We are proud to announce that we just published a timely monograph by William Brooks on Futenma issue, which has yet to be settled for indeed fourteen years, based on his rich experience in the American Embassy in Tokyo.
Director, Kent Calder wrote, "It gives the Reischauer Center for East Asian Studies great pleasure to publish this monograph as the latest contribution to our Asia-Pacific Policy Papers monograph collection. The series aims to bridge the delicate divide between policy and scholarship—to present timely issues of public interest and policy importance, in a reflective, analytical fashion that realistically contributes to their resolution. Just as we have dealt in the past with issues of Japanese economic reform, North Korean nuclear policy, and Chinese energy security, so here do we present timely research on the most controversial issue facing U.S.-Japan relations today—the relocation of the Futenma Marine Corps Air Station.
In recent months there has been a blizzard of journalistic commentary on Futenma—hundreds of op ed pieces and television specials on the issue, replete with short-term forecasts on how it may affect the incumbent Japanese administration or the U.S.-Japan alliance. Yet there has been remarkably little serious research—and no at-length historical studies covering the evolution of the controversy from its origins—on just how we got to where we are today. This analytical gap is not only unfortunate from a scholarly standpoint; it also blinds us to important political dynamics, and policy options, that have been relevant in the past, and may well shape the future.
We could not ask for a more appropriate analytical viewpoint on such a hybrid policy-research question than that of Bill Brooks, a valued colleague here at SAIS, with a Columbia Ph.D., with whom I worked closely at US Embassy Tokyo a decade ago. Bill served for fifteen years, until 2009, as head of the Office of Translation and Media Analysis at the Embassy, monitoring and analyzing political-economic developments in Japan, and Japanese reactions to them, for U.S. government officials in both Tokyo and Washington. His research and advice were always well respected, and his 2 appreciation of subtle developments within Japan, as an American fully fluent in Japanese language and culture, were unequalled. Now, for the first time, we get his public view of fateful events that Dr. Brooks witnessed directly and at close hand as a public servant, although the analysis itself draws only—Bill is careful to add—on openly available sources.
It is for the reader to decide how he or she views this unique analysis, on an issue fraught with public controversy. It needs to be read completely, and a brief summary cannot do it justice. That said, there are recurring themes it is useful to stress from the outset:
(1) The Lessons of History
The Futenma controversy has been boiling on for over fifteen years, but the basic options—relocation to the vicinity of Henoko; choices among mobile basing, reclamation, land-based options inside Camp Schwab, and the so-called QIP method—remain remarkably constant. So do many of the political responses to each of the options.
(2) The Centrality of Politics
Time and again, political decisions—at the national level and at the prefectural and local levels within Okinawa— have complicated resolution of what seemed originally to be a promising, simple, and creative resolution to the pressing imperative of closing an aging military facility in a crowded urban area, and moving it to a less threatening environment. Interested parties transformed the initial, relatively simple option of a heliport at Henoko, inside Camp Schwab, into a variety of complex permutations. New administrations felt the need to impose their own resolutions, even when doing so opened Pandora’s boxes. And within Okinawa itself, the preferred option again and again was simply indecision—keeping base issues in play, so as to extract maximum benefit from all parties, without the downside of implementing something distasteful.
(3) The “Mission Creep” Dynamic
The original proposal for Futenma relocation was relatively simple—a land-based heliport inside Camp Schwab. For a variety of reasons, on both the American and the
Japanese sides, the plans that ultimately emerged were, time and time again, much more elaborate. Technological change, and the related introduction of new operating equipment and logistical requirements, was one reason; political and economic pressures had their impact also.
(4) The Importance of Deadlines, Clarity and Leadership
Futenma-related decisionmaking has tended to drift, as the issues are unpleasant and peripheral for many of the decision-makers, unless there is an action-forcing event. The tragic 1995 Okinawa rape case, and the 1996 Clinton- Hashimoto summit, initially played this role, and gave birth to the original agreement. Leadership also helped consolidate the 2006 agreement. The history presented in this monograph thus suggests that leadership, against the deadline of the forthcoming November, 2010 Yokohama APEC summit, when President Barack Obama will visit Japan, will be crucial once again in finally settling this longstanding issue.
This monograph is a good read—remarkably bi-national and bicultural in its range of perspectives, and the data it summons for analysis. It covers an important subject, from a unique perspective, in an unprecedented way. It is eloquent, and sensitive to both the needs of the U.S-Japan alliance and the tragedy of Futenma citizens caught in the middle. I enjoyed it, and I know that future readers will as well."
2010年5月20日木曜日
2009年9月22日火曜日
Japan's General Election
Upon Japan’s general election on August 30, 2009, the Reischauer Center hosted a seminar on the election results and their implications for U.S.-Japan relations. The presenters were Kent Calder, Director of the Center, and Rust Deming, Senior Advisor. Both were optimistic regarding the future of the U.S.-Japan alliance. Despite Hatoyama’s rhetoric, published in a New York Times article, and the prospect of the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) halting the Maritime Self-Defense Force’s fueling operation in the Indian Ocean, it is understandable that the new DPJ administration would want to propose different policies from the long ruled Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) to show the difference, which in the short term might cause confusion but will be manageable. For the audio of the event, click here, and for the powerpoint used by Kent Calder, click here.
2009年6月26日金曜日
Kent Calder's Congressional Testimony
Download PDF File
Much is Changing: The World, Asia, and Japanese Domestic Politics
Neither Japanese politics nor the U.S.-Japan relationship today are static. Indeed, Japanese politics may well be on the verge of historic change. Understanding and coping with that prospect of historic change in Tokyo is the distinctive, unusual challenge that American policy-makers confront today—one that they have not faced with such intensity in nearly half a century. Japan remains America’s most important ally in the Pacific, and the strategic logic of our continued partnership is strong. Yet powerful political- economic forces, inspired by globalization, regional developments, and domestic change, threaten a quiet crisis in our bilateral alliance, all too poorly understood, which could deepen seriously over the coming year, if we do not act astutely to contain it.
The current structure of both Japanese politics and our trans-Pacific alliance were born in the 1950s, more than half a century ago. The current ruling Liberal Democratic Party of Japan was founded in 1955, and has dominated domestic politics in Tokyo almost continuously ever since. Our bilateral security treaty was originally signed in September, 1951, and will celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of its latest revisions only a few months from now.
When our trans-Pacific alliance was founded, and the ruling Liberal Democrats came to power, America’s GDP was nearly half of the world’s total, and Japan’s was little more than 3 percent. China was under embargo, Korea was in ruins, Europe was rebuilding from a disastrous war, and Southeast Asia was largely colonialized. The United States and Japan were alone as major powers in the Pacific, confronted with a Soviet global challenge. And their alliance, despite bitter war-time memories, was a natural choice, un-complicated by third party diversions.
Both the global and the regional equations are radically different today. The economies of the U.S. and Japan are somewhat closer in scale, with the US comprising a quarter of global GDP, and Japan roughly a third of that magnitude. Yet China, Korea, and India have rapidly emerged, as major beneficiaries of globalization, and all are in Japan’s neighborhood. It is much harder for Tokyo and Washington to systematically focus on each other’s concerns than it used to be. Japan’s domestic stagnation, since the collapse of its financial bubble in the early 1990s, has only made “Japan passing” all that much easier, even for Tokyo’s friends and allies abroad.
Why Japan Matters
Substantively, there is much in Japan today that needs to command the attention of America’s policy-makers, that country’s remarkable talent for remaining invisible notwithstanding. Japan’s economy is the second largest in the world, and Japanese hold more than a tenth of global savings. Japan’s public and private sectors together are by far the largest purchasers of American debt on earth. Japan is technologically much more advanced in most dimensions than China, and could easily go nuclear if it had the political inclination to do so.
There is much in Japan’s low security profile that is distinctive, but could prospectively be changed. Tokyo’s “no-war” constitution, in prevailing interpretations, bars offensive power projection, with no aircraft carriers or long-range missiles. In place of off-shore deployments, Japan has traditionally contributed to the common defense by offering extensive basing facilities to U.S. forces, including support for the only U.S. aircraft carrier home-ported on foreign soil, and long-term facilities for the only one of the three Marine Expeditionary Forces, III MEF, that is routinely deployed abroad. Japan also provides substantial host-nation support (HNS) payments, currently totaling over $4 billion, which represent over 40 percent of the total bilateral host-nation support that U.S. forces receive from all of our allies combined.
A Growing Japanese Security Role
This traditional defense equation—that the United States provides security beyond Japan’s shores, while Japan supplies bases within Japan, and generous financial support for maintaining them—has slowly begun to change, generating short-run solidarities that ultimately give rise to long-run tensions. Within a month of the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on 9/11, Japan committed to support American forces in the Arabian Sea, under new anti-terrorist legislation, and later deployed also to Iraq. Japan today provides over 30 percent of the fuel consumed by U.S. and allied forces in the Arabian Sea, that operate in support of anti-terrorist operations in Afghanistan, and interdict illicit flows into Pakistan as well.
Despite these new commitments, Japan has also maintained its traditional “burden-sharing” activities at home, in support of American bases there. Among other things, it pays most salaries of the 25,000 Japanese employees at U.S. military installations, pays the rent on land provided to the United States by private land-owners, and supports base utility costs. Additionally, the U.S. and Japan also concluded, in 2006, a $26 billion agreement to support redeployment of 8,000 U.S. Marines to Guam, close the existing U.S. Marine Corps Air Station at Futenma, redeploy affected troops to Henoko in the northern part of Okinawa, and improve bi-national coordination with respect to anti-terrorism and air defense at Camp Zama and Yokota Air Force Base respectively.
Lingering Regional Uncertainties
Regional developments—principally North Korean provocations, coupled with the rise of China—introduce one new set of uncertainties regarding the security future. Broadly speaking, these help to strengthen the alliance, particularly in the short-run. Japanese are almost universally critical of North Korea, with nearly 80 percent supporting the toughening of sanctions against Pyongyang, and generally apprehensive of a rising China. This apprehension is, however, mixed with attraction, including an urge to interact closely with a rapidly growing Chinese economy that since 2006 has been Japan’s largest trading partner.
With the economic importance of Asia for Japan rising, regional architecture that brings Japan into more systematic contact with Asia is attractive for Tokyo. US-Japan-South Korea mini-lateral dialogue, following the pattern of the Clinton years, is especially welcomed, as that triad is a grouping of allies especially well-equipped to respond to the North Korean challenge. The US-Japan-China mini-lateral is also positively regarded by most Japanese, especially for cooperation on energy and environmental issues, where China’s deepening problems directly affect Japan as well. Japan is, however, highly conscious that it, unlike China, is a formal U.S. ally, so naturally expects a degree of prior bilateral consultation appropriately reflecting its alliance standing.
Northeast Asia is the one major global region with a pronounced “organization gap”: no well-developed, region-specific security or political-economic architecture. The closest that Northeast Asia as a whole currently comes on the security side is the so-called “six-party talks”, involving the two Koreas, China, Russia, Japan, and the United States. On the political-economic side, the East Asia Summit, the “ASEAN plus Three” process, and, most recently, the Northeast Asia Summit, involving Japan, China, and South Korea, are alternatives.
Japan’s experience with the six-party process has not been an easy one. The major problem, in Japan’s view, has been the failure of the other regional partners to consider seriously the issue of Japanese citizens abducted to North Korea. Since 2006that so-called “lachi mondai” (abduction issue) has had considerable domestic political salience in Japan. The Japanese conservatives have traditionally felt much more at home with the US-Japan bilateral alliance than with the six-party talks or any other multilateral formulations. Japan has participated in a range of mini-lateral meetings, but has not so far emphasized new Northeast Asian regional architecture, despite the serious potential problems impending—refugee flows, humanitarian assistance, disarmament, and reconstruction among them-- should major political-military transition occur on the Korean peninsula. DPJ leader Hatoyama Yukio has, however, recently stressed the notion of an East Asian Community, and made his first international visit as party leader to Seoul.
Dealing with the Prospect of Political Transition in Tokyo
Japan’s future orientation on the entire range of issues considered here—North Korea, regional organization, U.S. bases in Japan, and the configuration of the U.S.-Japan alliance, to name a few—could be profoundly affected by the political changes now impending domestically in Japan. A general election must be scheduled by September 10, 2009, to be held by October 20. And the chances are strong that the major Opposition party, the Democratic Party of Japan, will win at least a plurality, possibly provoking broader political transformation. Newly configured parties would then have an opportunity to consolidate their positions next summer, when Upper House elections are scheduled for around July 25. Many observers speculate that a double election of both the Lower and the Upper Houses of the Diet might well at that time be held, consummating the most substantial political re-alignment since 1955, potentially within a year from now.
Some might ask why, after Japanese politics has been stable for so long, that it should suddenly grow so fluid and potentially volatile. To understand the likelihood of imminent change, it is important to see Japanese politics in broader socio-economic context. Urbanization and demographic change have been one factor, with a new generation alienated from traditional compensation politics only sporadically participating. Changing competitive patterns among re-configured parties could well bring new voters to the polls, helping to accelerate re-alignment and intensifying inter-party competition. Secondly, years of economic stagnation and politically inspired inefficiency, crystal clear in sectors like agriculture, have both consumed the budgetary resources that have kept the ruling party in power, and also created ambivalence among some business leaders about the utility or practicality of sustaining the current political structure. The end of the Cold War, finally, has reduced some geopolitical inhibitions on the emergence of serious competitive party politics, both domestically and on the part of Japan’s allies.
The confluence of these domestic and international factors may well lead to a new era of substantially more fluid and competitive party politics than Japan has experienced in over half a century. The future configurations of party competition are uncertain, of course, but electoral logic under the current electoral system, introduced in 1994, suggests that competition will after a transitional interval evolve primarily on a two-party basis. Issues rather than pork-barrel distributive politics will likely grow more salient, and starker choices will emerge between national security, including the challenges from North Korea and China, and social security, in what is becoming the oldest major nation in the world, with a demographic structure similar to Florida.
Clearly American sensitivity to Japan’s national-security straits, as well as its social-security tradeoffs, will be essential to the future viability of the alliance, and to the broader U.S.-Japan relationship. Japan’s perceived requirements are complex, and difficult for Americans to readily appreciate, in three major respects. First of all, many Japanese, living in a crowded land with minimal resources, subscribe to a somewhat broader conception of security, including prominent energy and environmental dimensions, than is common in the United States. They also tend to be more sensitive to nuclear- disarmament issues, while retaining a quiet concern about the quality of American extended deterrence. Japan, after all, is the one nation to have been a victim of nuclear warfare, and the shadow of Hiroshima continues to linger, balanced by some foreboding over China’s rise.
Japan and the United States also, of course, have different domestic political imperatives. The Democratic Party of Japan, which may well win at least a plurality in the forthcoming general election, has flirted in its past with the concept of an “alliance without bases”. Although it has retracted that notion, it has declared an intention of relocating the Futenma MCAS outside Okinawa, and opposed the LDP deployment to the Indian Ocean, while also seeking to reduce HNS. The DPJ has also proposed revisions to the U.S.-Japan SOFA, in order to make the alliance, in its view, more equal. Base issues could easily be a flash point in US-Japan relations over the coming year, and it is in the interest of both sides to keep latent differences muted, especially as China’s regional political-military profile rises.
Although there is broad agreement among Japanese and American leaders of virtually all political persuasions on the importance in the abstract of enhancing the US-Japan alliance, there is much less clear-cut agreement on what operationally that should mean. What is clear is that more “common equities” are needed, given broad cultural differences across the Pacific, and a paucity of direct foreign investment between the U.S. and Japan. To be sure, there are important political-military dimensions to this notion of “common equities”, such as the question of F-22 procurement, and defense-equipment inter-operability. Yet apart from the abstract requirements of diplomacy and strategy, a domestic-policy dialogue on subjects of grassroots utility, such as pre-school education, computer literacy, vocational training, energy efficiency, rapid transit, and high-speed intercity transportation, is also needed, so as to broaden and strengthen the political foundation of the alliance. Many of these fields are areas where Japan has substantial expertise; a domestic-policy dialogue, even on a Track II basis, could thus help to give more symmetry and breadth to the U.S.-Japan relationship—something that the DPJ, in particular, has stressed. High-visibility pilot projects, such as low-energy use buildings that pool state of the art American and Japanese technology, should also be pursued, in connection with a prospective domestic-policy dialogue.
In the period of prospective political uncertainty that is impending in Japan, symbolism and personal diplomacy will be especially important. It will be useful for leaders to re-affirm the symbolic importance of the US-Japan partnership through high-level personal diplomacy and gestures of mutual respect, as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and President Barack Obama did in their early meetings with Japanese leaders this year. Appointment of a “Wisemen’s Group”, such as functioned during the Carter Administration, to plan for the future of the bilateral relationship in apolitical fashion, could also be useful. Due to the uncertainty and fluidity, personal diplomacy and consultation will need to extend more broadly across Japanese society, and across its political world, than has typically been true, and the symbolic role of the Ambassador, as well as the U.S. Embassy and U.S. Consulates General in Japan will be central. Serious thought should be given to restoring the network of American Centers in Japan to at least the dimensions that it enjoyed a generation ago, and to providing NDFL funding status for Japanese-language study.
Broad-based engagement with Japanese society is crucial to American interests in Japan. It is equally important, however, for America’s representatives to avoid being drawn into partisan alignments, given the manifest uncertainties on the local political scene. U.S. policy should focus, at least in the short-run, on issues where Japanese, and indeed most Americans, broadly agree, such as re-assurance vs. North Korea, together with lowest-common denominator issues such as cultural relations, energy, and the environment. In those two latter areas, in particular, Japan also has substantive policy initiatives under way, flowing from the 2008 Toyako G-8 Summit, and considerable technical expertise, in both the private sector and in an elite, highly efficient bureaucracy. Those capacities should allow it to continue to effectively cooperate with the United States and other major nations, even in the face of domestic political uncertainty.
A final major issue that inevitably looms in the coming transitional era is nuclear energy, in both its civilian and military dimensions. Given the prospect of rising worldwide energy demand, driven by the simultaneous rise of China and India, as well as Japan’s total lack of domestic oil and gas, civilian nuclear power is an attractive option. A quarter of Japan’s electric power is already generated by nuclear plants, and the prospect is that that ratio will move steadily higher, to as much as 40 percent by 2030. Japan has also pioneered the closed fuel cycle. This generates plutonium as a means to assure energy security in a high-cost energy world, and has generated, under strict global supervision, a plutonium stockpile of over 13,000 pounds. Japan has been fully cooperative with the IAEA, but new and more comprehensive regional arrangements, with American participation, may well be needed, should neighboring China and South Korea—with similar energy challenges to those of Japan—also begin considering the closed fuel cycle’s merits, and as the geopolitical equation in Northeast Asia evolves. Needless to say, ending North Korean WMD, missile development, and arms-trade programs also loom as crucial future challenges to both the United States and Japan.
In Conclusion
Mike Mansfield two decades ago termed U.S.-Japan ties “the most important bilateral relationship in the world, bar none.” That trans-Pacific partnership remains vitally important not only in strategic terms, and because it helps crucially in stabilizing the world economy, but also for the role it has historically played, and continues to play, in broadening America’s horizons culturally, and in making us so much more than an Atlantic power alone.
For more than half a century, U.S.-Japan relations have moved forward remarkably smoothly, on momentum from the remarkable diplomatic achievements of the 1950s, based on the conservative, yet enduring political edifice erected in Japan during those days. Over the coming year, our two nations could abruptly confront a profoundly different era—one potentially marked by major political transformation in Japan, and the need for new strategic vision, even as the impact of our new, dynamic Administration here is just becoming manifest in new policy initiatives and confirmed personnel appointments. This coming year will doubtless be a time of challenge, but also of opportunity. It may at last provide a chance to finally overcome the broken dialogue with Japan that Edwin O. Reischauer confronted as Ambassador half a century ago, and to broaden the trans-Pacific relationship with Tokyo, to the benefit of all our people.
Much is Changing: The World, Asia, and Japanese Domestic Politics
Neither Japanese politics nor the U.S.-Japan relationship today are static. Indeed, Japanese politics may well be on the verge of historic change. Understanding and coping with that prospect of historic change in Tokyo is the distinctive, unusual challenge that American policy-makers confront today—one that they have not faced with such intensity in nearly half a century. Japan remains America’s most important ally in the Pacific, and the strategic logic of our continued partnership is strong. Yet powerful political- economic forces, inspired by globalization, regional developments, and domestic change, threaten a quiet crisis in our bilateral alliance, all too poorly understood, which could deepen seriously over the coming year, if we do not act astutely to contain it.
The current structure of both Japanese politics and our trans-Pacific alliance were born in the 1950s, more than half a century ago. The current ruling Liberal Democratic Party of Japan was founded in 1955, and has dominated domestic politics in Tokyo almost continuously ever since. Our bilateral security treaty was originally signed in September, 1951, and will celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of its latest revisions only a few months from now.
When our trans-Pacific alliance was founded, and the ruling Liberal Democrats came to power, America’s GDP was nearly half of the world’s total, and Japan’s was little more than 3 percent. China was under embargo, Korea was in ruins, Europe was rebuilding from a disastrous war, and Southeast Asia was largely colonialized. The United States and Japan were alone as major powers in the Pacific, confronted with a Soviet global challenge. And their alliance, despite bitter war-time memories, was a natural choice, un-complicated by third party diversions.
Both the global and the regional equations are radically different today. The economies of the U.S. and Japan are somewhat closer in scale, with the US comprising a quarter of global GDP, and Japan roughly a third of that magnitude. Yet China, Korea, and India have rapidly emerged, as major beneficiaries of globalization, and all are in Japan’s neighborhood. It is much harder for Tokyo and Washington to systematically focus on each other’s concerns than it used to be. Japan’s domestic stagnation, since the collapse of its financial bubble in the early 1990s, has only made “Japan passing” all that much easier, even for Tokyo’s friends and allies abroad.
Why Japan Matters
Substantively, there is much in Japan today that needs to command the attention of America’s policy-makers, that country’s remarkable talent for remaining invisible notwithstanding. Japan’s economy is the second largest in the world, and Japanese hold more than a tenth of global savings. Japan’s public and private sectors together are by far the largest purchasers of American debt on earth. Japan is technologically much more advanced in most dimensions than China, and could easily go nuclear if it had the political inclination to do so.
There is much in Japan’s low security profile that is distinctive, but could prospectively be changed. Tokyo’s “no-war” constitution, in prevailing interpretations, bars offensive power projection, with no aircraft carriers or long-range missiles. In place of off-shore deployments, Japan has traditionally contributed to the common defense by offering extensive basing facilities to U.S. forces, including support for the only U.S. aircraft carrier home-ported on foreign soil, and long-term facilities for the only one of the three Marine Expeditionary Forces, III MEF, that is routinely deployed abroad. Japan also provides substantial host-nation support (HNS) payments, currently totaling over $4 billion, which represent over 40 percent of the total bilateral host-nation support that U.S. forces receive from all of our allies combined.
A Growing Japanese Security Role
This traditional defense equation—that the United States provides security beyond Japan’s shores, while Japan supplies bases within Japan, and generous financial support for maintaining them—has slowly begun to change, generating short-run solidarities that ultimately give rise to long-run tensions. Within a month of the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on 9/11, Japan committed to support American forces in the Arabian Sea, under new anti-terrorist legislation, and later deployed also to Iraq. Japan today provides over 30 percent of the fuel consumed by U.S. and allied forces in the Arabian Sea, that operate in support of anti-terrorist operations in Afghanistan, and interdict illicit flows into Pakistan as well.
Despite these new commitments, Japan has also maintained its traditional “burden-sharing” activities at home, in support of American bases there. Among other things, it pays most salaries of the 25,000 Japanese employees at U.S. military installations, pays the rent on land provided to the United States by private land-owners, and supports base utility costs. Additionally, the U.S. and Japan also concluded, in 2006, a $26 billion agreement to support redeployment of 8,000 U.S. Marines to Guam, close the existing U.S. Marine Corps Air Station at Futenma, redeploy affected troops to Henoko in the northern part of Okinawa, and improve bi-national coordination with respect to anti-terrorism and air defense at Camp Zama and Yokota Air Force Base respectively.
Lingering Regional Uncertainties
Regional developments—principally North Korean provocations, coupled with the rise of China—introduce one new set of uncertainties regarding the security future. Broadly speaking, these help to strengthen the alliance, particularly in the short-run. Japanese are almost universally critical of North Korea, with nearly 80 percent supporting the toughening of sanctions against Pyongyang, and generally apprehensive of a rising China. This apprehension is, however, mixed with attraction, including an urge to interact closely with a rapidly growing Chinese economy that since 2006 has been Japan’s largest trading partner.
With the economic importance of Asia for Japan rising, regional architecture that brings Japan into more systematic contact with Asia is attractive for Tokyo. US-Japan-South Korea mini-lateral dialogue, following the pattern of the Clinton years, is especially welcomed, as that triad is a grouping of allies especially well-equipped to respond to the North Korean challenge. The US-Japan-China mini-lateral is also positively regarded by most Japanese, especially for cooperation on energy and environmental issues, where China’s deepening problems directly affect Japan as well. Japan is, however, highly conscious that it, unlike China, is a formal U.S. ally, so naturally expects a degree of prior bilateral consultation appropriately reflecting its alliance standing.
Northeast Asia is the one major global region with a pronounced “organization gap”: no well-developed, region-specific security or political-economic architecture. The closest that Northeast Asia as a whole currently comes on the security side is the so-called “six-party talks”, involving the two Koreas, China, Russia, Japan, and the United States. On the political-economic side, the East Asia Summit, the “ASEAN plus Three” process, and, most recently, the Northeast Asia Summit, involving Japan, China, and South Korea, are alternatives.
Japan’s experience with the six-party process has not been an easy one. The major problem, in Japan’s view, has been the failure of the other regional partners to consider seriously the issue of Japanese citizens abducted to North Korea. Since 2006that so-called “lachi mondai” (abduction issue) has had considerable domestic political salience in Japan. The Japanese conservatives have traditionally felt much more at home with the US-Japan bilateral alliance than with the six-party talks or any other multilateral formulations. Japan has participated in a range of mini-lateral meetings, but has not so far emphasized new Northeast Asian regional architecture, despite the serious potential problems impending—refugee flows, humanitarian assistance, disarmament, and reconstruction among them-- should major political-military transition occur on the Korean peninsula. DPJ leader Hatoyama Yukio has, however, recently stressed the notion of an East Asian Community, and made his first international visit as party leader to Seoul.
Dealing with the Prospect of Political Transition in Tokyo
Japan’s future orientation on the entire range of issues considered here—North Korea, regional organization, U.S. bases in Japan, and the configuration of the U.S.-Japan alliance, to name a few—could be profoundly affected by the political changes now impending domestically in Japan. A general election must be scheduled by September 10, 2009, to be held by October 20. And the chances are strong that the major Opposition party, the Democratic Party of Japan, will win at least a plurality, possibly provoking broader political transformation. Newly configured parties would then have an opportunity to consolidate their positions next summer, when Upper House elections are scheduled for around July 25. Many observers speculate that a double election of both the Lower and the Upper Houses of the Diet might well at that time be held, consummating the most substantial political re-alignment since 1955, potentially within a year from now.
Some might ask why, after Japanese politics has been stable for so long, that it should suddenly grow so fluid and potentially volatile. To understand the likelihood of imminent change, it is important to see Japanese politics in broader socio-economic context. Urbanization and demographic change have been one factor, with a new generation alienated from traditional compensation politics only sporadically participating. Changing competitive patterns among re-configured parties could well bring new voters to the polls, helping to accelerate re-alignment and intensifying inter-party competition. Secondly, years of economic stagnation and politically inspired inefficiency, crystal clear in sectors like agriculture, have both consumed the budgetary resources that have kept the ruling party in power, and also created ambivalence among some business leaders about the utility or practicality of sustaining the current political structure. The end of the Cold War, finally, has reduced some geopolitical inhibitions on the emergence of serious competitive party politics, both domestically and on the part of Japan’s allies.
The confluence of these domestic and international factors may well lead to a new era of substantially more fluid and competitive party politics than Japan has experienced in over half a century. The future configurations of party competition are uncertain, of course, but electoral logic under the current electoral system, introduced in 1994, suggests that competition will after a transitional interval evolve primarily on a two-party basis. Issues rather than pork-barrel distributive politics will likely grow more salient, and starker choices will emerge between national security, including the challenges from North Korea and China, and social security, in what is becoming the oldest major nation in the world, with a demographic structure similar to Florida.
Clearly American sensitivity to Japan’s national-security straits, as well as its social-security tradeoffs, will be essential to the future viability of the alliance, and to the broader U.S.-Japan relationship. Japan’s perceived requirements are complex, and difficult for Americans to readily appreciate, in three major respects. First of all, many Japanese, living in a crowded land with minimal resources, subscribe to a somewhat broader conception of security, including prominent energy and environmental dimensions, than is common in the United States. They also tend to be more sensitive to nuclear- disarmament issues, while retaining a quiet concern about the quality of American extended deterrence. Japan, after all, is the one nation to have been a victim of nuclear warfare, and the shadow of Hiroshima continues to linger, balanced by some foreboding over China’s rise.
Japan and the United States also, of course, have different domestic political imperatives. The Democratic Party of Japan, which may well win at least a plurality in the forthcoming general election, has flirted in its past with the concept of an “alliance without bases”. Although it has retracted that notion, it has declared an intention of relocating the Futenma MCAS outside Okinawa, and opposed the LDP deployment to the Indian Ocean, while also seeking to reduce HNS. The DPJ has also proposed revisions to the U.S.-Japan SOFA, in order to make the alliance, in its view, more equal. Base issues could easily be a flash point in US-Japan relations over the coming year, and it is in the interest of both sides to keep latent differences muted, especially as China’s regional political-military profile rises.
Although there is broad agreement among Japanese and American leaders of virtually all political persuasions on the importance in the abstract of enhancing the US-Japan alliance, there is much less clear-cut agreement on what operationally that should mean. What is clear is that more “common equities” are needed, given broad cultural differences across the Pacific, and a paucity of direct foreign investment between the U.S. and Japan. To be sure, there are important political-military dimensions to this notion of “common equities”, such as the question of F-22 procurement, and defense-equipment inter-operability. Yet apart from the abstract requirements of diplomacy and strategy, a domestic-policy dialogue on subjects of grassroots utility, such as pre-school education, computer literacy, vocational training, energy efficiency, rapid transit, and high-speed intercity transportation, is also needed, so as to broaden and strengthen the political foundation of the alliance. Many of these fields are areas where Japan has substantial expertise; a domestic-policy dialogue, even on a Track II basis, could thus help to give more symmetry and breadth to the U.S.-Japan relationship—something that the DPJ, in particular, has stressed. High-visibility pilot projects, such as low-energy use buildings that pool state of the art American and Japanese technology, should also be pursued, in connection with a prospective domestic-policy dialogue.
In the period of prospective political uncertainty that is impending in Japan, symbolism and personal diplomacy will be especially important. It will be useful for leaders to re-affirm the symbolic importance of the US-Japan partnership through high-level personal diplomacy and gestures of mutual respect, as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and President Barack Obama did in their early meetings with Japanese leaders this year. Appointment of a “Wisemen’s Group”, such as functioned during the Carter Administration, to plan for the future of the bilateral relationship in apolitical fashion, could also be useful. Due to the uncertainty and fluidity, personal diplomacy and consultation will need to extend more broadly across Japanese society, and across its political world, than has typically been true, and the symbolic role of the Ambassador, as well as the U.S. Embassy and U.S. Consulates General in Japan will be central. Serious thought should be given to restoring the network of American Centers in Japan to at least the dimensions that it enjoyed a generation ago, and to providing NDFL funding status for Japanese-language study.
Broad-based engagement with Japanese society is crucial to American interests in Japan. It is equally important, however, for America’s representatives to avoid being drawn into partisan alignments, given the manifest uncertainties on the local political scene. U.S. policy should focus, at least in the short-run, on issues where Japanese, and indeed most Americans, broadly agree, such as re-assurance vs. North Korea, together with lowest-common denominator issues such as cultural relations, energy, and the environment. In those two latter areas, in particular, Japan also has substantive policy initiatives under way, flowing from the 2008 Toyako G-8 Summit, and considerable technical expertise, in both the private sector and in an elite, highly efficient bureaucracy. Those capacities should allow it to continue to effectively cooperate with the United States and other major nations, even in the face of domestic political uncertainty.
A final major issue that inevitably looms in the coming transitional era is nuclear energy, in both its civilian and military dimensions. Given the prospect of rising worldwide energy demand, driven by the simultaneous rise of China and India, as well as Japan’s total lack of domestic oil and gas, civilian nuclear power is an attractive option. A quarter of Japan’s electric power is already generated by nuclear plants, and the prospect is that that ratio will move steadily higher, to as much as 40 percent by 2030. Japan has also pioneered the closed fuel cycle. This generates plutonium as a means to assure energy security in a high-cost energy world, and has generated, under strict global supervision, a plutonium stockpile of over 13,000 pounds. Japan has been fully cooperative with the IAEA, but new and more comprehensive regional arrangements, with American participation, may well be needed, should neighboring China and South Korea—with similar energy challenges to those of Japan—also begin considering the closed fuel cycle’s merits, and as the geopolitical equation in Northeast Asia evolves. Needless to say, ending North Korean WMD, missile development, and arms-trade programs also loom as crucial future challenges to both the United States and Japan.
In Conclusion
Mike Mansfield two decades ago termed U.S.-Japan ties “the most important bilateral relationship in the world, bar none.” That trans-Pacific partnership remains vitally important not only in strategic terms, and because it helps crucially in stabilizing the world economy, but also for the role it has historically played, and continues to play, in broadening America’s horizons culturally, and in making us so much more than an Atlantic power alone.
For more than half a century, U.S.-Japan relations have moved forward remarkably smoothly, on momentum from the remarkable diplomatic achievements of the 1950s, based on the conservative, yet enduring political edifice erected in Japan during those days. Over the coming year, our two nations could abruptly confront a profoundly different era—one potentially marked by major political transformation in Japan, and the need for new strategic vision, even as the impact of our new, dynamic Administration here is just becoming manifest in new policy initiatives and confirmed personnel appointments. This coming year will doubtless be a time of challenge, but also of opportunity. It may at last provide a chance to finally overcome the broken dialogue with Japan that Edwin O. Reischauer confronted as Ambassador half a century ago, and to broaden the trans-Pacific relationship with Tokyo, to the benefit of all our people.
2009年4月9日木曜日
Kent Calder's Pacific Alliance
For many years during the 1970s and 1980s, as Japan’s trade surpluses grew and grew, a low profile, and a reactive diplomacy, that attracted little attention and criticism seemed both beneficial for Japan and in the interest of the U.S.-Japan alliance. Harnessing the strength of the Japanese economy, America’s political economy was nourished by capital inflows that allowed the Reagan Administration to progressively increase defense spending, in the face of rising fiscal deficits, and triumphantly end the Cold War. Japan’s cooperation in quietly revising its Foreign Exchange Law to facilitate capital outflows played a crucial role, but there was little need in those days for that role to be active.
Today, however, we are in a very different era, with radically different global imperatives. Energy, environment, and international financial stabilization-- areas of manifest Japanese expertise and technical strength—are matters of pressing concern, on which passive Japanese liberalization steps are no longer enough. To the contrary, capricious, unregulated manipulation of Japanese capital exports by hedge funds and others, in the form of the yen carry trade, has been a pernicious recent element of international affairs. A substantial international profile, and the political coherence to be proactive, are very much in the interest of both Tokyo and the world. Indeed, if Japan does not soon end its recent pattern of revolving-door leadership, regaining both the ability and the will to act decisively in international affairs by stabilizing its politics, both Japan and the broader world will suffer.
The need for a Coherent, Proactive Japan is starkly clear in the trans-Pacific context. The United States, Japan’s preeminent ally, has just entered what promises to be a historic political transition. For the first time in eight years, the Democratic Party is back in power. Even more importantly, America’s first true globalist President, with existential roots in both Africa and Europe, extended childhood experience in Southeast Asia, and an upbringing in the diverse Pacific state of Hawaii, is about to enter the White House.
On the crucial matter of U.S.-Japan security guarantees, the advent of Barack Obama will no doubt mean stability and continuity. Robert Gates, President George W. Bush’s current Defense Secretary, will be continuing in office. General James Jones, a four-star Marine General and recent commander of NATO, will become National Security Advisor. Other senior Obama defense-policy advisors with East Asia-related expertise understand well the importance of U.S.-Japan security ties. It is hard to imagine a lessening of core American security commitments to Japan.
Yet the first year and a half of a new American Presidential term is traditionally the most dynamic of our Presidential cycle. New officials come to office, normally in the first six to nine months of the new President’s term, striving forcefully to distinguish themselves from their predecessors. And for a few golden moments, they typically have the wind at their back.
These early moments of a Presidential term have always been important for trans-Pacific relations. It was in June, 1953, for example, that Dwight D. Eisenhower achieved the Korean War armistice. It was in June, 1961 that the major Kennedy-Reischauer initiatives in U.S.-Japan relations unfolded. It was in mid-1969 that Richard Nixon began to unwind the Vietnam War, and to quietly begin his initiatives toward mainland China. And it was in February, 1994—little more than a year after Bill Clinton took office—that the U.S.-Japan telecommunications and auto crises began.
The early months of a new President’s term can thus be both positive and negative. It is generally difficult to forecast which. Yet it is typically true that they are fateful. This has been true to some degree across the entire history of postwar trans-Pacific relations, as we have suggested. Yet there are reasons to believe that the coming twenty months or so will be even more critical for U.S.-Japan relations than has typically been true in the past.
One major reason, as I noted in my recent book, Pacific Alliance, is that the structure of the Pacific political economy is changing. In the world of the 1950s that John Foster Dulles effectively made in negotiating the US-Japan Security Treaty, Japan and the United States stood alone in the Pacific as major and stable members of the regional community. China was under a Cold War embargo, while both Korea and Indochina were war-torn.
Today the situation is radically different. China has an economy of well over $1 trillion dollars, with military spending rising in double digits for over fifteen consecutive years, with influence leveraged by the presence of nearly four million Chinese Americans in the U.S.—nearly five times the number of Japanese Americans. Korea, although not so large, has likewise been benefiting from favorable economic and demographic trends, as has Southeast Asia also. Under an Obama Administration Southeast Asia, in particular, may have substantially more entrée in Washington than has traditionally been true, although its geopolitical weight, of course, remains limited.
The world today is rapidly globalizing, transforming the playing field in which the United States and Japan interact, as indicated in the figure below. While they must retain a meaningful bilateral alliance, they must do so within a much more complex world of competing commitments than heretofore.
This new global equation is one to which an existentially global President Obama will likely be particularly sensitive. Competition in setting the detailed agenda of Washington’s relations with the world will be intense, and will emerge explosively in coming months. Indeed, it has already begun, as was clear at the recent G-20 Washington and London Summits. The roles of the BRICs and the Europeans proved to be particularly conspicuous.
As the largest creditor nation in the world, when both public and private flows are considered, as the only large creditor that is a strong American ally, and as the one major industrialized nation that is relatively detached from the pernicious sub-prime crisis, Japan is a vital, stabilizing player in international financial diplomacy, from an American perspective. It is a natural ally of the United States. Yet Tokyo is not playing, as the results of the recent G-20 conferences suggested, as dynamic a role as might be optimal, although its recent IMF contributions and stimilus packages have made more substantial contributions to stabilizing the global economy than generally understood.
Japan’s marginal role in global financial diplomacy—at a time when its active, stabilizing function is very much needed—is only one casualty of the fluid, ambiguous political situation in Tokyo. Japan and the world are also disadvantaged on the international diplomatic scene as well. Prime Minister Aso Taro delivered a thoughtful speech in September to the General Assembly of the United Nations, and has presented sophisticated geopolitical notions for the post-Cold War world, such as his concept of an “arc of freedom and prosperity”, which effectively pre-empts the revival of the Soviet Union by extending across much of the post-Soviet space. Yet the domestic political turbulence in Tokyo—the return of a pattern of nearly annual Prime Ministers that prevailed across the 1990s also—has allowed both Aso and thoughtful predecessors such as Fukuda Yasuo far less leverage in international affairs than Japan’s global scale merits—even on issues like finance, energy, and the environment, where Japan’s expertise and underlying ability to contribute in global affairs are so strong.
Some important institutional steps to leverage Japan’s international role, of course, have been taken. Prime Minister Abe Shinzo’s establishment of a National Security Council was one important step, as has been the steady expansion of the kantei more generally. The consolidation of macro-economic and industrial-policy functions in an enlarged METI, and an expansion of the Japanese diplomatic corps have been helpful to some degree. Certainly the private sector also has a role also, and needs to work to offset paralysis in Nagata-cho.
Yet reform in the political world is clearly critical, and the resolution is not an easy one. Japan’s Constitutional and National Diet structures themselves are complex, and provide leverage for numerous veto players who can slow or stop needed policy change. Party alignments also are critical. Fukuda Yasuo and Ozawa Ichiro tried last year to form a grand coalition, to restore greater domestic political stability, and failed. No doubt a general election will be one element in clarifying the overall picture. Given complications in Diet management, some configuration that allows both Houses to operate coherently is clearly imperative. Not only Japan, but the entire world, is waiting.
Today, however, we are in a very different era, with radically different global imperatives. Energy, environment, and international financial stabilization-- areas of manifest Japanese expertise and technical strength—are matters of pressing concern, on which passive Japanese liberalization steps are no longer enough. To the contrary, capricious, unregulated manipulation of Japanese capital exports by hedge funds and others, in the form of the yen carry trade, has been a pernicious recent element of international affairs. A substantial international profile, and the political coherence to be proactive, are very much in the interest of both Tokyo and the world. Indeed, if Japan does not soon end its recent pattern of revolving-door leadership, regaining both the ability and the will to act decisively in international affairs by stabilizing its politics, both Japan and the broader world will suffer.
The need for a Coherent, Proactive Japan is starkly clear in the trans-Pacific context. The United States, Japan’s preeminent ally, has just entered what promises to be a historic political transition. For the first time in eight years, the Democratic Party is back in power. Even more importantly, America’s first true globalist President, with existential roots in both Africa and Europe, extended childhood experience in Southeast Asia, and an upbringing in the diverse Pacific state of Hawaii, is about to enter the White House.
On the crucial matter of U.S.-Japan security guarantees, the advent of Barack Obama will no doubt mean stability and continuity. Robert Gates, President George W. Bush’s current Defense Secretary, will be continuing in office. General James Jones, a four-star Marine General and recent commander of NATO, will become National Security Advisor. Other senior Obama defense-policy advisors with East Asia-related expertise understand well the importance of U.S.-Japan security ties. It is hard to imagine a lessening of core American security commitments to Japan.
Yet the first year and a half of a new American Presidential term is traditionally the most dynamic of our Presidential cycle. New officials come to office, normally in the first six to nine months of the new President’s term, striving forcefully to distinguish themselves from their predecessors. And for a few golden moments, they typically have the wind at their back.
These early moments of a Presidential term have always been important for trans-Pacific relations. It was in June, 1953, for example, that Dwight D. Eisenhower achieved the Korean War armistice. It was in June, 1961 that the major Kennedy-Reischauer initiatives in U.S.-Japan relations unfolded. It was in mid-1969 that Richard Nixon began to unwind the Vietnam War, and to quietly begin his initiatives toward mainland China. And it was in February, 1994—little more than a year after Bill Clinton took office—that the U.S.-Japan telecommunications and auto crises began.
The early months of a new President’s term can thus be both positive and negative. It is generally difficult to forecast which. Yet it is typically true that they are fateful. This has been true to some degree across the entire history of postwar trans-Pacific relations, as we have suggested. Yet there are reasons to believe that the coming twenty months or so will be even more critical for U.S.-Japan relations than has typically been true in the past.
One major reason, as I noted in my recent book, Pacific Alliance, is that the structure of the Pacific political economy is changing. In the world of the 1950s that John Foster Dulles effectively made in negotiating the US-Japan Security Treaty, Japan and the United States stood alone in the Pacific as major and stable members of the regional community. China was under a Cold War embargo, while both Korea and Indochina were war-torn.
Today the situation is radically different. China has an economy of well over $1 trillion dollars, with military spending rising in double digits for over fifteen consecutive years, with influence leveraged by the presence of nearly four million Chinese Americans in the U.S.—nearly five times the number of Japanese Americans. Korea, although not so large, has likewise been benefiting from favorable economic and demographic trends, as has Southeast Asia also. Under an Obama Administration Southeast Asia, in particular, may have substantially more entrée in Washington than has traditionally been true, although its geopolitical weight, of course, remains limited.
The world today is rapidly globalizing, transforming the playing field in which the United States and Japan interact, as indicated in the figure below. While they must retain a meaningful bilateral alliance, they must do so within a much more complex world of competing commitments than heretofore.
This new global equation is one to which an existentially global President Obama will likely be particularly sensitive. Competition in setting the detailed agenda of Washington’s relations with the world will be intense, and will emerge explosively in coming months. Indeed, it has already begun, as was clear at the recent G-20 Washington and London Summits. The roles of the BRICs and the Europeans proved to be particularly conspicuous.
As the largest creditor nation in the world, when both public and private flows are considered, as the only large creditor that is a strong American ally, and as the one major industrialized nation that is relatively detached from the pernicious sub-prime crisis, Japan is a vital, stabilizing player in international financial diplomacy, from an American perspective. It is a natural ally of the United States. Yet Tokyo is not playing, as the results of the recent G-20 conferences suggested, as dynamic a role as might be optimal, although its recent IMF contributions and stimilus packages have made more substantial contributions to stabilizing the global economy than generally understood.
Japan’s marginal role in global financial diplomacy—at a time when its active, stabilizing function is very much needed—is only one casualty of the fluid, ambiguous political situation in Tokyo. Japan and the world are also disadvantaged on the international diplomatic scene as well. Prime Minister Aso Taro delivered a thoughtful speech in September to the General Assembly of the United Nations, and has presented sophisticated geopolitical notions for the post-Cold War world, such as his concept of an “arc of freedom and prosperity”, which effectively pre-empts the revival of the Soviet Union by extending across much of the post-Soviet space. Yet the domestic political turbulence in Tokyo—the return of a pattern of nearly annual Prime Ministers that prevailed across the 1990s also—has allowed both Aso and thoughtful predecessors such as Fukuda Yasuo far less leverage in international affairs than Japan’s global scale merits—even on issues like finance, energy, and the environment, where Japan’s expertise and underlying ability to contribute in global affairs are so strong.
Some important institutional steps to leverage Japan’s international role, of course, have been taken. Prime Minister Abe Shinzo’s establishment of a National Security Council was one important step, as has been the steady expansion of the kantei more generally. The consolidation of macro-economic and industrial-policy functions in an enlarged METI, and an expansion of the Japanese diplomatic corps have been helpful to some degree. Certainly the private sector also has a role also, and needs to work to offset paralysis in Nagata-cho.
Yet reform in the political world is clearly critical, and the resolution is not an easy one. Japan’s Constitutional and National Diet structures themselves are complex, and provide leverage for numerous veto players who can slow or stop needed policy change. Party alignments also are critical. Fukuda Yasuo and Ozawa Ichiro tried last year to form a grand coalition, to restore greater domestic political stability, and failed. No doubt a general election will be one element in clarifying the overall picture. Given complications in Diet management, some configuration that allows both Houses to operate coherently is clearly imperative. Not only Japan, but the entire world, is waiting.
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