Discarding the old mantras

After winning the Florida Republican primary on Tuesday, Arizona Senator John McCain has more or less solidified his position as the likely Republican presidential candidate. Sankei's Komori Yoshihisa was quick to praise Senator McCain today for his unstinting support for the US-Japan alliance, pointing to lines from Senator McCain's essay in the November/December issue of Foreign Affairs. (He seems especially pleased that Senator McCain quoted former prime minister Abe in a positive light.)

Undoubtedly Komori also likes who is on the list of Senator McCain's foreign policy observers.

The sheer terror with which Komori and other conservatives speak of a Clinton victory suggest to me that a Democratic victory would be a good thing, although personally I'm supporting Senator Obama.

The alliance needs to be shaken up. If the US and Japan learned anything from 2007, it should be that the old formulas about the strength of the alliance and its bedrock of shared interests and values are no longer valid; simply repeating the old mantras of the alliance won't make the alliance any stronger or relevant. There is a need for a bilateral discussion that addresses the alliance's structural problems. I am convinced that a Democratic administration, with an Asia team less wedded to the vision of the alliance peddled by Japan's friends in the Republican Party, will be better able to ask fundamental questions about the alliance. It will be less inclined to tell the Japanese government what it wants to hear. Does anyone think that the team that ran US Japan policy from 2001 will be able to accomplish that?

At the same time, I do think that Japanese fears about Senator Clinton are (somewhat) justified. Perhaps as a result of the influence of revisionist ideas about Japan early in the Clinton administration, both former president and Senator Clinton have at best a blind spot, at worst an abiding dislike for Japan. The challenge is the revitalize the alliance for the twenty-first century, not push Japan to the side. Senator Obama, with his laudable willingness to buck conventional wisdom on foreign policy, may be better prepared to have this discussion.

In the Japan Times

The Japan Times has published an op-ed of mine on DPJ strategy.

You can find it here.

The special tax war heats up

As noted by Jun Okumura, the Fukuda government has thrown down the gauntlet in the debate over the extension of the temporary gasoline tax. The LDP and Komeito agreed Monday to submit a bill to the HR Tuesday (and pass by Wednesday) that will extend the tax for two months, giving the government time to both pursue a compromise with the opposition while still leaving two months to use Article 59 over the HC's objections if necessary.

The DPJ and other opposition parties responded with outrage. The DPJ is now debating its options, trying to decide whether to use the HC censure motion against the government, or, alternatively, boycotting Diet proceedings. I hope that the party opts against the latter. What does staying away from the Diet accomplish, other than give the LDP and its friends in the media an opportunity to tar the DPJ with the "irresponsible" tag? The censure motion card is not that much more inviting, because as before its power will depend on public opinion. If it plays it at the wrong time, the DPJ will toss away its one potential weapon against the government.

For the moment, then, the DPJ has little choice but to stay in the Diet and hammer the government over its misguided policies. It must, however, move beyond its emphasis on the numbers involved and start talking about how it will change Japan. As Yamaguchi Jiro, a Hokkaido University political scientist and DPJ sympathizer, wrote at his blog, "...The DPJ must constantly convey to the people a concrete message of what they will do for Japanese society when they take power. This message — merely a cut in the price of gasoline — is deplorable."

The DPJ must tread carefully now, especially with Mr. Fukuda's changing the government's reasoning on the temporary tax to emphasize its role in environmental protection. In Diet deliberations on Monday, he pointed to Europe's high gasoline taxes to argue that Japan can do more for the environment, like paying equally high taxes. The DPJ should hammer the government on this shift, but it will have a hard time doing that if it vacates the Diet.

To a second-rate Japan

Continuing the theme of Japan's vanishing global presence discussed in this post (and this post by Gen Kanai last week), it's worth looking at what may be this year's hot foreign policy article-turned-book (cf. Paul Kennedy, Francis Fukuyama, Samuel Huntington, Robert Kagan), "Waving Goodbye to Hegemony" by Parag Khanna, a fellow at the New America Foundation.

In both this article and the forthcoming book, Mr. Khanna looks at the emerging contours of the new world order from the perspective of the second world: "Lying alongside and between the Big Three, second-world countries are the swing states that will determine which of the superpowers has the upper hand for the next generation of geopolitics. From Venezuela to Vietnam and Morocco to Malaysia, the new reality of global affairs is that there is not one way to win allies and influence countries but three: America’s coalition (as in 'coalition of the willing'), Europe’s consensus and China’s consultative styles. The geopolitical marketplace will decide which will lead the 21st century."

There is considerable value in this piece, not least in its warning to US policymakers that American hegemony is finished. Over the course of the Bush administration, it has become clear that the US, for all its military strength, is woefully deficient in other areas of power, making it difficult for Washington to solve critical problems. It's not entirely the fault of President Bush, but his administration's actions made it plain the limits of American power, hastening the emergence of a new order.

Mr. Khanna makes clear that competition between the US, China, and the EU will not be primarily in the military realm, but rather over energy, markets, and natural resources. The other point of interest is that the second-world countries might actually hold the upper hand in their dealings with the superpowers. These countries can pocket concessions and aid from all three, maximizing their security in the process. This dynamic is already at work in Southeast Asia, where countries like Vietnam are happy to trade with China even as they deepen their security ties with the US (an example not lost on Mr. Khanna). As a result, this piece is not simply a reincarnation of fears from the 1980s and 1990s about the creation of three exclusionary economic blocs.

Not surprisingly, however, Japan is absent from this piece (except in passing, with Japan's interest in regional monetary cooperation cited as an example of how "Asians are insulating themselves from America’s economic uncertainties").

Where does Japan fit in a tripolar world? Presumably as its population shrinks over the coming decades, Japan will increasingly come to resemble second-world countries busy playing the superpowers off each other. Granted, Japan will likely remain wealthier and more politically stable than the other countries in this group, but as a result of its security and economic needs, Japan will likely engage in the same behavior. In managing its relationships with the US and China, Japan is, in fact, already playing one power off the other, one moment strengthening security cooperation with the US, the next exploring new avenues of economic cooperation with China, ASEAN, and others that exclude the US. It will take some time before Japan fully embraces this "small Japan" path — I suspect there remains too much fear of China and too much dependence on the US — but it may be only a matter of time, with the process hastened by external changes like a mellower China or a prolonged economic downturn in the US that leads it to reconsider its defense spending and foreign deployments.

The question is the extent to which Japan can remain prosperous and dynamic and preserve some modicum of influence in the competition for energy and natural resources. That will depend, of course, on decisions made today to transform Japan's moribund political and economic systems.

The weakness of Fukuda's (and Japan's) carbon campaign

As the Fukuda government has insisted at every chance it has to remind Japanese citizens and foreign governments that the focus of this summer's G8 summit in Hokkaido will be climate change policy. Tokyo is eager to be at the forefront of the quest for a post-Kyoto climate change pact.

This weekend Mr. Fukuda took this message to the World Economic Forum in Davos.

(Incidentally, this week's meeting brought to mind "Ringing of Revolution," a song by radical folk singer Phil Ochs — nothing like a gala fest of the high and mighty on Swiss mountaintop while in the outside world the world economic system as we know it comes crashing down.)

In his speech at a closed meeting, Mr. Fukuda reiterated that climate change will be the main theme of the summit, warned darkly about the consequences of climate change, and explained his government's three-part approach on climate change policy — (1) a post-Kyoto framework, (2) international environmental cooperation, and (3) technological innovation.

All well-intentioned, all important, but ultimately mostly irrelevant, for a couple reasons.

First, as former UN official Shashi Tharoor, who attended the Fukuda address, wrote in his Davos Diary at Foreign Policy's Passport blog, "...The number of empty seats at the half-dozen tables around the PM testified to the declining salience of Japan, a country that two decades ago was seen as the world's economic powerhouse and, bluntly, no longer is." Mr. Fukuda and other Japanese officials speak before international audiences, everyone nods in agreement, and then moves on to more important matters and actors. Japan's good intentions and clever ideas are not enough to make the rest of the world pay attention.

Beyond Japan's undersized international presence, there is a much more concrete reason for Japan's environmental leadership being stillborn: forcing the world to rethink its carbon emissions means in practical terms forcing the US (its most significant ally) and China (its largest trading partner) to change their economic systems drastically. Does anyone seriously think that Japan or any other one country will be able to make this happen? Change will happen when both the US and China change domestically and become willing to make radical changes in how they use energy, in the process taking the lead internationally on climate change.

Japan might play a niche role in developing energy-efficient technologies and sharing them with the world, but I have a hard time envisioning Japan in the driver's seat, forcing its partners to make substantial compromises that will enable progress on reducing carbon emissions.

Recommended Book: The Coldest Winter, David Halberstam

As the six-party talks continue to dance around the question of the future of the Korean peninsula — and the major powers plan for the collapse of the DPRK — it is worthwhile to look back to the (unresolved) conflict that cemented the division of the peninsula and had untold consequences for US Asia policy.

In his final book, The Coldest Winter, the late David Halberstam, who died in April 2007, provided a magisterial account of the Korean War that weaves together biography, political analysis, and historical narrative to explain how the war unfolded at the tactical, operational, and strategic levels. As the subtitle suggests, his focus is on the war's impact on the US and much of the narrative is told from the American perspective, but he takes time to look at the war from the perspectives of Pyongyang, Moscow, and Beijing (if not the perspective of Chinese and Korean foot soldiers).

The greatest virtue of this book is the care Halberstam took to embed the war in contemporary American debates about the future of US foreign policy and the growing struggle between anti-communists, most notably Senator Joseph McCarthy, and the foreign policy establishment, epitomized by Secretary of State Dean Acheson and his fellow "wise men." This book is in many ways a prequel to his earlier The Best and The Brightest. Halberstam showed an America that in 1950 was still unprepared for the global role envisioned by policymakers. For all the commitments that Washington had undertaken 1945-1950, in 1950 the American people were still mentally unprepared to meet those commitments. Part of that mental unpreparedness was a tendency to embrace the crudest anti-communism, the anti-communism of the "Asia-Firsters — the China Lobby and General Douglas MacArthur — that minimized the importance of Europe and called for a "crusade" that would reverse the "loss" of China by the Democrats and begin the process of rolling back communism worldwide. This facile anti-communism eliminated all nuance from US Asia policy, leading the US to ignore signs of tension in the Sino-Soviet relationship and to view all indigenous independence movements in Asia through the prism of the cold war. (It also led to the purge of the "China hands," those policymakers who might have been able to implement a more nuanced Asia policy.) The result was a quarter-century of unmitigated Sino-US hostility and all the wasted opportunities that entailed; the enduring protection of Chiang Kai-shek's government; the disastrous intervention in Indochina; and the overall failure of the US to appreciate the significance of decolonization.

The failure of the US foreign policy and military establishments was total. The "eastern" liberal elites, overwhelmingly focused on containing Soviet expansion in Europe, underappreciated the role the US had to play in Asia, leaving them open to the hysterical charges of isolationist-turned-Asia First members of Congress and the media. On the defensive, they found it difficult to elaborate a more sensible Asia policy. They were unable to explain to the American people that backing Chiang — a corrupt, incompetent, unpopular leader — was a dead end, and that China wasn't America's to lose in the first place. They were also unable to say no to MacArthur, darling of the Asia-Firsters, who was dangerously out of touch with reality on the ground during the war and inexcusably contemptuous of his military and, more importantly, his civilian superiors.

Of course, as far MacArthur is concerned, by the time the war began it was too late for Washington to be able to curb him. As members of the Truman administration came to realize during the war, five years as the unquestioned ruler of Japan made him effectively a foreign sovereign and thus as impossible to control in war as in peace. Halberstam's portrait of MacArthur is, not surprisingly, unflattering, not least because of the contempt with which he treated the lives of the soldiers under his command.

The foreign policy elite do not, however, deserve all the blame for the fiasco. In some way it was inevitable. The Truman administration had been painted into a corner. With Republicans hungry to reclaim the White House after losing five straight elections (after 1948), they needed an issue with which to hammer the Democrats. The Soviet menace combined with the Chinese Communist victory proved the perfect formula: the Democrats, whether as a result of incompetence or, in the McCarthyite version, communist sympathies, were dangerously unprepared to resist monolithic communism, which was supposedly on the march everywhere. The result was that Democrats came to feel the need to look tough on communism — and cower in the face of those seen as tough on communism (i.e., MacArthur). This psychological need for Democrats to appear strong on foreign policy lingers today, and could become an incredibly important factor in US foreign policy should a Democrat win the presidency this year. (It is not at all hard to see Republicans in opposition once again castigating a Democratic president for being soft on what they say is an existential threat to the US, in this case Islamic terrorism — and the Democrats overcompensating in response, with disastrous effects.)

In their campaign against the administration, the Republicans had the backing of much of the American public, who were simultaneously convinced of the communist menace (and in the case of China, the administration's failure to protect a democratic ally of the US from it) and unwilling to support properly the global commitments necessary to resist communism. (Hence the US military was dangerously unprepared for war in Korea when it came.) In Kennan's containment policy, the US had a prudent strategy for resisting Soviet expansionism — but as Halberstam made clear, the American people and their elected representatives were not up to the strategy. Indeed, the conversion of the US from isolationism to superpower was messy, especially in Asia, where wartime propaganda about "our ally" China contributed to a major overreaction to the communist takeover.

The result of all this was a bitter, inconclusive war on the Korean peninsula that destroyed for two decades the possibility of a modus vivendi between the US and Mao's China (and ensured a lingering element of mistrust in the relationship even after the opening). It was a war that took the lives of more than 36,000 American servicemen and hundreds of thousands of Koreans and Chinese, and, as a result of the brittle anticommunism it engendered, contributed to the deaths of thousands if not millions more as the US intensified its commitment to fight communism in Indochina. And it bequeathed to future generations flashpoints that might yet be the death of us all.

The Machimura faction tries to untwist the Diet

The Machimura faction, which just gained a new member to solidify its position as the LDP's largest, has delivered a proposal to Prime Minister Fukuda that calls for the drafting of new rules for Diet management in light of the divided Diet. The proposal, according to Asahi, points to a "structural deficiency in the constitution," in that it mandates different methods for dealing with the budget and budget-related bills. As such, it demands that Mr. Fukuda push through rules that provide for the passage of the budget and budget-related bills at approximately the same time.

As usual for LDP and conservative complaints about the post-July political situation, the proposal bemoans how the divided Diet makes it difficult to address Japan's national interests, in this case fixing the country's abysmal fiscal situation. (No mention, of course, as to how that situation came about in the first place.)

May I make the modest proposal that perhaps more democracy is in Japan's national interest, no matter what the impact on public policy (and no matter how insufferable Mr. Ozawa and the DPJ can be at times)?

The rule changes demanded by the Machimura faction are nothing short of anti-democratic, in that they would limit the HC's ability to exercise its constitutional duty to act on a certain type of legislation. The Japanese people voted last year to give control of the House of Councillors to different parties than that controlling the House of Representatives. Just because it has made governing more difficult does not give the LDP the right to manipulate the political process to reverse the consequences of the election.

Fortunately Mr. Fukuda disagrees with the opinion of his faction. He replied by emphasizing that he intends to "take every opportunity to appeal to the opposition parties" for cooperation. And so it should be: as we learned this month, the government and opposition are perfectly capable of cooperating on legislation, despite the media-driven impression of gridlock. The constitution mandated roles for each house, and the LDP should not opportunistically undermine one house just because it's now become a hindrance to LDP rule.

(Incidentally, this is why Japan needs regular alternation of ruling parties: a ruling party aware that it could easily end up in the opposition would perhaps be less blithe about proposing rule changes to handicap the opposition.)

The enduring weakness of the parties

Over at Shisaku, MTC writes about l'affaire Ōe — Ōe being Ōe Yasuhiro, one of the three DPJ HC members who attended the gathering of prefectural assembly members mentioned in this post.

Kan Naoto has called for Mr. Ōe to resign his seat. That is unlikely to happen: MTC notes that since Mr. Ōe was elected last July — and since the DPJ has a plurality, not a majority, in the HC — the DPJ is likely to be stuck with him and his overt flirtations with the LDP until 2013. I'm also dubious of pronouncements issued by DPJ executives who aren't Ozawa Ichiro; Mr. Ozawa seems to have the last word in the party executive, if not necessarily the party.

Indeed, this episode is but the latest sign that the creation of top-down, centralized, programmatic parties that was supposed to accompany the emergence of a two-party system has not occurred as expected. Both the LDP and the DPJ (despite talk of Mr. Ozawa's "dictatorial" control of the party) remain deeply divided. The leaders of both parties have few tools with which to discipline unruly backbenchers. Take, for example, the LDP leadership's frustrations with the activities of Nakagawa Shoichi (discussed here). Apart from the blunt weapon of expelling party members, what can the leaders of both parties do to discipline "uncooperative" members?

Another round of population transfers between parties (i.e., another political realignment) might help centralize the parties, but I doubt it. Factions, whether based on personality, pork, or policy, will continue to exist, and individual members will continue to wield considerable power, both on the basis of their fundraising abilities and because the political system may be in for a period of weak coalition and minority governments whose need to preserve working majorities will give considerable leverage to rebellious backbenchers.

Abdicating responsibility

The government has submitted its bill extending the temporary gasoline tax for ten years as part of its bill related to the revision of the tax system. It is not clear, however, whether the government will give up on finding a compromise with the opposition and push for passage before the end of the month, giving it time to pass the bill again in HR over HC objections.

In the background of the bill's submission, some 500 prefectural assembly members — mostly LDP, with nineteen DPJ members (and three DPJ HC members) — met at the Kensei Kinenkan in Nagatacho to demand the retention of the special fund for road construction and to insist that the Diet pass the extension before the end of the fiscal year. The issue is the DPJ's proposal to shift funding for road construction to the general fund, meaning that the prefectures and the "road tribe" advocates in the LDP would have to compete with every other interest group to secure funding for their projects of choice.

And this is a bad thing? It seems obvious to me that in a period of tight budgets, when the nation has to make tough decisions about priorities and what deserves money, road construction should not be given special preferences, especially considering that Japan's road needs are not what they once were. Arguably, the steady flow of money into rural construction projects is an impediment to developing creative solutions to the rural problem. Are the residents of rural areas actually served by the construction of roads, or are the "interests of the people" used as window dressing for a system that enriches LDP members, bureaucrats, and construction companies? As this Asahi article makes clear, the LDP's rhetoric in this debate focuses on how the loss of the extra tax revenue will impact communities. I hope the DPJ will show, again and again, how this entitlement, like many entitlement programs, has had perverse consequences, hindering the development of rural areas rather than enhancing it.

According to a DPJ survey of the heads and deputy heads of its prefectural chapters, there is broad support for the DPJ's position on this issue, but as usual it needs to do a better job presenting its opposition to the public. As asked by the head of the Kochi prefectural chapter in response to the party survey, "Although this is an election in which a government will be chosen, is it good to focus the debate on a price reduction of 25 yen (per liter of gas)?" This issue alone will not sink the government. The task for the DPJ in advance of a possible general election is to make a coherent case condemning the failed governance of the LDP. The temporary tax should be but one plank in that case — it should not be the whole of the DPJ's case.

If the DPJ formulates its position carefully, it can change the debate from one that pits urban against rural into one that unites all Japanese against the government, pointing to how the government has substituted money for creative policy making, in the process abdicating its responsibility to lead and provide a secure future for all citizens. This debate shouldn't just be about the extra yen paid into government coffers. The DPJ should use this issue to indict the LDP for failing to adjust the nation's spending priorities in a period of both tight budgets and urgent policy needs.

Another consequential decision for the government

Having just finished the process of using Article 59 to pass the new anti-terror law, the Fukuda government is once again debating whether to go through the process of rushing a desired bill (the extension of the temporary gasoline tax) through the House of Representatives in order to leave the government time to "re-pass" the bill over DPJ and HC resistance in time for the new fiscal year.

The government has announced plans to submit the tax legislation that includes provisions for the gasoline tax on 23 January and will push for it to be debated in conjunction with the budget.

Introducing the bill on the 23rd gives the government a week to decide whether to end HR debate at month's end and pass the bill, ensuring that the bill will be bounced back from the HC in time to be passed again before 1 April.

As reported by Sankei, there is debate between the governing coalition's HR and HC caucuses over the timeline for passing the bill, with HC party leaders demanding that the bill be sent to the Upper House during January (an attitude reflective of the greater weight of rural votes in HC elections?). Chief Cabinet Secretary Machimura, however, disagrees, arguing that the HR needs sufficient time to debate the measure: "To the last, it's the Diet's, not the government's decision." Given the unlikelihood of a compromise being forged on this issue, is Machimura's statement the first sign of the government's changing course on this measure?

Whatever it means, the clock is ticking for the Fukuda government to make yet another decision that will have considerable influence on its durability and the coalition's viability in a general election. The LDP will, however, raise the stakes of the debate by submitting a revised version of the tax measure that extends the temporary tax for ten years.

Is the LDP doomed?

MTC makes the bold prediction that the LDP "faces annihilation" in the next general election.

I'm inclined to agree, simply because it seems that the LDP has finally exhausted the patience of the Japanese people — and the members of the LDP seem more interested in dividing into warring ideological camps than in making good policy in advance of a general election. The party elders seem equally aware of the peril facing the LDP. Not surprisingly, over the weekend both Foreign Minister Komura and former prime minister Mori insisted that there is no hurry to hold a general election, with Mr. Komura suggesting that the government should wait until the end of the term (i.e., September 2009) before dissolving the House of Representatives and holding a election.

Will the ideologues, I wonder, permit the government to wait that long before going to the people? Will 2008 be the year of the Nakagawa no ran?

Meanwhile, the gasoline tax issue is shaping up to be a massive boon for the opposition, not least because it will make it harder for Mr. Fukuda and the LDP to campaign on behalf of consumers and urban Japan more generally. That's what I conclude from a meeting at the Kantei with the National Governors Association, in which the governors, led by NGA Chairman Aso Wataru of Fukuoka (no relation to Taro, who is also from Fukuoka), informed the government that they support the extension of the "temporary" gasoline tax. (It's unclear from this Sankei article about the meeting whether the governors are unanimous in support of the tax extension.) The issue is increasingly shaping up to be a battle of consumers and gas-dependent producers versus regions hungry for infrastructure projects funded by the tax. It seems obvious to me which side is the better bet both in the short term, in a general election, and over the long term as the LDP and the DPJ vie for dominance.

The DPJ is set to get as much mileage out of the gasoline tax issue as possible (pun intended), and unlike in the debate over the refueling mission, the LDP may not be able to win the match by using the HR supermajority. A recent Mainichi poll found that even as 46% of respondents said they approved of the government's use of the supermajority on the refueling issue (to 41% who did not approve), 51% said they don't think it should be used for future issues (compared to only 38% who approve of its being used again). Mr. Mori thinks that there is no danger to the government from using the supermajority to resolve the debate over the gasoline tax, that the threat of an HC censure motion is nothing to fear. As I noted in the run-up to the re-passage of the anti-terror law earlier this month, on paper the DPJ's threat to censure the government isn't much of a threat. The government could theoretically ignore it. But a censure motion backed by massive public outcry against the government would be harder to ignore.

It is difficult to see how Mr. Fukuda, for all his good intentions, will be able to reassert his control of the LDP and regain the momentum in Diet deliberations.

Who won the battle over postal reform?

On Saturday, Koga Makoto, the LDP's chief election strategist, announced that the party's candidate in Gifu-1 will be Noda Seiko, a former postal minister ousted from the party as a postal rebel in the summer of 2005 and readmitted to the party in December 2006. The dispute was over whether the party would give the nomination to Ms. Noda or to Sato Yukari, one of Mr. Koizumi's assassins.

In accordance with stated policy, the reason for Ms. Noda's receiving the nomination was on the basis of her "objectively" being able to win — apparently because she has won five elections.

Ms. Sato (or should I say Dr., on the basis of her Ph.D. in Economics from NYU?), having been elected only once, simply could not compete on that criteria.

In case anyone still thought that the LDP is the party of Koizumi Junichiro, this is yet another example that the real winner in the summer 2005 showdown over postal privatization was neither Mr. Koizumi and his band of reformers nor the postal rebels (after all, privatization is going forward), but the party elders who forced Mr. Koizumi to accept amendments to the bills to make them more palatable to the party's risk-averse and cowardly members. Recall the 28 June 2005 LDP executive council meeting when Kyuma Fumio, then chair of the council, forced a vote on the amendments without first achieving a consensus. Mr. Koizumi ended up getting his (amended) legislation and winning a major election victory, expelling the die hards in the process, but upon his leaving office control of the party passed back into the hands of the risk-averse elders, who are now prepared to erase the remaining traces of the Koizumi legacy.

Mr. Koizumi may ultimately get the last laugh — indeed, I suspect that he's been laughing to himself for the past year — because the LDP may be on the brink of destroying itself. But for the moment, the party elders are in control, and will continue to run the LDP as they know best, for the time being anyway.

Tip of the iceberg

Following Prime Minister Fukuda's remarks Thursday at the LDP convention, Ibuki Bunmei, LDP secretary-general, has also warned darkly of the possibility of the breaking of the LDP.

Speaking in Utsunomiya, Mr. Ibuki said, "If the LDP wins, the DPJ will break. If the DPJ wins, in the LDP people who cannot persevere will spill out."

There are plenty of public signs of the gathering storm within the LDP, but if the president and secretary-general of the party feel compelled to take their fears for the party's future public, then the situation must be worse than even press reports suggest. Given the barely concealed vitriol of the conservatives, who seem to feel that Mr. Fukuda has taken their birthright — control of the party for which they and their ideological predecessors yearned for decades — I don't doubt it.

But Mr. Ibuki is right: I don't expect any movement until after the election. But he's wrong about the winner staying united, the loser dividing. What will count as a victory for the LDP? retaining the supermajority? Best take out the carving knives now. A simple majority for the LDP, without Komeito? A simple majority for the government, but only with Komeito's help? Undoubtedly different actors within the LDP will have their own ideas about what constitutes a win for the LDP in a general election. I expect that Nakagawa Shoichi and the other ideologues will do their best to spin just about any outcome as a defeat, giving them due cause to reassert control over the LDP, and push out their dovish rivals, with a mitigating factor being a strong election performance by the doves that bolsters their numbers within the party. Barring that, the LDP will be rocked by just about any outcome short of the miraculous retention of the supermajority.

As for the DPJ, if it loses — although, again, there is a question about the definition of what constitutes a win for the DPJ — the party will have to confront the question of who will replace Ozawa Ichiro. As revealed back in November, there isn't an obvious replacement, meaning that when Mr. Ozawa goes, there's bound to be chaos within the DPJ as the party's proto-factions search for a new compromise leader who can assuage all factions or purge the party's conservatives, sending them into the arms of the LDP.

Japan on the brink

The Diet returned to business yesterday after a two-day recess, with Prime Minister Fukuda and members of his cabinet delivering speeches outlining the government's basic policies for the 2008 regular session.

Prime Minister Fukuda — despite his decline in popularity, which he has said "can't be helped" — gave another excellent speech, his second in two days, in which he outlined the nature of the problems facing Japan and the work that remains to be done. Continuing the soft approach that he has followed since taking office in September, Mr. Fukuda opened his address by praising the work of the recently finished special session and calling attention to the ways in which the government and the opposition were able to cooperate to pass legislation, despite the conflict over the anti-terror law.

He then correctly identified the problems facing Japan today: "In the midst of the change in the global economy symbolized by the rapid growth of China, India, and others, how do we preserve our country's economic strength, how do we maintain our social security system in tough economic conditions, how do we deal with the problem of declining birth rates, how do we deal with the problems of expanding irregular employment and stagnant regional economies, and also, how do we deal with the fierce global competition in technology, and how do we deal with the problems of the global environment, natural resources, and energy?" He spoke of building a new Japan, not a beautiful Japan, and he said "our" — he emphatically did not lay down an ideological blueprint for this new Japan. Indeed, if Mr. Fukuda has an ideology, it is one that upends the traditional way of politics in Japan, elevating the people at the expense of the government and bureaucrats.

As expected, he emphasized the need of build a consumer-centered society. He stated five goals: (1) realizing a consumer-centered society; (2) securing the livelihood of the people by creating a new social security system; (3) constructing a vital economic system; (4) "realizing Japan as a peace cooperation state"; and (5) finding a way to a society that is both energy-efficient and prosperous. What follows is a long and detailed statement articulating how the government will pursue these goals. I doubt that he will have enough time and power to act on this agenda, but it's important to note that Mr. Fukuda gets it. As I have suspected since he took office, Mr. Fukuda, far from being an aged functionary and tool of the factions, has a keen appreciation for the problems facing Japan today. He may not be flashy like former prime minister Koizumi, but in many ways he has a more constructive vision for Japan than the mercurial former prime minister. (Like Mr. Koizumi, I think Mr. Fukuda realizes that a new system will not emerge without political change. The political system has long been dead weight holding back Japan.) He recognizes the interconnectedness of the problems facing Japan; for example, towards the end of his address he spoke of the importance of changing the education system to enhance Japan's international competitiveness. Unlike his predecessor, whose ideas about education harkened back to the Meiji-era rescript on education, Mr. Fukuda recognizes Japan's responsibility to its children. (He also undoubtedly angered the conservative ideologues by noting that if Japan is to revise its constitution, revision has to be the result of broad consensus among all parties. For an illustration of the contrast between Mr. Fukuda and Mr. Abe, check out the picture of Mr. Abe in this article.)

It is truly unfortunate that Mr. Fukuda was not elected LDP president and prime minister in September 2006, when he would have been in a position to move forward aggressively with this agenda. He would have control of both houses of the Diet, the goodwill of the public, and a sincere desire to tackle the problems facing Japan. Instead Japan got Mr. Abe, and the rest is, of course, history. Now Mr. Fukuda has to juggle a divided Diet, a divided party, and an insecure public that does not seem to be particularly willing to be patient while Mr. Fukuda tries to make progress on building a new Japan.

I do not think that Mr. Fukuda was exaggerating when he spoke of the scale of the problem facing Japan. As Ota Hiroko, his minister of economic policy, said yesterday, Japan is no longer a first-rate economic power. Takenaka Heizo, Mr. Koizumi's reform czar, made the same point in an article in the February issue of Voice. Mr. Takenaka called Japan a "policy third-world country," citing the government's inability to resolve any of the long-standing economic problems facing Japan.

But I also think that Mr. Fukuda will be hard-pressed to address these problems in this Diet session, especially with the prospect of a general election looming over the proceedings. He will not be helped by talk of a consumption tax hike, which Finance Minister Nukaga Fukushiro dared to do yesterday. I don't doubt that Mr. Fukuda's approach will put pressure on the DPJ in a general election campaign — and may make the difference in the LDP's keeping an HR majority — but the festering problems within the LDP may be enough to undermine his government fatally.

It may be the case that true reform will have to wait for regime change.

Let there be strife

The LDP held its party convention in Tokyo on Thursday, and the mood was anything but cheery.

Prime Minister Fukuda spoke bluntly about the existential crisis facing the party today. "We are facing the greatest crisis since the foundation of the party," he said to a crowd of some 3400 party members and supporters.

Reiterating the party's mantra since losing last July's HC election, Prime Minister Fukuda emphasized the need to act on behalf of the Japanese people, joining the DPJ in putting lifestyle issues first. (Does anyone else find it odd that the prime minister of a long-standing ruling party needs to remind his own party of the need to govern on behalf of the people?)

Will the party's clans stop warring long enough to hear Mr. Fukuda's message?

In advance of the party convention, the discord within the party became ever more open. On Wednesday, former prime minister Mori Yoshiro bluntly addressed Nakagawa Shoichi's flirtations with former LDP member Hiranuma Takeo via their "true conservative" study group (discussed here), reminding Mr. Nakagawa that his faction, the Ibuki faction (whose head, Ibuki Bunmei, is the party secretary-general), should come before his dalliance with Mr. Hiranuma. Something tells me that Mr. Nakagawa is not about to halt his extracurricular activities in pursuit of "true conservatism" — and besides, when Mr. Mori speaks, does anyone actually listen? (Just to show to make clear exactly what his vision of the party is, he also lashed out at the Koizumi Kids, suggesting that Mr. Mori would love to go back to the old days when everyone in the party got along to distribute money to supporters and were returned to office over and over again.)

I think it's safe to say that Mr. Fukuda's remarks Thursday are aimed at his conservative rivals, whose allies in the media have castigated him relentlessly since not long after he took office. As I discussed here, the priorities of these conservatives are not those of Mr. Fukuda (or the Japanese people). Mr. Fukuda recognizes that the LDP cannot afford a repeat of July 2007; it cannot afford to ignore the concerns of the people and expect to escape unscathed, not with the DPJ — for all its troubles — doing its best to capitalize on the LDP's failure to address the many insecurities of the Japanese people.

The conservative ideologues will have to choose between their ideals and party unity (and power). I'm not entirely certain that they will choose the latter over the former, especially if they come to reason that an electoral disaster under Mr. Fukuda will enable them to discredit his leadership and reclaim the LDP for themselves.

Meanwhile, the new Kochikai lurched ever closer to its rebirth, with Messrs. Koga and Tanigaki formally agreeing to merge their factions on Wednesday. Announcing the merger, Mr. Tanigaki said, "Since we share DNA, we want to once more make a nucleus that will be a stream in support of the LDP's conservative politics." (Apparently conservatism is as contested in the LDP as it is in the US Republican Party.) But as I noted previously, although the new faction will have sixty-one members, making it the third-largest faction, it is possible that some of those members may be more interested in supporting Mr. Aso than Mr. Tanigaki or any other candidate that the new faction would back in a leadership race.

This might be premature of me to suggest, but I wonder whether we are witnessing the twilight of the LDP factions, at least the factions as we know them. The LDP will, of course, remain fractured, just as the DPJ is fractured, but part of a political realignment might mean the transformation of factions from being social clubs good for collecting cash and distributing patronage to being ideological clubs along the lines of Mr. Nakagawa's study group. Might not the September 2007 presidential election, in which faction members clearly ignored the instructions of faction leaders to vote for Mr. Aso be a sign of what's to come?

High spirits in Yokohama

In the exceedingly brief pause between the just-finished special session of the Diet and the regular session of the Diet scheduled to begin tomorrow, both the LDP and the DPJ have held their party conventions.

The message at the DPJ convention in Yokohama was simple: "Now is the time for realizing regime change and making the people's life number one." All of its efforts will strain to this end at least all efforts but for Mr. Ozawa's being amiable, as he continued to insist that there is no need to apologize for leaving the Diet early last Friday, as his activities as party leader are his own concern. He also reminded voters that he will stake his political career on the outcome of a general election.

Finally, the DPJ has, as noted by MTC, made a big show of opposing talk by the Fukuda government that it will consider extending the temporary gasoline surcharge this session. Once again the LDP has given the DPJ a gift that makes it that much easier for the DPJ to oppose the government. What opposition party wouldn't love to be able to oppose an onerous tax in a year that will likely see a general election?

While the gasoline tax issue gives the DPJ an issue with which to speak for all Japanese, the DPJ has formalized its plans to reorient itself to urban Japan, noting the influence of major cities in general election results.

If the DPJ can limit its own infighting and avoid making serious mistakes that raise questions about its ability to govern, the party is well-placed to score a major victory in a general election — while a majority of its own may be hard to achieve, it could deprive the divided LDP of not just its supermajority, but also of a simple majority.

At FEER Forum

An article that began life as my review of the events of 2007 and has gone through several iterations since is now online at The FEER Forum, the Far Eastern Economic Review's group blog.

You can read it here.

The fantasies of "true conservatism"

For a glimpse into the twisted thinking of the Japanese right — the revisionist right — in the aftermath of the downfall of Abe Shinzo, there is no better place to look than the conversation between Sakurai Yoshiko and Hiranuma Takeo published in the January 2008 issue of Voice.

The bizarre, distorted facts and outright fictions published in this article brought me to the point of laughter on more than one occasion, although I didn't laugh nearly as much as the discussants apparently did, judging by the little parenthetical laugh marks that followed all too many of their remarks.

The discussion did, however, give me another reason to be glad that Mr. Abe was forced to resign (for whatever reason — these two think that fault for Abe's resignation lies not with Mr. Abe himself, but with his secretary, Inoue Yoshiyuki, who Ms. Sakurai describes as being "like [Koizumi secretary] Iijima," apparently a bad thing). It's not that their ideas are especially dangerous, it's that they're so irrelevant. They continue to insist that what they know what the Japanese people want, and that is the abductees brought home and the constitution revised. Ms. Sakurai at one point castigates Prime Minister Fukuda for failing to act on constitution revision, which, she reminds us, has been one of the core principles of the LDP since its founding in 1955. True, but so what? Why should a government in 2008 by following an agenda formulated before 1955 when it has to deal with the problems of 2008 and beyond?

How many elections does the LDP have to lose before they recognize that the Japanese people don't share their priorities? Did the July 2007 defeat not register?

Of course, the discussion inevitably turned to Mr. Hiranuma's planned "true" conservative party, because both the LDP and the DPJ are rotten (even if, they say, there are capable individuals within both parties). When asked about the timing of its formation, Mr. Hiranuma was reluctant to say whether it would occur before or after a general election. Undoubtedly he will have to make that decision with the cooperation of his friends within the LDP, who I suspect would prefer to wait until a general election before acting. Instead of forming a new party, it seems to me that the ideological right is starting to hope openly for an LDP defeat in a general election that will take down Fukuda and give them an opportunity to retake control of the party, purging "fake" conservatives in the process.

Towards the discussion, Mr. Hiranuma very nearly veered into relevance when he broached the question of economics, but it turned out he only wanted to castigate the Finance Ministry before directing the conversation back to more familiar ground, puzzlement over the reaction to Nakagawa Shoichi's 2006 calls for a debate about the acquisition of nuclear weapons.

I don't want to linger too much longer over this, but there was one more nugget worth mentioning. The two of course talked at length about the US about-face on North Korea and had a good laugh about Christopher Hill. Mr. Hiranuma also spoke about his recent trip to Washington along with other Diet members and the abductee families, where they spoke with members of Congress about resolutions in the House and Senate calling for a linkage between the abductions issue and the removal of North Korea from the state sponsors of terror list. For some reason, these ideologues really take congressional resolutions seriously. Mr. Hiranuma spoke with pride about how Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL-18) and Senator Sam Brownback (R-KS) promised to push for these resolutions, and was impressed that the House resolution already had a whopping twenty-eight co-sponsors.

That said, they acknowledged the shortcomings of Diet members' diplomacy, thanks in part — wait for it — the influence of the Chinese in Washington, whose embassy has ten times more political specialists in their embassy than Japan's and who have significant numbers of Chinese-Americans whose support Beijing can apparently mobilize at will, as in the case of the comfort women resolution.

You would think from reading this interview that Japanese society was healthy and that there was not a long list of problems facing the government for years to come. And you would be wrong, just as the ideological right is wrong. The decisions made by the Japanese government in the coming years will determine whether Japan remains influential regionally and globally, whether it remains an economic power with a voice in shaping East Asia. Its power will not rest on a new constitution that enables Japan to send its robust military to fight abroad. It will not rest on its children being proud of being Japanese. It will depend on Japan's becoming a country that is more open to the world, more willing to take risks, better able to provide security for its aging citizens, and better able to educate Japanese children for the world in which they will live.

The vision of Mr. Hiranuma, Ms. Sakurai, and their compatriots in the mass media and the Diet is a vision from 1950. (I guess that's what they mean by "true conservatism). Too bad it's 2008.

Goodbye to all that

After 128 days, the resignation of one prime minister, the selection of another, the aborted resignation of the leader of the largest opposition party, and the "re-passage" of a major bill in the House of Representatives over the rejection of the House of Councillors, the 2007 special session of the Diet — Japan's latest experiment with divided government — has come to a close.

Despite the impression of gridlock, Mainichi reports that the Diet passed twenty-six bills this session (fourteen government bills, twelve individual member bills), one more than was passed in the 2006 special session. Of the thirteen bills submitted to the HC by the DPJ, only one — on support for disaster victims — passed.

The battles of this session, however, were nothing more than a prelude to the showdown to come. The LDP is now divided over whether the anti-terror law should be the government's last use of its HR supermajority (not to mention the underlying divisions in the party that were only temporarily settled when Mr. Fukuda took office). Thanks to the precedent, various government and LDP officials have begun making the case for the use of the supermajority to pass budget-related bills and an extension of the temporary gas tax, most recently Finance Minister Nukaga. The DPJ's divisions are equally apparent after the struggle over the anti-terror law.

Will all of this result in a general election, whether in the middle of this Diet session or in the late summer (or another time of the government's choosing)? That question will loom large over this session's deliberations.

Hold on tight.

The imperious Mr. Ozawa

I'm with MTC: the "can the DPJ govern" meme has been beaten to death.

The D