Shuffling districts?

At a press conference Wednesday at DPJ headquarters, Ozawa Ichiro hinted at the possibility that he, along with several other prominent figures from the DPJ and other opposition parties, will change districts in the next general election to campaign against governing coalition heavyweights holding seats in Tokyo.

Asahi suggests that if Mr. Ozawa makes the jump from his home district of Iwate-4, he would run in Tokyo-12 against Komeito's Ota Akihiro, who has only ran in Tokyo-12 twice, first in 2003 by a 3,600-vote margin and again in 2005, by a 36,000-vote margin. With Komeito vulnerable, especially after the party's disastrous showing in the 2007 HC election, in which only nine of twenty-four Komeito candidates won, the party's lowest "batting average" in an HC election since 1974, a victory by Mr. Ozawa over the party's leader could be the symbol of Komeito's demise.

The opposition might also have Tanaka Yasuo, former maverick Nagano governor and current HC member from Nagano as a representative of his own New Party Japan (NPJ) run in Tokyo's eighth district against the LDP's Ishihara Nobuteru, former cabinet minister and potential contender for the premiership in the future. Hatoyama Yukio and Okada Katsuya have also been mentioned as possible DPJ "assassins."

There are some who doubt the wisdom of Mr. Ozawa's scheme, however; Asahi notes that some DPJ members are concerned that if Mr. Ozawa has to focus on campaigning in a new district and defeating a prominent foe, he will not be able to travel the country on behalf of DPJ candidates.

I wonder whether this proposal isn't indicative of (over)confidence on Mr. Ozawa's part, so sure is he that not only will the DPJ be able to sweep the LDP out of Tokyo by parachuting heavyweights into Tokyo districts but that second-tier DPJ candidates will be able to retain seats vacated by said heavyweights. Maybe his overconfidence is merited, particularly in regard to his home district in Iwate (AKA Ozawa's kingdom). Maybe the DPJ stands on the brink of a major victory in the next general election. There are certainly signs that suggest that a tipping point has been reached in the public's tolerance for the LDP's policy failures; maybe the Japanese people are finally ready to punish the LDP in a general election and vote for any candidate with "DPJ" next to his or her name. But if that's not the case, this strategy could backfire by forcing formerly secure, heavyweight incumbents to campaign hard for seats while throwing their formerly safe seats open to competition.

In an election that could result in a hung parliament, all 300 single-member districts matter. The DPJ must think hard about whether Mr. Ozawa's suggestion maximizes the party's ability to fight across the country. Will the party be better off leaving Mr. Ozawa and other leaders in safe districts, enabling them to campaign harder for weaker candidates?

Bait and switch

The HR passed the road construction bill a second time on Tuesday afternoon, as scheduled. Despite rumors to the contrary, there was no rebellion. Kono Taro and his comrades voted with the government, in the process illustrating why the much-anticipated political realignment has yet to occur: for all the discontent voiced by backbenchers about the leadership of both the LDP and the DPJ, they remain reluctant to bear the risks associated with bucking the party leadership and possibly leaving the party.

Mr. Kono and other reformists are still threatening to fight for the party to adopt the prime minister's plan to phase out the road construction fund from 2009, but after caving on the road construction plan Tuesday, will their concerns be taken seriously in the coming months? As Mainichi reports, despite remaining silent in the face of the cabinet decision supporting Mr. Fukuda's plan, the road tribe remains ready to fight to preserve its privileges. The road tribesmen will instead focus their efforts on the year-end budget proposal, a sound strategy considering that Mr. Fukuda will likely be gone by then, leaving the reformists to fight on alone.

Even with Mr. Fukuda as premier the tribesmen have important allies within the party for their campaign to derail the reform: local and prefectural politicians, who will undoubtedly remind their patrons in Tokyo that their communities need the road fund and suggest that if Mr. Fukuda's plan goes forward, they cannot guarantee that the LDP will get favorable returns in the next general election. Whether such a threat is credible is not the issue — if the LDP leadership becomes convinced that ending the special fund truly alienates the party from its supposed base, that will be enough to ensure that the reform plan gets watered down to the point of irrelevance. The head of the national mayors association has already criticized the plan, no doubt the first of many such comments to come from local politicians.

In short, the LDP, already concerned that its rural base could desert the party in a general election, will not follow through on Mr. Fukuda's proposal, a classic bait and switch.

And so the LDP's death throes will continue, as the LDP can no longer rely on the two methods that had extended its life in the past: opportunistic policy shifts (like this, for example) and "divide-and-rule." (These arguments are made by Ito Atsuo in a Chuo Koron article to which I linked above.) Regarding the former, not only has the LDP calcified ideologically, but its reformist members, who want to change the party's policies, find it nearly impossible to overcome the opposition of older members who desperately cling to their remaining privileges. What do the latter have to lose in resisting reform tooth-and-nail? The party is in no position to punish them, Mr. Koizumi's 2005 purge notwithstanding. Mr. Koizumi's purge of postal rebels — so objectionable to many LDP members, judging by the return of most of the rebels to the LDP — was clearly an aberration.

As for the latter, the LDP's bid to divide and co-opt the opposition by offering a grand coalition to the DPJ clearly failed and if anything united the DPJ in its opposition to the government. This scheme may have temporarily created turmoil within the DPJ by intensifying dissatisfaction with Ozawa Ichiro's leadership, but Mr. Ozawa appears to have quelled most of the resistance to his leadership. The LDP continues to hope that Mr. Ozawa will face a serious challenge in the September party leadership election but the threat to Mr. Ozawa may be overstated. A reformist like Maehara Seiji or Okada Katsuya, both former party leaders, may ultimately stand against Mr. Ozawa, but it is unlikely that the bulk of the party will abandon Mr. Ozawa for either man.

Meanwhile, the depth of the LDP's desperation is revealed in its hope for an incapacitated DPJ.

Realignment scenarios

After months of talking about forming a new party, Hiranuma Takeo, a leading LDP postal rebel who spurned LDP efforts to bring him back into the party during the Abe era, may finally be taking steps to create a new conservative party that may yet be a fly in the LDP's ointment.

Mr. Hiranuma has reportedly been in talks with other former LDP members — "independent conservatives" — to form a new study group. Partners in this endeavor include Watanuki Tamisuke, leader of the PNP; Kamei Shizuka, the PNP's secretary-general; Suzuki Muneo, the disgraced (and indicted) former LDP member, partner-in-corruption of the late Matsuoka Toshikatsu, and representative of his own Hokkaido-based New Party Big Earth; and Nakamura Kishiro, construction minister in the Miyazawa cabinet who was subsequently left the LDP, was arrested and charged with influence peddling in 1994, continued to win elections and serve as an independent HR member until 2003, when the Supreme Court rejected his final appeal and promptly stripped him of his seat and sent him to prison until 2004 when he was paroled (he won his seat back in the 2005 election).

These LDP castaways agreed to take a confrontational stance towards the "Fukuda cabinet's policy line," suggesting that this PNP+ grouping could be the beginning of Mr. Hiranuma's new party, throwing a wrinkle into a political realignment.

Or will it? While Mr. Hiranuma clearly has links to Nakagawa Shoichi and other conservative ideologues in the LDP, it is not at all clear that Mr. Hiranuma will be able to entice them to join his party, considering the ragtag group he has assembled around him. That won't stop the DPJ from looking to bolster Mr. Hiranuma's party in the hope that it will break the LDP. On Monday, Hatoyama Yukio, the DPJ's secretary-general, greeted the news of Mr. Hiranuma's group by calling for cooperation. I hope cooperation goes no further. For all Mr. Hiranuma's anti-LDP posturing, I suspect that his tune would change were Aso Taro elected as leader, suggesting that this gambit may be less an effort to create a third pole in the political system than to improve the terms for Mr. Hiranuma's eventual reunion with the LDP. Ibuki Bunmei, LDP secretary-general, has already come calling.

Mr. Hiranuma cannot possibly think that his party could become a significant third force in Japanese politics. Considering that it would be little different from the PNP, which has elected a grand total of eight representatives (four HR, four HC), why should anyone expect the Hiranuma new party to be anything but a guppy? Obviously that would change if the LDP's conservative wing were to leave the party en masse and join with Mr. Hiranuma, but at that point it would no longer be the Hiranuma new party but the Hiranuma-Abe-Nakagawa-Aso true conservative party, with the "H" increasingly pushed to the side.

The Japanese political system might have room for a third, swing party between two big parties, but I doubt that the swing party will have the ideological coloration of the Hiranuma new party.

The prospect of a Koizumi new party remains, to me, the more intriguing possibility. An article in the June issue of Bungei Shunjyu suggests (in part one) that Mr. Koizumi views the present crisis — a natural outgrowth of his ransacking of the LDP — as an opportunity to build a new political system, with Koike Yuriko acting as his stalking horse.

Another scenario discussed in the latter portion of the article is a bid by Ozawa Ichiro to pry the LDP's liberals away, similar to his failed attempt in 1994 to pry Watanabe Michio and his followers away from the LDP by promising Mr. Watanabe the premiership. The target for Mr. Ozawa's efforts supposedly is Kato Koichi, the once-promising liberal, although it is unlikely that the has-been Mr. Kato could bring significant numbers of LDP members with him.

Nevertheless, if the conservatives retake control of the LDP under Mr. Aso and reunite with Mr. Hiranuma, that alliance could prove fatal for the LDP, as the readmission of Mr. Hiranuma and the other postal rebels could lead Mr. Koizumi and his followers out of the party, perhaps prompting liberals unconnected to Mr. Koizumi to leave too and drift towards the DPJ.

But I still suspect that nothing will happen until after the next general election. Until an election is held, no group knows just how valuable its hand is. The size of the LDP's majority — if it retains a majority — will make all the difference when it comes to potential separatists considering whether to split (the same logic applies to Komeito's partnership with the LDP). The larger the majority, the stronger the LDP will be respective to potential splinter groups. Should the DPJ have a strong showing that puts it within striking distance of a majority, however, there will be a brutal war for the loyalty of possible defectors and Komeito (the latter especially in the event that the governing coalition retains a majority, but not the LDP independently).

The second override

The House of Councillors voted yesterday to reject the ten-year road construction plan passed by the House of Representatives in March. The bill was defeated 108 to 126, with DPJ (proportional representation) members Oe Yasuhiro and Watanabe Hideo rebelling against the party leadership to support the bill, and Kimata Yoshitake (Aichi) and Hironaka Wakako (Chiba) abstaining from the vote. The PNP's four members, who caucus with the DPJ, also abstained from the vote.

The Fukuda government plans to bring the bill to a second vote in the HR Tuesday afternoon.

Tuesday morning the government plans to secure a cabinet decision on Mr. Fukuda's plan to phase out the special road construction fund, a precondition for forestalling a rebellion by Kono Taro and his band of reformists. The path to a cabinet decision has been tortuous, as reported by Mainichi. Until the LDP's defeat in the Yamaguchi-2 by-election, the government's policy was to wait until after passing the road construction plan a second time before securing a cabinet decision on the Fukuda plan. Taking the threat of rebellion seriously, the government has changed tacked, and, consistent with the Fukuda government's poor sense of timing, has put off securing a cabinet decision until Tuesday.

Presumably that will ensure that Mr. Kono and his comrades will vote with the government in the afternoon. Yamamoto Ichita anticipates that not even one will defect. He argues, however, that the real battle is yet to come. A cabinet decision is not enough; the reformists will have to fight within the LDP to ensure that the party embraces the prime minister's plan.

Assuming that the road construction plan passes Tuesday afternoon, an extra ten years of road construction funded by the special road construction fund will be law — and Mr. Fukuda's plan still just words.

Erratum?

A reader informs me that the pictures mentioned in this post are most likely not pictures of the aftermath of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, but are instead pictures of the aftermath of the Great Kanto earthquake of 1923.

No less moving, in light of today's news.

Fear and loathing in the wake of Hu's visit

As Jun Okumura notes, a poll by Fuji TV's Hodo 2001 program found that Fukuda Yasuo gained nothing from Chinese President Hu Jintao's visit to Japan last week.

The poll recorded that nearly sixty percent of respondents disapprove of Mr. Fukuda's China policy.

Beyond public doubts, Mr. Fukuda's action (or inaction) during Mr. Hu's visit have driven conservative commentators into paroxysms of rage over Mr. Fukuda's supposed pusillanimity in the face of Chinese outrages, especially poisoned gyoza and human rights violations in Tibet.

In Shukan Shincho, Sakurai Yoshiko vented her spleen about the visit, arguing that Mr. Fukuda failed to defend Japan's national interests in his meetings with Mr. Hu.

She claims that Fukuda pere et fils have worked on behalf of China to the detriment of Japan, Takeo for consenting to a friendship treaty that "ignored national interests" and contributing to the expansion of the Chinese military by providing ODA, Yasuo for his failure to address the East China Sea dispute and for offering technological assistance on environmental grounds. To Ms. Sakurai, the Fukudas are traitors, "injuring Japan's national interests and betraying the people."

She also criticized Prime Minister Fukuda for calling the Tibet problem an internal problem, even as other world leaders have criticized China and threatened to stay away from the Beijing Olympics. (Of course, when foreign governments criticize Japan for one reason or another — take the comfort women issue, for example — that is a grave offense against Japan for commentators like Ms. Sakurai.) She also attacks Mr. Fukuda for opposing independence for Taiwan.

Komori Yoshihisa, Ms. Sakurai's ideological compatriot, also condemned Mr. Fukuda in the strongest possible terms at his blog. Examining the joint statement, he observes that the statement fails to include the words "democracy," "human rights," and "liberty," while using words like "cooperation," "peace," "mutual," and "friendship" numerous times. Mr. Komori attacks the Fukuda-Hu meetings on the basis of Mr. Fukuda's failure to defend the aforementioned universal values.

I have a particular problem with Ms. Sakurai's casual invocation of the phrase "national interest." She uses the phrase as if its meaning is commonly understood, self-evident to one and all. In no country is that the case. Ms. Sakurai has one vision of the national interest, one that views cordial relations with Japan's rapidly growing neighbor and largest trading partner as not in Japan's interest, and Mr. Fukuda has another, one that recognizes that Japan cannot afford to neglect China, even if pursuing a constructive relationship entails muting criticism of China's human rights record, among other things, and prioritizing process over substance. If there is a problem with Mr. Fukuda's approach is that he has failed to make the case for why Japan needs a constructive relationship and why it cannot adopt the conservative approach to China that entails little more than criticizing China for its failings. As I've noted before, the conservative vision of China policy is not a strategy. They offer no constructive, long-term ideas of how Japan can co-exist with a growing China. Their China policy is nothing but rage, rage that has become especially potent since their ideas get little reception at the center of power.

But because there are so few voices in the Japanese media capable of countering the arguments made by conservatives, their rage resonates, stoking public fears about a menacing China.

What choice does Japan have? Antagonizing China is a dead end for a depopulating, stagnant Japan whose regional and global influence is dwindling. The opposite of antagonism isn't surrender. It is prudent policy for Japan to construct a framework for Sino-Japanese relations within which the two countries can make steady progress on solving bilateral issues and ratchet down the hatreds and fears of the Japanese and Chinese peoples. Japan (and other developed countries) shouldn't totally ignore human rights issues, but, as William Schultz argues, they should be realistic about what pressuring China on human rights can actually achieve. In focusing on cooperative mechanisms and not mentioning the history issue — which, as Mainichi notes, did not go unnoticed by the Chinese people — Mr. Hu indicated that he acknowledges the value in a stable relationship. Mr. Fukuda clearly shares his vision. But can he convince the Japanese public of the wisdom in his approach?

Boldly going where Japan has never gone before

Thanks to an agreement between the LDP, the DPJ, and Komeito, on Friday the HR's Cabinet committee passed a bill that revises Japanese space policy, lifting the 1969 ban on the military use of space. The bill, expected to pass the HR on Tuesday, will create a NASA-style agency attached to the cabinet as a modification of JAXA. As Asahi reports, the bill will also permit Japan to deploy higher resolution spy satellites (Japan is currently limited to commercial-grade satellites).

After passing the HR this coming week, the bill will pass to the HC, where it is expected to pass, although it is worth noting that on this issue, as on other defense issues, there are dissenting opinions within the DPJ, including (I would suspect) members from the party's left-wing-heavy HC caucus.

There are a few relevant questions about this bill.

First, why is the DPJ signing on to this initiative? I suspect that the DPJ is inclined to support this because it gives Japan military capability independent of the US. With higher resolution satellites, Japan would be that much less reliant on the US for information in the event of a crisis (say, a missile launch from North Korea). With the DPJ interested in more autonomy, it is little surprise that the party supports the development of more advanced Japanese space assets.

Second, why now? Is this just another step in Japan's "Sputnik moment," the prolonged reaction to North Korea's 1998 Taepodong launch?

May contribution to FEER Forum

You can find my latest contribution to FEER Forum here, discussing the impending demise of the Fukuda government.

Mr. Hu's relentlessly upbeat visit

Chinese President Hu Jintao will leave Japan Saturday after a five-day visit, a visit that the Chinese Communist Party's external relations bureau has described as a "great success."

(Photo from the Office of the Prime Minister)

It is hard to dispute that, as far as symbolism goes, the visit was indeed a success. Mr. Hu and Prime Minister Fukuda Yasuo showed that the relationship is on an even keel, and Mr. Hu, by staying longer in Japan than in any other country (a meaningful statement considering his relentless globe trotting), showed Japan that China still finds value in a close relationship with its wealthier (for now) neighbor. The two leaders reaffirmed the "strategic, reciprocal relationship" approach to Sino-Japanese relations developed during Abe Shinzo's premiership.

In a joint statement, the two leaders agreed to a five-point program to enhance peaceful cooperation between Japan and China: (1) political confidence-building measures, including annual summits between heads of state and government, exchanges between parties and legislatures, and high-level visits and talks in the security realm; (2) cultural and personal exchanges; (3) reciprocal cooperation in the areas of energy and the environment, trade, finance, investment, and other economic sectors, continuation of the high-level economic dialog, and making the East China Sea a sea of "peace, cooperation, and friendship;" (4) cooperation in East Asia, including a commitment to the six-party process, with China welcoming normalization of Japanese-North Korea relations following resolution of "various problems," and the realization of an East Asian region grounded in openness, transparency, and inclusiveness; and (5) cooperation to resolve global problems and combat global warming, energy shortages, and infectious diseases (for China this latter effort starts at home).

As one might expect, there is little of substance in the joint agreement. MOFA has provided a list of concrete steps that will be taken in the coming months, but for the most part these are limited to scheduled summit meetings, visits, and exchanges. I'm certainly not complaining about that — the more interaction between the two governments and peoples, the better — but this week's summitry was more about "agreeing to pursue agreement" and establishing a new framework for Sino-Japanese relations than reaching substantive agreement on the real issues that haunt the bilateral agenda.

Reading the transcript of the joint press conference with Mr. Hu and Mr. Fukuda held on Wednesday, it is clear that both governments worked hard to keep the tone positive. The only reference to bilateral history was Mr. Hu's noting that "there are more than 2,000 years of history of friendly interaction between the peoples of Japan and China." The prevailing, tacit agreement in Sino-Japanese — and now, under President Lee Myung-bak, Japanese-South Korean — relations seems to be that all governments concerned will follow the Basil Fawlty line: "Don't mention the war." Unpleasantness over Tibet and poisoned gyoza was dispatched with ease in questioning; indeed, Mr. Hu, questioned about discussions with the Dalai Lama's representatives before the summit, drew a hard line, stating that it is now the responsibility of the Dalai Lama's "side" to forswear violence, separatist activities, and efforts to wreck the Olympics. The two leaders remained focused largely on enhanced political and economic times.

It is worth noting the difference in Japanese and Chinese visions. Mr. Fukuda spoke largely of the bilateral relationship; Mr. Hu spoke of the bilateral relationship, but embedded it in a regional and global context. In his remarks at the press conference, Mr. Hu spoke frequently of mechanisms for bilateral and regional cooperations. Wannabe dragon slayers may think that talk by Chinese officials about multilateral cooperation is a ploy to disarm potential enemies, but I think that may be overly cynical. China clearly recognizes the value of regional institutions, even with Japanese involvement (that might dilute China's power within said institutions). Judging by this summit, there is an appreciation in Beijing that it is better to placate Japan and have it play a constructive role in the region than to have an embittered Japan drawn to fantasies of containing China. The China on display at the joint press conference was a confident regional leader dedicated to creating a new East Asian order — hence there was no mention of the US (or Taiwan) by either leader.

There is nothing the US can or should do about this: Japan needs stable, cordial relations with both the US and China. Indeed, perhaps the more Japan undertakes initiatives outside the US-Japan alliance, the healthier the alliance will become, as Japan will feel less obligated to do Washington's bidding for lack of other options.

The question now is whether this approach is sustainable within Japan. For months now, the LDP's ideological conservatives and their allies in the media have been hammering Mr. Fukuda for being soft on China, especially in regard to Tibet and the poisoned gyoza issue. The "True Conservative Policy Research Group," the seat of the conservative ideologues within the LDP, has been particularly relentless in its criticism of Mr. Fukuda.

In a Mainichi article reviewing the group's opposition to Mr. Fukuda's China policy, one member is quoted as saying, "China policy will be one important theme in the next party president election. If Mr. Aso enters the presidential election, most of the members will shift their support to him." This last line is not particularly surprising — I've assumed from the beginning that Nakagawa Shoichi's study group is at least in part a committee to elect Aso Taro — but this article as a whole shows that the conservative approach to China remains bankrupt. The conservatives still have nothing constructive to offer. They would still rather harangue China for its failings than outline a way forward.

While Mr. Abe's overtures to China suggest that a conservative prime minister can still pursue a positive relationship with China, I fear that an Aso government — particularly an Aso government accompanied by a McCain administration calling for a League of Nations Democracies — would be considerably less forward-looking in its China policy. Mr. Aso might not necessarily return Sino-Japanese relations to the Koizumi-era deep freeze, although a glance at this speech he gave in 2006 on Yasukuni, in which he fails to mention the enshrined Class-A war criminals, suggests that Mr. Aso might have a devastating impact on the latest Sino-Japanese rapprochement; Mr. Aso and his comrades will most likely not embrace the Fawlty line. With Mr. Fukuda enfeebled and Mr. Aso positioning himself to take the premiership, there may yet be bumps ahead, sooner rather than later.

That said, I suspect that over the long term, the ability of China hawks in both Japan and the US to freeze or rollback cooperative ventures with China will be limited, provided that Beijing continues to talk about cooperative mechanisms and regional order. The challenge is making it to the long term with the least amount of backsliding due to agitation by conservatives.

UPDATE: Perhaps as part of the ongoing process of reinventing himself, Mr. Aso praised the talks as being effective on the tainted gyoza problem.

The US in Asia and the world

Princeton's G. John Ikenberry has a long guest post at the Washington Note addressing Kishore Mahbubani's arguments in The New Asian Hemisphere: The Irresistible Shift of Global Power to the East. Not having read Mr. Mahbubani's book yet, I can't speak directly to his argument, but I do want to address the points raised by Professor Ikenberry.

The crux of Professor Ikenberry's argument is that the rise of Asia does not necessarily mean the decline of the West, or, more specifically, the decline of the US. He does not deny Asia's growing influence, but he suggests that while power is flowing Asia's way, the Asian powers have not proposed new organizing principles for world order. He suggests that what might happen — and what will probably be the best possible outcome — is a modified version of the American-led postwar system, a postwar system with an Asian flavor in which China and the other Asian powers recognize that maintaining the system is in their interests. As Professor Ikenberry writes:

China may well be tomorrow's greatest supporter of the American-led postwar system. That system provides rules and institutions for openness and nondiscrimination. These are features of order that China will want going forward as its growing economic weight will be greeted by efforts by others (including some governments in the West) to close and discriminate. Rule-based international order is not a Western fixation. It is a system of governance that all states - East and West - have some interest in maintaining, China not least.

There is considerable value in this argument. Given that China most likely will not have the opportunity to remake the international order anew in the manner that the US and its allies did in the aftermath of the World War II, China, India, and the other rising powers will have little choice but to jury-rig preexisting institutions to reflect their power and their interests.

It's also possible to overstate US decline, both in Asia and globally. As an "Asian" power — the US unmistakably is a great power in Asia — the US will have a stake in shaping the "Asian" world order. Washington will have to reconsider how it exercises its power regionally and globally, of course, becoming less reliant on its military power and more willing to listen to others, but the US has not begun its Recessional yet.

The emphasis needs to change, however. Since the US expanded its role in Asia at the end of the war, its Asia policy has been schizophrenic, divided between a crusading, transformational tendency and a stabilizing tendency. This schizophrenia persists up to today, with the crusaders keen to paint China as the next great threat to the US. But the time for US crusades in Asia is past. For the first time in nearly two centuries, Asian powers are in a position to manage the region's affairs themselves. That doesn't mean there is no role for the US; in fact, it means the US role as stabilizer and pacifier is more important than ever. I think, for example, that the presence of the US military, especially the US Navy, has ensured that political tensions have risen inexorably despite the ongoing Asian arms race. In short, US power should be used less for dictating terms and more for underwriting the efforts of others to create international order. The US should participate in the latter process, but only as one country among many. Its alliances in the region should shift accordingly, measured more in terms of how the support this US role. Transformational ideas, like Abe Shinzo's and Aso Taro's "arc of freedom and democracy" have little place in this order. Asian countries are in no hurry to see the US evacuate Asia; if anything, they want the US to be more involved, to be less obsessed with terrorism and more willing to listen to their concerns. It is imperative that the US start thinking seriously about how it will play this stabilizing role in Asia over the long term.

The US role globally will be more central than in Asia, but the question will be the same: as Professor Ikenberry writes, "...the United States should be asking itself: what sort of international order do we want to have in place in 2040 or 2050 when we are relatively less powerful?" Extending US influence, if not predominance, will depend on developing foreign policy tools other than military power (and with it, a shift in attitude that acknowledges that the US is less able to dictate terms to other countries).

Meanwhile, it is a mistake to refer casually to "Asia" in this discussion. Whose Asia? Is Asia a codeword for China? For India? For ASEAN? Each of these players has a different vision for the region, which redounds to the advantage of the US. Just as the Asian regional future is unknown, so to is the future of an Asia-centered world order unknown. The US is still in a position to shape the Asian and global orders.

The LDP's dilemmas

Yamamoto Ichita, taking a break from rocking out, writes of the divide between LDP veterans and youngsters in the debate over Prime Minister Fukuda's plan to shift the special road construction fund into the general fund from 2009.

The question is how the prime minister should proceed. At present, the HR will be voting next week to override the HC and pass the road construction plan in its current form, even as the prime minister has promised a new plan. Mr. Yamamoto himself sees no inconsistency in passing the existing plan and then revising after the fact; he recognizes, however, that the public doesn't see it this way. Mr. Yamamoto and other potential rebels want official decisions by the cabinet and the LDP executive in support of Mr. Fukuda's plan. Party veterans, according to Mr. Yamamoto, fear that giving Mr. Fukuda's plan official imprimatur also means giving opponents the opportunity to sabotage the plan. Mr. Yamamoto chalks up the dispute to differing perceptions of election timing.

Is it really as simple as that? This seems to be another example of the cautious/risk-taking divide within the LDP in the face of conservative reaction (in this case in the form of the road tribe resistance to reform). For the "veterans" — Mr. Yamamoto's word — a direct, open schism in the LDP as a result of fights in the party council and the cabinet is a greater concern than the possible electoral consequences of going forward solely on the basis of the prime minister's promise. The young reformists want official decisions, even if it means open confrontation with the opponents of road construction reform and a greater risk of failure. As before — see the case from 2005 when the LDP council forced revisions to the postal reform bills on Mr. Koizumi by virtue of an unprecedented majority (as opposed to unanimous) vote — the veterans are willing to violate procedures and customs if doing so minimizes the risks to the party (as they see it).

Without official decisions, Mr. Fukuda's strategy on his compromise plan amounts to telling the people, "Trust me." It entails back-loading LDP resistance to the plan, in the hope that somehow the resistance will be placated over time. The reformists' approach entails front-loading resistance, tackling it head on, at the beginning. Even if Mr. Fukuda's plan gets derailed while in deliberation, at least the "opposition forces" will be out in the open, enabling the prime minister to draw a firm line on reform, à la Koizumi, and possibly revive his crumbling cabinet.

And even that probably won't be enough to save Mr. Fukuda, given that the DPJ's obvious retort is if it can be done from 2009, why not from 2008?

Regardless, the party's dilemma remains. Tahara Soichiro points out in Liberal Time that although there is probably a majority within the LDP in favor of ousting Mr. Fukuda, but is deterred from pushing for his replacement for fear that the formation of a new government will prompt irresistible calls for a general election. No one in the LDP is ready to risk that, given that it could be a massacre for LDP and Komeito candidates.

But how long will Mr. Fukuda be protected by fears of a general election?

I still suspect that he has until July, after which the party will take its chances on a new leader — and perhaps even resign itself to a general election that I expect will trigger the realignment once the general election produces a nearly split HR. In short, Mr. Fukuda will most likely not have the opportunity to see his road construction plan through to fruition.

Public discontent, in numbers

Sankei has published the fourth part of its analysis of recent public opinion polls (parts one through three discussed here).

The questions dissected here are related to the government's use of its two-thirds majority to pass the gasoline tax and MSDF refueling mission authorization bills a second time in the HR, and cooperation between the LDP and DPJ in response to the "twisted" Diet.

Sankei observes that while a majority of respondents in April poll stated that they opposed the reinstatement of the gasoline tax in a second HR vote, a majority of the public approved the use of the supermajority to pass the extension of the refueling mission in a November poll. Another poll conducted in January following the HR's second passage of the refueling mission bill, however, found that the public had turned against the use of the supermajority.

I don't see what the mystery is. In the gasoline tax debate, the public undoubtedly opposed the use of the supermajority to reinstate the temporary tax because...the public overwhelmingly opposed the measure. In the refueling mission debate, the public likely turned against the government's insistence on using the supermajority to send MSDF ships back to the Indian Ocean because it rejected the government's focus on it even while the pensions debacle continued (for example).

The point is, as noted previously, that the public is unhappy with the current political situation. To drive the point home, Sankei concluded by citing two more polls that showed sizable majorities in favor of LDP-DPJ policy coordination and the meetings between Messrs. Ozawa and Fukuda last autumn. Another poll, however, showed that the public has no more idea than the politicians about how to break the deadlock: in a poll conducted last November 41.3% wanted a quick general election, while another 41.3% wanted more cooperation between government and opposition.

No word if the public is still divided after watching the rapid decay of the Fukuda government.