On the national interest

In the 20 June edition of his column in Yukan Fuji, an evening newspaper, Nakagawa Shoichi tackled recent developments in Japan's relations with its neighbors.

Not surprisingly, he wrote that the government should be taking a harder line in negotiations with North Korea over the abductee problem, China over East China Sea gas rights, and Taiwan over possession of the Senkakus.

What is of interest is how he advanced these positions. In discussing the negotiations with China over the East China Sea gas fields, Mr. Nakagawa emphasized the importance of defending the national interest. "When I was METI minister, I gave prospecting rights in the East China Sea to Japan's private oil companies," he said. "The government, in order to defend the national interest, should support this prospecting work." (国益, こくえき, national interest.)

The "national interest" is a popular term not just among Japan's conservatives, but among Japanese intellectuals at large. As Japan struggles to find its place in a changing world, this phrase is used to justify any number of foreign policies. But it is rare that the people using the phrase define exactly what it means. It is often used as a bludgeon; when the speaker or writer uses the phrase to describe a policy he or she is advocating, the implication is usually that anyone who disagrees with said policy is acting against the national interest and thus betraying Japan. After all, who could be against the national interest?

The national interest, however, is not a given. As Ishizuka Masahiko argued in Nikkei Weekly in April, it is not exactly clear what the "national interest" means. Mr. Ishizuka was addressing comments by Komori Shigetaka, chairman of NHK's board of governors, in which Mr. Komori suggested that NHK programs "targeted at audiences outside the country should be more assertive about 'Japan's national interest' on issues where the Japanese point of view differs from that of other nations." In response, Mr. Ishizuka wrote, "The source of the controversy arising from Komori's remark seems to be that what exactly dictates "national interest" as he calls it is not clear at all, and it tends to be identified with the establishment to which he obviously is considered to belong. Making the issue more complicated is that national interest and its perception can change from issue to issue." He goes on to argue that Japan will be best served by emphasizing the multiplicity of voices within Japan — in short, that there is no single national interest for NHK to beam abroad.

The phrase "national interest" is (or should be) the beginning of a discussion, not the end of one. An example of the former usage is US Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice's essay in the July/August issue of Foreign Affairs, entitled "Rethinking the National Interest." The first sentence of Ms. Rice's essay poses the question, "What is the national interest?" She spends the rest of the essay trying to answer it. Not only does she try to posit a definition of the national interest, she also considers whether the US has the means to defend its national interests. I have yet to see a Japanese policymaker or commentator make a similar argument for Japan, clearly articulating not only what Japan's national interests are, but, more importantly, listing them in descending order of priority and explaining what means Japan needs to secure them (or what it needs to do domestically to ensure it has to wherewithal to secure designated national interests).

I am in full agreement that Japan needs to give more thought to its national interests, but simply repeating the phrase does not equal giving the matter more thought. The way it is used now stifles rather than encourages a debate to define Japan's national interests.

Recommended Book: Securing Japan, Richard Samuels

In the aftermath of Japan's first successful test of its ballistic missile defense systems, the "Japan Rising" meme will undoubtedly be on the lips of foreign commentators. Expect more articles like the NYT article by Norimitsu Onishi discussed in this post in July.

Fortunately MIT's Richard Samuels, in his latest book Securing Japan, provides a more balanced look at Japan's changing security posture. Samuels studiously avoids the extremes of the debate, offering instead a level-headed scholarly discussion of the dynamics of Japanese security policy both at present and since the Meiji Restoration. Unlike Kenneth Pyle's Japan Rising, however, which is largely a history of Japanese foreign policy change, Samuels spends at least as much time discussing where Japan is going as where it has been.

His conclusion is that the security policy consensus — the successor of the Yoshida Doctrine — that will emerge from the contemporary debate will not be the result of the revisionists simply imposing their will on the Japanese people. Rather, it will be the result of a compromise (what Samuels calls a "Goldilocks consensus") that strikes a balance between the alliance with the US and economic integration in Asia and a constructive relationship with China, while lifting some of the limits on Japan's armed forces, a process that Samuels shows is well underway.

The new Japan, Samuels argues, will look more like Canada or Germany, a country reluctant to use force aggressively but willing to play an armed role in peacekeeping and post-conflict reconstruction. As a result of living in a more dangerous neighborhood, the JSDF's mission profile will, of course, differ somewhat from other US allies, in that it will have to monitor activities in the air and seas around Japan and repel intruders when necessary, as Japan's Coast Guard is already doing (documented at length by Samuels). But the end result will be a looser US-Japan alliance — in which Japan might occasionally say no — and a greater focus on Asia by Japan, both as a source of security threats and economic opportunities.

This would be, I think, a positive outcome for Japan (and the US).

I would like to make note of a couple more things about this book. First, as in previous books and articles, Samuels shows his first-class skills as a political "taxonomist." For those confused about the differing schools of thought in the contemporary Japanese debate, Samuels deftly explains the differences and traces their roots back to the late nineteenth century.

Second, for my part I find his theoretical approach appealing. Samuels is a self-described "realist," but he is not a structural realist. As he demonstrated clearly in Machiavelli's Children (discussed in this post), leaders matter — and domestic politics matter. National interests and foreign policies are not simply determined by the international system. They are the result of a complex, messy interaction between the international system and domestic political systems, with politicians and bureaucrats playing a mediating role, trying to advance their personal interests and their visions of the nation's interests simultaneously. The result is that policy changes do not always have obvious international antecedents. There are often lags, as states struggle to interpret changes in the international environment.

The result is that we now have a comprehensive guide to how Japan has interpreted recent international changes and changed its domestic institutions so to be better able to interpret international signals, a guide that will also be useful in putting events like Japan's BMD test in perspective.

Ambassador Schieffer again

Just in case the LDP was unclear on US desires, Ambassador Schieffer said in a meeting with Foreign Minister Komura, "We desire the continuation of the MSDF's activities."

The discussion appears to have been part of routine meeting on the foreign policy agenda in advance of Prime Minister Fukuda's visit to Washington next month, and so some might say that of course he would repeat Washington's fervent desire that the MSDF continue refueling coalition warships in the Indian Ocean.

But he should have said something along the lines of, "The US government has made its wishes known, but we recognize that this is a decision that the Japanese government and people must make for themselves. We will respect whatever decision results from Japan's democratic process."

The intrusion of the US government through Ambassador Schieffer's comments (and sniping with the DPJ) is one of the more regrettable aspects of this debate, and probably played an important role in raising the stakes for all involved. And so the US may indeed get its wish of continuing Japanese involvement in the coalition, but it will be in spite of the activities of the US government and its emissary in Tokyo.

Is Japan on the brink of a new foreign policy debate?

With another week of budget committee deliberations and thus another week before the Fukuda Cabinet officially decides to proceed with a new bill authorizing the MSDF refueling mission in the Indian Ocean, Mainichi reports that the government is striving to build upon the public support it has already gained, as shown in numerous public opinion polls. The goal, as enunciated by Yamasaki Taku on multiple occasions, is to gain around two-thirds support from the public so that the government can pass a rejected bill again in the Lower House with confidence that it can weather a censure vote in the Upper House.

For my part, I think a new bill will ultimately pass, even if the government has to wait until late December to get it. By now, the stakes for the LDP and for Japan are such that the government will say or do anything to outmaneuver the DPJ into getting its way, even having Mr. Ishiba accuse Mr. Ozawa of having a cavalier attitude towards the lives of JSDF personnel (discussed in this post). It's nothing short of extraordinary how quickly the DPJ has gone from confident and united to divided and uncertain, and the LDP from open civil war to calm and unified, insofar as the MSDF mission is concerned.

If the new terror law passes, however, it will be on the grounds enunciated by Mr. Fukuda during the LDP presidential campaign: Japan needs to continue to participate in the multinational operation to preserve its international reputation.

Tanaka Hitoshi, former administrative vice minister of foreign affairs and an ally of Prime Minister Fukuda's when the latter was chief cabinet secretary, elaborates this argument at some length in an interview in Chuo Koron conducted by political journalist Tahara Soichiro.

Mr. Tanaka is not without doubts about how the mission has been conducted — he says at one point, "Of course, I think it's essential to raise the transparency concerning the JSDF operation" — but he is unequivocal about the need to extend the mission, preferably on the basis of bipartisan consensus. "At this time," he said, "If Japan completely withdraws from the Afghan operation, how much will it harm national interests? — this is probably well understood by Fukuda-san. I think that all effort will expended in aiming to extend the operation. Moreover, even in the DPJ there are proponents of extending the special measures law."

The interview from which this discussion is drawn concerns Japan's post-Abe foreign policy as a whole, and is worth reading for a glimpse at what can be called the realist position in Japan's foreign policy establishment. (It's available in two parts, one and two, at Yahoo's Minna no Seiji.) Mr. Tanaka questions the idealism of Messrs. Koizumi and Abe, criticizing the former's Yasukuni visits and the latter's emphasis on the abductee question in relations with North Korea. The phrase "national interests" appears regularly in his remarks, and he does not indulge in the idealistic fancies that some politicians prefer — he makes a point of dismissing the utility of the US-Japan-Australia-India quartet as unnecessarily hostile to China. Mr. Tanaka's approach is not altogether surprising for a former senior MOFA official, but it provides a valuable look at a way of thinking not altogether different from Mr. Fukuda's. It is a foreign policy for a middling power sensitive to its position in the region and the world, conscious of its own limits, and keen to maximize its options. For example, the alliance with the US is important, but it should be but one pillar of Japanese foreign policy. (Interestingly, it was an expression of this way of thinking about Japanese foreign policy in the 1994 Higuchi Commission report that contributed to Washington's refocusing its attention on the US-Japan alliance after the deep freeze following the cold war.) If Mr. Fukuda manages to last "between one month and ten years," I would expect Japan's foreign policy to move further in this direction: less emphasis on the US-Japan relationship, less concern with democracy, and more focus on Asian institutions and shared regional leadership with China.

The question is whether this approach would outlast Mr. Fukuda, regardless of whether the next occupant of the Kantei is an LDP or DPJ premier. As far as the LDP is concerned, Mr. Aso and his conservative idealism remain a potent force within the party, as elaborated by Komori Yoshihisa at his blog. Even as old-style mainstream conservatism enjoys something of a resurgence under Mr. Fukuda, Mr. Aso will remain a forceful advocate in the anti-mainstream, calling for a more confident Japan that forcefully promotes universal values like liberty, democracy, the rule of law, human rights, and capitalism. I, like Mr. Tanaka, am skeptical about the efficacy of Abe-Aso "assertive diplomacy," because I have yet to see it accomplish anything but Japan's not-so-splendid isolation.

Perhaps one of the best things Mr. Fukuda can do once the battle of the anti-terror law is complete would be to articulate a "realistic" vision for Japanese foreign policy that reassesses Japan's ends and means in light of its status as a middling power. How can Japan become more "European" in its foreign policy, allied to the US, dependent even to some extent, while still capable of disagreeing and having a full-developed Asian "alternative" to its partnership with the US? What place should Japan's military power have in this scheme (and from that, a practical plan for revising the constitution)? I would argue that doing so would put the realists in a better position than their conservative idealist rivals, who have yet to articulate their vision beyond emphasizing the alliance with the US and a more active role for the JSDF abroad.

Mr. Fukuda's surprising ascendancy to the head of the LDP may prove beneficial for Japan's evolving foreign policy thinking, because it may force both ideologues and realists to better articulate their plans and ideas. With luck, Japan could be on the brink of a true renaissance in its foreign policy thinking, resulting as much from an intra-LDP debate as a debate between the LDP and the DPJ (the latter may remain stunted as long as the DPJ's own position remains muddled).

Thanks Japan!

The UN Security Council has passed its latest resolution authorizing the activities of the ISAF in Afghanistan, and, as I discussed yesterday, took care to thank Japan for its contribution to Operating Enduring Freedom.

There's very little of note regarding this resolution, except that for the first time it did not pass unanimously — Russia decided to abstain, arguing that OEF is beyond what the UN is capable of supporting.

Will this latest resolution make any difference in the debate in Japan? If the previous resolutions passed by the Security Council authorizing coalition activities in Afghanistan were not enough for Mr. Ozawa, I doubt that this latest measure, with its cloying attempt to coax Japan's continuing involvement, will make any difference.

But there you have it: the UN officially appreciates Japan's Indian Ocean gas station. (And if you think this is just me being unfairly dismissive, a certain prominent Tokyo University academic and public intellectual described it in just those terms when we spoke last year.)

Wanted: a new Japanese grand strategy

Japan apparently has a new strategic concept to replace the irrelevant Yoshida doctrine. At least that's what Greg Sheridan, foreign editor of The Australian, thinks.

To Mr. Sheridan, Japan is back, regardless of the troubles following the downfall of Mr. Abe, because "Japan's new strategic personality will transcend individual politicians." There is a certain truth to that, but the problem with Sheridan's piece is that he doesn't quite get around to telling readers what exactly Japan's new strategic personality is.

We get bits and pieces, like these:

"...Japan, like Germany, can undertake its share of the global security burden, can participate in a degree of collective security and need not be shackled by the post-World War II restrictions."

"The alliance now is reciprocal and Japan is an independent strategic player. That does not mean it will always agree with the US, but as such it is an infinitely more valuable ally to the US and a much more valuable strategic partner for Australia."

And, as is obligatory for articles about Japanese security policy now, the slam of Mr. Ozawa:

This was a monstrous bit of opportunism by Ozawa, who has in the past backed the US alliance and backed Japan becoming a normal nation. Operation Enduring Freedom is authorised by the UN and should not be the subject of controversy. But precisely because Ozawa's move was so cynical it probably does not presage a revolution in Japan's new strategic personality. I suspect that with Abe gone the anti-terrorism law will pass. If it fails, this is a blow to Japan's emerging new strategic personality, but Washington and Canberra will try to work around it, not to let it become a litmus test of the US alliance.

I like that: monstrous bit of opportunism.

In the midst of this, however, Mr. Sheridan does not come even close to elaborating what exactly Japan's new strategic personality is. A "normal" Japan that bears a greater global burden and acts as "the only country besides the US willing to talk about Chinese human rights or to caution China meaningfully on Taiwan" is about as close as he gets.

I can't blame Mr. Sheridan for having little to say on this, because Japan itself doesn't know. Japan "doing more" is the beginning of a discussion on Japan's new security role, not the end of it. For all of Mr. Ozawa's "opportunism," there is a real critique asking whether Japan wants to be a junior member of the US global posse. There is still a debate waiting to be had about how Japan can take up more responsibility for its own defense, enabling it to say "no" when it feels its interests aren't at stake, instead of feeling obligated to say "yes" for fear of displeasing the US.

And so the problem with Mr. Sheridan's talking points. Japan's "strategic independence" has meant, in practical terms, strategic isolation in Northeast Asia, as Japan as pursued an independent course in the six-party talks and found that even the US has a hard time standing with Japan on the abductions issue. Ambitious initiatives hawked by Messrs. Abe and Aso have been met mostly with deafening silence. And last time I checked, the constraints on Japanese security policy were still in effect — and there are few signs that they will change anytime soon. (A re-interpretation of the prohibition on the exercise of the right of collective defense, most pressing from Washington's perspective, looks to be on hold indefinitely, between the DPJ's opposition outside the government and Komeito's opposition within.)

The closer one looks at Japan's much-vaunted strategic change, the less impressive it looks. There are a number of questions yet unanswered. Does Japan have the will and the wherewithal to be a global power (and do the Japanese people want that)? If Japan is focused solely on the Asia-Pacific region, will it act as a genuinely independent strategic actor, even if it means disagreeing with the US (on China, for example)? Will it be able to respond to crises in its near abroad, with or without the US? Would Japan's new "posture" — i.e., the road to a greater security role leads through Washington — survive a change of ruling party?

So, no, Japan still hasn't found a replacement for the venerable but archaic Yoshida Doctrine.

The DPJ in Yoshida country

With the DPJ making the anti-terror special measures law the main point of contention for the autumn special session, it seems increasingly clear that the DPJ has found a solution to the problem of how to distinguish itself from the LDP. The DPJ's positions on social and economic policy not being all that different from the LDP, foreign policy is once again the main partisan cleavage in Japanese politics.

But this is not a return to the cold war, when pacifist left squared off against the nationalist right, to the benefit of the pragmatic LDP mainstream. The triumph of the revisionist right and its emphasis on a strong, global alliance with the US means that the LDP has vacated the center on foreign policy. As I noted in this post, the LDP is more uniform on foreign policy issues than in the past; while some LDP chiefs are pushing for compromise on the anti-terror law for political reasons, I have yet to hear a significant LDP politician dissent from the ideal of Japan's supporting the US (and others) with warships in the Indian Ocean.

Accordingly, with the LDP having moved to the right, especially in the six years since the 9/11 attacks, the center — the Yoshida line of a limited US-Japan alliance due to Japanese domestic constraints — has been vacated, and Mr. Ozawa's DPJ is preparing to occupy the center. The foreign policy debate that was once contained within the LDP is now the debate between the DPJ and the LDP. The DPJ is essentially calling for a US-Japan alliance restored to old limits, and a Japanese security policy that adheres to domestic constraints (and the added twist of UNSC approval). While the not inconsiderable support for constitution revision within the DPJ suggests that the party is willing to consider adjusting those constraints, the party's overall stance is that of moderation in the face of the overcommitment of the Koizumi and Abe governments.

Not surprisingly, then, one of the DPJ's first acts in the new Diet session was to submit legislation to end the JSDF mission in Iraq.

By shifting the emphasis to Japan's international responsibilities — "the promise to the world" that Mr. Abe made in Sydney, described by Asahi today as "selfish" — the government seems to be trying to reclaim the center (and it has Yomiuri's enthusiastic support). But a couple weeks of talking about Japan's obligations to the international community deriving from its position as a commercial power will not undo six years of emphasizing the value of the US-Japan alliance over all other elements of Japanese foreign policy, particularly with US officials having spent the last month practicing their gaiatsu.

The DPJ's stance is anything but radical (which is why Amaki Naoto is so disappointed in the party). It marks a return to the more moderate past — and, more importantly, a return to the thinking of the Japanese people. Washington might want Japan to change radically, but the changes envisioned by Koizumi and Abe are not sustainable over the long term; a correction is in store. Japan will change. It will take on a greater international role. But the change will be grounded in the moderate center, and will acknowledge and embrace limits on what Japan can and can't do internationally and in cooperation with the US.

The DPJ should use this Diet session to better articulate this vision for Japan's foreign policy: that much Yomiuri has right. I think the DPJ will find that it enjoys the support of the Japanese public, and also of some Americans (not to mention Europeans).

In the meantime, Mr. Abe, apparently determined to relive his grandfather's life, is set to sacrifice his political career for the US-Japan relationship, except this time, it is unlikely that it will be necessary for the people to encircle the Diet to make him go. (Having joked for the past year about Mr. Abe getting himself confused with Kishi, it's eerie that Mr. Abe's end may play out in a similar way.)

The battle over the anti-terror law begins in earnest

Facing a difficult battle over the extension of the anti-terror special measures law, the new Abe-Yosano-Aso-Machimura cabinet has set to work on laying the groundwork for a compromise with the DPJ that will enable the JSDF to continue to participate in the multinational coalition in Afghanistan.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Yosano has set to work by calling Mr. Ozawa a "really swell guy" (ok, not exactly a literal translation, but it's basically what he said) — this is, according to Mainichi, an "about-face from his predecessor Mr. Shiozaki Yasuhisa," who repeatedly criticized the DPJ head.

Whether Mr. Yosano's flattery will serve to soften DPJ opposition remains to be seen, but there are signs that the DPJ may be amenable to a compromise with a more pliant Abe cabinet, which very badly wants this bill passed and will do whatever it can to succeed (so said Foreign Minister Machimura in conversation with Secretary of State Rice yesterday). The DPJ will no doubt extract a high price for its assent, at which point the question is what the government is willing to give up to get a compromise. Quite a bit, argues Jun Okumura, who suggests that the government might even be willing to trade participation in Iraq for continuing participation in Afghanistan; he says that the DPJ will likely drive a hard bargain and then "declare victory and claim – with justification - that it has acted responsibly."

The prospect of a compromise has made retired diplomat and failed Upper House candidate (on a pacifist platform) Amaki Naoto apoplectic, who points to a recent opinion poll in Nikkei that showed 53% oppose extension and only 30% approve of it. Amaki suggests that opposition to extension of the law is a sign of public opposition not just to JSDF dispatches to serve in US-led campaigns, but to Japanese dependence on the US more generally, and hopes that the DPJ will stand firm on the side of the public. "The DPJ's unyielding stance will probably be encouraged by the results of this public opinion poll. The DPJ's company of pro-American conservatives represented by Maehara and others has been compelled to silence for a moment." But pointing to softer statements from Messrs. Kan and Hatoyama, Amaki thinks that there's something fishy about the DPJ's leadership, that its opposition to the extension is shallow. He wonders, "From the first, participation in the war on terror was a mistake, and moreover the cooperative Koizumi and Abe cabinets were mistakes, and therefore the DPJ cannot at all participate in Afghanistan or Iraq: can the DPJ make this statement to America?"

He fears that it can't, that the DPJ is simply trying to make political hay out of this issue, and will cave in the face of pressure from the LDP and the US.

I remain convinced that Japan's withdrawal from participation in the reconstruction of Afghanistan will be a step backwards for Japanese security policy, but I also believe that it's not simply or even primarily about the US-Japan alliance. I disagree with Michael Green and Kurt Campbell, who argue in Asahi, "If Japan pulls out suddenly from the coalition against the Taliban and al-Qaida, this will lead to inevitable and unfortunate questions for the next administration—whether Republican or Democrat—about Japan's reliability as an ally." Will withdrawal really harm the alliance that much? What about the ongoing process of deepening security cooperation between the two militaries closer to Japan? Will that really change because Japan brings its ships home? And what about the growing grumblings from the right about the unreliability of the US after the about-face on North Korea and the comfort women resolution? It seems like that kind of talk, which shows no sign of abating, is more threatening to the alliance over the long term than the rebalancing of the alliance that is the implicit goal of the DPJ's security policy ideas.

I'm with MTC: this is about the Japanese people and their representatives deciding security policy for themselves, without the intimidation of Washington, and thus while I think it would be a mistake for Japan to leave, I also recognize that it's Japan's mistake to make (and it's also important not to overstate the potential consequences of the withdrawal; somehow I think the coalition will manage without the MSDF).

Japan has to figure out what role it will play in the world — and the debate over extension of the anti-terror special measures law is but one step in the process of answering the question. A "normal" Japan, long desired by Washington, is also a Japan at liberty to say no.

The Upper House elections and Japanese security policy

Of all the factors that went into the LDP's historic loss on Sunday, it is safe to assume that the security policy pursued under the Koizumi and Abe cabinets — an emphasis on the alliance with the US that has seen the JSDF deployed to the Indian Ocean and Iraq, albeit in non-combat roles — was not a significant factor in inducing voters to abandon the LDP.

As Michael Zielenziger argues, echoing a point I made here in advance of the election:

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s stinging defeat in parliamentary elections demonstrates that the Japanese people aren't interested in abandoning their pacifist constitution and taking on the mantle of military might to help Washington manage some form of global hegemony. Japanese citizens don't want to send troops to Iraq and are rejecting Abe’s stand on North Korea which is even tougher than Washington’s own now that direct talks are moving forward between officials from Pyongyang and the State Department.

Instead what voters affirmed on Sunday is that they want a government that will end years of eroding wages and prices, offer hope to millions of alienated young adults, and pledge to the nation’s growingly restive reserve of the elderly that their pensions and retirements will be protected and that the gap between rich and poor will somehow be narrowed.

That seems to be the lesson that the DPJ has drawn from its victory (or perhaps non-defeat is more accurate?) on Sunday. And so almost immediately after the results became clear DPJ Secretary-General Hatoyama Yukio voiced the party's opposition to the renewal of the anti-terror special measures law when it expires in November. The law, first passed in November 2001 as the keystone of the Japanese response to the 9/11 attacks, enabled the dispatch of MSDF vessels to support coalition efforts in Afghanistan, and there they have remained, refueling coalition warships in cooperation with the ongoing multinational campaign against the Taliban. Note that this law applies only to the campaign in Afghanistan; Japanese forces are in Iraq under a different piece of legislation, renewed earlier this year over opposition objections.

DPJ President Ozawa Ichiro, having left his election-day sickbed, has confirmed Hatoyama's proclamation, suggesting that it will be part of an aggressive strategy on the part of the DPJ to force an early election. If the DPJ plans to cooperate with the LDP to make good policy, it's being awfully coy about it.

For Ozawa to hold the special measures law hostage to Diet tactics is shamefully opportunistic, and it will give Ozawa the dubious honor of having both authored Japan's shift to bearing a greater burden in upholding global order and pushed for a new period of isolation. As LDP secretary-general during the Gulf War he pushed hard for Japanese boots on the ground, and when that failed, he authored the postwar international peace cooperation law that resulted in Japanese peacekeepers being sent to Cambodia, the beginning of the legal expansion of Japanese security policy that eventually produced the anti-terror and Iraq special measures laws as well as the formal adoption of "international peace cooperation activities" as a primary mission of the JSDF when the Defense Agency was elevated to ministry status. And yet now he has signaled his opposition to a bill that has enabled Japan to contribute materially to a multinational coalition assisting the reconstruction of Afghanistan, note multinational, not simply the US.

My concern is that backing away from contributing to global security even in minor ways like serving as a floating gas station for coalition ships will encourage passivity among the Japanese people. Passivity, not pacifism: I think the former is more of a problem than the latter, because free-riding is easy to do and does not particularly require the moral commitment of pacifism. The Japanese people did not vote against an activist foreign policy, they just didn't vote in favor of one either, which means that if Japan is going to play some role as a security provider, it will take political leadership to hammer the point home to the people, the kind of leadership that Ozawa once promised but has apparently decided to abandon for the sake of partisan expedience. As US Ambassador Thomas Schieffer noted, "Japan is a responsible member of the international community and I would really hate for Japan to decide that the issue was not important any more or that they didn't want to contribute."

This isn't about Iraq. (I happen to think there are plenty of good reasons for Japan to remove its transport aircraft.) This is about Japan's not withdrawing into itself, focusing on its own problems to the exclusion of the rest of the world. What happens outside of Japan has tremendous importance for the Japanese people — considering their extreme dependence on imported energy and food, for example. The temptation to withdraw clearly still exists, among people and elites.

Japan obviously has a host of domestic problems to confront, and the lesson of this election is that they should be the government's top priorities. But it is not an either/or proposition. The DPJ leadership should think carefully about whether it wants to lead Japan back down the road of free-riding, and it should also consider carefully what impact this strategy will have on party cohesiveness. How far can the DPJ go down this road before pushing its conservatives out of the party and potentially into the arms of the LDP?

Missing the point on Japan's normalization

Using the occasion of Japanese Air Self-Defense Force pilots participating in live-bombing exercises with the US in the Marianas, Norimitsu Onishi of the New York Times has a prominently featured article in today's edition (also on the front page, top of the fold of today's IHT) on Japan's shedding "military restraints."

The NYT website also features a short documentary called Rearming Japan.

In general, Onishi's article provides a fair summary of the contours of the debate, taking care to note, for example, that Japan, while ranking high on annual league tables of defense expenditures, has actually been letting its defense budget stagnate over the past decade.

And yet there are a few things that bear noting about this article.

First, Onishi premises the problematic nature of Japanese normalization on its "rattling nerves throughout northeast Asia." And yet the only example Onishi provides to support this is South Korea's recent launching of its first Aegis cruiser and President Roh's comments about an arms race in the region. It seems that if concerns about Japanese normalization are so prevalent, Onishi might have been able to muster a few more examples to show it. (Devin Stewart at Fairer Globalization notes that if Onishi had talked to Southeast Asians, he would have found them more supportive of a more active Japanese security policy.)

Second, and this is a far more substantial problem, Onishi's article and the companion video are lacking in context, both in terms of history and Japanese politics. Regarding the former, Japanese militarism was a product of political developments in Japan occurring at a given moment in history, when colonization and aggression were the hallmarks of great-power status. Just because Japan's ultra-nationalists make this argument does not make it untrue (but it also does not excuse what Japan did). The idea that Japan is going to invade China again, mentioned by one of the interview subjects in the film, is ludicrous and divorced from the facts. With its stagnant defense budget that increasingly emphasizes high-technology air and sea platforms over the GSDF, which according to recent planning documents is set to see its numbers fall, the JSDF may have a hard time helping at the Snow Festival in Hokkaido, let alone invading China.

In terms of the domestic political context, while Onishi gets the change within the LDP right, thanks to an assist from Richard Samuels, he misses the far more significant domestic political change: the ousting of the Socialists from their position as the leading opposition party, the destruction of the Japanese left more generally, and the rise of the Democratic Party of Japan. He quotes DPJ Secretary-General Hatoyama Yukio criticizing the government for violating the constitution in its activities in Iraq, but he misleadingly fails to mention that Hatoyama and his party are less concerned about Japan's playing a more active role than they are concerned about Japan's becoming to close to the US, which they feel has become dangerously aggressive. The DPJ's critique, in general, is not a pacifist one by any means, although former Socialists in its ranks still stand by that position. Rather, the DPJ rejects the argument made by former JDA chief Ishiba Shigeru in this article: "I think the Japan-U.S. security relationship should be as unified as possible, and our different roles need to be made clear."

The DPJ, perhaps because opposition affords it the luxury of taking positions that could be more difficult to adopt in government, has emphasized Japan's need for more independence from the US (I discussed one particularly articulate discussion of this here).

In other words, the debate is far more interesting than Onishi notes — it is by no means simply a matter of pacifists versus nationalists.

This raises the larger question, addressed by Samuels and J. Patrick Boyd in the monograph discussed in this post, of why Japan tied its own hands in security policy in the first place. As they argue convincingly, it was a matter of the political balance within the LDP, with the pragmatic mainstreamers, who favored the Yoshida line, receiving assistance from the political opposition and public opinion in their fight against the LDP's revisionists. But they sought limits not out of pacifism, but because it made good strategic sense. In other words, to adapt a Marxist concept, Japan's postwar pacifism may well have been the superstructure that served as a more presentable face for the substructure, Japan's assessment of its postwar interests as enshrined in the Yoshida doctrine.

With Japan's interests changing as the balance of power in East Asia shifts, it is to be expected that Japan would reconsider its interests in the new era and adjust its grand strategy and defense priorities accordingly. The rise of the nationalist revisionists is one aspect of that, but their rise has been accompanied by the collapse of the left and the emergence of a political opposition that is also interested in seeing Japan's grand strategy change. It may be useful to think of the situation once again as a matter of superstructure and substructure. Today, the superstructure of Japanese normalization is provided by Japan's ultra-nationalists, who never cease cranking out material that leads Japan's neighbors (and ally) to question normalization. The substructure, meanwhile, is once again shaped by a realistic assessments of Japan's interests, threats, and opportunities. Having talked with enough officials in MOFA and the Japanese Ministry of Defense, as well as members of the Diet from both the LDP and the DPJ, it is clear that there are enough important policy makers in Tokyo who don't buy the rhetoric of the ultra-nationalists even as they acknowledge that Japan needs a new doctrine that reflects contemporary realities and may require Japan's acting as a security provider.

In light of these considerations, one has to ask why the NYT thinks this article is so important as to merit page-one coverage.

Is Japan really poised to threaten its neighbors anytime soon, if ever? Is Japan truly ready to follow the US into combat in the "arc of instability" (and refueling in the Indian Ocean, as important a mission as its been, does not count)? Is Japan really even close to possessing even a conventional deterrent in its showdown with North Korea? These are the questions one must keep in mind while reading this article. As unnerving as Japan's ultra-nationalists are, for the moment they are still more of a menace, if that, to the Japanese polity than to Japan's neighbors (see earlier posts on Abe here and here, and Sakurai Yoshiko and the ultra-nationalists more generally here).

The trouble with collective self-defense

Yomiuri ran an editorial on reviewing the prohibition on the right of collective self-defense today, arguing that debate "ought to deepen."

The occasion for this editorial is the government panel's recommendation that MSDF vessels be permitted to counterattack if, when sailing with US warships, the US vessels come under attack. In this case and the case of a missile potentially bound for the US, the panel, rather than simply declaring that collective self-defense is permissible, has suggested that the right of individual self-defense and the provisions of the JSDF law permit a Japanese response, regardless of the prevailing interpretation of the right of collective self-defense.

Not being a lawyer, I am not in a position to question the legal soundness of the panel's recommendations. What interests me is the politics of collective self-defense, and what it means for the US-Japan alliance.

At the heart of Yomiuri's position is the argument that failure to allow collective self-defense in some form will destroy the alliance: "For example, if Japan, by virtue of constitutional restrictions, was an idle spectator to an attack on the US, the alliance would collapse." I do not disagree with that assessment. Once Americans realize that the alliance is actually a one-way alliance, their tolerance for it would disappear quickly, particularly if that realization came about in the aftermath of an attack on the US.

My problem is the idea that the solution to the collective self-defense problem is Japan's simply changing the constitutional interpretation (or revising the constitution). The Japanese people, insofar as they think about collective self-defense, are undoubtedly concerned that changing the interpretation could result in Japan's being forced to march alongside the US in American wars of choice (or war that may be necessary for the US, but not exactly in Japan's interests). This obviously transcends the limited cases under consideration, but it is an essential problem when looking at the road to a more active US-Japan alliance.

The politics of the alliance are such that it is hard to envision Japan standing up in the UN and publicly disagreeing with the US on the need for a war. (I am thinking, of course, of the actions of certain European allies prior to the Iraq war.) Wars of choice ought to mean that allies have a choice too; indeed, that seems to have been the lesson of the Iraq war, given that transatlantic relations seem to be steady again.

Accordingly, the alliance needs to change politically to be capable of handling collective self-defense.

The key is probably Japan becoming more capable of defending itself without the US. As long as Japan needs US military power for its own defense — even excluding nuclear deterrence — collective self-defense will feel like Japan is being press-ganged into helping the US because it feels it has no choice lest it risk the US loosening its commitment to defend Japan. This kind of anticipatory reaction was certainly a part of Japan's commitments to coalition efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq (which leads me to wonder how long Japan will be able to resist pressure from the US to put boots on the ground in Afghanistan). As a result, collective self-defense would be less the product of two allies working together than one ally feeling pressured to help as a way to ensure its security.

All changes flow from this, because as long as Japan depends on the US for its security, it is assigned, implicitly if not explicitly, a subordinate position politically. Creating an alliance council equivalent to the North Atlantic Council in the absence of Japan's being able to defend itself without the US would be futile, because the same psychological pressures that shape Japan's decision making vis-a-vis the US today would come into play.

Of course, the process of Japan becoming able to defend itself largely without the US is a process fraught with risk due to the likely reactions of Japan's neighbors, and constrained both by constitution interpretation and the budget. Indeed, these challenges have been enough to retard the process to date.

But the time is come to make Japanese self-reliance an explicit goal, and work to overcome the aforementioned challenges as much as possible.The US need not be a "cap in the bottle" any longer. It should want a capable, relatively equal ally, an ally that is able to articulate and defend its interests, even if there is divergence with the US. The goal should not simply be for Japan to become a more capable, subordinate ally. As such, permitting collective self-defense beyond the most basic cases, without a major shift in the balance between allies, will ultimately be politically unsustainable in Japan. The risk of being pulled into a US war that the Japanese people feel is not their concern will be enough to derail it. But if the Japanese government were positioned to articulate those fears publicly in the event of a crisis, collective self-defense would mean not an unconditional arrangement whereby each ally promises to aid the other in any and all cases, but an arrangement whereby the allies are capable of airing concerns and opting out if need be (for example, if Japan were in a skirmish with China or Korea over contested islands).

Creative thinking on the alliance is needed as Japan considers how to change its defense posture. Repeatedly restating commitments to one another — renewing vows over and over again — may have been fine during the 1990s, but it is no longer good enough today.

When in doubt, talk about how to make Japan great again

"Now the vote likely will pivot on scandal and mismanagement of the country's enormous pension system. This is a shame. The election really should be about Mr. Abe's vision for a more activist international role for Japan."

So says Michael Auslin, AEI's newest Japan scholar, whom I previously discussed in this post, in which I discussed his unquestioning acceptance of Prime Minister Abe's "beautiful country" rhetoric.

Compared to Auslin's latest — an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal (available free here) — the earlier article was a work of inspired genius.

Let's start with the above quote. Who is Michael Auslin — or Abe Shinzo, for the matter — to tell the Japanese people what the election should be about? Why is it a shame that the Japanese people are concerned about the responsiveness of the government to their very real quality of life concerns? Why should the voters ignore the government's very real indifference to their concerns and vote on the basis of some abstract concern about Japan's position in the world? And why does Auslin think that the Japanese people are just hankering for Japan to play a more significant global role as a US ally?

Once again, Auslin buys the rhetoric emanating from Tokyo: "Despite scandal and missteps, they might find that it is Mr. Abe who offers the most compelling vision of their country's role in the world."

What is Mr. Abe's vision for Japan in the world, and how does Mr. Abe plan to achieve it without wide-scale reform of how Japan is governed? Japan, like Italy, Germany and other continental European countries, is trying to manage the difficult task of coping with an aging and shrinking population while at the same time transforming the economy to ensure survival and prosperity in a globalized economy. But Auslin believes none of the matters. All that matters are the superficial symbols of national power and Japan's rhetorical commitment to the US, not the long-term future of Japan as a great power.

Who cares if swathes of the country are in terminal decline? Who cares if people cannot be certain that care for the elderly will be sufficient to handle the aging of baby boomers? Who cares if corruption and incompetence have shaken public trust in nearly every sector of Japanese life? Why should the election be decided based on these mundane issues when the Japanese people can use the election to acclaim Abe Shinzo as the leader who will make Japan great beautiful again!

The US should not want an ally that is incapable of responsible governance and unable to cope with the challenges that its society will face in the coming decade. And it should not want an ally that comes running whenever the US calls. It should want a country that is confident, well-governed, and a model to its neighbors, one that is a good-faith partner that honors its commitments to its allies, but only makes those commitments after an open discussion as to whether doing so is in its interests.

Before Japan can begin talking about leading in the region, it needs to sort out its numerous domestic governance issues. That is the criteria by which to judge Prime Minister Abe. In his nine months in office, what has he done to transform how the country is governed? Auslin does not address that question; the national referendum bill and the government's stated intention to buy F-22s are apparently all that matter.

Why does Japan need a pipeline?

Prime Minister Abe, in this week's mail magazine, echoes some of the media coverage of his appointment of Koike Yuriko as the new defense minister in describing her as a "pipeline" to the US: "Koike-san has pipelines to ministers responsible for defense and foreign policy in other countries, and she is well versed in security policy."

Why on earth does the defense minister of one of the world's biggest defense spenders and ally of the world's greatest military power need to have unique pipelines to other governments? If she calls through normal channels, are they going to put her on hold?

It is this cloak of meekness that Japan needs to shed if it is going to be taken seriously as a security provider. (Oh, and the sensitivity that leads a defense minister to resign after stating facts that are acknowledged more or less universally outside of Japan — but then doing that would mean "[sticking] to dry, strategic arguments," as Asahi's Tensei Jingo column warns us not to do.)

This whole sorry episode — including the trumpeting of Defense Minister Koike's foreign network — shows just how far Japan has to go before it can be called a "normal" country. For all the new laws, for the dispatches of the JSDF abroad (including the ASDF into the line of fire in Iraq), for all the rhetoric emanating from the government, the thinking of the Japanese people remains thoroughly steeped in the sentiments of "one-country pacifism." The Japanese people remain deeply uneasy about all things martial, even as they benefit from the US Military's ensuring that Japanese consumers enjoy access to Middle Eastern oil.

I recognize that the contradiction makes many Japanese uncomfortable — I discussed this here — but rather than just pausing to acknowledge the contradiction, and then carrying on as always, Japanese leaders will have to face up to reality, to stop indulging in "compassion for the people who suffered under those mushroom clouds" and start focusing on how they can actually ensure that no people need suffer the same fate again. Chances are that resolutions and high-minded statements of principles will not be enough to do it. There is a place for remembering the events of August 6 and August 9, 1945, but memory and sentiment cannot be the whole of the story.

This is the problem with the argument made in recent years by Kenneth Pyle, Michael Green, and others that Japan is the consummate realist: I do not disagree that Japan has benefited from the leadership of some extraordinary strategists since it modernized, but they have operated largely out of sight of the Japanese people, and as a result the people have little appreciation for the strategic considerations that have guided Japan's actions in the international system. I recognize this is a problem for many countries, but the problem seems especially acute in Japan. Look at the "awakening" on North Korea that has occurred over the past decade. While the 1998 Taepodong launch was important, while nuclear fears are important, both pale in comparison to public sentiment on the abductions (explained in part but not entirely by the government's emphasis on the issue). It has taken a soft, sentimental issue for the Japanese people to pay attention to a threat next door.

For many countries, even for many democracies, this would not be a problem, but in Japan security and defense policy are less insulated from public sentiment than in other democracies; indeed, in security and defense policy the government is uniquely vulnerable to public pressure, as the Kyuma resignation illustrates. While Kyuma's resignation was not about defense policy in particular, it was about defense policy in general, including how Japan should think about nuclear weapons — and even how Japan should think about its alliance with the US. A foreign policy tied to public sentiment is dangerous, vulnerable to either undershooting or overshooting, as even the US has learned in the years following 9/11, with considerable costs in blood and treasure.

Meanwhile, the Kyuma affair shines light on the problems of history. "Nuclear weapons do not fall from the sky of their own accord," notes Asahi. "People make them, and people release them on other people's orders." True and true. But what about the people who launch wars of aggression on an entire region? And what about people who wage war with no regard to the laws of war governing the treatment of prisoners of war? And what about people who are willing to sacrifice the lives of civilians in order to continuing waging their war?

Indeed, Asahi's column is a great example of how pacifists have furthered the interests of Japan's hypernationalists, because the history of Imperial Japan's aggression becomes obscured by Japan's suffering from American bombing. A responsible column would have, even while condemning the US for the bombing, spared at least a sentence to criticize the government in Tokyo that had laid Okinawa to waste and was prepared to do the same for the rest of Japan in order to resist the US.

An indiscretion too far

Under pressure from his own constituents, Defense Minister Kyuma offered his resignation to Prime Minister Abe, who accepted.

Asahi reports that he told reporters that his reasoning was based on fears that he would influence the Upper House elections.

His tenure as Japan's last JDA director-general and the first defense minister was marked by ill-considered public remarks, so it is altogether fitting that he has been brought low for violating the taboo of taboos, this after comments that publicly questioned the US war in Iraq (breaking with government policy of supporting the US rhetorically one-hundred percent) and suggested a reconsideration of the three principles on arms exports, one of the pillars of Japanese security policy.

While he may be out of the way for the Upper House campaign, I wonder if voters in his Nagasaki district will remember his comments the next time a Lower House election rolls around.

Meanwhile, I stand by what I wrote earlier — whatever the political impact of Kyuma's remarks, they, and the response to them, have been revealing.

How many angels fit on the end of an SM-3?

James Auer, director of Vanderbilt's Center for US-Japan Studies and Cooperation, spoke tonight at Temple University Japan to a large audience composed of US and Japanese diplomats and policymakers, scholars, and others interested in the US-Japan alliance.

Auer is one of the elder statesmen of the alliance, having served in Japan while in the US Navy (including time spent as a liaison officer between US Naval Forces Japan and the Japanese political community), formulated US Japan policy while serving as Special Assistant for Japan in the Office of Secretary of Defense for nearly a decade spanning the Carter and Reagan administrations, and studied the alliance as a scholar, not to mention mentoring alliance leaders from both countries, including many of the defense policymakers responsible for the alliance during the 1990s. He is steeped in the lore of the alliance, and it would not be an exaggeration to call him the alliance's oral historian.

It was for this last reason especially that it was interesting to listen to his talk. But the question-and-answer session dissolved into a classic "angels-on-pinheads" discussion of Japan's position on its non-exercise of the right of collective defense, illustrating just how stunted the alliance is.

Unlike NATO, the members of which having debated since the end of the cold war the meaning of the alliance in the absence of a clear external enemy, the US-Japan alliance has not really moved beyond debates about how the alliance can fully meet its primary purpose: the defense of Japan, as enshrined in Article V of the Mutual Security Treaty. (Auer argued, with good reason, that the terms of the security treaty constitute de facto collective defense.) While some policymakers and intellectuals would like the alliance to be more global in scope, and Japan to bear a greater burden as a global security provider, the alliance is far from being able to address that question adequately, because policymakers from both countries — but Japan in particular — still debate the theology of the Cabinet Legislation Bureau's constitutional interpretation. Collective defense, especially in the limited cases being considered by Abe's advisory group (most significantly for the US the case of a missile that may be bound for the continental US), is still more about enhancing the ability of the US to defend Japan, not about projecting bilateral power in the region or neighboring regions. (Note how little discussion there is of how collective defense might work in an Article 6 situation, involving the "maintenance of international peace and security in the Far East.")

At the same time, it seems that alliance transformation is stuck, because without some discussion of what the alliance will be for beyond the mere defense of Japan, if anything, the process of reconsidering how Japan should contribute to the alliance is inadequate. The Japanese debate has been and will continue to be more concerned with figuring out what Japan cannot do than devising a new legal framework to support what Japan, in concert with the US, has decided it wants to be able to do.

After the Yoshida Doctrine, what?

Over at Shisaku, MTC notes in a thoughtful post on the Yoshida Doctrine, "Yet even now, sixteen years down the line, the Yoshida tradeoff rules as the master narrative underpinning all discussion of Japan's security options."

Yet I wonder if the Yoshida Doctrine lives on only as a function of the institutional and constitutional constraints that were devised to establish its position as strategic framework by which Japan acted in the postwar world — less master narrative than default option in lieu of a new consensus.

As I have argued before, for the past fi