Japan’s Values Diplomacy Runs Aground in Myanmar

Japan’s rivalry with China reinforces Tokyo’s inclination to avert its eyes from human rights abuses, electoral fraud, corruption and suppression of fundamental freedoms. Tokyo is not opposed to liberal democracy but also not prepared to risk anything to support it.

By Jeff Kingston, FORSEA – or Forces of Renewal for Southeast Asia, February 23, 2021

Director of Asian Studies at Temple University Japan and APP member. He is author and editor of a dozen books, including Press Freedom in Japan (Routledge 2017), Japan’s Foreign Relations (2018), Japan (Polity 2019), Press Freedom in Asia (Routledge 2019) and the Politics of Religion, Nationalism and Identity in Asia (Rowman & Littlefield 2019).

The Myanmar military’s unconstitutional coup d’etat to derail democracy, and subsequent killing of peaceful pro-democracy protestors, is awkward for Japan’s so-called values diplomacy. Aside from some mild diplomatic handwringing, Tokyo has confirmed that promoting values is not a priority in Myanmar and that it is not willing to sacrifice anything to protect or promote them. Across Asia, the Japanese government has no qualms in working with whoever is in power, raising questions about whether there is any substance to its values diplomacy or if it’s merely a branding strategy. Large protests in Tokyo by Myanmarese residents seek to pressure Tokyo to side with their nation’s democratic aspirations, but the Japanese government is signaling that it will work with the junta.

Tokyo managed to get President Trump to back PM Abe’s vision of a Free and Open Indo-Pacific (FOIP) and participate in the Quad security component involving Australia, India, the US and Japan. Ostensibly, FOIP is a values-driven strategic concept aimed at containing China’s expanding regional influence. The conceit is that values matter and that by promoting democracy, freedom and human rights, FOIP stands in stark contrast to what China offers. PM Suga and President Biden have reaffirmed their support for FOIP and the Quad. Does this matter? In the case of Myanmar, not if one narrowly focuses on democracy, freedom and human rights.

On the eve of the coup, Watanabe Hideo, chairman of the Japan-Myanmar Association, visited Aung San Suu Kyi and coup leader Commander-in-Chief Min Aung Hlaing to discuss boosting Japanese investments there. Watanabe has long been the chief fixer for economic relations and has a long track record of working closely with the military. He and many in Japan are more concerned about China’s soaring influence in Myanmar and are eager to counter that through expanded economic relations. For the new junta and Tokyo, he is a key back channel for communications, but there are no signs that he promoted the democratic transition or supports efforts to reverse democratic backsliding in Myanmar. The Japanese business community sees Myanmar as the region’s most promising frontier and are there to make money regardless of the political situation.

Miyake Kuni, a foreign policy advisor to PM Suga, opposes sanctions and pressure, instead advocating persuasion. He argues that, “a simple resumption of a ‘big stick’ policy vis-a-vis Myanmar would only push the Tatmadaw back to the dark side.” Back to the dark side?! Given the scale of protests against the military coup, it’s safe to say that for the people of Myanmar the military is the dark side and the greatest threat to democracy, the rule of law and public security. Miyake wrote in the Japan Times (Feb. 4, 2021), “What is needed is a subtle and mature supervision of concerted efforts by the international community to resume talking to and eventually persuade the leaders of the Tatmadaw to change their mind.”  And how is that going to happen? The same way that Japan has maturely and subtly persuaded the Thai military to mend its ways? Or subtly used the ‘little stick’ of dialogue to nudge Cambodia’s Hun Sen towards free and fair elections?

According to Stanford University’s Daniel Sneider, a veteran Asia-hand, the Biden Administration rejects such vacuous sophistry. Writing in Tokyo Business Today (Feb 18, 2021), Sneider describes early frustrations in the Biden Administration with Japan’s opposition to sanctions and pressure on the military. Apparently, Tokyo has not been very persuasive in convincing the US to join it in abandoning democracy in Myanmar under the pretext of respecting Asian values.

Tokyo downplays human rights and democratic values in favor of maintaining trade ties and securing geo-strategic advantage. It is thus a values-free diplomacy of pragmatism and expediency, dealing with regional governments as they are, not as one might wish them to be. Japan is certainly not unique in this regard, but Abe and Suga invite scrutiny of the government’s record due to their sustained grandstanding on promoting values.

The Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) pursues a regime-compatible approach to development assistance and thus does not intervene to promote democracy, bypasses civil society and prioritizes smooth relations with recipient nations. From 2007-2016 Japan ranked 26 out of 29 donor nations in terms of its overall aid to democratization-related programs.

JICA official Shiga Hiroaki explains that, “JICA does not support democracy promotion due to an entrenched belief among officials that development aid should be apolitical.”  Japan emphasizes long-term capacity building of state institutions rather than strict adherence to the values and principles of democratic governance. He added, “For the Japanese people, the most important value is harmony, i.e. to keep harmony among community members. Freedom is also an important value but probably after harmony.” But harmony according to who?

One suspects that pro-democracy protestors in Myanmar also seek harmony, one that is based on the military respecting the NLD’s landslide victory and the constitution.

Aid without conditions is welcome by recipients, whether from China or Japan, but this means it is not being used to promote democratization or human rights. The nostrums of shared values are thus invoked by Japan like background music to establish an appealing identity and to provide useful political cover for expanding security ties with other regional governments. The main goal of brandishing democratic commonalities is not about spreading or supporting universal values but rather is to facilitate a shift in Japan’s security policies and shrug off constitutional constraints under the banner of Abe’s “proactive pacifism”.

Japanese experts confide that the impact of, “China’s foreign aid resembles that of Japan, as both emphasize noninterference and noninterventionist principles.” Containing China is more important to Japan’s leaders than expanding or defending democracy in Asia, and thus it refrains from actions that would jeopardize relations with authoritarian or illiberal governments. The crux of the problem is that Tokyo believes that its relations with undemocratic nations might be undermined to the extent that Japan insists that they embrace such values because China offers unconditional support. Thus, Japan’s rivalry with China reinforces Tokyo’s inclination to avert its eyes from human rights abuses, electoral fraud, corruption and suppression of fundamental freedoms. Tokyo is not opposed to liberal democracy but also not prepared to risk anything to support it.

Japanese politicians brandish values principally to align Japan with the US and other regional democracies. Tokyo has expanded security ties with the US, Australia and India, the so-called Quad, as part of its balance of power strategy to contain China, but position this as part of a broader agenda of advancing shared values under the banner of a Free and Open Indo-Pacific. The Japanese public has been wary of PM Abe’s agenda of boosting security alliances and easing constitutional constraints on Japan’s armed forces so emphasizing the shared values of a concert of democracies has provided useful political cover.

Even among the ruling elite, there is unhappiness with the government’s hypocrisy. In mid-2020 LDP conservatives condemned Abe’s ‘weak-kneed’ response to China’s curtailing of Hong Kong’s autonomy and crackdown on pro-democracy activists. As in the cases of Tibet and the jailing of over one million Uighurs, Abe didn’t champion the values he preached.  In response to democratic backsliding across Asia, Abe and Suga have remained silent and they have cozied up to human rights suppressing strongmen like Rodrigo Duterte, Hun Sen and Narendra Modi. One wonders what values Japan’s ambassador to Myanmar was promoting as a leading apologist for the military’s expulsions of ethnic Rohingya? That effort should stand Japan in good stead with the new junta, but one has to be incredibly naïve to imagine that Tokyo can persuade Tatmadaw to change its mind. Like Tokyo, the junta is hoping to resume business as usual, but popular discontent and civil disobedience render this wishful thinking. The genie of democracy is out of the bottle.

The emboldened nationalism of Japan and Korea

Will he or won't he

Is There Any End To The Japan-ROK Dispute? The Strategic Choices Being Made

Comparable to the deep freeze after then-prime minister Koizumi visited Yasukuni Shrine

By Dan Sneider, Stanford University lecturer, Asia Policy Point member, and associate editor of Washington’s Nelson Report, in which this article originally appeared on August 8, 2019 as well as in the Asia Times.

The accounts of the deepening disconnect between Japan and South Korea that are now making their way into the pages of major media actually underplay the destructive character of this current crisis. And they fail to explore the strategic choices being made, almost unconsciously, by the leadership in both countries.

The atmosphere in South Korea is particularly poisonous, egged on by the Moon Jae-in administration. The Korean media is filled with accounts of Japanese perfidy, fed by continuous commentary to the same effect from the government. Earlier this week, for example, the lead evening news broadcast on the Korean Broadcasting System (KBS), the flagship TV network, spent the first 20 minutes focused entirely on Japan.

There is a widening movement to boycott Japanese goods that is already hurting sales of everything from beer to cars. Even conservative media that are somewhat critical of Moon’s handling of relations join in the broad narrative that paints all the current woes as the product of a dangerous nationalist Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who is unrepentant about Japan’s colonial and wartime past.

Japanese media are far less breathless but the anti-Korean mood in Japan is undeniable. Opinion polls show about two thirds of Japanese back the tough response to Korea in the form of imposition of tighter controls on exports. While the liberal media call for restraint by Abe and tend to blame both sides for the crisis, conservative media and politicians are now happy to point fingers at the unreliable and provocative Koreans, urging the government to hold to an uncompromising position.

There are small signs that both sides may want to limit the damage being done, particularly in the economic realm. Japan’s trade minister Hiroshige Seko told reporters on Thursday that the government has granted permission for semiconductor materials to be exported for the first time since tightened controls were imposed last month.

In Seoul, Moon seemed to back off from his provocative suggestion that South Korea could compensate for the damage to the economy from the trade war with Japan by improving ties with the North. “In the end, it’s a game without any winner, in which everyone, including Japan, becomes a victim,” he told a meeting of economic advisers. The foreign ministers of both countries are now scheduled to meet again soon.

‘Far enough’

“I get the sense that both sides are trying to signal each other that things have gone far enough and that it’s time to try to stop making things worse,” says Evans Revere, former US principal deputy assistant secretary of state for East Asia and the Pacific.

“Moon’s acknowledgement that both sides are being hurt, the fact that the ROK has not implemented their threat to take Japan off Korea’s white list, Japan’s decision to allow the export of sensitive materials to Korea under the new export review process and Abe’s call for Seoul to adhere to the 1965 normalization agreement seem to suggest that, at a minimum, the two sides are not threatening each other with new actions,” Revere says.

Other American analysts hope that the Japanese moves on export controls have a narrow intent. “The Japanese government doesn’t necessarily want to prevent trade with South Korea or prevent its companies from doing business with ROK firms, but Tokyo did want some additional control over the process,” says James Schoff of the Carnegie Endowment.

“The Abe administration wanted to downgrade South Korea’s ‘status’ as a partner in some way, to express its displeasure with a variety of moves the Moon government has made in the past year or two,” Schoff adds. “At a basic level I think Abe & Co simply don’t believe that South Korea belongs on a special list of its most trusted partners, and this is a way to make that point.”

This could be, as even both Schoff and Revere acknowledge, an overly optimistic reading. There are ample opportunities to escalate tensions. The Koreans are contemplating whether or not to renew the GSOMIA defense intelligence sharing agreement. Talking to reporters yesterday (August 7), Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga pointedly did not rule out a decision by Abe to visit the controversial Yasukuni Shrine to Japan’s war dead on August 15, the anniversary of the end of World War II.

If both sides refrain from taking further steps, that could at least limit the descent into full-scale conflict for now. “Both sides do not want to make things worse but neither side intends to take any action to improve the situation,” a well-informed Japanese analyst told me. “My guess is that the situation will be frozen at this current level of hostility for the time being.”

Strategic choices

The frozen nature of this conflict reflects underlying strategic choices that both Moon and Abe have made and which will continue to drive them apart. And more deeply, it is a consequence of the dramatic shift of American foreign policy under the nationalist Trump regime.

President Moon and his progressive government are clearly focused on inter-Korean integration over all other relations, and in that context playing the card of anti-Japanese nationalism serves to bind the two Koreas together. The opening created by President Trump’s diplomacy with North Korea is a historic opportunity that has “emboldened and tempted South Korean President Moon Jae-in to prioritize his inter-Korean agenda over ties with the US and Japan,” former Japanese senior diplomat Kuni Miyake wrote this week [in the Japan Times].

For the Japanese government, the rising threat from China has prompted two seemingly conflicting strategic decisions – to rely even more on the security alliance with the US, despite Trump’s disdain for alliances, and to calm, if not improve, relations with China. In that context, advisors to the prime minister see South Korea, particularly under the Moon administration, as almost irrelevant to Japanese foreign policy.

“About five years ago, when Abe was still fresh in his new administration, he told one of my colleagues that he intends to do something to improve the relationship with Beijing and also that, regarding Seoul, he will simply ignore it,” a senior Japanese editor at a major daily newspaper told me. “In Abe’s mind, China is important enough to invest political capital but Seoul is nothing but a pain in the ass that could harm his image as right-wing leader.”

The attitude of benign neglect toward Seoul prevailed even while Moon moved to dump the 2015 agreement to settle the comfort women issue, reached with the previous conservative Korean government of Park Geun-hye. But the escalations over the forced labor issue forced a harsher response.

“Abe has stepped into a new territory where the South Korea issue has become a high stakes game of either big loss or big win to keep his approval rate high,” the Japanese editor said. “All polls indicate that surprisingly a majority of Japanese people support this bullying action to Seoul and, if Abe puts down his fist without clear sign of win, he will lose too much.”

This is comparable to the period when former prime minister Junichiro Koizumi visited the Yasukuni Shrine, sending relations with China and South Korea into the deep freeze. As happened in that case, it may take the end of both Japanese and Korean governments to reverse the situation.
Political calculation

“Abe has made the political calculation to address the new reality by maintaining a relationship with both Washington and Beijing, and at the same time managing his political base by playing tough against Seoul, but it is far from a reasoned strategy,” observes the veteran Japanese journalist. “Abe’s ultimate goal is to stay in power as long as possible, not to maximize the future interest of Japan by sensible diplomacy. Politicians are all prisoners of domestic populism lately and they are fanning populism to appeal to the fragmented sentiments of voters. Abe and Moon are sadly among them.”

This is clearly shaped by the America First stance of the Trump regime. Hopes that the US might intervene effectively to try to bring a halt to the spiraling dispute between its two main security allies in East Asia have proven exaggerated. While senior officials seemed prepared to push both sides toward a ceasefire, instead the messaging from those above them – from national security adviser John Bolton, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Defense Secretary Mark Esper (now in the region) and the president himself – has communicated very different priorities.

Trump wants to pick a fight about how much money South Korea and Japan will contribute to cost-sharing arrangements for US forces based in both countries. Bolton, Pompeo and Esper are eager to drag both countries into the so-called coalition of the willing in the Persian Gulf against Iran. Both countries, especially Japan, are resistant to that siren song. And now there is even a push to deploy ground-based cruise missiles aimed at China – to which there is even greater opposition.

On top of this, there is Trump’s almost casual acceptance of the legitimacy of a string of tests by North Korea of shorter-range ballistic missiles that pose a clear threat to both South Korea and Japan. “His virtual blessing for short-range ballistic missile tests is telling his allies, South Korea and Japan, and American soldiers and expatriates that they are dispensable,” wrote Duyeon Kim in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists. “This message reinforces existing security concerns in South Korea and Japan that Washington may not defend its Asian allies at critical moments, especially if US territory becomes vulnerable to a North Korean nuclear attack.”

That effectively renders useless the calls from US officials for Japan, South Korea and the United States to focus on shared security interests such as North Korea and China. Still Abe is compelled to claim success in managing the alliance with the US.

“For Mr Abe, the cordial relationship with Mr Trump is very comforting and has become an objective in itself,” a former senior Japanese foreign ministry official and adviser to prime ministers told me. “But the relationship has not been translated into deeds that benefit Japan. In fact, Abe faces horrendous demands from an unbridled Trump, who has lost sensible advisers like [former Defense Secretary James] Mattis, such as transforming the US troops into mercenaries of Japan.” The former official added that “Japan’s host nation support is already covering 75% of the necessary cost, but Trump wants Japan to pay five times as much.”

Abe is protected from the political consequences for now by the weakness of the opposition within Japan and the lack of any serious challengers from inside the ruling conservative party. Increasingly, though, he is relying on his form of nationalism, a path already taken by Moon. “The ‘Me First’ movement is contagious,” the former senior official concluded with some sadness, “grappling hold of even a docile and inactive nation like Japan.”

Abe's history committee defuses responsbility

Commission impossible for Abe’s foreign policy

By Michael Cucek, Temple University Japan

Originally published in East Asia Forum, 3 March 2015


On 25 February, Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe convened the first meeting of a new special advisory council, the Commission on a Framework for the 21st Century. The rather ambiguously and grandiosely named council is to meet with him over the coming months, presenting the results of their deliberations on five topics. The prime minister will presumably include the gist of the commission’s recommendations in his Prime Minister’s Statement to be delivered on August 15, the 70th anniversary of Japan’s acceptance of the terms of the Potsdam Declaration, the act ending the combat phase of World War II.

The first topic the commission will address is how Japan should view its and the world’s courses through the 20th century, and what lessons may be drawn from them. Second, what path has Japan trod in the 70 years since the end of World War II, and to what extent have Japan’s pacifism, economic development and contributions to the international community have been appreciated? Third, what path has Japan traveled in regards to reconciliation, first with the US, Australia and Europe but especially with China, South Korea and the rest of Asia? Fourth, what should Japan’s vision for relations in the 21st century be? Finally, what specific measures should Japan undertake 70 years into the post-war period.

The membership of the commission is top notch: 16 of the most influential and recognizable senior commentators and reporters on foreign policy, diplomacy and international image management. The council’s president Taizo Nishimuro is the eldest at 79. He is Chairman of Japan Post and former chairman of both Toshiba Corp and the Tokyo Stock Exchange. His presence provides the council with actual personal memory of the war and its end. Rumiko Seya, the director of the Japan Center for Conflict Prevention, is the youngest at 38. Most of the members of the commission are in their late 60s, meaning that while they have no direct experience of the war, their lives span both Japan’s rise to global economic power and its decades of struggle and relative decline since the collapse of the asset price bubble.

Some reports have incorrectly characterized the commission as composed mostly of academics. Though many of the members currently use academic titles, many are not university scholars. Professionally the commission’s membership is quite varied. Mitsubishi Corporation Chairman Yorihiko Kojima stands at the pinnacle of traditional Japan Inc. corporate culture [Company frequently sued for slave and forced labor claims during the war]. Globis Capital Partners president Yoshito Hori represents Japan’s young, entrepreneurial business class. Yukio Okamoto (for whom the author used to work) and Kunihiko Miyake are former career diplomats. Keiko Iizuka and Takao Yamada are senior journalists, hailing from two news organizations one of which is the most supportive (Yomiuri Shimbun) and the other the most critical (Mainichi Shimbun) of the Abe administration.

Politically, the council can be characterized as moderate-right in orientation. Terumasa Nakanishi of Kyoto University is the one hardliner on the commission. His presence is more than balanced though by the presence and authority of Nishimuro, who serves as the president of the New China-Japan Friendship Committee of the 21st Century. Nishimuro is one of the few members of the elite who have close relations with the leaders of China. Most of the membership of the council would be best called conservative, both in the sense of advocating for greater legalization of the SDF’s use of military force in line with international norms and in wanting those changes to be incremental and not disruptive to the peace in East Asia.

Nishimuro will be a formidable chairman. But the power to shape consensus within the commission will have to be shared with his deputy, Shinichi Kitaoka. Kitaoka, the president of the International University of Japan and the former Japan chair of the Japan–China History Research Committee is a long-time close Abe confidant. He served as deputy chairman of the Advisory Panel on Reconstruction of the Legal Basis for Security, the council that gave the Abe administration the intellectual argument for the constitutionality of Japan engaging in limited collective self-defense operations. He will likely play a highly influential role on the commission.

Most of the members — with the exception of Nishimuro, Iizuka and Seya — have long been part of Prime Minister Abe’s network of advisers. Miyake, a fluent speaker of Arabic, Chinese and English, is often treated by the media as the prime minister’s private spokesman on security and international affairs.

That such talent is so close to the prime minister should be a cause for celebration. But it could well be wasted. Abe has managed in the past to consult with wise persons, weigh their advice and then go on to do what he wanted to do as if he had never talked to anyone at all — his 26 December 2013 visit to Yasukuni Shrine being the most glaring example of his stubborn self-direction.

Furthermore, the sheer mass of talent and attention being brought to bear upon the Prime Minister’s Statement on the 70th Anniversary is many orders of magnitude greater than what is necessary. If Abe wanted to please the US government and satisfy the governments of China and South Korea, all he would have to do is reissue the 1995 Statement of Prime Minister Tomiichi Murayama on the 50th anniversary of the end of World War II. That he has inaugurated a commission to supplement his own statement is evidence he does not intend to follow in the path to reconciliation mapped out by the Murayama Statement.

Unfortunately for Abe, the members of the commission and the citizenry of Japan, the Murayama Statement is the minimum standard expected by the governments of the US, China and South Korea. If, after the deployment of all the experience and knowledge of the commission, Abe fails to hit the expected notes and to transcend the Murayama Statement, the letdown felt by those governments, and the damage done to Japan’s international stature, will be all the greater.

The prudent course for Abe would have been to discourage the build-up of expectations for his statement, to work through the normal diplomatic and bureaucratic channels in its production and forget about the text immediately after reading it. As of 25 February, that humble, cautious path is closed.

Michael Cucek is an Adjunct Fellow at the Institute of Contemporary Asian Studies, Temple University, Japan. He was formerly a senior research analyst at Okamoto Associates Inc, a consulting firm led by commission member Yukio Okamoto. He is an APP member