No Sign, yet,

Of Afghan fallout in Korea and Japan

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

Toyo Keizai, August 20,2021

In the middle of April, 1975, North Korean leader Kim Il Sung hurried to Beijing to meet with Mao Tse-tung and the Chinese Communist leadership. Phnom Penh had just fallen to the Khmer Rouge, the North Vietnamese were marching toward victory in Saigon, and the U.S. seemed to be in retreat around the globe. Now was the time, Kim told his Chinese patrons, to liberate South Korea.

America’s allies in Northeast Asia were undoubtedly shaken by the events in Indochina, beginning from the late 60s. The U.S. had withdrawn the 7th Infantry division from Korea and Nixon told allies to rely more on their own resources to defend themselves.

South Korea’s Park Chung-hee embarked on a clandestine program to develop nuclear weapons, as did Taiwan. Japan pondered that choice but opted instead to reach out to China, moving quickly to normalize relations after Nixon’s shocking opening of ties to Beijing.

Comparisons between the fall of Saigon and the stunningly rapid collapse of the American-backed government in Kabul are now the fodder of front pages from Beijing to Washington. In the U.S., pundits claim that U.S. allies in Europe and Asia are again questioning American resolve and reliability, while China and Russia rush to fill the strategic vacuum.

European angst is clearly visible, not surprisingly since NATO allies committed their own military forces to the war in Afghanistan and had to rush to remove their troops, diplomats and Afghan support staff. But in Korea and Japan, now the largest concentration of U.S. overseas military power -- almost 85,000 American naval, air and ground troops – there is not yet the same level of anxiety.

In conversations this writer has had in recent days with senior Korean and Japanese former officials and current advisors, the events in Kabul seem to have actually strengthened the belief in the importance of the alliance with the U.S. Those policy makers in Northeast Asia echo President Joe Biden in pointing to the failure of the Afghan government and military to be willing to fight in their own defense.

“The fall of Kabul may not damage our alliance with the U.S. as much as you may imagine,” Miyake Kuni, a former senior Foreign Ministry official who advises Prime Minister Suga Yoshihide, told me.

“Former Afghan President Ashraf Ghani and his friends did not help the Afghans, and they had to pay the price. For Japan, if we don’t have the will to fight and defend ourselves, we will be like Afghanistan.”

As for the chaotic events in Afghanistan and the decision of the Biden administration to withdraw, Miyake and others do not see a loss of American credibility at stake, but rather the consequence of bad policy decisions made long ago.

“America should have known that Afghanistan has been, and will be, like this forever and it should not have stayed there for 20 years, or even a year,” said Miyake, who was in charge of Afghanistan for the foreign ministry in the late 1990s.

“The fall of the Afghan government is seen as the failure of the Afghan government, in spite of 20 years of international help, rather than the loss of credibility of the U.S. commitment,” Umemoto Kazuyoshi, who recently retired as the senior Foreign Ministry official directing relations with the U.S, told me as well.

So far, Japanese policy makers reject facile comparisons between Afghanistan and potential flash points in their own region, particularly Taiwan and the disputed territory in the East China Sea.

The risks of the failure of the U.S. to respond to Chinese aggression in either case are far higher than the danger of a possible return of terrorists to Afghanistan, which triggered the U.S. intervention there. “With Taiwan,” a former senior official said privately, “it would affect the world order immediately if the U.S. did not intervene.”

The view from Seoul

In South Korea, facing potential escalation from a North Korean regime that is under growing internal pressure, the view is a bit more cautious, though still far from panicked.

Confidence in the U.S. commitment is not yet shaken, Korean policy makers from across the spectrum agree. “On the contrary, this event invoked for many people the importance of the Korea-U.S. alliance,” former senior Foreign Ministry official Kim Sook, who also served as deputy director of the National Intelligence Service, told me.

Koreans were particularly reassured by the statement from U.S. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan that troop withdrawal from Korea was not on the Biden agenda. In conservative circles in Korea, where a presidential election is looming next March, the Afghan events have been used to bolster the criticism of the current progressive government of Moon Jae-In.

“The situation in Afghanistan shows how important it is to maintain a strong military,” the conservative daily JoongAng Ilbo wrote. “North Korea continues ratcheting up its nuclear capabilities. Under such circumstances, the decades-old Korea-U.S. alliance cannot be overemphasized.”

Even among progressives, the focus has been on the failed effort to transform Afghanistan rather than American retreat. The defeat doesn’t do much to shake confidence in the U.S, security commitment to Korea, says Paik Hak-soon, the executive director of the Kim Dae-jung Peace Forum.

“We know why the U.S. was defeated and decided to pull out its forces, and also why it keeps its forces in Korea, even though we’re reminded that the U.S. forces cannot stay forever in foreign lands.”

“Many Koreans understand that there are more differences than similarities between the two cases,” agrees former senior foreign ministry official, Amb Wi Sung-lac.

Still, the corrosive impact of the images from Kabul touches nerves in Korea, where dependence on the U.S. is still deeply felt.

“The notion that the US may abandon an ally depending on the capabilities of the allied partner will linger in the memory of Koreans,” adds Wi, who was formerly in charge of relations with the U.S. and led the South Korean delegation to the Six-party talks with North Korea.

“In that sense, the messy nature of the retreat in Afghanistan will not be helpful to strengthen the US message on the alliances,” he cautions.

Will Kim Jong Un Follow his Grandfather?

The view from Pyongyang is far more difficult to discern. Kim Jong Un is struggling to cope with a severe economic crisis, triggered by the border closure measures taken to avoid the spread of Covid-19 and compounded by severe weather conditions.

Rather than take up offers of humanitarian aid from the Moon government in South Korea, the North Korean regime has engaged in vague threats to escalate tensions in response to the decision to go ahead with joint U.S.-South Korean military exercises.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has long modeled himself on his grandfather, Kim Il Sung. It raises the question of whether he too will see the U.S. retreat from Afghanistan as another opportunity to undermine the U.S.-South Korean alliance. Kim might, for example, test the alliance by carrying out a cross-border attack of the type seen in 2010 when North Korean forces shelled a South Korean-held island off its shores.

“I don’t think Kim Jong Un will do anything particular because of what happened in Afghanistan,” says Paik, who was a long-time North Korea expert at the Sejong Institute.

“These days, he's totally focused on domestic economic survival, and has no reason whatsoever to engage in provocations when the Moon and Biden Administrations are not provoking towards North Korea.”

Even more conservative analysts tend to agree with that assessment. “Pyongyang knows that the situation on the Korean Peninsula is not identical to the one in Afghanistan,” Amb Wi says. “Pyongyang wouldn't see this as an opportunity to test the US.”

But the Korean experts are careful not to rule out the possibility of escalation. But they see that not as a consequence of events in Afghanistan but as an attempt to restart the stalled negotiations following the breakdown of the Kim-Trump summit in Hanoi in 2019.

The role of China is also a large question mark. When Kim Il Sung pleaded for backing for his revolutionary dreams in 1975, the Chinese Communist leadership, according to the archives of East European diplomats, turned him away. They were not interested at that moment in risking a confrontation with the U.S. and triggering a potential war on their frontier.

Beijing is now locked in a strategic competition with Washington. Will China now be ready to turn Pyongyang loose? “On one hand, they know the Americans have gotten their comeuppance in Afghanistan – they look inept and feckless and the Chinese can be heartened by that,” observes Brookings Institution scholar Jonathan Pollack, who has written extensively on the Sino-North Korea relationship.

But, he adds, “at these moments of definitive strategic change, the Chinese have a tendency to think very carefully about where they find themselves.”

China may see more advantage in being ready to insert itself as a mediator between the two Koreas, perhaps in the wake of an exchange of fire across the border, suggests a former senior State Department official who was involved in managing the 2010 crisis. The Afghan events “open up opportunities for China,” the former official told me. “I bet they are thinking about it.”

Washington’s shifting nuclear policy in the Asia-Pacific region

Puts Japan in a difficult position and enhances its policy contradictions

By David McNeill, Tokyo-based journalist and writer, APP member

THE JAPAN TIMES, JULY 29, 2017

A global ban on nuclear weapons was approved earlier this month at the U.N. headquarters in New York. A total of 122 countries signed the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. None of the signatories, however, possesses a nuclear bomb.

The world’s nuclear club — the United States, Britain, Russia, China, France, India, Israel, Pakistan and, most recently, North Korea — boycotted the talks, arguably dooming them to failure. Nikki Haley, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, said in March that Washington couldn’t allow “bad actors” to have nuclear weapons and “those of us that are good, trying to keep peace and safety, not to have them.”

A joint statement by the United States, Britain and France on July 7 said the ban “disregards the realities of the international security environment.” As a result, all countries that rely on the nuclear deterrent either stayed away (including South Korea), voted against the ban (the Netherlands) or abstained (Singapore).

Japan’s absence from the talks was striking. The U.S. atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945, which are estimated to have killed or wounded more than 200,000 people, mostly civilians, remain the only use of nuclear weapons in warfare, giving Japan considerable moral heft in any discussion on abolition.

Tokyo’s disarmament ambassador, Nobushige Takamizawa, lamented in March at the beginning of negotiations that while his country would “continue to pursue realistic and effective” disarmament measures, “regrettably” it was unable to join the talks.

Toshiki Fujimori, assistant secretary-general of Nihon Hidankyo, greets Elayne Whyte Gomez, president of the U.N. conference on prohibiting nuclear weapons, after participants voted to adopt a ban on nuclear arms on July 7.

Toshiki Fujimori, assistant secretary-general of Nihon Hidankyo, greets Elayne Whyte Gomez, president of the U.N. conference on prohibiting nuclear weapons, after participants voted to adopt a ban on nuclear arms on July 7. | KYODO

The decision appalled Japan’s hibakusha, the dwindling survivors of the 1945 atomic bombings. Toshiki Fujimori, assistant secretary-general of Nihon Hidankyo, an organization for atomic bomb victims, said it left him “heartbroken.” Fujimori was little more than a year old when the bomb exploded over Hiroshima on Aug. 6, 1945.

Terumi Tanaka, former director of Hidankyo, says he believes diplomatic pressure was brought to bear on Japanese officials.

“Up until the day before the negotiation convened, the minister of foreign affairs showed an intent to attend the negotiations but, in the end, he didn’t,” Tanaka said. “I think there was influence from the Prime Minister’s Office not to go.”

Japan has for decades acknowledged the anti-nuclear cause while sheltering under the U.S. defense umbrella. The nation’s so-called three non-nuclear principles, outlined by Prime Minister Eisaku Sato and formally adopted in 1971, state that Japan shall neither possess nor produce nuclear weapons, nor shall it permit their introduction into Japanese territory.

“Japan is the only country in the world to have suffered the ravages of atomic bombing,” said Sato, accepting the 1974 Nobel Peace Prize for his contribution to the efforts toward nonproliferation of nuclear weapons. “That experience left an indelible mark on the hearts of our people, making them passionately determined to renounce all wars.”

However, those noble sentiments were not safe from the Cold War calculations needed to maintain the facade of pacifism in a heavily nuclearized neighborhood, when the Soviet Union and then China acquired their own deterrents against what they saw as potential U.S. aggression.

Japan’s no-nuke rule was undermined by a backroom deal struck between Washington and Tokyo, signed by Sato and President Richard Nixon in 1969. The deal allowed the possibility that nuclear-armed U.S. ships and aircraft traffic anywhere through or over Japanese territory for decades.

Politicians on both sides of the Pacific repeatedly denied the deal. In February 2016, Washington finally admitted what had almost become an open secret — that nuclear weapons were stored in Okinawa in Japan’s far south before its reversion to Japanese rule in May 1972. The secret agreement allowed for their re-introduction without prior Japanese consent in times of crisis.

Japan’s abstention from this year’s U.N. conference, therefore, did not come out of the blue. In 1998, it declined to sign a U.N. resolution against no first use of a nuclear weapon. Washington has historically maintained the right to a preemptive strike. Attempts to end the policy are typically condemned as liberal naivete.

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe appears to agree. Last year, shortly after standing beside U.S. President Barack Obama on his historic visit to Hiroshima, Abe reportedly expressed “concern” that the United States was weighing whether or not to end its policy of no first use. Abe warned Adm. Harry Harris Jr., head of the U.S. Pacific Command, that deterrence against North Korea would suffer as a result, according to a report in The Washington Post, a report that has not been denied.

Japanese officials rarely discuss such nuclear issues publicly — hardly surprising given their unpopularity: Just 5 percent of Japanese people said they wanted their country to possess nuclear weapons in a poll conducted by think tank Genron in 2016. In South Korea, by contrast, the figure is consistently over 50 percent.

A senior Japanese defense official, speaking off the record owing to the sensitivity of the issue, said whatever his personal feelings, the “reality” is that as part of Japan’s alliance with the United States, the nuclear deterrent is necessary.

“We share the view that we should have a peaceful and stable world without nuclear weapons, but can we one-sidedly do away with them?” the official asked. “If someone has nuclear weapons, they must believe in them.”

The contradictions of Japan’s position, however — acknowledging domestic sentiment on nuclear weapons while supporting the United States’ right to deploy and use them — are likely to become more glaring as tensions in East Asia grow.

As the Cold War eased following the fall of Soviet communism, U.S. President George Bush almost halved America’s nuclear stockpile, withdrawing tactical nukes from ships and submarines across Asia in 1991. His son, George W. Bush, cut the global stockpile again.

China’s growing economic and military clout and, since 2006, the entry of North Korea into the group of nuclear powers have helped convince Pentagon planners that such moves may have been premature. The shifting U.S. defense policy puts Japan in a difficult position as it tries to deal with three nuclear-armed states on its doorstep.

Bush’s “liberal” successor, Barack Obama, authorized “the largest expansion of funding on nuclear weapons since the fall of the Soviet Union,” said the Alliance for Nuclear Accountability, a Washington think tank, in September 2014. The $1 trillion splurge puts the world on track for a 21st-century arms race, it warned.

Washington will not rule out a first-strike option against China, says Gregory Kulacki, a China specialist at the Union of Concerned Scientists, a think tank.

“(China) has been asking that for 10 years, and we won’t give it to them,” Kulacki says.

Since building its first nuclear bomb in 1964, Beijing has repeatedly reaffirmed a no first-use policy.

The Pentagon’s Strategic Command, meanwhile, which was charged with obliterating the Soviet Union during the Cold War, is working on a new evaluation to determine “whether the Russian and Chinese leadership could survive a nuclear strike and keep operating,” the Bloomberg news agency reported.

Critics say the “modernization” of U.S. nuclear forces is code for a technological leap, increasing America’s capacity to fight and win a nuclear war.

“This increase in capability is astonishing — boosting the overall killing power of existing U.S. ballistic missile forces by a factor of roughly three,” says a paper in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists in March. That, in turn, encourages America’s enemies to keep their own fingers on the trigger, the paper’s authors say.

These developments make Japan’s long-standing duality increasingly untenable, Kulacki says.

Historically, he says, there have been two sets of Japanese voices on U.S. nuclear weapons policy. The first, reflecting the majority of the Japanese public, “is strongly opposed to the use of U.S. nuclear weapons in the defense of Japan.”

The second, Kulacki says, “is a small and secretive group of bureaucrats in Japan’s defense and foreign policy institutions who may have different views.” Alarmed by China’s territorial claims to much of East Asia, as well as North Korea’s five nuclear tests, these bureaucrats are working harder to reverse the Bush legacy, he says.

“They have made a sustained effort to have U.S. tactical nuclear weapons redeployed in Asia,” Kulacki says. In addition, he says, the once-taboo notion of “tailored nuclear options” has growing support on both sides of the Pacific.

For tailored, read “usable.”

“(Bureaucrats) believe that a credible threat to use nuclear weapons first or preemptively is necessary for maintaining the credibility of the U.S. nuclear deterrent in Asia,” Kulacki says.

Defense officials in Japan will neither confirm nor deny these claims. Noboru Yamaguchi, a retired lieutenant general with the Japan Ground Self-Defense Forces, who supports the modernization of America’s nuclear arsenal, says tactical nukes in East Asia “don’t make any sense.”

“Tactical nuclear weapons used to be a good tool to compensate for inferiority in conventional arms,” Yamaguchi says. “Not any longer — we are conventionally superior. In this region, the U.S. Navy and Japanese Navy have always been superior to any other navy, including the Chinese or the Soviets, so there is no need to rely on such weapons.”

Ramesh Thakur, director of the Centre for Nuclear Non-proliferation and Disarmament at the Australian National University and author of “Nuclear Weapons and International Security,” calls such a strategy a seductive illusion.

“The limited utility of nuclear weapons rests on the certainty of nuclear retaliation, not in any belief in its first use,” Thakur says. “First-use posture is a Cold War deterrence legacy whose logic breaks down once nuclear weapons are used and the empirical reality is transformed from peacetime deterrence … to fighting an actual war.”

Thakur is “skeptical” of the strength and influence of pro-nuclear officials in the Japanese national security bureaucracy. Nevertheless, the distance between them and mainstream thinking in the government appears to have narrowed under Abe, Thakur says.

Some analysts note, for example, that Shotaro Yachi, a key Abe aide, was a disciple of Kei Wakaizumi, the diplomat who negotiated the secret deal with Nixon in 1969. Wakaizumi is believed to have been a “realist” who wanted to end Japan’s “insular pacifism” and over-reliance on U.S. military protection, says Giulio Pugliese, a lecturer in war studies in King’s College London.

That said, Japan is very unlikely to go so far as to start building its own nuclear arsenal for protection, despite Donald Trump telling The New York Times while running for U.S. president last year that it might not be such a “bad thing” if Japan (and South Korea) developed nuclear weapons.

U.S. Vice President Joe Biden had also played a similar card last year. “What happens if Japan, who could go nuclear tomorrow? They have the capacity to do it virtually overnight,” Biden told Chinese President Xi Jinping in June 2016.

While few doubt that Japan has the required capital, technology and raw materials, there is more to joining the nuclear club than that, says Alessio Patalano, a reader in East Asian warfare and security at the Department of War Studies at King’s College London.

“You need civil-military relations set up, command and control, a national security council,” Patalano says. “And you need political confidence to understand the complexity of how to use nuclear weapons.”

Another obstacle is popular opposition — merely floating the idea of a nuclear weapon would most likely be tantamount to political suicide — and the certainty that it would trigger a regional arms race.

Whatever the thinking, tactical nuclear weapons in East Asia would be a disaster, says Thakur, ratcheting up tensions with China and North Korea and potentially spooking Kim Jong-un into launching a preemptive strike on Seoul if he fears imminent U.S. attack.

“Remember, Pyongyang has been living with hair-trigger sensitivity and preparing for a U.S. attack for decades,” Thakur says. “A nuclear umbrella may offer protection of the great and powerful ally, but any actual use ceases to be protective and instead morphs into the most catastrophically self-destructive security guarantee imaginable.”

Abe's ideals frighten Japanese voters

Abe caught out in school scandal

East Asia Forum, 12 March 2017

By Alexis Dudden, Professor of Japanese History at the University of Connecticut and APP member.

‘Growing scandal’ is the only way to describe the unfolding story about Moritomo Gakuen, a private education company in Osaka responsible for the controversial early education programs and schools currently under scrutiny in the Japanese parliament and press because of its close connection to Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.

Videos from Moritomo Gakuen schools of kindergarteners in sailor suits singing martial songs at a Shinto shrine under the approving gaze of its head priest and first graders finishing a running race by raising their hands in a Heil Hitler pose have shocked many observers. But more startling is the link of Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and his wife Akie to the school.

Mrs Abe had publicly expressed support for Moritomo Gakuen’s Mizuho-no-kuni Elementary School, stating that it is ‘wonderful’, ‘remarkable’ and ‘fosters children to have pride as Japanese and a strong inner self’. Until Prime Minister Abe announced on 24 February that she’d resigned, Mrs Abe was also the school’s honorary principal.

The Japanese Diet is now debating the involvement of senior ruling party members — including Abe — in the deeply discounted sale of the land to the school due to buried waste on the site, and also whether Mrs Abe acted in a public or private capacity in her support of the school. Prime Minister Abe has deflected the issue with bombast, declaring: ‘I find it very unpleasant to have [my wife] discussed as a common criminal…If wrongdoing is discovered, I will resign immediately’.

While Mizuho-no-kuni Elementary School is still under construction, Moritomo Gakuen’s related enterprises offer clues to the ‘wonderful’ and ‘remarkable’ ways that its teachers indoctrinate small children. Viral videos first surfaced some years ago of kids screaming, ‘Adults should protect the Senkaku Islands and Takeshima and the Northern Territories! Chinese and South Korean people who treat Japan as a bad [country] should amend their minds’. They feature Mrs Abe wiping away tears of appreciation during a school visit.

So what is it about the Moritomo Gakuen kindergarten that is so telling?

The images of children raising Heil Abe salutes jar a majority of Japanese and people around the world because they signify everything that was supposed to be different about Japan from 1945 to the present. Worse, these are children doing what adults tell them to do.

Whatever word best captures post-World War II Japan — constitutional pacifism or secularism — Japanese society committed to negating the cult of emperor worship that drove the nation to catastrophic war, the end of the empire and a devastated homeland. The current Emperor Akihito eschews displays of personal veneration that invoke a time when the Japanese viewed his ancestors as divine. But in 1997, the political group called Nippon Kaigi (Japan Conference) emerged with the central aim of changing all this through policy and education.

Nippon Kaigi’s grip on national matters today extends beyond its 40,000 members. Sixteen of twenty current cabinet ministers are prominent participants or directors of the group’s various divisions. Its ranks comprise former prime ministers and incumbent Prime Minister Abe, leading Diet members and key regional politicians, bureaucrats, writers, media moguls and educators — including the owner of the kindergarten at the centre of this scandal.

One member, Minister of Internal Affairs and Communications Sanae Takaichi, appeared in the US State Department’s 2016 Human Rights Report as a central figure in the strangling of press freedoms in Japan. Takaichi has been key to the Nippon Kaigi’s Parliamentarian League section concerning ‘History Issues, Education and Family Issues’ since 2007. Abe is in charge of ‘Defense, Diplomacy and Territory’ matters, while Yoshitada Konoike, the Upper House parliamentarian whom the Moritomo Gakuen kindergarten owner apparently tried to bribe, heads the subcommittee on ‘Constitution, Imperial Household and Yasukuni Issues’.

Nippon Kaigi’s primary goal is to restore the emperor as head of state and rear future citizens to worship him — no female rulers need apply — through late 19th and early 20th century Shinto practices at special schools.

Added to this mix, on 5 March, Japan’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party changed its rules to allow the head of its party a third term. If the scandal fails to break Prime Minister Abe’s stride he could run Japan until September 2021 and help to make Nippon Kaigi’s dreams come true.

Hopefully, open public debate will enable investigation of those involved in the scandal. Then, it should train its powerful — and democratic — lens on how the Moritomo Gakuen incident brings into relief the meaning of Japan moving forward.

For me, a ‘wonderful’ Japanese nursery school resides in one of Niigata’s less privileged areas — on a dilapidated shrine ground nonetheless — where my four-year-old found warmth and confidence, learned hiragana, and sang ’Totoro’ to his heart’s content regardless of what any of his teachers may have privately thought about who he was or why we were living in Japan. This, too, has every chance of being Japan’s future.

Asia mostly backsliding on democratic values

BY Jeff Kingston, director of Asian Studies, Temple University Japan and APP member

THE JAPAN TIMES,  November 28, 2015 

In Japan, lawyers are fortunately not arrested by the state for doing their job, as they are in China. Nor are academics faced with indictment for challenging mainstream history narratives, as in South Korea.

We tend to expect the worst when it comes to China, but in democratic South Korea it is troubling to learn that professor Park Yu-ha is being subjected to a witch-hunt over her recent book, which challenges the official story of the “comfort women.” Whether she is right or not is irrelevant; in a functioning democracy scholars should have the political space needed to voice their opinions even if their ideas are unpopular.

Combined with President Park Geun-hye’s recent initiative to reassert a state monopoly on high school textbooks by 2017, and the arrest of a Japanese journalist for what amounted to shoddy journalism — thereby transforming him into an undeserving icon for press freedom — clearly the South Korean government is working overtime to tarnish that nation’s hard-won image for robust democracy. The good news is that large-scale demonstrations against the president’s gambit to white-wash history show that citizens zealously guard these rights and are not going to tolerate any conservative backsliding on South Korea’s praetorian history.

Park must envy Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. He has promoted patriotic education and imposed new guidelines that give the state inordinate control over what is written in Japan’s textbooks; when it comes to touchy subjects like territorial disputes or comfort women, they must conform with government views. And Abe has accomplished this without sparking mass protests about the history lobotomy he is administering. Perhaps this is because Abe’s Japan is a target-rich environment for progressive activists as he propels reactionary agendas across the board ranging from welfare for the wealthy — aka “Abenomics” — to nuclear restarts, collective self-defense, shoving a new U.S. military base at Henoko down the throats of Okinawans, arms exports, moral education, faux “womenomics,” visits to Yasukuni Shrine and so on. With so many targets, it’s hard to focus public disaffection.

Abe’s signature initiatives and grandstanding gestures may not be popular, but a weak and fragmented opposition gives him a free hand. The mass protests this past summer, in which demonstrators rallied in defense of the Constitution and against his security legislation, followed protests against his 2013 state secrets legislation, a remarkable rollback of what limited transparency has ensued since a national information disclosure law was passed in 2001.

The government seems paranoid over international scrutiny of this secrecy legislation, as the planned December visit of David Kaye, the U.N. special rapporteur charged with examining Japan’s record on transparency and accountability, has been postponed indefinitely. No doubt the officials charged with designating state secrets are so busy making sure that none of the dirty linen sees the light of day for 60 years — yes, that is the inscrutably lengthy period for which government documents can be withheld from public scrutiny — that making time to welcome an unwelcome visitor is a low priority.

So next month, when Abe visits Prime Minister Narendra Modi in India, he can offer moral support for New Delhi’s recent stonewalling of visits by U.S. State Department officials regarding human trafficking and LGBT rights. Given that Modi’s star is fading rapidly in India, underscored by a monumental setback at the state polls earlier this month in Bihar, where he had campaigned extensively, he could use a bit of Abe-teflon. Increasingly Modi has fallen back on the dark agenda of Hindutva (Hindu chauvinism) to offset the growing disenchantment with his mounting failures on the promises of national rejuvenation encapsulated in the “India Shining” propaganda. As with Abe’s historical revisionism, support for the Japan Conference (Nippon Kaigi) and Yasukuni visits, Modi finds the temptations of the primordial are hard to resist and is also dumbing down India’s textbooks. Abe will try to seal the deal on exporting Japanese nuclear technology to India and Shin Maywa’s amphibious U-2 planes, which can track Chinese submarines in the Indian Ocean. He will also try to get New Delhi to buy Japanese high-speed rail technology.

China’s recent snatching of the Indonesian high-speed rail contract came as an unpleasant surprise given close bilateral ties between Indonesia and Japan since World War II and lingering animosity toward Beijing in Jakarta for alleged (and unsubstantiated) support for a so-called communist coup in 1965. In the aftermath, the military mounted a real coup under former President Suharto (1967-98), who, with the aid of Islamic youth groups and paramilitary organizations and gangs, unleashed a wave of terror that killed up to 1 million Indonesians.

This slaughter remains controversial in Indonesia, where President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo has not carried through on his pledges for a full reckoning. This might be somewhat easier now, after the U.S. State Department in September declassified materials related to Washington’s involvement in fingering targets for the death squads. But Jokowi is politically weak and has also been unable to follow through on promises to open the troubled province of Papua to journalistic scrutiny because security forces there want to keep their repressive operations under wraps. And his “boss,” Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle leader Megawati Sukarnoputri, is now trying to kill the anti-corruption commission in one of the most corrupt nations in the world.

At a November conference in Berlin on Sino-Japanese rivalry, discussion of Abe’s recent tour through central Asia singled out his visits to Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, where Abe disappointed human rights activists by shifting toward a more pragmatic stance similar to China’s. Unlike his predecessors, Abe came up short by ignoring widespread concerns about political repression. Given that China’s energy deals overshadow Japan’s by far, Abe had little to lose and much to gain by standing tall on democratic values and human rights. Alas, Abe decided that “success” depended on acting more like Beijing and cozying up to despots.

Myanmar is one of the bright spots for democracy in Asia, after Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy won a resounding landslide victory in the October election. It now faces the impossible task of meeting unreasonably high expectations. She doesn’t have a magic wand, however, and has to deal with ethnic problems that have proven intractable for the entire post-WWII independence period. She also needs to cope with militant Buddhist monks eager to whip up anti-Muslim violence.

Yet, the people voted out the military-backed junta for the second time in 25 years, and this time the generals indicate they will respect the outcome, a belated reward for citizens’ perseverance under a despotic regime. There is, however, an urgent need for donors to open the spigots of aid and the flow of technical assistance required to help them climb out of the very deep hole dug by an inept kleptocracy that has misruled for way too long.

Abe's Monetary Policy--Listen with Skepticism

The Lincoln Log:  Abe’s Monetary Policy

by Edward J. Lincoln

4/23/2015

This weekend Prime Minister Shinzo Abe will arrive in Washington.  In the following week, a bevy of LDP Diet members will also descend upon Washington in the annual Golden Week trek.  Obviously, the big attention-grabbing issue is what language Prime Minister Abe will use in his address to the joint session of Congress to speak about the Comfort Women and other historical issues (an attention that is altogether proper).  But whatever he says, he and his supporters will try to soften the potential negative reaction to his view of history by talking up the success of “Abenomics.”  That is, even if we (and the Koreans and Chinese) do not like what the Prime Minister has to say about history, we should be thankful that he is rescuing the Japanese economy.  After all, it was the willingness of the Japanese public to hold their noses about his offensive right-wing nationalism in a hope that his economic policies would be better than sorry record of the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) prime ministers in office 2009 to the end of 2012.  

The goal of Abenomics was to achieve 2 percent real GDP growth and 2 percent consumer price inflation within 2 years (i.e. by the end of March, 2015).  Their story will be that while the targets have not been reached, all Japan needs is a little more time because fundamentally the policies are working.  The one piece of Abenomics that most of them will tout as being more or less on target, albeit a bit more slowly than anticipated, is monetary policy.  But their story is unduly optimistic.  

Spoiler alert: deflation is not over

What is on target is the Bank of Japan’s goal of doubling the monetary base over a two period, beginning from April, 2013.  That goal was considered to be a radical policy for the normally conservative Bank of Japan.  According to Bank of Japan data, the monetary base (currency in circulation plus commercial bank reserves—a technical term that should not be confused with the money supply) was 218% higher in March 2015 than it was in March 2013.  Voilà!!  They have achieved their goal in doubling the monetary base.

But what about the intended outcome of this monetary expansion of creating 2 percent consumer price inflation?  This turns out to be a somewhat confusing issue because of the 3 percentage-point increase in the national consumption tax (a sales tax levied on most consumer goods and services).  In addition, energy prices have gyrated in the past two years, further muddying the data.  But you can be sure that Prime Minister and various visiting LDP Diet members will find ways to describe the data to support the notion that the economy is on track to producing 2 percent inflation.  Not exactly.

On the following page is a chart showing the raw consumer price index (with a base year of 2010 = 100) on a monthly basis.  As you can see, there is a jump in the index in April 2015 because of the tax increase.  The chart shows two versions of the consumer price index—the full index covering all goods and services consumed by households, and one excluding food and energy.  Economists prefer to exclude both food and energy because they are so volatile and therefore muddy any attempt to discern underlying trends.  The Japanese government prefers a “Japanese core” index that only excludes food (I have no idea why), but that one remains affected by volatile energy prices so I will skip in this analysis.  To be sure, changing energy prices eventually feed through the economic system and affect prices of all goods and services that use energy (such as airline fares being affected by the price of aviation fuel, which, in turn, is affected by the price of crude oil). 

So what does this chart show?  Consumer prices were rising slowly in the year from January 2013 to April 2015.  Since then, however, the trend of the index—both for all items and the one excluding food and energy appear to have flattened or even declined.

Rather than looking at the actual index number, economists prefer to look at measures of the change over time.  There are two ways of doing this:  comparing one month to the previous month, or comparing one month to the same month in the previous year (called a year-on-year comparison).  Because monthly economic data of any sort if often subject to random short-term events, generally economists use the year-on-year comparison.  But in this case, it is useful to look at both.

If we look at the usual year-on-year comparison, the result is shown in the chart on the following page.  In the few months preceding the start of “Abenomics” monetary policy (which began in April 2013 after Mr. Kuroda was appointed as the new governor of the Bank of Japan by Prime Minister Abe), consumer prices were still falling at a rate of -0.5 percent or a bit more.  Thereafter, prices did begin to rise.  Part of that rise was simply due to the rising price of crude oil (and the increasing importance of that more expensive oil due to the shutdown of all nuclear power plants in the year subsequent to the 2011 Tohoku earthquake/tsunami/nuclear disaster).  By March 2014, just before the consumption tax increased, the overall consumer price index was rising at a year-on-year rate of 1.5 percent

and even the index minus food and energy was rising at 0.8 percent.  While well short of the 2 percent goal, the trend appeared to be in the right direction.   

When the tax rate jumped from 5 percent to 8 percent in April, obviously the change in consumer prices increased.  While the tax applies to most consumer goods and services (e.g. housing construction) it does not apply to them all (school tuition fees, for example, are exempt).  In any case, in February 2015 (the latest data available), the overall price index was running about 2.2 percent higher than a year earlier, and the index minus food and energy was 2 percent.  Quite likely these are the numbers that Japanese visitors during Golden Week will tout as showing success of Abenomics monetary policy.

But what happens if we look at the month-to-month change in prices?  The chart on the following page gives those results.  Remember, in this case we are looking at the change in prices in one month compared to the immediately preceding month (the change from January to February 2015, for example).  The numbers here are very small.  After all, if prices increase 1 percent year-on-year, then they changed month-to-month by less than 0.1 percent.  And one can see that the changes do jump around somewhat from month to month.  However, there are several interesting results from looking at these numbers.

First, prices had begun to rise just before Governor Kuroda got his Bank of Japan Policy Board to embark on quantitative easing.  Second, prices were generally rising slightly month by month after quantitative easing began (except for January 2014).  Third, the spike due to the consumption tax increase becomes very obvious.  In April, 2014 prices jumped 2 percent (both the overall index and the index minus food and energy).  Fourth, prices since April, 2014 have not continued rising.  The explanation that will be put forth by visitors to Washington will be that this is a temporary phenomenon due to falling oil prices.  But the data show the same result for the price index minus food and energy. 

These data imply that initially quantitative easing appeared to have a small positive impact on prices in its first year of operation.  But in the year since the tax increase in April 2014, that positive effect on prices has petered out.  Let’s go back to the actual index to measure the changes over time.  Leaving out food and energy, overall consumer prices rose 1.3 percent in the year from April, 2013 through March, 2014 (i.e. the index was 1.3 percent higher in March, 2014 than in April 2013).  Part of that increase was due to increasing oil prices, so the price index minus food and energy rose a much smaller 0.2 percent.  Still positive, but not anything to shout about. But from April 2014 through February 2015, the overall price index fell by 0.2 percent and the index minus food and energy fell by 0.3 percent.  Not only did the price increases stall, but the drop in prices cannot be blamed on the external factor of declining oil prices.   

This is quite discouraging—quantitative easing appeared to be having some positive effect (even if the impact once oil price increases are factored out was quite small), but that effect has worn off.  Since late 2014 prices have resumed a resumed a mild decline.  Japan is not yet out of deflation.

But what about the stories of wage increases?  No doubt this development will also be brought up by Japanese visitors.  Toyota and some other large manufacturers have been persuaded by the government to increase wages.  Won’t this help to keep prices rising as firms have to pass along the cost impact of higher wages?  That’s another whole story not worth getting into in this short note.  But briefly:  What the large, politically sensitive Toyota does in bargaining with its union and what happens to all wages in Japan are not necessarily the same thing (remember that just like in the United States, only a small proportion of the labor force is unionized).  More important, firms were so stingy in granting wage increases last year, that even a 2 percent wage increase will do no more than restore the losses workers suffered due to stagnant wages in the face of the consumption tax increase.  No need from that for firms to start increasing prices.

Is there a way to draw a more optimistic picture?  Maybe.  One effect of monetary quantitative easing has been a rather dramatic fall in the value of the yen against other currencies.  This weakening of the currency is finally producing an increase in exports.  As exports rise, so does employment in the manufacturing sector.  With a falling working-age population, increased employment in export-oriented manufacturing causes labor markets to tighten and could possibly produce higher wages—not because the government jawbones companies like Toyota, but because they can get more workers only by paying more.  That might lead to higher prices.  But it is too early to tell if this will really happen (it did not happen during the rapid export expansion of 2002-2007).  At least for the near future, therefore, Japan is not out of the woods on deflation.  So listen to the upbeat talk from Prime Minister Abe and his fellow LDP politicians with a very large dose of skepticism.

LDP vs. FCCJ: Behind the Barricades

Sunday, December 28, 2014

Reprinted from the FCCJ's Shimbun #1

In the lead up to the election, the LDP and Komeito shunned the Club.
Has Japan’s government suddenly turned shy of the foreign media?

by David McNeill
McNeill writes for the Independent, the Irish Times, the Economist and other publications and is a coordinator of the electronic journal JapanFocus.

In the well-trudged battlefield between politician and journalist it was a relatively minor skirmish but an important one nonetheless: Japan’s government effectively boycotted Asia’s oldest foreign correspondents’ club before the Dec. 14 general election. The Liberal Democrats (LDP) and coalition partners Komeito were the only two major parties not to send senior delegates to the FCCJ to explain their policies.

The boycott risked breaking a long tradition of pre-election pressers by the government. It also meant that foreign correspondents had only one limited venue – the Japan National Press Club – to directly question the cabinet. The office of the LDP’s No.2, Sadakazu Tanigaki, told the FCCJ that it was powerless to change the decision, which was made at the party level.

Off-the-record, officials said the decision was prompted by concerns that some of its members had “not been treated fairly” at recent events.

Why? The LDP’s public relations division cited “scheduling difficulties” when questioned by the FCCJ. “We are now in the middle of an election battle,” explained a spokesperson, apparently unaware that this is precisely why such pressers are considered newsworthy at all.

There was of course another reason, though the LDP was loath to discuss it publicly. Off-the-record, several officials said the decision was prompted by concerns among the party’s hierarchy that some of its members had “not been treated fairly” at recent events.

They noted a twitchy press conference by Eriko Yamatani, chairperson of the National Public Safety Commission. Yamatani visited the FCCJ in September to discuss North Korea’s kidnapping of Japanese citizens in her capacity as Minister in Charge of the Abduction Issue. Instead, she was grilled on her alleged connections to Japan’s hard right.

Knocked off message, Yamatani stumbled through the press conference seemingly intent on not putting distance between her office and perhaps Japan’s most toxic racist group, Zaitokukai. The event ended with Japan’s top cop being shouted down by a particularly enthusiastic freelance member of the press.

The presser (and its denouement) was relished by some as the sort of scrappy, rambunctious encounter that helped make the FCCJ’s reputation, such as it is. But where many saw spirited, open debate, others saw chaos. Allowing freelancers such leeway at the more scripted events run by the NPC is unheard of.

Yamatani’s encounter capped an uneasy two years for ties between the FCCJ and the government of Shinzo Abe, which has made itself far less available to the media than its predecessors. Abe himself has not been to the Club since he came with a group of LDP presidential candidates in September 2012.

That in itself is not especially noteworthy – in fact, the FCCJ has not hosted a sitting prime minister since Junichiro Koizumi in 2001. But neither Abe’s foreign nor defense ministers have made an appearance at all, and it took 19 months to get Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, who tried (but failed) to have the questions scripted beforehand.

The Abe government's full-frontal assault on the Asahi newspaper has -- perhaps permanently -- weakened Japan's liberal flagship.

Yamatani is one of 12 cabinet ministers to speak before the Club’s journalists in the two years since Abe took power in December 2012. That compares to 24 ministers under the three years of the previous Democratic (DPJ) government, which sent its foreign minister no fewer than three times.

The Abe government’s tepid relationship with the FCCJ hardly amounts to an organized snub, but it does point to a carefully parsed strategy of control and spin. The government has adopted a similar attitude to the domestic media, avoiding hostile outlets while favoring their conservative rivals, particularly theSankei newspaper.

Its full-frontal assault on the Asahi newspaper has – perhaps permanently – weakened Japan’s liberal flagship. Many commentators say NHK, the nation’s top broadcaster, has also been brought to heel by the Abe government, which has stuffed its board with fellow political travellers.

The more successful this strategy has become, the more the government’s confidence has grown: The LDP seemed heedless to charges that it was trying to suppress critical coverage when it sent “guidelines” to Japan’s big broadcasters in late November demanding “correct” coverage of the election. It was striking too that Abe avoided the one other place where he was sure to face serious interrogation – Okinawa.

In that context, avoiding the possibility of political landmines at the FCCJ seemed just common sense, and the Yamatani clash provided the pretext. As FCCJ President Lucy Birmingham says, “I feel it was an excuse. They thought ‘Why bother sending anyone to the Club?’ They might make a mistake.”

The spat has focused minds on both sides of the media divide. Birmingham says one result will be tightened rules at FCCJ press conferences to ensure legitimate journalists are given priority in asking questions. Why give the government an excuse not to come?

One reason why the FCCJ makes politicians nervous is that questions are entirely unscripted, and evasions can be challenged, as the Yamatani dustup showed.

Meanwhile, the bad publicity generated by the FCCJ boycott – and charges that the Abe cabinet is running shy of tough questions – has both angered the government and created signs of détente. Birmingham met a Cabinet Office official in December who pledged to “make efforts” to bring more ministers to the Club.

That doesn’t mean they’ll get an easy ride. One reason why the FCCJ makes politicians nervous is that questions are entirely unscripted, and evasions can be challenged, as the Yamatani dustup showed. That’s only natural, points out Shiro Yoneyama, a lecturer at Toyo University and a member of the FCCJ’s events committee. “The idea that journalists ask what they want to ask is a normal, global standard. The ability to answer questions in an unscripted press conference is effectively an international prerequisite for politicians.”

Japan Urged To Take Pride In Admitting To Troubled Past

On January 12th, Kyodo News interviewed APP member Columbia University Professor Gerald Curtis. 

He described Japan's ties with China and South Korea as "worrisome," with the "history issue" as an underlying factor. His advice was for Japan to "take pride in admitting what you're not proud of," just as other countries have reevaluated their own past like the United Sates where schools are facing uncomfortable truths about issues such as the treatment of native Americans, the segregation era and the Vietnam War.

Selections from the interview follow:

"This history issue, you can't just say it doesn't matter or there's nothing Japan can do, Japan has to do something."

Nearly 70 years after World War II ended, this question, he said, is "more controversial now than it ever has been in the post-war period" and there is now "all this anger directed against Japan."

This is despite Japan being a peaceful country and providing sizable economic assistance to China and South Korea in the postwar period.

"I think a lot of Japanese are really perplexed by this development."

The Chinese and South Korean governments downplayed Japan's wartime role in the past, according Curtis, because they needed a good relationship with Japan to rebuild their struggling countries.

"There was a kind of collusion between the Japanese, the Koreans and the Chinese not to make a big issue of Japan's war crimes and so on, because they had other objectives that the Japanese could help achieve in terms of economic growth."

However, as the Chinese and South Korean economies took off, the people there began to revisit Japan's role as a colonizer while Japanese schools continued to leave out "unpleasant and awful" parts of its history.

"There is a loss of memory in Japan and an intensified memory in China and Korea," Curtis said, adding that Japanese youth now are unaware of the historical context surrounding Yasukuni, where 14 Class A war criminals are honored along with the war dead. The shrine is seen as having been an instrument of state Shinto worship and a symbol of Japan's militarism.

"The Koreans and the Chinese don't let this history go; they think it somehow benefits them to bash Japan and it's wrong," he said, adding, "They're helping to make the nationalist sentiment stronger in Japan."

Although Seoul and Beijing have repeatedly called on Tokyo to apologize for its colonial past, Curtis said that the 1995 statement on Japan's wartime conduct by then Prime Minister Tomiichi Murayama was sufficient. "It's not a question of apology, Japan has apologized many times and the Murayama apology is about as strong and as full an apology as you can ask for," he said.

The current government needs to proactively reach out to its neighbors to assure them that it will not repeat its militarist past, the scholar suggested.

"Abe has to come out and say...there is no room in Japan today for the values that led Japan to do what it did before the war," Curtis said, elaborating that they are the values that led Japan "to become a colonial power, to use force against neighboring countries, that accepted the recruitment of young girls to provide sex for Japanese soldiers."

Abe needs to make such a statement "whether or not he believes it."

"Without that kind of reflection on its past, I don't see how you can really improve the situation."

On China, Curtis said, "the issue is a real, palpable sense of concern, if not fear, on the Japanese part" about the implications for its security of Beijing's growing power as it challenges the American position in Asia, where the United States has exerted hegemony.

In this context, Curtis said the United States, bound by a security alliance accord with Japan, is concerned about being entangled in a conflict it does not want to be part of, such as a military clash over the Senkakus, a group of islands at the heart of a row between Tokyo and Beijing.

The United States would not want to get involved in a war with China for Japan over those "barren rocks in the East China Sea," given the war fatigue Americans are experiencing after Afghanistan and Iraq, according to Curtis.

For the U.S. administration, "the question is how do you demonstrate to the Japanese that our commitment to Japanese security is as strong as ever, but not give Mr. Abe a free hand to create problems that will then drag us into a situation we don't want to be a part of?" he said.

Curtis questioned the growing view in Japan that things would be different if the Republicans were in power instead of Democrat President Barack Obama, perceived as weak and indecisive. "This is an illusion," Curtis said. "This is not about Obama. This is about a changed world and a changed U.S. in the world."

While the Japanese media "exaggerates" the extent of anti-Japanese sentiment among the public in China and South Korea, there is room for ameliorating relations in East Asia, the professor suggested, citing the South Korean business community, which he sees as not necessarily anti-Japanese, and young Chinese people.

China's Energy Sector Reform

MIT PhD student and former Asia Policy Point intern, Michael Davidson, discusses China's energy policy with Channel News Asia on January 21, 2014. He finds that China has the tools and plans to reform the energy sector, yet questions if the government will move forward. He is an Assistant Researcher in the China Energy and Climate Project at MIT and is spending this month in northern China. 

You can follow his research on his blog, East Winds

Caroline Kennedy: a Perfect Choice as Ambassador to Japan

By William Brooks, APP Senior Fellow, Adjunct Professor, SAIS Johns Hopkins
This essay first appeared in the Monday, September 30th edition of the Asia Policy Calendar.

Forget any brickbats in the media: Caroline Kennedy is a wonderful choice to be the new U.S. ambassador to Japan.

Japan, like Britain, has become a key ally and friend of the United States; and Tokyo has become like London a leading cosmopolitan city. It is a logical place for a U.S. President to award a distinguished ambassadorial post to a close supporter and confidante. Unlike her grandfather, Joseph P. Kennedy, the U.S. Ambassador in London during The Blitz (1940), she will enjoy the trust of the President.

Ambassador Caroline Kennedy can be expected to bring traditional diplomacy to Japan. Until now, this highly social and elegant form of statesmanship seemed more appropriate for European capitals than for Asian ones. The famous Kennedy name and the new ambassador’s personal credentials will be a tremendous boost for this kind of American-style public diplomacy. Moreover, the new ambassador will have the ear of the President, as well as the Secretary of State – extremely important for a Japan that often has seemed off the radar for Washington policymakers.

The new ambassador’s priorities will obviously include developing close personal relations with Japan’s movers and shakers in the political, government, educational and cultural sectors, as well as nurturing the already friendly ties between the two peoples. She can build on the good work that her predecessor Ambassador John Roos began under the Operation Tomodachi initiative.

In recent years, the Japanese and American societies seem to be growing somewhat distant from each other, not surprising perhaps in an environment in which pressing global issues crowd out the diplomatic and security agendas for East Asia, and given the already short attention span of the media. Indeed, the growing lack of American media interest in Japan can be charted by the scarcity of news articles and journalism, the dwindling number of Japanese students in the U.S. and vice versa, and even the waning presence of Japanese business representatives in the U.S.

The new Ambassador must not only find suitable sparring partners with important opinion leaders, but also expand efforts of the previous ambassador, also initially seen as an “amateur” to diplomacy and things Japanese, to deepen and broaden ties from the grass-roots level up. Despite being a fast read, the new ambassador will most likely need some time to learn the essentials about dealing with Japan and its bilateral issues, but she will have on hand an expert staff of diplomats and advisers who can guide her through her first months in office.

She will need to reach out quickly to the Japanese public through speeches, op-eds, and the usual array of meetings, receptions, and soirees with Tokyo’s elite. She should also get out and see the country, meeting average Japanese at every opportunity and taking advantage of Japan’s great natural beauty and the many cultural heritages sites. A climb up Mt. Fuji, just declared a World Heritage site, would be a golden opportunity.

Just about every American ambassador who has come to Tokyo sooner or later seems to encounter their own version of baptism by fire: a crisis that tests their management abilities to the core. How an ambassador resolves each crisis can shape the relationship. The famous photo of Ambassador Mike Mansfield bowing deeply in apology to Japanese leaders after a U.S. submarine had fatally collided with a Japanese fishing boat in Tokyo Bay earned the respect of many Japanese.

Ambassador Walter Mondale worked hard to bring to closure a period of great national outrage in Japan over the gang rape of a schoolgirl in Okinawa by setting in motion a mechanism to reduce the U.S. military footprint in that prefecture. Ambassador Tom Foley masterfully dealt with the tragic collision near Hawaii of a U.S. submarine and a Japanese training ship filled with students. Ambassador Howard Baker faced the horror of 9-11 and then the war on terror just after arriving at his new post in Tokyo. Ambassador Jon Roos played a critical role in U.S. efforts to console Japan and mobilize assistance after the triple earthquake disaster struck northern Japan on March 11, 2011.

Not that Ambassador Kennedy will encounter a crisis of like proportions on her watch, but the region is a dangerous place. North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs are a direct threat to Japan and American security interests. China’s risky game of military brinksmanship in the waters off the disputed Senkaku Islands make that area a potential flashpoint should an incident or accident occur.

Ambassador Kennedy will be well served by a team of experts and advisers already in place in the U.S. Embassy, and she will be kept well informed of moods and trends in Japan by media watchers in the press section. Some key issues seem now well underway toward resolution, such as Japan as part of a TPP agreement. Others, such as the resolution of U.S. basing in Okinawa, remain open and contentious. These will demand concerted efforts in Washington and Tokyo, and some imagination.

Most important, the Ambassador will have to ensure that democracy flourishes in Japan as the security environment worsens. Unlike her grandfather in embattled Britain, she cannot dismiss democracy as impractical or capitulation as inevitable. She promises to be an ardent defender of human rights, individual liberties, tolerance, and women’s empowerment. A fresh look by the new ambassador and her team at the current state of U.S.-Japan relations that goes beyond the usual defense and security perimeters may be just what is needed.

September 23, 2013

Using belligerence to forget

On April 8th,  U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter gave a speech to CSIS outlining American military capabilities and plans in the Indo-Pacific region. [TRANSCRIPT] He emphasized that "U.S. interests in the region are enduring, and so also will be our political and economic presence." Five times "enduring" was mentioned in the speech.

He justified American presence in the region as a responsibility accompanied by values worth defending:

I'm more accustomed to listening to people question why the U.S. spends more on defense than the next 16 largest militaries in the world combined. This statistic is true and won't change much in coming years. It's also worth noting that most of the rest of the money that the world spends on defense is spent by countries that are allies and friends of the United States. These levels of defense spending are a reflection of the amount of responsibility that the U.S. and its friends and allies share for providing peace and security.

It was not, however, until nearly the last question in the Qs&As that he said something substantive about Japan. Australian National University Professor Rikki Kersten asked "how important is it for Japan to embrace collective self-defense for the American rebalancing to work effectively" [53.09 in the video above].

He responded that it would be very constructive for Japan to open the way to exercising its right to collective self-defense. "Japan's increasing awareness of their own abilities, their own capabilities and their increasing freeing of themselves from the strictures they imposed upon themselves some decades ago...is a constructive thing. They're doing that with respect to arms exports, with respect to the kinds of activities that they are willing to engage in internationally," he said, adding that "I think that's a good thing."

But then he added something unexpected. He implied that the militarily stronger Japan would supersede regional hesitations about trusting Japan. And this is the strategy that the U.S. is encouraging Japan to pursue.

It's part of the U.S.-assisted, if I may be so bold, process of healing and putting history behind in that part of the world. It gives Japan the opportunity to play a role that it can, which is a very constructive one around the world in security affairs. They are already involved in counter-piracy activities,  maritime domain awareness, and so forth. These are areas where the world has a need, and if Japan can be a part of fulfilling that need,  that is good for everyone.

This answer startled many. What exactly is the Defense Department doing to help Japan address its history of aggression and unhealed wounds? And how is this expected to encourage Japan's neighbors to welcome the country's more overt military presence? And does this mean that the United States will be signing on to Prime Minister Abe's constitutional change campaign?

Later: As reported by Kyodo in the Japan Times, April 9th.

APP on Huffington Post Live!

Today, April 4, APP director Mindy Kotler joined APP member Ms. Shihoko Goto of the Wilson Center Asia Program, Ms. Yuki Tatsumi of the Stimson Centers, and Professor Thomas Berger of Boston University on Huffington Post Live to discussion whether Japan is moving away from pacifism.

Ms. Kotler was hesitant to characterize Japan as pacifist. The country has substantive defense forces. Even during the discussion of the postwar constitution there was a strong emphasis on maintaining self-defense. Today, Japan's defense forces are sophisticated and capable. It's Maritime Self Defense Force is a potent blue water fleet. What is true is that Japan has refrained from using its defense forces and has been a free rider on the United States. The "alliance" is a linguistic construct designed to legitimatize the American defense of Japan.

Today's Asia is economically and politically stronger than after WWII. Independent democracies with feisty publics exist. What is happening is threefold: 1) the United States no longer wants to carry the full burden of Japan's defense; 2) Japanese politicians want to test the American commitment to the country's defense; and 3) Japan's neighbors are asserting their own nationalism and question Japan's rhetoric of change. 

The new Abe government, abjectly  unapologetic about Japan's aggressive wartime past, worries its neighbors. It is not that the self-defense forces will get any stronger, but the Japanese leaders making the decisions are viewed as militarists with retrogressive views of Asian history and culture. The judgement of Japan's leaders is what worries many. Unilateral actions and militarist rhetoric further undermine trust. This is the danger ahead.

Abe’s Bold Decision on TPP Wins Public Approval

On March 15, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe formally announced that Japan would join the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) negotiations. He had promised as much to President Barack Obama at their February summit. This bold decision, which many critics thought would be delayed by internal political feuding—the kind that blocked earlier attempts by Abe’s DPJ predecessors Naoto Kan and Yasuhiko Noda—is not without political risk.

Abe successfully argued to his party and coalition partners that joining the TPP can open the door to 3.2 trillion yen in much needed GDP growth. With Japan’s entry, the TPP comprises 12 nations, accounting for 40% of world GDP, making it the largest regional trading bloc. TPP is also seen as a means for Japan to reduce its economic dependency on the China market. Abe stressed that joining now was “so that the world’s third largest economy can take the lead in rule-making” before TPP talks wrap up late this year. Otherwise, he believes that Japan would be left behind and internationally disadvantaged.

Abe received grudging acceptance from anti-TPP elements in the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) by saying that he would protect Japan’s agriculture sector and public health insurance system during negotiations. In theory, TPP members had agreed beforehand to abolish all tariffs without exception. The expectation is that his government will make Japan’s interests reflected in the final set of rules, as well as to gain exemptions from zero-tariffs for certain politically-sensitive agricultural products such as rice and sugar.

With about half of the LDP lawmakers in the Diet opposing TPP, Abe’s strategy is a gamble. All could backfire on him if negotiations with the U.S., which include the knotty side issues of auto trade and government-backed insurance, fail. In particular, if Japan cannot obtain the minimal exceptions on “sacred” agricultural areas it seeks, the party expects it to pull out of the talks. This would be a political disaster and would cost Abe his premiership. On the other hand, if Japan is seen in the U.S. – read the Congress – as receiving special exemptions on key items, the backlash could even jeopardize the passage of the TPP treaty.

Before his statement, the ruling LDP's panel on the TPP passed a resolution that:

-- seeks the premier's crucial decision based on a century-long nation-building plan.
-- urges maintaining tariffs on certain farm products, with rice and others in mind, as well as protection of Japan's universal health insurance system.
-- suggests Japanese negotiators should withdraw from talks if national interests are threatened.
-- notes concerns that Japan will not benefit from growth in the Asia-Pacific region if it does not take part in TPP talks.
-- calls for close communication between the government and the LDP once Japan joins the TPP talks.

Abe is operating with both party and constituent restraints. He is counting on other TPP members, including the U.S., to seek to retain vestiges of its protected trading areas in order to sell the resulting treaty to domestic constituencies and legislative bodies. Abe seems convinced that the TPP goal of 100% zero-based tariffs will have to be eased to reflect domestic political realities. He may be right; it would seem that the U.S. Congress in the end would try to keep protective tariffs on such sensitive products as sugar.

Public Gives Abe High Marks 

The general public appears to support Abe’s gamble. , In the latest opinion surveys released by three major dailies on March 18: the Asahi poll found 71% of the public giving the Prime Minister high marks for his decision to join TPP talks, and 53% would approve Japan actually joining the free trade agreement; a poll by the Yomiuri found 60% of the public supporting entry into the TPP talks, and one by the Mainichi placed such support at a lofty 63%.

Moreover, the popularity of the Abe Cabinet remains strong. The Asahi found the cabinet support rate up three points from the February survey to 63% -- a record high for it in that newspaper. The Yomiuri poll put the cabinet approval rate at a heady 72%, up slightly, and the rate soared 7 points in the Mainichi survey to 70%. For the Japanese people, already pleased with Abe’s brash economic-stimulus policies, dubbed “Abenomics”, the Prime Minister at this juncture can do no wrong.

In response to the public’s positive reaction, the LDP has turned surprisingly supportive of Abe’s TPP strategy. The party members are apparently satisfied that it will do little or no harm to lawmakers running in the Upper House this July. After all, the results of the TPP talks will not be known until around October. Abe in a meeting at LDP headquarters on March 16 asked local party officials gathered from all over the country to “place your trust in me” on TPP matters, and they seemed to agree.

The party will campaign for the July election on a platform that includes measures to bolster the agricultural sector, which is in serious decline. Party Secretary General Shigeru Ishiba added at the LDP’s plenary meeting that the party will seriously debate what to do next to rescue the farm sector and safeguard its base in the nation’s economy. Already, party officials are making the rounds of rural areas likely to be affected by TPP liberalization, to convince them that their interests will not be sacrificed.

Junjiro Koizumi, the son of former Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, who took his father’s place in the Diet, even entered the lion’s den. He visited a small island near Okinawa where the only cash crop for the 1,300 inhabitants is sugar cane. This constituency is “absolutely opposed to TPP.” The move was good publicity, producing a photo in a major magazine.

China Syndrome 

As with all of Abe’s strategies affecting external relations, there is a security aspect that even anti-TPP diehards in the LDP have had to acknowledge: the China factor. The media has already picked up this issue, with some analysts seeing Japan’s decision to enter TPP talks as a clear message to China. They say that Japan is now linked more closely to the U.S. in both security and economic terms.

The Senkaku row with China and other regional factors has drawn Japan and the U.S. closer, while the free-trade agreement can bring many other advantages, including access to cheap shale gas. And as the regional bloc grows, China will find itself increasingly left out in the cold – encircled strategically and isolated economically. The analysts note that South Korea is already showing signs of interest in joining TPP, as well, adding to the regional pool.

TPP, in the words of one analyst (Nikkei, March 17), is “a tool that has enhanced the U.S.’s political influence” in the region. There is no doubt in this analyst’s view that for China, the U.S.-Japan condominium has become a potential “major threat” to its interests. China fears that as TPP membership grows, it will see the new trade rules become the new global standard that it will eventually have to accept. Japan seems to playing this China card for all that its worth.

Prime Minister Abe said he “has been tasked” with realizing the promise of TPP’s benefits to Japan. He has also pledged to do his “best to protect Japan's agriculture and food" as it represents Japan’s tradition and culture. For now, he has the support of his party and the electorate as he tries to stitch together Japan’s various definitions of national and economic security.

By William Brooks,
APP Senior Fellow and Adjunct Professor SAIS