges of a fluid regional security environment, the region's most significant security partnership -- anchor of the US position in East Asia since the end of World War II -- appears powerless.

I hope I'm wrong. I hope there's strength yet. But if President Bush and Prime Minister Abe -- and, more importantly, the US and Japanese foreign and defense ministers, in the 2 + 2 meeting following the summit -- do not have frank and open discussions about the evolving regional security environment, about approaches to the emergence of China, and about differences between the US and Japanese positions in the six-party talks (if they make it to the end of the month), my fears may well be justified.

Japan feels the heat

Based on the coverage in Japan's newspapers, it seems that Japan was blindsided by the US-ROK free-trade agreement. Perhaps Japanese observers did not quite believe that negotiators would be able conclude an agreement before time ran out. Of course, the agreement's passage in both the US and South Korean legislatures is hardly a foregone conclusion, as the Japanese media has noted, but the prospect of Korean companies -- especially automakers -- having preferential access to the US market seems to have stirred the Japanese government to action.

The FT reports today that Japan has announced that it is interested in ramping up talks with South Korea on a Japan-South Korea FTA, and quotes Abe has saying that even an FTA with the US should be considered. The FT also notes, however, that Korea is more interested in trade negotiations with the EU than with Japan.

Perhaps another sign of the deficiencies of the Japanese government's foreign policy making; Tokyo seems utterly incapable of shaping the regional environment, and is continually being outflanked by its neighbors, allies, and rivals, whether on trade, security, or in the six-party talks.

Asia's shifting geometry

Last week, on the occasion of Hu Jintao's visit to Moscow, I wrote this post, suggesting that while China and Russia may appear to be moving ever closer together, there are good reasons to think that both Russia and China will be seeking greater flexibility in the Asia-Pacific region.

Two recent articles develop this idea further.

First, in Japan Focus, M.K. Bhadrakumar, a former Indian diplomat, argues that Sino-Russian ties are weakening, and Sino-American ties are deepening, citing the symbolism of General Pace's visit to Beijing just before Hu went to Russia. Notably, Bhadrakumar calls attention to Chinese concerns about becoming too dependent on Russia for energy -- suggesting that China, the US, and the EU may be moving towards a consensus on coping with Russia as energy superpower. And he concludes by quoting a researcher at the Institute of American Studies at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, who calls attention to the new wind in the Sino-US relationship: "The Sino-US relationship is moving beyond the bilateral scope to cover regional and global security and economic matters. Exchanges at various levels and between diverse sectors, trade and economic cooperation in particular, are going ahead in a big way. By all accounts, the two countries share more interests and are becoming increasingly dependent on one another strategically and economically."

Obviously there are still plenty of outstanding bilateral issues between China and the US, not least the nature of the Chinese regime, but Washington increasingly sees in China a partner in preserving the stability of the region, a fundamental interest of both Washington and Beijing. Bhadrakumar's essay is useful in measuring the degree to which the region's arrangements are in flux.

That impression is confirmed in an essay by Ian Bremmer (hat tip: RealClearPolitics), author of the book The J Curve, who points to the "mutually assured economic destruction" intrinsic to the Sino-US relationship to argue against the idea of a new cold war between the US and China (or Russia). I would not be so foolish as to suggest that armed competition or conflict is impossible, but the terms of the relationship between the US and China have changed. Each country needs the other; each country needs to engage the other constructively to address issues of mutual concern. Accordingly, expect more initiatives on the order of the US-China Strategic Economic Dialogue.

With the US embracing flexibility in its Asia policy, the big question is whether Japan has adjusted accordingly. Despite Abe's early visits to China and South Korea, I strongly suspect that Japan remains wedded to a strategic concept -- a maritime alliance of democracies off the coast of Asia -- that seems increasingly out of favor in Washington. The "continentalists" are in control, and stability, not democracy, is increasingly the watchword of US Asia policy.

China's emergence at sea

In the midst of concerns about the changing profile of the Chinese People's Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) -- as suggested by reports about China's "secret" aircraft program, discussed at Wired's Danger Room blog, and this report about China's submarine purchases sparking a maritime arms race (via NOSI) -- it is worthwhile to look closer at China's maritime strategic thinking.

Two articles from the Autumn 2006 issue of the (US) Naval War College Review -- one is a translation of an article from a Chinese defense journal -- provide a realistic assessment of China's naval plans that suggest the course of the PLAN's budgeting priorities and doctrine is still up in the air.

The first, by two professors at the Naval War College, looks at Chinese thinking on developing aircraft carriers, and concludes that it is far from certain that the PLAN will opt to develop American-style supercarriers, and even if they develop aircraft carriers, it is not certain how they will fit in Chinese plans. The second, meanwhile, is by Xu Qi, a PLAN senior captain, and looks at the big picture of China's thinking on maritime geostrategy, suggesting that after under emphasizing naval affairs for centuries, China is rethinking its approach to the sea: "If a nation ignored maritime connectivity, it would lack a global perspective for planning and developing, and it would likely have difficulties in avoiding threats to its security."

Both articles suggest that there are still more questions than answers surrounding Chinese military modernization, despite the media's -- and the global defense industry's -- interest in suggesting that the threat posed by China is unambiguous.

Interesting...the media-industrial complex?

Redefining the US-ROK relationship

How interesting that on the same day that the US and South Korea conclude a "landmark" trade agreement -- legislative approval in both countries pending -- the Yomiuri Shimbun runs an editorial looking at the impact of North Korea on the February agreement to dissolve the US-ROK Combined Forces Command, giving primary responsibility for the defense of South Korea to the South Korean military.

The point of this editorial is not concealed: "It is also important for Japan to observe contemporary developments in the US-Korean security arrangements [alliance]."

The editorial proceeds to spell out the details of the new division of labor between the allies -- but I don't think there's any question that a reader should read between the lines and transpose the new US-ROK arrangement onto the US-Japan alliance.

But leaving aside the question of a new division of labor in the US-Japan alliance, the US-ROK free-trade agreement, coming on the heels of the February agreement, is an important indicator of how the US position in Asia is changing. The old hub-and-spoke system, establishing in the early 1950s, meant that the US was the senior partner in a series of bilateral alliances. That system appears to be breaking down, in a haphazard way, on all fronts.

That changes provides the context for Australia and Japan talking directly to each other about security, without the US acting as an intermediary, and it provides the context for the new US-ROK relationship, of which the trade agreement is an indispensable part. The US increasingly has to deal with allies on more equal terms. This is a good thing, but it requires the US to change its habits in Asia; it needs to learn to see the region and the world through the eyes of its allies and partners. Arguably Japan, however, remains stuck in a relationship largely unchanged from the hub-and-spoke era, in part due to the lingering presence of the US Military in Japan -- and the clear subordination of the JSDF to the US Military.

I think this is what Nagashima Akihisa was talking about in his address last month in a plenary session of the Lower House of the Diet -- discussed in this post. Japan too needs to enter the post-hub-and-spoke era. The smooth execution of the May 2006 2 + 2 agreement on the realignment of US forces in Japan would have been one way to do it, but it's been almost a year and little progress, if any, has been made. Another way of transforming the US-Japan alliance, suggested in the second Armitage-Nye report, is forging a US-Japan FTA, which would be even more revolutionary than the US-Korea FTA (the biggest US trade agreement since NAFTA). But the political obstacles in both countries -- already formidable in the US-Korea negotiations -- would likely be insurmountable (FT subscription required) in negotiations between the US and Japan.

So for all the friction between the US and South Korea since the election of President Roh in 2002, the election of a more conservative -- read pro-American -- candidate in this year's ROK presidential election could well result in a renaissance in the US-South Korea relationship, based on steps taken to build a more equal partnership. Getting to that point with Japan, however, seems to remain a distant goal.

Farewell six-party talks?

So the US Department of Commerce has imposed tariffs on imports of glossy paper from China, bowing to pressure from the paper industry.

This is one of those cases that lead me to question whether the Bush administration is capable of walking and chewing gum at the same time.

At the same time that the administration has committed political capital to reaching a lasting agreement in the six-party talks -- in which it is dependent upon China wielding its influence with North Korea -- it has opted to provoke China in trade policy. Obviously the federal government is a colossal machine with each component focused on its own work, but did no one in the administration speak up with a reminder that maybe, just maybe, imposing these tariffs might undermine the six-party talks by prompting Chinese retaliation (perhaps by a sell off of China's holdings of US Treasuries)?

So did the administration forget about the six-party talks, or does it not care? In any case, its policy incoherence is becoming dangerously reckless.

Meanwhile, I can imagine that the Japanese government is not altogether unhappy with the US move, particularly if China retaliates. After all, in the event of Chinese retaliation, the onus for undermining the talks will shift from Tokyo to Beijing.

Japan's PR problem

Francis Fukuyama has written a brief essay called "The Trouble with Japanese Nationalism," in which he recounts his own encounters with Japanese nationalists -- including the translator of The End of History and the Last Man -- and wonders whether the US wants a normalized Japan that has yet to resolve its historical issues. (Hat tip: Arts and Letters Daily.)

He concludes:

A number of American strategists are eager to ring China with a NATO-like defensive barrier, building outward from the US-Japan Security Treaty. Since the final days of the Cold War, the US has been pushing Japan to rearm, and has officially supported a proposed revision of Article 9 of the postwar constitution, which bans Japan from having a military or waging war.

But America should be careful about what it wishes for. The legitimacy of the entire American military position in the Far East is built around the US exercising Japan’s sovereign function of self-defense. Japan’s unilateral revision of Article 9, viewed against the backdrop of its new nationalism, would isolate Japan from virtually the whole of Asia.

Revising Article 9 has long been part of Abe’s agenda, but whether he pushes ahead with it will depend in large part on the kind of advice he gets from close friends in the US. President Bush was unwilling to say anything about Japan’s new nationalism to his “good friend Junichiro” out of gratitude for Japanese support in Iraq. Now that Japan has withdrawn its small contingent of troops, perhaps Bush will speak plainly to Abe.

Fukuyama's argument is largely unexceptional, but it illustrates the real consequences of the reports trickling out of Japan about just how little some senior Japanese politicians have come to terms with Imperial Japan's crimes. Japanese nationalists may have an easy time dismissing Chinese and Korean complaints about Yasukuni visits and the like, but if the US -- the executive branch especially -- begins voicing serious complaints about how the Japanese view their wartime history, the alliance will be in serious trouble.

Why? Well, because after urging Japan to do more over the past two decades, the US cannot slam the Pandora's box of Japanese normalization shut, certainly not without angering Japanese politicians (and perhaps the public at large) -- some of whom are demanding that Japan takes a greater role in defending itself even without the US cautioning Japan to slow down. The result could well be the end of the alliance, with the US coming around the Chinese/Korean view of Japan.

So Fukuyama's essay --- coming from an intellectual who is by no means known to be hostile to Japan's playing a greater role internationally -- can be taken as an indicator that the time for the allies to resolve the tensions between them is now. Perhaps the long-awaited 2 + 2 meeting, now scheduled for 30 April, will go some way towards clearing the air, and laying the groundwork for a more durable framework for bilateral cooperation.

The DPJ's dilemma

With the Abe Cabinet determined to press ahead with passage of a bill establishing a national referendum system so that when the time comes a revised constitution can be submitted to a vote, the Democratic Party of Japan finds itself in something of a bind, because unlike previous opposition parties, the DPJ is not opposed to revision of the constitution -- it does not have a totemic attachment to the postwar system.

But, of course, it still wants to be an active opposition party that makes life difficult for the government.

That is the dilemma found in current deliberations about submitting a rival national referendum bill to the Diet. As Mainichi reports, the DPJ has decided to submit its own plan, which differs from the government's draft only in that the DPJ wants to set up a "general" national referendum system.

Once Japan's political parties get around to discussing the actual substance of constitution revision, there will no doubt be plenty of debate and disagreement, but for the moment that's neither here nor there, because both parties are looking to July's upper house elections. The DPJ, torn between its policy goals and its desire to hammer the government and improve its standing in advance of the elections, once again looks weak and indecisive.

This is a problem that will not go away. The DPJ has yet to find a way to present itself as a viable opposition party with the potential to form a government, without looking like an LDP-lite (having the old LDP operator Ozawa at the helm may not be the best way of presenting the DPJ as a new wind in Japanese politics).

As such, for all the Abe Cabinet's troubles one should not expect revolutionary political change any time soon. On the contrary, as suggested in a conversation with another American Japan watcher with whom I met this past week, Japan may well be in for another period of short-lived LDP governments headed by bland pols.

The Koizumi era seems like it was ages ago.

Murayama's apology revisited

In this recent post, I mentioned that what Japan needs to do is stop issuing caveats about its wartime behavior, and make a clear, unambiguous apology.

Of course, I neglected to mention that a Japanese prime minister has previously made such a statement: Prime Minister Murayama Tomiichi's 1995 remarks on the fiftieth anniversary of the end of the war. In his remarks, Murayama said the following:

During a certain period in the not too distant past, Japan, following a mistaken national policy, advanced along the road to war, only to ensnare the Japanese people in a fateful crisis, and, through its colonial rule and aggression, caused tremendous damage and suffering to the people of many countries, particularly to those of Asian nations. In the hope that no such mistake be made in the future, I regard, in a spirit of humility, these irrefutable facts of history, and express here once again my feelings of deep remorse and state my heartfelt apology. Allow me also to express my feelings of profound mourning for all victims, both at home and abroad, of that history.

Building from our deep remorse on this occasion of the 50th anniversary of the end of the war, Japan must eliminate self-righteous nationalism, promote international coordination as a responsible member of the international community and, thereby, advance the principles of peace and democracy. At the same time, as the only country to have experienced the devastation of atomic bombing, Japan, with a view to the ultimate elimination of nuclear weapons, must actively strive to further global disarmament in areas such as the strengthening of the nuclear non-proliferation regime. It is my conviction that in this way alone can Japan atone for its past and lay to rest the spirits of those who perished.

It is said that one can rely on good faith. And so, at this time of remembrance, I declare to the people of Japan and abroad my intention to make good faith the foundation of our Government policy, and this is my vow.

This is the very model of a sincere apology.

But this apology is problematic. Murayama was Japan's first and only Socialist prime minister following the creation of the LDP in 1955, and the product of a grossly opportunistic coalition formed between the LDP and the Socialists after the collapse of the Hosokawa-Hata coalition cabinets in 1993-1994. Accordingly, the question is for whom was Murayama speaking. Himself? His government? All of the Japanese people? One thing is for certain: he was not speaking for Japan's conservative nationalists, including the current prime minister. And, as his policy proposals towards the end suggest, he was working in the pacifist paradigm that did not rankle Japan's neighbors.

The decade since the Murayama Cabinet suggests that the Murayama apology was more a coda on the postwar era than the dawn of a new age of Japanese relations with its continental neighbors. Japan is unmistakably more assertive, and has been governed by prime ministers who have not hesitated to push against the postwar restraints on Japan's playing a more significant role in the world. Thus, despite Koizumi's repeating the Murayama apology, words and actions did not match. As Tokyo University Professor Fujiwara Kiichi wrote, "Mr. Koizumi’s apology was a word-for-word repetition of the one made by then Prime Minister Tomoiichi Murayama in 1995 on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the end of World War II. This fact gave Mr. Koizumi’s words a hollow ring. It was as if he was merely stating a memorized mantra."

Accordingly, Japan needs an unequivocal apology for the war that comes not from the lips of a tired, old Socialist but from a (young) nationalist like Mr. Abe, in many ways the political (and sometimes literal) heirs of the politicians who governed Japan during and before the war. Otherwise the apology will be just as meaningless as Murayama's was -- and, since Abe and his ilk have a more ambitious foreign policy agenda than Murayama, Japan's efforts to play a more significant regional and global role will continue to draw opposition from Japan's neighbors.

Given that Japan's nationalists are nothing if not unrepentant, however, no such apology seems to be in the offing; the history issue will undoubtedly continue to fester.

Gauging Japan's normalization

Two articles provide a solid, realistic look at the process of Japan's normalizing its security policy and possibly reducing its dependence on the alliance with the US in its grand strategy.

The first, by David Pilling in the FT, provides a belated report on Prime Minister Abe's speech to graduates of the National Defense Academy. (I just watched the speech via podcast on the train coming home from Yurakucho; very nearly put me to sleep, especially since Abe was reading his address from a sheet of paper.)

Pilling looks at Japan's evolving defense priorities in the face of an uncertain regional environment, and, despite a headline that contradicts the body of the article, provides more nuanced analysis than most discussion of contemporary Japanese security policy in international media sources. Citing comments by Temple University Japan's Robert Dujarric, Pilling notes the difficulties in expanding its defense budget beyond the customary one-percent of GDP ceiling, including public opinion, the fears of Japan's neighbors -- and large projects, namely missile defense and funds going to the realignment of the US presence in Japan, that limit the Japanese government's flexibility in defense spending. While Japan's Gaullist-nationalists may want greater independence in Japan's foreign policy, without a major shift in budgetary priorities -- preceded by the "normalization" of Japanese economic conditions -- Japan is dependent on the US for its security for the indefinite future.

The second article of note is a short interview with Columbia's Gerald Curtis in the latest issue of Foreign Policy, which focuses on the comfort women issue but also briefly mentions the limits of Japan's normalization. Said Curtis:

It’s hard to find Japanese who can explain what Japan is thinking in a way that foreigners can understand. It’s very different when you interact with Chinese elites. They’re very articulate. They have a global vision. They have a worldview. They know what they think and they tell you. But the Japanese cultural tradition is quite different, so you have to be able to read between the lines. You have to be able to hear it in the Japanese language, and there aren’t very many people who can do that. So they’re not very good at articulating their views, and that leads to all kinds of guesswork about what they’re up to. The fact is, even with all the changes going on, and this right-wing leadership in power now, the Japanese defense budget is not increasing. They’re reaching out for a bigger role abroad, but in a pretty tentative and limited manner. They’ll probably continue to muddle through—take some tough positions like they have on the abductee issue with North Korea—but the idea that they’re on the march to become a great military power with power projection capabilities and challenge the Chinese and so on? I don’t buy it.

Read the whole thing.

George Bush helping Matsuoka?

George Bush, speaking to the National Cattlemen's Beef Association, issued a challenge to Japan (and others):

Today, more than 100 countries have fully or partially opened their markets to U.S. beef. The objective of this administration, however, is to make sure that they're better than partially opened, they're fully opened, including the countries like Japan and Korea. We're also working to open up markets that have still got a ban on our imports. In other words, this is an important part of our foreign policy. When I'm talking to leaders and they've got an issue with American beef, it's on the agenda. I say, if you want to get the attention of the American people in a positive way, you open up your markets to U.S. beef. People understand that when it comes to being treated fairly in the world marketplace.

This might be just the thing to revive Japanese Minister of Agriculture, Forestry, and Fisheries (MAFF) Matsuoka Toshikatsu's sagging political fortunes, giving him the opportunity to pose as the defender of Japanese consumers from disease-ridden American beef (a role he has relished playing since the beginning of his political career).

Of course, it may well be too late for Matsuoka to save himself. Mainichi reports that Kamiwaki Hiroshi, a graduate professor of law at Kobe Gakuin University and head of a citizen's group called Political Funds Ombudsman, is preparing charges against Matsuoka for five years' worth of false reporting by his support group, The Matsuoka Toshikatsu New Century Politics and Economics Association. Kamiwaki said: "As is expected, the agriculture minister has not satisfied his obligation to provide an explanation; this illegal issue must not be neglected. Efforts to solve this case in the Diet have stalled, so I think that he must be indicted and the facts made clear in a courtroom." It is encouraging to see an NGO act independently to hold the government accountable. Stories like this suggest that there may be hope for Japan yet.

The question is whether Abe's stalwart defense (not to mention appointment to the cabinet) of a senior LDP politician with a long history of political activities of dubious legality will have consequences for the LDP in next month's local elections or July's Upper House elections. I would like to think it will, but then the Japanese public seems to have high tolerance for corrupt dealings by the LDP.

Why Japan is losing friends

The Jiji wire service reports that the minister responsible for public relations at Japan's embassy in Washington has called out the Washington Post for its "mistakes" and "not understanding sufficiently" the positions of Prime Minister Abe and the Japanese government on the comfort women question in its recent editorial on the issue, discussed here.

I suppose an official response to the Post's strongly critical editorial is a matter of course, but, at the same time, Japan's behavior throughout this whole process has made it difficult for American friends of Japan to defend Japan publicly. I have less of a problem with Japan's lobbying -- discussed in Harper's in October -- because Japan was simply playing the same game as pro-resolution activists. My problem is bigger, not only Japan's maddening inability to accept its historical crimes, but its inability to understand -- and to empathize with -- the victims of those crimes and appreciate that people all over the world, not just Koreans and Chinese, want Japan to face its past forthrightly. Once again, I don't think that the US Congress should be the vehicle of Japan's reconciliation with history, but opposing this resolution should not excuse Japan's behavior.

As such, I'm pleased that Kono Yohei -- author of the "Kono Statement" in question -- has criticized Abe and other "comfort women" deniers. Hair-splitting about historical crimes is almost worse than denying them outright, as it is an insidious way of diverting discussion away from questions of responsibility for wrongdoing (cf. the debate regarding the number of people killed in Nanking).

So, Mr. Abe, enough about whether or how coercion was involved: Japan was wrong. And so with the larger question of war guilt. Questions of Japanese victimhood at the hands of American strategic bombing (including atomic bombing), whether Japan was just engaging in the same practices as European empires, whether the US goaded Japan into war, or whether the International Military Tribunal for the Far East was simply meting out victor's justice, while relevant and interesting questions in their own right, are of secondary importance. It is time for a Japanese prime minister to make a full and unequivocal apology for all of Japan's wartime crimes and to issue a call to the Japanese people that a full and open reckoning with history is necessary. I don't think, however, that Abe will be that politician.

And that is why Japan is facing a US government less willing to indulge Japan as it did in the past. Consider that even the Bush administration, perceived to be particularly close with Japan (although less so now that certain officials have left), is now on record criticizing the Abe Cabinet for its ambiguous response to the congressional resolution. The relationship is changing, and if Tokyo thinks that the US government is going to shield it from critics (and enemies) forever, it is sorely mistaken.

Japan's worst nightmare?

If there's any truth to this article in the Chosun Ilbo, Japan should be worried. The article reports that North Korea is alleged to have asked the US at bilateral meetings earlier this month if it would be possible for the US and North Korea to normalize relations without North Korea's having to give up its nuclear weapons. (Tellingly, North Korea asked for the "India" treatment.)

While the article notes that Christopher Hill nixed the idea, that such an arrangement has been mentioned in US-North Korea bilateral talks should worry Japan, because while the US said no on this occasion, there's no guarantee that the US won't soften its opposition in the future. Given the unlikelihood that North Korea will give up the nuclear weapons it already has, the US may ultimately have to choose between an agreement that accepts a nuclear North Korea or no agreement whatsoever.

So how far is the US willing to go to secure an agreement? Aside from the abductions issue, what gaps remain between the US and Japan negotiating positions? Seems like the kind of thing about which Japan and the US should be exchanging opinions and working towards a common position.

Are they?

Putin meets Hu

I feel like the title of this post could be the beginning of a corny geopolitics-themed Abbot and Costello parody.

But seriously, the Japanese media seems to be keeping a close eye on the meeting in Moscow between Presidents Hu and Putin. This Mainichi article, for example, calls attention to the two countries agreeing to strengthen their "strategic partnership. Yomiuri, meanwhile, ran two articles about the China-Russia summit, this one on the facts of the meeting and a longer, analytic article that does not appear to be online.

While it is entirely appropriate for the Japanese press to watch discussions between two of the four powers constituting the East Asian strategic quadrangle -- the subject of this book by Robyn Lim -- I suspect Japan's media, particularly conservative publications like Yomiuri, are interested in part because closer relations between China and Russia plays into the "antagonistic Asia" storyline. Two large continental empires with illiberal political system versus...the maritime democratic allies, standing shoulder to shoulder as they did during the cold war, except this time Japan would no doubt love to play a more active military role.

I think, however, that observers should not overestimate the value of the China-Russia partnership. While there are a number of areas in which Beijing and Moscow have reasons to cooperate -- perhaps starting from their joint defense of the principle of non-interference in the internal affairs of states -- neither state, but Russia in particular, will benefit from being tied too closely to the other. And let's not forget that there is plenty of friction between the two, not least the millions of Chinese flowing into Siberia. Frankly, the less fettered Russia's position in the region, the better. Following up last month's visits to Japan by several Russian officials to talk energy, I would not be surprised if momentum builds towards a Japan-Russia rapprochement. The more Russia can triangulate between energy-hungry China and Japan, the more it will gain and the more secure its position in the Far East will be.

So while Russia and China may find international cooperation useful in, for example, the UN Security Council, I have doubts about whether Beijing and Moscow will be especially chummy in East Asian matters. The regional security environment is becoming increasingly fluid, militating against a firmer Sino-Russian partnership, and, I fear, more intense political cooperation between the US and Japan.

Japan's friends, kept at arm's length

The Japan Times today has two op-eds that illustrate Japan's troublesome ties with the US, its ally, and South Korea, its wealthy, democratic neighbor and former colony.

The first, by journalist Hanai Kiroku, calls for a US-Japan economic partnership agreement (EPA), to follow on the heels of the Japan-Australia EPA currently under negotiation. Given the scale of the economic links between the world's first and second largest economies, the benefits of a US-Japan EPA would be large -- and would undoubtedly have spillover benefits for both the search for a compromise in the WTO and the push for an APEC FTA.

But I fear that political conditions in both countries militate against the negotiation and passage of a US-Japan agreement for the foreseeable future. With economic insecurity on the rise in the US, and the president's trade promotion authority set to expire, a wide-reaching EPA with Japan could very well aggravate US fears of Japan's economic prowess -- imagine the screams that would emanate from Detroit.

In Japan, meanwhile, the opposition to an agreement would be more fundamental, as it would no doubt emanate from Japan's heavily protected agriculture sector. Hanai makes the sensible suggestion that since Japan is dependent on food imports anyway, it might as well conclude deals that ensure that imported food supplies will remain stable, cheap, and plentiful:

Japan's calorie-based food self-sufficiency rate is only about 40 percent, much lower than the comparable rates of other countries. Some fear that EPAs with major farm exporting nations such as Australia and the U.S. will lower the rate further. However, in my opinion, Japan should secure stable food supplies from overseas because of its low food-sufficiency rate. If Japan, through EPAs with Australia and the U.S., has both countries promise to refrain from one-sided restrictions on food exports, it will help strengthen Japan's food security.

For that to happen, though, Japan's political system will have to change: as long as rural prefectures are the LDP's power base, and as long as the distribution of power in the political system favors agricultural producers over consumers, any agreement that forces Japan's farmers to face substantially greater competition will be nigh on impossible. This kind of opposition has already emerged against the Australia EPA negotiations; imagine the opposition that would await EPA negotiations with the US.

The second piece, meanwhile, is Pyon Junbeom and Tsukagoshi Yuka, South Korean and Japanese scholars respectively, writing about concrete steps that South Korea and Japan can take to ease bilateral tensions and build a genuine partnership. I like this piece, because it seeks to craft policies that take into account intangible cultural and historical factors. As they write: "The root of anti-Japanese sentiment in South Korea is wounded pride. Koreans feel humiliated and insulted that they, a highly civilized society, were invaded by the Japanese, whom they believed to be barbarians." A sensible argument, but it leads me to wonder if even their modest recommendations will be difficult to implement. The kind of attitude they describe South Koreans as having seems like it would be difficult to overcome simply through Japanese apologies and other conciliatory measures. I don't doubt the value of a closer, more active Japan-South Korea partnership, I just doubt whether a South Korea intent on rectifying centuries of shame and a Japan feeling insecure as it watches its neighbors succeed will be able to forge a strong, dynamic friendship.

If Japan is to remain a significant player regionally and globally, however, it better start laying the groundwork for more constructive, open partnerships with its friends now, before it's too late.

The Washington Post on Abe

The Washington Post published an editorial on Saturday criticizing Prime Minister Abe for his "double talk," pressing North Korea on abductions of Japanese citizens while denying the use of coercion by the Imperial Army in establishing "comfort women" stations.

The conclusion:

Mr. Abe may imagine that denying direct participation by the Japanese government in abductions may strengthen its moral authority in demanding answers from North Korea. It does the opposite. If Mr. Abe seeks international support in learning the fate of Japan's kidnapped citizens, he should straightforwardly accept responsibility for Japan's own crimes -- and apologize to the victims he has slandered.

In case anyone doubted the damage caused by Abe's ill-considered remarks on the comfort women resolution to his cabinet's diplomatic efforts, this editorial should serve as a reminder of the consequences. In the eyes of the world, Abe is now the world leader who essentially called women who testified to the US Congress liars -- further tarnishing Japan's reputation in Asia and fuelling doubts about Japan's security normalization.

With another two months before the resolution currently before Congress will go to a vote, there's plenty of time for members of the Abe Cabinet, from the prime minister down, to ensure the resolution's passage with inappropriate comments, if Abe hasn't done that already.

(Hat tip: Steve Clemons)

Food for thought

Nagashima Akihisa, international security policy expert and DPJ member of the Lower House, delivered questions in plenary session of the Lower House concerning the government's recently submitted bill on the realignment of US forces (discussed in this post).

Nagashima's remarks, posted here at his blog (in Japanese), constitute a long explanation of the need for a more independent Japanese security policy, in which the traditional division of "US bearing the costs in wartime, Japan bearing the costs in peacetime" is broken down in favor of a more equitable division of labor.

I don't necessarily have a problem with Nagashima's vision -- Japan should be able to defend itself and play a greater role in regional security -- but the ends of Japan's normalization must be explained clearly to Japan's neighbors, and, of course, to the US. The region is fraught with tension, and if Japan moves too quickly it risks exacerbating Asia's antagonisms.

Read the whole thing, if you can.

Tales from the strategic triangle

General Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, is currently in China after a stop in Japan, during which he talked with Foreign Minister Aso -- and possibly Defense Minister Kyuma, as Steve Clemons wonders, following the rumors surrounding Vice President Cheney's visit -- about a range of technical issues related to alliance cooperation.

On the agenda was the question of the realignment of US forces in Japan, including the removal of 8,000 US Marines from Okinawa to Guam. The debate on last year's agreement on US realignment, in which Japan agreed to pay $6.9 billion towards the Guam relocation, is likely to heat up now, as the Abe Cabinet has just submitted a realignment bill to the lower house of the Diet. The Democratic Party of Japan -- including the Upper House member for whom I work -- has raised questions about whether it's appropriate for Japan to be contributing this sum towards the cost of preparing Guam for a major influx of US forces. Such questions are reasonable, considering Japan's prevailing budgetary difficulties. And of course Japan should demand transparency and accountability about the project to expand existing US Military facilities on Guam to accommodate the new Marine presence that its contributions will be supporting.

Meanwhile, in China Pace has reiterated US (and Japanese) concerns about the lack of transparency in the People's Liberation Army (PLA). Differences no doubt remain, but I am pleased to see the chairman of the Joint Chiefs meeting with his Chinese counterpart -- and discussing the creation of a US-China military hotline, no less.

The delicate ballet that is the US-China-Japan strategic triangle goes on.

UPDATE: The FT reports that the PLA has reciprocated by offering a list of measures to promote greater openness and enhance cooperation between the Chinese and US militaries.

The ever-shifting balance

I was slightly remiss in this post yesterday, because I should have said more about just how successful North Korea's diplomacy has been through all this.

North Korea has the Bush administration bending over backward to assuage North Korea and keep negotiations on track, and -- with an assist from the US Congress -- has Japan isolated and weak. (To see how the US Congress's ill-timed comfort women resolution has played into North Korea's hands, South Korea's foreign minister today, in comments about the six-party talks, criticized Prime Minister Abe's comments on the comfort women issue.) It has forced the US to over-commit quickly, meaning that Pyongyang will have an easier time holding out for a better deal without having to worry that the US will abandon negotiations altogether.

Having already developed and tested nuclear weapons, North Korea is on control of the pace of negotiations -- and, of course, can very easily undermine a final agreement by dragging its feet on implementation.

All of which goes to show that while last month's breakthrough in the six-party talks was a promising sign, Northeast Asia remains fraught with tensions that run deeper than the issues currently under discussion. The East Asian balance of power is in a state of constant flux. Each state is particularly sensitive to changes in the relative distribution of power. So yes, it's important to denuclearize the Korean peninsula, but the process of reaching that goal will do much to shape the distribution of power -- and, more importantly, perceptions of the distribution of power -- in the region. The future of Asia may well hang in the balance.