Monday Asia Events, May 17, 2021

MULTILATERAL COOPERATION IN NORTHEAST ASIA IN THE BIDEN ERA. 9:00-11:00am (EDT), ZOOM WEBINAR. Sponsors: Institute for Korean Studies and East Asia National Resource Center, George Washington University (GW); U.S.-China Policy Institute, Ajou University. Speakers: Cheng Li, Director, John L. Thornton China Center, Brookings; Gregg Brazinsky, Deputy Director, Institute for Korean Studies, GW; Jane Nakano, Senior Fellow, CSIS; Joseph Yun, Senior Advisor, U.S. Institute of Peace; Kristin Vekasi, Associate Professor, University of Maine; Mary Alice Haddad, John E. Andrus Professor of Government, Wesleyan University; Chaesung Chun, Professor, Seoul National University; Jae-Seung Lee, Dean & Jean Monnet Chair, Graduate School of International Studies, Korea University; Shin-Wha Lee, Professor, Korea University; Sung-Han Kim, Director of Ilmin International Relations Institute, Korea University; Young Ja Bae, Professor, Konkuk University; Yul Sohn, President, East Asia Institute.

ALLIANCE INTERNALIZED: THE SECURITIZATION OF THAI-US RELATIONS. 9:00-10:30am (EDT). WEBINAR. Sponsors: Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University; School of Diplomacy and International Relations, Seton Hall University; APEC Study Center, Columbia University; New York Southeast Asia Network. Speakers: Thitinan Pongsudhirak, Director, Institute of Security and International Studies (ISIS), and Associate Professor of International Political Economy, Faculty of Political Science, Chulalongkorn University; Benjamin Zawaki, Senior Program Specialist, Asia Foundation; Moderator: Ann Marie Murphy, Professor at the School of Diplomacy and International Relations, Seton Hall University, and Senior Research Scholar at the Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University.

NAVIGATING TROUBLED WATERS: THE REPUBLIC OF KOREA AND THE INDO-PACIFIC - DAY 1. 9:00am (EDT). WEBINAR. Sponsor: Korea Economic Institute of America (KEI). Speakers: Ambassador (ret.) Christopher Hill, Former Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, and Former U.S. Ambassador to the Republic of Korea; Admiral (ret.) Scott Swift, Former Commander of the U.S. Pacific Fleet; Kim Ki-jung, President, Institute for National Security Strategy (INSS), and Professor Emeritus, Department of Political Science and International Studies, Yonsei University; Ashley J. Tellis, Tata Chair for Strategic Affairs and Senior Fellow, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and Former Senior Adviser to the Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs; Liselotte Odgaard, Senior Fellow, Hudson; Moderator: Ambassador (ret.) Kathleen Stephens, President and CEO, KEI. 

RECENT TRENDS IN GLOBAL ARMS TRANSFERS AND MILITARY SPENDING. 9:30-11:00am (EDT), ZOOM WEBINAR. Sponsor: Conventional Defense Program, Stimson. Speakers: Nan Tian, Senior Researcher, Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI); Pieter Wezeman, Senior Researcher, SIPRI; Lauren Woods, Director of the Security Assistance Monitor, Center for International Policy; Moderator: Rachel Stohl, Director, Conventional Defense Program and Vice President, Stimson.

TEHRAN AND WASHINGTON: BACK TO THE NUCLEAR DEAL, AND BEYOND? 10:00-11:30am (EDT). ZOOM WEBINAR. Sponsor: Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington (AGSIW). Speakers: Raghida Dergham, Founder and Executive Chairman, Beirut Institute; Suzanne DiMaggio, Senior Fellow, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace; Ali Vaez, Senior Adviser to the President and Iran Project Director, Crisis Group; Moderator: Hussein Ibish, Senior Resident Scholar, AGSIW. 

VACCINATING THE WORLD IN 2021. 11:00-11:45am (EDT). WEBCAST. Sponsors: Wilson Center (WWC); Tony Blair Institute for Global Change. Speakers: The Right Honourable Tony Blair, Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom; Ambassador Mark Green, President, Director, and CEO, WWC; Moderator: Sheri Fink, Author, Five Days at Memorial, Executive Producer, Pandemic (Netflix), and Correspondent, New York Times. 

FUTURE FOREIGN POLICY SERIES FEATURING WENDY CUTLER. Noon-12:45pm (EDT). WEBCAST. Sponsor: Atlantic Council. Speakers: Wendy Cutler, Vice President, Asia Society Policy Institute; Nick Wadhams, Senior Foreign Policy Reporter at Bloomberg News. 

SAM NUNN: STATESMAN OF THE NUCLEAR AGE. 11:00am-Noon (EDT). WEBCAST. Sponsor: CSIS. Speakers: Author, Frank L. Jones, Professor of Security Studies at the U.S. Army War College; Laura S. H. Holgate, Vice President, Materials Risk Management, Nuclear Threat Initiative; Sam Nunn, Chairman Emeritus, CSIS Board of Trustees. PURCHASE BOOK: https://amzn.to/2QU0n3J

SMARTER OPTIONS ON U.S. NUCLEAR MODERNIZATION. 2:00-3:30pm (EDT), ZOOM WEBINAR. Sponsor: Arms Control Association. Speakers: Representative John Garamendi (D-CA); Steve Fetter, Associate Provost and Dean, University of Maryland, and former Assistant Director, White House Office of Science and Technology Policy; Sharon Weiner, Associate Professor, American University, and former Program Examiner, National Security Division, White House Office of Management and Budget; Amy Woolf, Specialist in Nuclear Weapons Policy, Congressional Research Service. 

IT’S TIME TO REPEAL THE IRAQ WAR AUTHORIZATIONS. 3:30-4:30pm (EDT), WEBINAR. Sponsor: Heritage. Speakers: Hon. Tim Kaine, U.S. Senator (D-VA); Hon. Todd Young, U.S. Senator (R-IN); Moderator: Charles Stimson, Acting Chief of Staff and Senior Legal Fellow, Stimson. 

A WAR ON GLOBAL POVERTY: THE LOST PROMISE OF REDISTRIBUTION AND THE RISE OF MICROCREDIT. 4:00-5:30pm (EDT). ZOOM WEBINAR. Sponsors: National History Center of the American Historical Association; History and Public Policy Program, Wilson Center (WWC). Speakers: Author, Joanne Meyerowitz, Arthur Unobskey Professor of History and American Studies, Yale University; Amy C. Offner, Assistant Professor of History, University of Pennsylvania; Moderators: Eric Arnesen, Professor of History, George Washington University, and Director, National History Center; Christian Ostermann, Director, History and Public Policy Program, WWC. PURCHASE BOOK: https://amzn.to/3bhz0aE

Monday Asia Events, May 10, 2021

SUSTAINABLY RECOVERING FROM THE PANDEMIC. 2:00-7:00pm (CEST). LIVESTREAM. Sponsor: Heinrich Böll Foundation. Speakers: Rasmus Andresen, MEP, EFA/Greens; Franziska Brantner, German MP, Alliance90/The Greens; Annika Hedberg, Head of Sustainable Prosperity for Europe Programme, European Policy Centre; Dirk Holemans, Co-president of the Green European Foundation GEF; Benedek Jávor, Representative of the City of Budapest; Ares Kalandides, Professor of Place Management, Manchester Metropolitan University; Phoebe Koundouri, Professor, University of Economics and Business, Athens; Audrey Mathieu, EU Climate Policy Officer, Head of Berlin Office, Germanwatch; Neil Makaroff, European Policy Officer, Reseau Action Climat; Bozena Ryszawska, Professor, Wroclaw University of Economics and Business; Claude Turmes, Minister for Energy and Spatial Planning Luxembourg; Ellen Ueberschär, President, Heinrich Böll Foundation; Sanna Vesikansa, Deputy Mayor, for Social Services and Health Care. 

IRAQI-US RELATIONS UNDER CHANGING ADMINISTRATIONS. 10:00-11:00am (EDT). WEBCAST. Sponsor: Brookings. Speakers: Joey Hood, Acting Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs, U.S. Department of State; Abbas Kadhim, Iraq Initiative Director and Resident Senior Fellow, Atlantic Council; Marsin Alshamary, Post-Doctoral Fellow, Foreign Policy; Moderator: Lousia Loveluck, Baghdad Bureau Chief, Washington Post. 

BORDER BATTLE: ASSESSING THE KYRGYZSTAN-TAJIKISTAN CLASHES. Noon (EDT). WEBCAST. Sponsor: Atlantic Council. Speakers: George Gavrilis, Fellow, University of California-Berkeley’s Center for Democracy, Toleration, and Religion; Jonathan Henick, Deputy Assistant Secretary at the Bureau of South and Central Asian Affairs, US Department of State; Akylai Karimova, Kyrgyz civil activist based in Osh; Jennifer Brick Murtazashvili, Nonresident Senior Fellow, Eurasia Center, Atlantic Council; Anahita Saymidinova, Dushanbe-based journalist, Iran International TV; Moderator: Ambassador John Herbst, Director, Eurasia Center, Atlantic Council.

ADVANCING ARMY PRIORITIES FOR THE FUTURE OF WARFARE: A CONVERSATION WITH THE ACTING SECRETARY AND THE CHIEF OF STAFF OF THE ARMY.  1:00pm (EDT). WEBCAST. Sponsor: Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security, Atlantic Council. Speakers: Hon. John E. Whitley, Acting Secretary of the Army, US Department of the Army; Gen. James C. McConville, Chief of Staff of the Army, US Department of the Army; Moderator: Nancy Youssef, National Security Correspondent, Wall Street Journal. 

THE BIDEN ADMINISTRATION'S APPROACH TO ASIA AND VIEWS ON TAIWAN. 12:30-2:00pm (EDT). WEBEX. Sponsor: Sigur Center for Asian Studies, George Washington University (GW). Speakers: Derek Grossman, Senior Defense Analyst, RAND Corporation; Barbara Weisel, Managing Director, Rock Creek Global Advisors; Robert Sutter, Professor of Practice of International Affairs, Elliott School of International Affairs, GW; Moderator: Deepa M. Ollapally, Research Professor of International Affairs and Associate Director, Sigur Center for Asian Studies, Elliott School of International Affairs, GW. 

ACCELERATING INNOVATION ACROSS THE COUNTRY: PUTTING “FASTER” IN CONTEXT. 1:00-2:00pm (EDT), ZOOM WEBINAR. Sponsor: CSIS. Speakers: Kelly Sexton, Associate Vice President for Research, Technology Transfer and Innovation Partnerships, University of Michigan; Marc Sedam, Vice Provost for Innovation and New Ventures, Managing Director of UNHInnovation, University of New Hampshire; Chad Womack, Senior Director of STEM Initiatives and HBCU Innovation, Commercialization and Entrepreneurship (ICE), United Negro College Fund; Moderator: John J. Hamre, President and CEO, and Langone Chair in American Leadership, CSIS.

MODERNIZING CONGRESS: PROGRESS AND PROSPECTS–‘FIX CONGRESS’ COMMITTEE. 1:15-2:00pm (EDT), WEBINAR. Sponsor: Bipartisan Policy Center (BPC). Speakers: Rep. Derek Kilmer (D-WA), Chair, Select Committee on the Modernization of Congress; Rep. William Timmons (R-SC), Vice Chair, Select Committee on the Modernization of Congress. 

SPACE FORCE: WHAT’S NEXT? 2:00-2:45pm (EDT). WEBINAR. Sponsor: Heritage. Speakers: The Honorable Jim Bridenstine, 13th Administrator of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA); Everett Dolman, Professor of Comparative Military Studies, Department of Space Power, U.S. Air Force Air Command and Staff College; M.V. “Coyote” Smith, Associate Professor of Comparative Military Studies, Department of Space Power, U.S. Air Force Air Command and Staff College; Moderator: John Venable, Senior Research Fellow for Defense Policy, Heritage.

FUTURE STRATEGY FORUM: THE FUTURE OF NATIONAL SECURITY AND TECHNOLOGY PANEL 1 – EMERGING TECHNOLOGIES AND WARFIGHTING. 3:30-5:00pm (EDT), ZOOM WEBINAR. Sponsor: CSIS. Speakers: Evanna Hu, CEO and Partner, Omelas; Nina Kollars, Associate Professor, U.S. Naval War College; Ulrike Franke, Senior Policy Fellow, European Council on Foreign Relations; Julie George, PhD Candidate, Cornell University; Moderator: Sara Plana, PhD Student, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

HOW THE HARDLINERS PREVAILED IN NORTH KOREA: REFLECTIONS FROM THE FORMER GERMAN AMBASSADOR TO PYONGYANG. 4:00-5:-00pm (EDT). ZOOM WEBINAR. Sponsor: National Committee on North Korea (NCNK). Speakers: Amb. Thomas Schäfer, former German Ambassador to North Korea; Keith Luse, Executive Director, NCNK.

RESTRICTED DATA: THE HISTORY OF NUCLEAR SECRECY IN THE UNITED STATES. 4:00-5:30pm (EDT). WEBINAR. Sponsors: National History Center of the American Historical Association; History and Public Policy Program, Wilson Center (WWC). Speakers: Author, Alex Wellerstein, Professor, Stevens Institute of Technology; Matthew Connelly, Professor of International and Global History, Columbia University; Kathleen M. Vogel, Professor and Deputy Director, School for the Future of Innovation in Society, Arizona State University; Moderators: Christian F. Ostermann, Director, History and Public Policy Program, WWC; Eric Arnesen, Professor of History, George Washington University, and Director, National History Center of the American Historical Association.  PURCHASE BOOK

Monday Asia Events, May 3, 2021

May 3-5 - G7 Foreign and Development Minister’s Meeting in London,

invited additional countries to join as guests at the meeting, including Australia, India, South Africa, the Republic of Korea, and Brunei in its capacity as Chair of ASEAN.

May 3 - National Memorial Constitution Day in Japan. Start of Golden Week.

BIDEN AND CONGRESS AT 100 DAYS – ASSESSING ARMS TRADE POLICY. 9:30-11:00am (EDT). ZOOM WEBINAR. Sponsor: Stimson Center. Speakers: Annie Shiel, Senior Advisor for U.S. Policy and Advocacy, Center for Civilians in Conflict (CIVIC); Frank Slijper, Project Leader, Arms Trade, PAX; Rachel Stohl, Vice President, Stimson Center; Akbar Shahid Ahmed, Senior Foreign Affairs Reporter, HuffPost.

ANALYZING BIDEN’S FIRST 100 DAYS. 10:00-11:30am (EDT). WEBCAST. Sponsor: Brookings Institution (Brookings). Speakers: William A. Galston, Ezra K. Zilkha Chair and Senior Fellow, Governance Studies, Brookings; Molly E. Reynolds, Senior Fellow, Governance Studies, Brookings; Camille Busette, Senior Fellow, Economic Studies, Governance Studies, Metropolitan Policy Program, and Director, Race, Prosperity, and Inclusion Initiative, Brookings; John Hudak, Deputy Director, Center for Effective Public Management, and Senior Fellow, Governance Studies, Brookings; Jon Valant, Senior Fellow, Governance Studies, Brown Center on Education Policy, Brookings; Moderator: Elaine Kamarck, Founding Director, Center for Effective Public Management, and Senior Fellow, Governance Studies, Brookings. 

THE FUTURE OF U.S. FOREIGN POLICY. 11:30am-12:30pm (EDT), ZOOM WEBINAR. Sponsor: SAIS, Johns Hopkins University (JHU). Speaker: Richard N. Haass, President of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). 

ARAB-ISRAELI NORMALIZATION: A VIABLE AVENUE TOWARDS PEACE? Noon-1:00pm (EDT). ZOOM WEBINAR. Sponsors: Middle East Institute (MEI); Conflict Resolution Program, Georgetown University. Speakers: Mickey Bergman, Vice President and Executive Director, Richardson Center for Global Engagement; Khaled Elgindy, Senior Fellow and Director, Program on Palestine and Palestinian-Israeli Affairs, MEI; Lucy Kurtzer-Ellenbogen, Director, Israeli-Palestinian Conflict Program, United States Institute of Peace; Mohammed Soliman, Non-Resident Scholar, MEI, and Senior Associate, Middle East and North Africa Practice, McLarty Associates; Moderator: Joyce Karam, Washington Correspondent, The National.

CHINESE CONCEPTIONS OF WORLD ORDER. Noon-1:00pm (EDT). WEBINAR. Sponsor: Jackson Institute for Global Affairs, Yale University. Speakers: Bill Hayton, Journalist, BBC World News TV; Eyck Freymann, Doctoral Candidate in China Studies, Balliol College, Oxford; Susan Thornton, Senior Fellow, Paul Tsai China Center, Yale Law School, and Nonresident Senior Fellow, Brookings Institution; Moderator: Arne Westad, Elihu Professor of History and Global Affairs, Jackson Institute for Global Affairs, Yale University. 

BEYOND CIVILIZED AND BARBARIANS: UNDERSTANDING THE SETTLEMENT OF CHINESE MIGRANTS IN SIXTEENTH AND SEVENTEENTH CENTURY CHOSŎN KOREA. 3:00-4:30pm (EDT). ZOOM WEBINAR. Sponsor: Institute for Korean Studies, George Washington University (GW). Speaker: Author, Adam Bohnet, Associate Professor in History, King’s University College; Moderator: Jisoo M. Kim, Korea Foundation Associate Professor of History, International Affairs, and East Asian Languages and Literatures, Director, Institute for Korean Studies, and Co-Director, East Asia National Resource Center, GW. PURCHASE BOOK: https://amzn.to/3tgCAZ2

THE EVER-CHANGING PAST: WHY ALL HISTORY IS REVISIONIST HISTORY. 4:00-5:30pm (EDT), WEBCAST. Sponsor: History and Public Policy Program, Wilson Center (WWC). Speakers: author, James M. Banner, Cofounder, National History Center; Sarah Maza, Jane Long Professor, Arts and Sciences and Professor of History, Northwestern University; Moderators: Christian F. Ostermann, Director, History and Public Policy Program, WWC; Eric Arnesen, former Fellow, Professor of History, George Washington University. PURCHASE BOOK: https://amzn.to/3ap7yYb

THE RELEASE OF FREEDOM IN THE WORLD 2021 ASIA FINDINGS. 9:00pm (EDT). WEBEX. Sponsors: Freedom House; Taiwan Foundation for Democracy. Speakers: Amy Slipowitz, Research Manager, Freedom House; Sumit Ganguly, Professor, Indiana University Bloomington; Alvin Y.H. Cheung, SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellow, McGill University; Moderator: I-Chung Lai, Executive Director, Prospect Foundation.

The Japan-Korea History Wars

Will Not End, For Now

By Daniel Sneider,  Lecturer, International Policy at Stanford University and APP Member

Toyo Keizai, April 30, 2021

Inside the Biden administration, there is a deepening frustration over what is described as a “painful” breakdown of relations between Japan and South Korea. In meeting after meeting, American officials from the President on down are preaching the importance of trilateral cooperation between the United States and its two key allies in Northeast Asia.

That cooperation is a key piece of the Biden administration’s broader strategy to confront China. The administration’s North Korea policy, nearing the end of its review, depends in part on the three countries lining up together.

Publicly, the U.S. extracts ritual statements of support for trilateral coordination, and holds meetings of senior officials, focused on forging a joint response to North Korea, and hopefully China. Privately, senior U.S. officials are pushing Korea and Japan to make real progress in restoring working relations, even to resolve the issues of wartime history that continue to plague their relations. So far, however, there is no evidence of serious talks on the history issues.

The recent decision of the Seoul Central District Court to dismiss a suit by Korean victims of wartime sexual servitude, so-called military comfort women, has generated some hopes that both governments might find a route out of the current impasse.

The South Korean government of President Moon Jae-in has been signaling some flexibility and interest in improving relations. Senior Korean officials have gone out their way to tell their American counterparts that it is the Japanese who are holding up any progress.

The Japanese government has indeed offered a cold response to the Korean signals, arguing that they first need to see actions to shut down the legal challenges over comfort women and forced laborers. Japanese officials have written off the Moon government and place their hopes on a conservative government coming to power next year in South Korea.

Both Prime Minister Suga Yoshihide and President Moon are weakened politically and their room to maneuver is even less than previously.

“It is unlikely that the Korean government would change its positions and suggest mutually agreeable solutions to Japan,” says former South Korean Foreign Minister Yu Myung Hwan, a key bridge between the two countries. The losses by the ruling progressive party in the Seoul and Busan mayoral elections, and Moon’s plummeting popularity, make it highly unlikely there will be a breakthrough until after the presidential election next March, predicts Yu, who previously served as Korean Ambassador to Japan.

The recent Japanese parliamentary by-elections have similarly weakened Suga and made him even more under the sway of hardline conservatives in the ruling Liberal Democratic Party who oppose any concessions on wartime history issues. Japanese public opinion, shaped in part by conservative media in Japan, reflects the view that Korea is an unreliable partner.

“Suga has to pay attention to public opinion because the LDP is facing difficulties in the coming election of the House of Representatives this year,” observes Tokyo University Professor Kawashima Shin, an expert on wartime history issues. “If Suga makes any positive response to Moon’s approach, it would be a negative factor for Suga and for the LDP.”

The war for Washington’s favor

At the moment, the two American allies are engaged in a fierce, though undeclared, the war in Washington, trying to convince the new administration to take their side.

The latest exchange of fire took place when Prime Minister Suga visited Washington in April. The attention of Japanese and American media was focused on the discussion of China, and on Taiwan. Most observers missed the rather blunt statements on Korea issued by Suga, first at his joint press conference with Biden and then again in an appearance at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).

While making a nod toward trilateral cooperation, Suga pointedly pressured the U.S. not to retreat from a commitment to complete denuclearization of North Korea, using a term favored by the Trump administration, calling for “CVID,” or Complete, Verifiable, Irreversible Denuclearization.

Suga’s remarks were a clear effort to head off any move by the Biden administration, after its policy review, to seek an arms control style deal with Pyongyang that would leave its shorter-range missiles, and its existing nuclear arsenal, intact.

He called recent tests of short-range ballistic missiles by the North Koreans a “clear violation of United Nations Security Council resolutions” and a “threat to the peace and security” of Japan and the region. Negotiations, he said, must eliminate the threat of “ballistic missiles of all ranges possessed by North Korea.”

President Moon, who is heading to Washington in May, responded with an interview with the New York Times. Moon laid responsibility on Donald Trump for the failure of the summit talks with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. His message to Biden was to resume direct talks with the North Koreans as early as possible, a goal that is central to Moon’s own political agenda.

The court ruling opens a door – will Suga and Moon walk through it?

Despite the battles for Washington’s favor, the April 21 decision by the Seoul District Court could have a significant positive impact on the history wars. The decision effectively contradicted the decision by a similar level court in early January which had ruled that the Japanese government had to provide compensation to 12 former comfort women, supporting the argument that principles of international human rights overrode claims to exemption from such suits based on state sovereignty.

The April decision in a suit by a separate group of women was in line with established international law, say Korean legal experts and likely to be upheld over the earlier decision.

“The court came back to the classical authentic attitudes on the sovereign immunity issue,” Seoul National University legal scholar Heo Seongwook told me. “Most probably, this conclusion will be maintained at the appeals court.”

In his ruling, Justice Min Seong-Cheol also significantly referred to the 2015 agreement reached by Japan and the previous conservative government of Park Geun-Hye in South Korea to attempt to settle the issue of compensation and apology to the Korean women victims.

That agreement created a Japanese-funded Fund which provided compensation, accepted by two-thirds of the surviving victims, along with an expression of apology. The suits were filed on behalf of supporters of the Korean organization representing those who rejected this settlement.

Justice Min acknowledged that the results of that agreement may not have been “fully satisfactory compared with the pain they had to suffer through in the past,” but that it did have validity as an existing agreement and was a Japanese offer of a “remedy for the violation of rights.”

The progressive government had unilaterally dismantled the 2015 agreement, closing down the operations of the Fund in support of activists who opposed the deal. But following the January court decision, which triggered a harsh response from Tokyo, Moon reversed course slightly. He expressed dismay at the decision and acknowledged that the 2015 agreement remained in force as an official pact.

Moon’s shift seems to have set the stage for the reversal in the District Court. “President Moon’s remarks…indirectly influenced the decision,” says Professor Park Cheol Hee, a prominent expert on Japan at Seoul National University. “Still there is no evidence that Blue House gave any guideline to the court.”

By reaffirming the 2015 agreement, the Korean court and Moon have “opened the door to diplomatic negotiation between Korea and Japan,” says Professor Park. But the obstacles remain considerable. On the Korean side, Moon is reluctant to take the next obvious step and reopen the comfort women fund established in 2015, accepting that as the basis for dealing with those victims who remain to be included.

Japanese official response to the court decision has been extremely cautious, led by the Prime Minister’s Office and the LDP.

“I think that now it depends on Suga,” says former foreign ministry official Togo Kazuhiko, who has been a voice for compromise on history issues. “If Suga sees this verdict as an opportunity, he has a room to move.” And if the April ruling loses on appeal, Suga can always argue that he did his best to improve relations, says Togo.

The other time bomb hanging over this is the potential decision of the Korean courts to dissolve the assets of Japanese corporations which were judged to have to pay compensation to former Korean forced laborers from the wartime period.

That case is legally more solvable as it involves individual plaintiffs and private firms but the Japanese government has pressured the firms not to yield, arguing it is a violation of the 1965 treaty which normalized relations between the two countries and settled, in principle, such wartime claims.

In Japan, there are voices in favor of improving relations with South Korea, echoing American officials who see the strategic importance of bringing Korea in with Japan in the broader response to China. But Suga personally opposes any concessions and shares a deep mistrust of the Moon administration, based on his eight years as Chief Cabinet Secretary to Prime Minister Abe Shinzo, says Professor Kawashima.

That leaves Washington waiting for an opening to help repair these damaged relations.

“President Biden fully understands the delicate history issues between Korea and Japan,” former South Korean foreign minister Yu told me. Biden played the role of mediator on these issues during the Obama administration, setting in motion the diplomatic engagement that led to the 2015 agreement, in which Yu played a key role. But conditions may not yet be ripe to repeat that effort.

“I believe President Biden will wait until next year, when a new team is installed in both Korea and Japan and ready for compromise,” the Korean diplomat says, “a compromise for the sake of their legacy and also for the betterment of all involved, including the United States.”

Clyde Prestowitz takes issue with George Koo

Response to Asia Times critique of my book on China by George Koo

click to order

By CLYDE PRESTOWITZ, President of the Economic Strategy Institute and APP member

Asia Times April 26, 2021

I must begin by thanking George Koo for his interest in and important commentary on my recent book, The World Turned Upside Down: America, China and the Struggle for Global Leadership.

By way of introducing the reader to this book, Koo mentions my earlier book, Trading Places (1988), that dealt with the trade frictions and negotiations between the US and Japan in the 1980s when I was the chief US negotiator with Japan’s key trade officials and CEOs like Sony founder Akio Morita.

There were many trade issues between Japan and America at that time including Japanese displacement of US producers in industries like consumer electronics, steel, autos, and semiconductors. With the US trade deficit soaring and hundreds of thousands of US workers losing their jobs, I was under enormous pressure to fix what we called the Japan problem.

Japan’s game

There were many causes behind this problem, but two factors were fundamental. One was Japan’s yen policy. The Bank of Japan constantly intervened in currency markets to buy dollars and sell yen, thereby holding the value of the yen down versus the dollar and indirectly subsidizing Japanese exports while also imposing a hidden tariff on imports.

I and my colleagues negotiated what became known as the Plaza Agreement under which Japan agreed to halt currency-market intervention and to allow the yen to float to its true value. Ultimately it rose by more than 50%. 

The second factor was what I called “the name of the game.”

The US was playing a game called “free trade” without special subsidies for targeted industries, or industrial development targets, or hidden barriers to imports and foreign investment, or compulsory transfer of technology as a condition of market entry, and without export subsidies that could enable predatory dumping of products in foreign markets aimed at driving foreign producers out of business.

Japan was playing a game called “catch-up industrial policy.”

There was much talk at the time of fair and unfair trade, but that was all a misunderstanding. It was as if the Americans were playing baseball and the Japanese were playing American football. No one was cheating and everyone was trying as hard as possible. But football is a rougher game than baseball and the baseball players were taking a licking. 

When I recognized this reality, I urged the US government to begin playing like the Japanese. Then-president Ronald Reagan listened to me and the US government changed its policies to be more like those of Japan.

It established a government-industry joint venture called Sematech that funded development of more advanced semiconductor production equipment. Rather than waiting for industry to complain, it self-initiated anti-dumping legal procedures against the Japanese industry, and it also provided additional funds for semiconductor research and development.

It also negotiated what came to be called the Semiconductor Agreement, under which Japan pledged to halt all dumping of chips in the US market and to enable full opening of the Japanese market for US chips. 

I could go on with other details but suffice it to say that the US trade deficit with Japan declined, Japanese auto companies began producing their cars in America, and the US semiconductor industry remains the overall world leader. Taiwan’s TSMC has become the leading chip fabricator, but it is now building major fabrication facilities in America. Thus the US will remain the leader in this industry for the foreseeable future. 

China’s game

Regarding China, Koo says I accuse it of rampant theft of intellectual property, but this is not an accusation. It is merely a statement of a simple fact.

I do not chastise China for doing this, because obtaining intellectual property by whatever means necessary is what all countries that have ever achieved industrial development, including the United States, have done.

Few today realize that there was a debate at the founding of America in the 1790s. Thomas Jefferson foresaw a country of yeoman farmers exporting agricultural products and raw materials. Alexander Hamilton saw Britain becoming the workshop of the world through industrialization and wanted America to do the same. Eventually, Hamilton won the debate because America nearly lost the War of 1812 for want of weapons-manufacturing capacity.

It grieves me that Koo thinks I hold a zero-sum attitude such that I see any gain for China as a loss for the US and vice versa. I must emphasize that such is not my attitude. As it happens, my wife is Chinese. Through her I am related to many Chinese both in America and in China. I wish nothing but the best for those relatives of mine and for all Chinese people. 

Helping China

Indeed, I was one of the leaders of the first US trade mission to China in 1982. I brought with me to Beijing a group of American business leaders who were interested in investing and starting businesses in China.

I and the rest of the US government urged them to invest, to transfer technology to China, to build factories in China and thereby contribute to the development of China as they had contributed to the development of Europe and Japan after World War II.

During my time as a leading official, the US Commerce Department strongly promoted US investment in China as well as Chinese exports to the United States.

Later, as a consultant I helped Intel Corporation and other US companies establish themselves in China. I do not harbor any fear of China’s economy becoming bigger than that of America. Indeed, I believe it should be bigger in view of the fact that China has four times the US population. Objectively speaking, its economy should be four times as large.

Having said that, I do believe that China, like Japan in the 1980s, is playing a different game than the US. Like Japan then, China today is playing “catch-up,” and this involves the government in obtaining technology, subsidizing and/or protecting the development of certain industries.

The best example is the program called “Made in China 2025.” This aims for essential autonomy for China in a long list of key high-technology industries such as semiconductors, robotics, aviation, and many more. These industries are receiving special assistance from the Chinese government.

Let me emphasize that I think Beijing is right to give these industries special help. I would do likewise if I were running China. 

However, this “catch-up” policy is at odds with many of the rules of the World Trade Organization. This leads officials in the US and elsewhere to accuse China of playing unfairly. I do not so accuse. Rather, I say America should do the same. It should have a Made in America 2025 or 2030 program.

Rather than complain about China’s “unfair trade.” the US should copy the smart things China is doing.

Belt and Road

For example, China has undertaken the Belt and Road project. It is a brilliant concept that I deeply admire because it is meeting a major global need while also promoting China’s global strategic expansion and influence. I am advising the United States to launch a similar program along with other countries as partners. It should be a real win-win effort.

The Party

George Koo suggests that I have problems with China because it is governed by a Leninist political party, the Communist Party of China.

A Leninist party is one formed on the principles dictated by Lenin when he established the Bolshevik Party in 1917. Such a party is completely dedicated to holding complete power in a society and to concentrating that power in the hands of a very few people at the top of the party.

It is a party that recognizes no limits on its power and no untouchable rights of the individuals it rules. It is a totalitarian party that trusts no one and suspects and surveils everyone.

I make a distinction between the people of China and the Communist Party of China. I wish the people only the best. I have concerns about the Party. I admit it has achieved many positive things. Yet it has also made its driving values quite clear in Document 9, the “Communiqué on the Current State of the Ideological Sphere On the Ideological Sphere.”

Here the CPC quite clearly states its opposition to “Western constitutional democracy,” to the concept of “universal values” (such as “all men are created equal with certain inalienable rights”), to civil society, and to journalism “not subject to Party discipline.” This, in effect, is a denunciation of everything for which America and the rest of the free world stands. 

If the CPC’s doctrine were applied only to China, the conflict might not be too serious. But Beijing has been using its increasing wealth and power to extend the reach of these anti- liberal doctrines.

Of course, the crackdown in Hong Kong is technically an internal matter, but because Hong Kong has always been an international city, the overthrow of its one country-two systems regime far short of the 50 years initially promised by Beijing is having global repercussions, as is the expulsion of most foreign journalists from China.

Increasingly, foreigners have no knowledge of what is happening in the world’s most populous country. Beijing’s halt of the showing of professional US basketball games in China because of a tweet by the Houston Rockets coach supporting demonstrators in Hong Kong seems to be an effort to halt free speech not only in China but in the US as well.

The sudden, unannounced suspension by Beijing of various imports from Australia because Prime Minister Scott Morrison called for an inquiry into the origins of the Covid-19 virus appears to be an attempt to impose censorship on Australia.

The advice from Beijing to Mercedes-Benz that it had best remove the Dalai Lama from any advertisements, even those outside China, if it wishes to continue doing business in China is just another example of the attempt to export censorship by the CPC abroad.

The militarization of South China Sea reefs and the swarming of Chinese fishing and para-police boats around Philippine, Malaysian, Vietnamese and Indonesian islands and reefs sends a hostile, threatening, bullying message. 

I wish China peace, prosperity, and happiness. I also wish for the free world to continue enjoying free speech, rule of law, and human rights. 

Monday Asia Events, April 26, 2021

ENERGY EFFICIENCY BUILDINGS AS A PATHWAY TO CARBON NEUTRALITY IN THE US AND CHINA. 9:00-10:15am (EDT), WEBCAST. Sponsor: China Environment Forum, Wilson Center (WWC). Speakers: Clay Nesler, Global Lead, Buildings and Energy, WRI Ross Center for Sustainable Cities; Carolyn Szum, Program Manager, Lawrence Berkely National Laboratory; Jing Hou, Director, International Cooperation Department and Assistant to the Secretary-General, China Association of Building Energy Efficiency and Associate Researcher, Doctor of Management Science and Engineering; Luke Sherlock, Head, China Engagement, C40 Cities; Moderator: Jennifer L. Turner, Director, China Environment Forum and Manager, Global Choke Point Initiative. 

A COMPREHENSIVE APPROACH TO PREVENT AND MITIGATE THE RISK OF DIVERSION. 9:15-10:45am (EDT). ZOOM WEBINAR. Sponsors: Stimson Center; Small Arms Survey; Conflict Armament Research; United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research; Mission of Sierra Leone to the United Nations in Geneva. Speakers: Ambassador Lansana Gberie, Ambassador and Permanent Representative of Sierra Leone, Geneva; Hayley Gill, Conflict Armament Research; Himayu Shiotani, Programme Head of the Conventional Arms Programme, United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research; Rachel Stohl, Vice President, Stimson Center; Moderator: Paul Holtom, Senior Researcher, Small Arms Survey.

U.S.-ROK RELATIONS: CHALLENGES AND OPPORTUNITIES UNDER THE BIDEN ADMINISTRATION. 10:00-10:45am (EDT), ZOOM WEBINAR. Sponsors: Institute for Korean Studies and East Asia National Resource Center, George Washington University (GW). Speakers: Congressman Andy Kim, Member, U.S. House of Representatives (D-NJ); Moderator: Jisoo M. Kim, Korea Foundation Associate Professor of History, International Affairs, and East Asian Languages and Literatures, Director, Institute for Korean Studies and Co-Director, East Asia National Resource Center, GW.

US-CHINA COMPETITION: A DISCUSSION WITH KEITH KRACH. 11:00am-Noon (EDT), WEBINAR. Sponsor: CSIS. Speakers: Keith Krach, former Undersecretary for Economic Growth, Energy, and the Environment; Daniel F. Runde, Senior Vice President and William A. Schreyer Chair and Director, Project on Prosperity and Development.

SCHIEFFER SERIES: THE FUTURE OF VOTING IN AMERICA. 12:30-1:30pm (EDT). WEBCAST. Sponsor: CSIS. Speakers: Andy Bernstein, Executive Director, HeadCount; Aditi Juneja, Counsel, Protect Democracy; Amber McReynolds, Chief Executive Officer, National Vote At Home Institute; H. Andrew Schwartz, Chief Communications Officer, CSIS. 

THE FUTURE OF AFGHANISTAN. 1:00-2:00pm (EDT), ZOOM WEBINAR. Sponsor: School of International Service (SIS), American University (AU). Speakers: Rahmatullah Nabil, former Head, National Directorate of Security; Bruce Valentine, former Associate Deputy Director of the CIA for Operations (ADDO); Eric J. Novotny, Hurst Senior Professorial Lecturer and Director of the MA programs in Comparative and Regional Studies (CRS), Global Governance, Politics & Security (GGPS), and US Foreign Policy and National Security (USFP), SIS, AU.

THE FUTURE OF US EXPORT CONTROLS. 2:00pm, WEBCAST. Sponsor: GeoEconomics Center, Atlantic Council. Speakers: Matt Borman, Acting Assistant Secretary for Export Administration, Bureau of Industry and Security, United States Department of Commerce; Chris Chew, Head of Export Control Policy, Export Control Joint Unit, the United Kingdom’s Department for International Trade; Kit Conklin, Director of Global Client Engagement, Kharon; Annie Simpson Froehlich, Director and Senior Counsel for Sanctions and Export, Carrier Corporation, and Non-Resident Senior Fellow, Atlantic Council; Moderator: Julia Friedlander, C. Boyden Gray Senior Fellow and Deputy Director of GeoEconomics Center, Atlantic Council.

RUSSIAN AGGRESSION IN THE BLACK SEA: REGIONAL AND INTERNATIONAL RESPONSES. 2:00-3:00pm (EDT), ZOOM WEBINAR. Sponsor: Middle East Institute (MEI). Speakers: Gen. (ret.) Philip Breedlove, Distinguished chair, Frontier Europe Initiative, MEI; Yörük Işık, Non-resident scholar, Frontier Europe Initiative, MEI; Iulia Joja, Senior fellow, Frontier Europe Initiative, MEI; Mamuka Tsereteli, Non-resident scholar, Frontier Europe Initiative, MEI; Moderator: Gönül Tol, Director, Turkey Program and Senior Fellow, Frontier Europe Initiative, MEI.  

OPEN-SOURCE ANALYSIS OF IRAN'S MISSILE AND UAV CAPABILITIES. 3:00-4:00pm (BST), WEBINAR. Sponsor: International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS). Speakers: Mark Fitzpatrick, Associate Fellow and former Executive Director of IISS–Americas and Interim Manager, Non-Proliferation and Nuclear Policy Programme, IISS; Douglas Barrie, Senior Fellow, Military Aerospace; John Krzyzaniak, Research Analyst, Non-Proliferation and Nuclear Policy, IISS; Fabian Hinz, Independent OSINT Expert and Consultant, IISS. 

VULNERABILITY AND RESILIENCE: THE FUTURE OF EAST ASIAN SUPPLY CHAINS. 8:00-9:00pm (EDT), WEBCAST. Sponsor: Brookings. Speakers: Tain-Jy Chen, Professor Emeritus, National Taiwan University; Etel Solingen, Distinguished Professor, University of California, Irvine; Kristin Vekasi, Associate Professor, University of Maine; Moderator: Mireya Solís, Director and Senior Fellow, Center for East Asia Policy Studies, Brookings. 

RULE OF LAW AND GRAY ZONE ACTIVITIES IN THE EAST AND SOUTH CHINA SEAS. 8:30-10:00pm (PDT). WEBINAR. Sponsors: Pacific Forum; Yokosuka Council on Asia-Pacific Studies; Maritime Programs. Speakers: Yurika Ishii, Associate Professor, National Defense Academy of Japan; Cmdr. Jonathan G. Odom, Military Professor of Int'l Law, Marshall Center for Security Studies; Moderator: Jeffrey Ordaniel, Director, Maritime Programs, Pacific Forum.  

Japan’s Looming Climate Showdown

Tokyo Has a Chance to Break Its Coal Addiction—and Spark a Regional Energy Revolution

By Richard Katz,  Senior Fellow at the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs and is writing a book on reviving entrepreneurship in Japan. He is an APP member.

Foreign Affairs, April 21, 2021

In October of last year, Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga announced that Japan was shifting course. The country—which in 2020 came in a miserable 45th out of 61 countries in addressing climate change—would now commit itself to achieving net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, a goal the country had once hoped to achieve sometime between 2050 and 2100.

That Tokyo’s record on climate change has been so dismal might surprise observers who associate Japan with technological innovation. But almost a third of the country’s electricity derives from coal—the single largest contributor to anthropogenic climate change. Worse yet, Japan is currently constructing 15 new coal-fired plants and is planning another seven, all to be finished within the next five years. Its carbon tax is a mere $3 per ton of carbon dioxide, compared with $33 in France and $126 in Sweden.

That makes Suga’s new stance a significant reversal for Japan. To reach the country’s new benchmark, the prime minister has pledged to “fundamentally shift” Japan’s policy on coal-powered electricity, initiate a study on the feasibility of carbon pricing, and phase out gasoline-fueled vehicles by 2035. “[Responding] to global warming is no longer a constraint on economic growth,” he explained.

Strong and rapid measures will not only decrease Japan’s own emissions but might also help induce other countries in the region to take similar steps. Just days after Suga’s speech, South Korea, the world’s ninth-largest emitter, committed to net zero by 2050. Activists in Australia, a major coal exporter, have called on Canberra to match Tokyo’s shift. Whether or not Japan delivers on its lofty promises, however, will depend on the policy battles now raging in Tokyo.

STOP AND GO

Japan’s feeble response to climate change has its roots in a national trauma. In 2010, carbon-free nuclear energy supplied a third of the country’s electricity. That number was supposed to increase to 40 percent by 2017 and 53 percent by 2030. With an additional 20 percent to be derived from renewables such as solar, wind, and hydroelectric, Japan was on track to cut overall emissions by 30 percent from 1990 levels.

Then came March 11, 2011. A horrific tsunami ripped through Fukushima prefecture, killing 20,000 people and causing a meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant that narrowly missed spewing radiation on millions. Had the utility company TEPCO simply followed global best practices and its own engineer’s recommendations, the meltdown would never have occurred. Worse yet, TEPCO had falsified safety data while government regulators turned a blind eye. The disaster destroyed nuclear energy’s credibility. All of Japan’s 54 nuclear reactors were shut down, and public opposition has thus far prevented most from reopening. In response, Japan turned to coal.

Today, however, a combination of what the Japanese call gai-atsu (foreign pressure) and nai-atsu (domestic pressure) is shifting Tokyo’s response to climate change. Joe Biden’s election as U.S. president also bolstered those in Japan who were already urging robust action. During their April 16 summit in Washington, Biden and Suga announced a new Climate Partnership, which includes measures to help other countries decarbonize.

Meanwhile, global companies have begun to include the practices of their suppliers in their net-zero commitments, and Japan’s leading corporations are feeling the heat. Apple, for example, will stop buying from suppliers that do not use 100 percent renewable electricity by 2030. Some Japanese producers have European facilities that could meet this goal, but those located inside Japan cannot. Only 19 percent of the country’s electricity comes from renewables, and the government’s current goal for 2030, set in 2018, is for that number to rise to between just 22 and 24 percent. The CEOs of Sony and three other major Japanese companies warned Administrative Reform Minister Taro Kono that failure to reach at least 40 percent renewable electricity by 2030 could compel many Japanese firms to shift some production offshore.  

At the same time, extreme floods and disastrous heat waves over the last several years have visited the direct effects of climate change on Japanese citizens and companies. An astonishing 90 percent of voters supported Suga’s October declaration to reach net zero by 2050. In 2018, several leading companies—including heavy hitters such as Sony, Nissan, SoftBank, and Mitsubishi Estate—created a new alliance called the Japan Climate Initiative (JCI). The group was designed to pressure Tokyo into meeting the decarbonization goals set in the Paris climate accord, and today it has almost 400 corporate members. This January, 92 member companies urged the government to expand renewable electricity generation to between 40 and 50 percent of overall production by 2030 as part of the Strategic Energy Plan to be released in June. Keizai Doyukai, a separate federation of executives from 1,000 leading corporations, urged similar action last summer.

Climate-minded politicians are also rising through the ranks of the country’s perennially dominant Liberal Democratic Party (LDP). This includes Suga and two potential future prime ministers, Kono and Environment Minister Shinjiro Koizumi, both of whom support aggressive action on climate change. According to a source close to Suga, the prime minister was frustrated by the slow pace of decarbonization under his predecessor, Shinzo Abe. Suga believed that Abe was too reliant on advice from the Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry (METI), which—according to the same person—was “not aggressive about carbon neutrality because the business world was reluctant to make a big change.”

Kono, for his part, told the JCI in November 2020 that he planned to remove regulatory obstacles to renewable electricity production—an important step toward Suga’s 2050 goal. Japan’s regional utility companies, for instance, can currently give their own power plants priority access to transmission lines. Kono has cited cases in which the utilities blocked new companies from transmitting wind-generated electricity, even on unused lines. Similarly, land use laws prevent abandoned farmland from being used for nonagricultural purposes, such as solar and wind farms.

With a combination of these regulatory shifts, current technology, and an upgraded grid, the country could generate between 40 and 45 percent of its electricity from renewable sources by 2030, according to Mika Ohbayashi, a member of the JCI secretariat and a director of Japan’s Renewable Energy Institute. Net zero by 2050, however, will require what she called “revolutionary technologies.”

BUMPS IN THE ROAD

Although Japanese efforts to decarbonize are gathering strength, there is still strong resistance. In a “Green Growth Strategy” document published on December 25, for instance, METI included hybrid gas-electric vehicles as part of Japan’s plan to eliminate gasoline-powered transportation by 2035, contradicting Suga’s talk of fully electric cars. And in April, a METI advisory committee proposed that coal should supply 26 percent of Japan’s electricity in 2030, the same goal set in 2018. If accepted, the target would defy Suga’s promise to “fundamentally shift” the country’s coal policy.

Similar opposition to change also exists in parts of the corporate world. The Toyota chieftain Akio Toyoda railed against Suga’s talk of ending sales of gasoline cars by the mid-2030s, inaccurately asserting that “the more electric vehicles we build, the worse carbon dioxide gets.” Separately, Keidanren, Japan’s most powerful business federation, has endorsed net zero by 2050 but opposes many of the measures needed to reach that goal. The federation insists that coal is necessary until reliable battery storage and hydrogen fuel become commercially feasible. “Energy security means Japan must have diverse sources of energy, including coal, at least in the short term,” said Masami Hasegawa, a Keidanren director.

Keidanren also prefers the current lax emission enforcement system, where industry associations voluntarily create goals for their member companies and the government reviews the results. Although Keidanren points to progress in reducing emissions, at the current pace, Japan will not even come close to net zero by 2050. Keidanren also opposes a carbon tax, which Hasegawa contends “would deprive companies of the funds needed to develop indispensable revolutionary technologies like hydrogen fuel and CCS [carbon capture and storage].” It will take at least two or three decades, however, before hydrogen and CCS become commercially competitive.

In reality, carbon pricing would have a dramatic effect even with current technology. Steelmaking, for example, is responsible for about ten percent of Japan’s total carbon emissions—mainly because 80 percent of the country’s crude steel output is still made in carbon-intensive coal-fired blast furnaces, compared with 33 percent in the United States. A carbon tax would make steel from blast furnaces uncompetitive in the marketplace, forcing companies to switch to cleaner alternatives.

An important factor in the outcome of this dispute is Suga’s waning political capital. His mishandling of the COVID-19 pandemic and poor communication skills have tanked his popularity. In September, he will have finished filling Abe’s term as the LDP president and must run for reelection on his own. Suga’s vulnerability could weaken his leverage over resistant bureaucrats. If he falls, the pace of progress will depend on the LPD’s choice of a successor. Polls currently show that the public overwhelmingly prefers Kono, who is strongly committed to fighting climate change.

SEA CHANGE

Despite the opposition to change among some leading companies, others have already altered important practices. Until last spring, Japan’s three megabanks—Mizuho, Sumitomo Mitsui, and Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ—provided a third of all global financing for new coal-fired power plants. Last spring, they decided to stop underwriting new projects (although some loopholes remain). Several giant trading companies have also stopped investing in coal mines, and JCI member Toshiba announced that it will not build new coal-fired plants.

These actions are a good start. But Tokyo’s long-term goal of net-zero emissions by 2050 will be unreachable unless the government commits to sufficiently ambitious short-term objectives in its forthcoming Strategic Energy Plan, which sets targets for 2030. To succeed, Japan will need a much larger cut in emissions than the current and fiercely criticized target of 26 percent from 2013 levels. The Environment Ministry is advocating for a 45 percent reduction, while METI is pushing for a more modest 35 percent. Washington, for its part, is reportedly urging 50 percent.

Turning any eventual target into reality, however, will require a dramatic increase in the renewable electricity supply (potentially between 40 and 50 percent), along with Suga’s pledge to phase out gasoline vehicles. Japan, moreover, would need to immediately stop building new coal-fired plants and phase out all existing facilities by the 2030s. The government will also need to take advantage of market forces by adopting a more demanding carbon price or tax.

Tokyo’s ability to deliver on these measures will have a vital impact on global efforts to address climate change. Some argue that Japan’s actions make only a marginal difference since the country produces just three percent of global carbon emissions. That number, however, makes Japan the world’s fifth-largest emitter—behind only China, the United States, India, and Russia. And unless each nation does its share, addressing climate change will be an impossible task. If Japan stops shirking its responsibility, its behavior might pressure others to follow suit—accelerating global action on decarbonization and hastening the adoption of climate friendly technologies. The next signal will be the specifics that Suga announces, or fails to announce, at Biden’s April 22–23 climate summit. The world awaits Tokyo’s decision.

Monday Asia Events, April 19, 2021

THE OCEAN: TURNING A CLIMATE CHANGE PROBLEM INTO A SOLUTION. 10:00-11:00am (EDT). WEBCAST. Sponsor: Global Europe Program, Wilson Center (WWC). Speakers: Hans-otto Pörtner, Researcher of Marine Ecophysiology, Co-chair Working Group II IPCC; Pascal Chabenet, Coral Reef Specialist, Director of the French National Research Institute for Sustainable Development, La Reunion; Mark Driessen, Manager of Public Affairs, Stakeholder Management, and Communications, Porthos Rotterdam; Jenny Brown, Coastal Oceanographer, National Oceanography Centre, UK; Moderator: Ambassador David Balton, Senior Fellow, Polar Institute, WWC, and Former Ambassador for Oceans and Fisheries, U.S. Department of State.

NATIONAL SECURITY COMMISSION ON ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE (NSCAI) "BLUEPRINT FOR ACTION” REPORT. 10:00-11:00am (EDT), ZOOM WEBINAR. Sponsor: Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments (CSBA). Speakers: Hon. Robert O. Work, NSCAI Commissioner; Hon. Jose-Marie Griffiths, NSCAI Commissioner.

SUSTAINABLE US PRESENCE IN THE MIDDLE EAST: BALANCING SHORT AND LONG-TERM NEEDS. 10:00-11:00am (EDT). Sponsor: Brookings Institution (Brookings). Speakers: Michael E. O’Hanlon, Director of Research, Foreign Policy, Brookings, Co-Director, Center for Security, Strategy, and Technology, Africa Security Initiative, Brookings, Senior Fellow, Foreign Policy, Center for Security, Strategy, and Technology, Brookings, and The Sydney Stein, Jr. Chair; Becca Wasser, Fellow, Center for a New American Security; Emma Ashford, Senior Fellow, Atlantic Council; Robert Pape, Professor of Political Science, University of Chicago; Moderator: Daniel L. Magruder Jr., Colonel, U.S. Air Force, and Federal Executive Fellow, Brookings.

DOES THE UNITED STATES NEED CHINA TO FIGHT CLIMATE CHANGE? 10:00-11:00am (EDT). WEBINAR. Sponsor: Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF). Speakers: Michael Klare, Secretary, Arms Control Association Board of Directors, and Senior Visiting Fellow, ITIF; Robert D. Atkinson, President, ITIF. 

NEW TOOLS FOR NEW THREATS: JOHN RATCLIFFE ON STRENGTHENING U.S. INTELLIGENCE CAPABILITIES. 11:00-11:45am (EDT). WEBINAR. Sponsor: Heritage Foundation. Speaker: The Honorable John Ratcliffe, Former Director of National Intelligence; Moderator: David R. Shedd, Visiting Fellow, Heritage Foundation.

NUCLEAR ISSUES ACROSS THE UNITED STATES. Noon-1:15pm (EDT), WEBCAST. Sponsors: Heritage; Ronald Reagan Institute. Speakers: Representative Dina Titus (NV-01); Erica Fein, Advocacy Director, Win Without War; Yasmeen Silva, Partnership Manager, Beyond the Bomb; Denise Duffield, Associate Director, Physicians for Social Responsibility–Los Angeles; Moderator: Naomi Egel, Janne Nolan Nuclear Security Visiting Fellow, Truman Center.

BIDEN’S NORTH KOREA POLICY REVIEW: PERSPECTIVES FROM THE REGION. 2:00-3:00pm (EDT), ZOOM WEBINAR. Sponsor: Stimson. Speakers: Yun Sun, Co-Director, East Asia Program and Director, China Program, Stimson; Yuki Tatsumi, Co-Director, East Asia Program and Director, Japan Program, Stimson; Jenny Town, Senior Fellow, Stimson and Director, 38 North Program, Stimson; Moderator: Brian Finlay, President and CEO, Stimson. 

KOREA AND THE INDO-PACIFIC STRATEGY: A CONVERSATION WITH HEINO KLINCK, FORMER DEPUTY ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF DEFENSE. 4:00-5:00pm (PDT), ZOOM WEBINAR. Sponsor: School of Global Policy and Strategy (GPS), UC San Diego.  

Any Value to the Suga Visit

SS Vyner Brooke

Why Comfort Women Matter to the U.S.-Japan Values Summit
Getting history right matters and Washington needs to hold its allies to the same moral values and standards that America and its allies claim to represent.

The National Interest, April 12, 2021

by Tessa Morris Suzuki, Professor Emerita of Japanese History, School of Culture, History and Language at the Australian National University and Mindy L. Kotler, Director of Asia Policy Point in Washington, DC.

In February 1942, after sinking the SS Vyner Brooke off the coast of Bangka Island near the Java Sea, the occupying Imperial Japanese gave the Australian and European women who survived a choice: they could starve in a prison camp on Sumatra or sign a document to provide sexual services on demand for Japanese troops.

This episode and many others like it during the war in the Pacific have reverberated over the generations. On Friday, nearly eighty years later, this history will underlie President Joe Biden’s summit meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga.

The White House apparently invited Suga to be the first foreign leader to visit the White House in order to mirror Suga’s predecessor Shinzo Abe’s pre-inauguration meeting with Donald Trump in 2017—and to cover for the impending conflict over values. Although the U.S.-Japan Alliance is heralded as rock solid, opinion writers have been quick to point out the mercurial state of American foreign policy. They try to brush aside what the President might ask of Suga by saying that Americans change course very quickly and unexpectedly. In other words, Japan does not need to take the meeting over values too seriously.

All of this is a deflection from Japan’s responsibility for the rift in the Alliance. The Suga Administration has accelerated a project started under the Abe Administration to manipulate and rewrite the history of the Pacific War, and particularly of women and girls trafficked and coerced into military brothels throughout the areas occupied by Japan during World War II—known as Comfort Women.

Despite well-established history of the many ways in which women and girls of multiple nationalities were forced into sexual slavery to Imperial Japan’s military, the Japanese government tries to present the issue simply as one between Japan and an overwrought, never satisfied South Korea. The result has eroded trust between these two major American allies, and frustrated Washington.

At the heart of the problem lies the question of whether or not the Japanese government admits that Japan’s military was responsible for the Comfort Women system, and accepts that the women and girls involved were recruited by deception or coercion. A 1993 statement issued by Japan’s then Chief Cabinet Secretary Yohei Kono acknowledged the role of the military in the comfort women system, including the fact that “at the time administrative/military personnel directly took part in the recruitments,” and admitted that some women had been recruited through coercion.

The Japanese government states that they have “inherited” the Kono Statement, carefully avoiding any promise to “uphold,” “commit to” or “fulfill” the promises of the Statement. Instead, conservative governments have steadily promoted the view that there are no documents that show forcible removal of any women by military or government officials. A review of the history of the Statement, supervised by then-Chief Cabinet Secretary Suga in 2014, implied that Japan had caved in to pressure from the Korean government, undermining public confidence in the Statement’s content.

The Statement, in fact, has been so diminished that the government has recently announced it will no longer use the term “military comfort women” or “so-called military comfort women” (the expressions used in the Kono Statement): the word “military” has been removed from this phrase because it highlights the role of Japan’s armed forces in the comfort women system.

A recent academic article by Harvard Law Professor Mark Ramseyer has helped to fuel Japan’s development of a revisionist narrative that depicts the Comfort Women as willing prostitutes. Astonishingly, this article presents all Japanese and Korean Comfort Women as contractual workers under Japan’s prostitution system, in which (Ramseyer suggests) children as young as ten-years-old knowingly and voluntarily negotiated prostitution contracts. Some Japanese ruling party politicians have enthusiastically promoted this version of history, while the Japanese Education Minister has publicly suggested that Ramseyer’s article is part of the process by which we “approach the truth” of history.

Tokyo’s position is so antithetical to any contemporary understanding of trafficking and sexual violence in warfare that American policymakers must be stunned. The Japanese government’s blanket denial of forced recruitment of comfort women not only contradicts irrefutable evidence of force in multiple cases; it also shows a fundamental lack of understanding of sex trafficking and sexual slavery. This is because the Japanese authorities do not see the skewed power relationship nor comprehend the psychology of coercion.

The dispute itself is the tip of much larger and troubling “history wars”: part of a push to revise memories of the Asia Pacific War as a whole. Last month, the ruling Liberal Democratic Party announced that one of its main strategic objectives for 2021 was a further expansion of the government budget for telling its version of history internationally. With Tokyo demanding the removal of Comfort Women memorials from sites in America and Germany, and using pressure to have one ripped out of its foundation in sight of the Bayview Hotel in Manila where hundreds of Filipino women were gang-raped by retreating Japanese troops, this “war” is not confined to South Korea.

In releasing the 2020 Human Rights Report, Secretary of State Antony Blinken lamented that “the trend lines on human rights continue to move in the wrong direction.” A concerning part of this trend are denials in Japan and the United States of the terror that compelled women like some Vyner Brooke survivors to “choose” to join a Comfort Station. Blinken said in his remarks: “standing for people’s freedom and dignity honors America’s most sacred values.” The U.S.-Japan Alliance is said to be based on those shared values. Now Washington and Tokyo need to discuss what this means in practice. The Biden-Suga Summit will test the U.S. Administration’s ability to be fair, but firm with allies as well as with those it sees as rivals and security threats.

Monday Asia Events, April 12, 2021

DO US-CHINA EDUCATIONAL EXCHANGES SERVE AMERICAN INTERESTS? 9:00-10:30am (EDT). WEBCAST. Sponsor: John L. Thornton China Center, Brookings Institution (Brookings). Speakers: Ambassador Julia Chang Bloch, President, US-China Education Trust; Ambassador J. Stapleton Roy, Founding Director and Distinguished Scholar, Kissinger Institute on China and the United States; Richard Stengel, Strategic Advisor, Snap Inc. and Former Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs, U.S. Department of State; Lee Bollinger, President, Columbia University; Jeffrey Lehman, Vice Chancellor, NYU Shanghai; Kurt Dirks, Vice Chancellor for International Affairs, Washington University in St. Louis, and Director, McDonnell International Scholars Academy; Ted Mitchell, President, American Council on Education; Moderators: Cheng Li, Director, John L. Thornton China Center and Senior Fellow, Foreign Policy, Brookings; Susan A. Thornton, Senior Fellow, Paul Tsai China Center, Yale Law School, and Nonresident Senior Fellow, Foreign Policy, John L. Thornton China Center, Brookings. 

GOVERNMENT POLICIES RESHAPE THE BANKING INDUSTRY: CHANGES, CONSEQUENCES, AND POLICY ISSUES. 10:00am-Noon (EDT). LIVESTREAM. Sponsor: American Enterprise Institute (AEI). Speakers: Charles Calomiris, Henry Kaufman Professor of Financial Institutions, Columbia University; Bert Ely, Principal, Ely & Company; Alex J. Pollock, Distinguished Senior Fellow, R Street Institute; Richard E. Sylla, Professor Emeritus of Economics, New York University; Moderator: Paul H. Kupiec, Resident Scholar, AEI. 

ADVICE FOR PRESIDENT BIDEN: DEALING WITH PUTIN’S RUSSIA. Noon-1:00pm (EDT). ZOOM WEBINAR. Sponsors: Center for International Studies, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT); Security Studies Program, MIT; MISTI MIT-Russia. Speakers: Andrey Kortunov, Director General, Russian International Affairs Council; Angela Stent, Director, Center for Eurasian, Russian and East European Studies, and Professor of Government and Foreign Service, Georgetown University. 

INSIDE PUTIN’S RUSSIA: A TURNING POINT IN DOMESTIC POLITICS? Noon-1:00pm (EDT). WEBINAR. Sponsor: Chatham House. Speakers: Joanna Szostek, Associate Fellow, Russia and Eurasia Programme, Chatham House; Natalia Antonova, Writer and Journalist; Arkady Moshes, Programme Director, Finnish Institute of International Affairs; Henry Foy, Moscow Bureau Chief, Financial Times; Denis Krivosheev, Deputy Regional Director and Head of Research, Eastern Europe and Central Asia Regional Office, Amnesty International. Members only 

SOLARWINDS AND COZY BEARS: HOW RUSSIAN HACKERS COMPROMISED THE U.S. GOVERNMENT AND HOW WE CAN REDUCE THE CHANCES OF IT HAPPENING AGAIN. 1:00-1:45pm (EDT), WEBCAST. Sponsor: Heritage. Speakers: Chad Wolf, Visiting Fellow, Davis Institute; Scott Jasper, Lecturer, Department of National Security Affairs, Naval Postgraduate School and Captain, U.S. Navy (Ret); Moderator: James Di Pane, Research Associate, Center for National Defense. 

BEYOND EXIGENCY: INSIGHTS ON SUPPLY CHAIN VULNERABILITIES AND BUILDING GLOBAL RESILIENCE. 1:00-2:00pm (EDT). WEBCAST. Sponsors: Asia Program, Wilson Center (WWC); Canada Institute, WWC. Speakers: Ambassador Mark Green, President, Director and CEO, WWC; The Honorable Mike Gallagher, United States Representative from Wisconsin's 8th District; The Honorable Elissa Slotkin, United States Representative from Michigan’s 8th District; Christopher Sands, Director, Canada Institute, WWC; Shihoko Goto, Deputy Director for Geoeconomics and Senior Associate for Northeast Asia, Asia Program, WWC.

THE FUTURE OF US SECURITY IN SPACE. 1:30-3:15pm (EDT), WEBCAST. Sponsor: Scowcroft Center, Atlantic Council. Speakers: Gen James E. Cartwright, USMC (Ret.), former Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Department of Defense; Hon. Deborah Lee James, former Secretary of the Air Force, US Department of the Air Force; Hon. Charles F. Bolden Jr., MajGen, USMC (Ret.), 12th Administrator and Astronaut, NASA; Scott Pace, former Executive Secretary, US National Space Council and Professor, George Washington University; Debra Facktor, Head of U.S. Space Systems, Airbus U.S. Space & Defense, Inc.; Ellen Chang, Head of Naval Portfolio, H4X Labs & Retired Officer, U.S. Navy; Gregg Maryniak, Co-Founder and Director, XPRIZE Foundation; Matthew Daniels, Senior Fellow, Center for Security and Emerging Technology (CSET) and Research Faculty, Georgetown University; Jana Robinson, Managing Director and Space Security Program Director, Prague Security Studies; Moderators: Jennifer Griffin, National Security Correspondent, Fox News; Jacqueline Feldscher, National Security and Space Reporter, POLITICO. 

NATURE-BASED SOLUTIONS IN CHINA: RESEARCH AND POLICY. 5:00 - 6:00pm (PST), WEBINAR. Sponsor: California-China Climate Institute and The Nature Conservancy. Speakers: Huo Li, Climate Change and Energy Director, The Nature Conservancy, China; Dr. Gao Xiang, Director of International Policy Research, National Center on Climate Change and International Cooperation; Dr. Wang Binbin, Institute of Climate Change and Sustainable Development, Tsinghua University; Dr. Christina McCain, Associate Director of Programs, Climate and Land Use Alliance.

WHAT CHINA'S S&T MODERNIZATION MEANS FOR THE U.S.: A STRATEGIC PERSPECTIVE. 7:00-8:00pm (EDT), WEBCAST. Sponsors: Center on Science and Technology Policy and Asian/Pacific Studies Institute, Duke University. Speaker: Richard P. Suttmeier, Professor of Political Science, Emeritus, University of Oregon; Moderator: Dennis Simon, Senior Adviser to the President for China Affairs, Duke.