The Japan Times

Steven Clemons on Japan's Nuclear Options in The Japan Times

Communications — Fri, 13 Oct 2006 00:05:00 -0400

OSAKA -- Despite Tokyo's pledge to remain nonnuclear and assurances from top U.S. officials that their most important Pacific ally will do just that, North Korea's apparent atomic test is expected to further weaken taboos about talk of a nuclear-armed Japan in both Washington and Tokyo.

Influential academics and researchers, as well as politicians on both sides of the Pacific, have long called for Japan to seriously consider developing a nuclear deterrent...

"Key American Japan-handlers are helping to coax politicians like (former Prime Minister Yasuhiro) Nakasone, (Democratic Party of Japan President Ichiro) Ozawa and others to publicly discuss Japanese nuclear options," said Steven Clemons, director of foreign policy programs at the New America Foundation, a Washington-based think tank.

"These people, especially those who have left the Bush administration but are still influential, are helping to enable the thinking, and sparking synapses in Tokyo about this politically volatile topic.

"Obviously, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe can't publicly repudiate the nonnuclear principles, but he can, perhaps, privately work to establish a new consensus," Clemons said of Japan's stated principles of not possessing, not producing and not allowing the entry into the country of atomic weapons...

Declassified records show that the U.S. military stored atomic weapons in Okinawa and… more

Betting on a Bolder Japan

Cecille Isidro — Thu, 15 Sep 2005 02:00:00 -0400

A Latin proverb says, "fortune favors the bold but abandons the timid." That, more than any other explanation captures the drama of Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's gravity-defying success in catapulting his Liberal Democratic Party to its biggest electoral success ever--in contrast to the rival Democratic Party of Japan imploding from its internal contradictions and political inarticulateness.

Many political observers are casting Koizumi's extraordinary election wizardry in terms of a referendum on postal reform--and reform in general. This is an incorrect assessment.

What the Japanese people have voted for was boldness, vision, and a type of decisiveness that Japan has not seen for decades. In many ways, Koizumi has now decisively ended the long-running "Kaku-Fuku War" between the political heirs of the former LDP kingpin Prime Minister Kakuei Tanaka and his rival, the elite bureaucrat-turned politician Takeo Fukuda.

There were many dimensions to this internecine LDP political conflagration, but at its most blunt level, populist party bosses like Tanaka, Susumu Nikaido, Shin Kanemaru, Ichiro Ozawa and others used patronage and corruption to maintain power and fought Fukuda's cadre of elite civil servants turned politicians.

Koizumi's political lineage descends from Fukuda, but he has emerged as the nearest archetype to the once hugely popular Kakuei Tanaka than any other Japanese prime minister--but without the corruption.

This week's Lower House election, in which the LDP returned the highest percentage of seats since the party's founding in 1955, quantifies the shift in Japanese attitudes toward a new nationalism and, perhaps more importantly, a greater confidence in themselves. After more than a decade of enduring stagnation and a series of gray, dull and temporary prime ministers, Japanese voters have tenaciously embraced a leader typifying "the nail that sticks out"--an important reversal in Japan's national psyche.

It is an open question what waits on Koizumi's near-term political horizon now that the quirky prime minister's boldness has been so strongly rewarded. Koizumi will no doubt quickly resurrect and pass the major postal-reform legislation privatizing in the next 12 years Japan's government-controlled private savings near-monopoly.

But postal reform is not what inspired Japanese voters to turn out in heavy numbers. Koizumi will certainly engineer more excursions to the controversial Yasukuni Shrine, continue hardball politics and "makeup sessions" with China, and work to extend the Japanese troop presence in Iraq.

Constitutional revision also will move to the forefront, now that the LDP and coalition partner Komeito together control the necessary two-thirds of seats in the Lower House to initiate the process.

It is not just Koizumi and his LDP that benefited from this robust affirmation of the "nail sticking out." Voters continued to support several other well-known political leaders who stuck to their guns despite heavy LDP pressure, including previously-ousted LDP members Makiko Tanaka and Muneo Suzuki, and recently-expelled Seiko Noda and Shizuka Kamei.

Of course, many other "rebels" were successfully "assassinated" by Koizumi's LDP machine (17 of the 30 who ran), including by a group of "lipstick ninjas"--Kuniko Inoguchi, Satsuki Katayama, Yukiko Koike, and Takaichi Sakane.

The LDP's inclusion of numerous younger-generation and female candidates among the LDP "assassins" underscores the LDP's new boldness. It is interesting in this context that the one female sent to assassinate a female incumbent was unsuccessful; Seiko Noda was returned by her constituents despite her outspoken opposition to postal reform--or perhaps because of it.

Thus, although the era of LDP dominance would appear to be a return to the past, this is not your father's LDP. First, the party is younger and more inclusive of difference, whether by gender, profession or region.

Second, the traditional factionalism of the LDP is finished. While this long-standing system of back-room dealing did not square well with democratic values, it did provide a number internal brakes on LDP power. Those brakes are now gone. It may now fall to Komeito, and its special Japanese brand of religious politics, to provide this brake now, but its influence will only be minor.

In one way, though, Japanese politics appears to be returning to the old ways--the "1955 system" of a dominant LDP and a weak permanent opposition. In fact the Socialists in the 1960s and 1970s were stronger than the Democratic Party is today. As it did with the Socialists in years past, the LDP today successfully has co-opted the message of the opposition in order to gain public favor.

It will be little solace to the Democrats that their introduction years ago of younger and more female candidates and bold calls for reform of old ways were essentially heeded--though by the LDP.

When Koizumi lost his battle in favor of pushing through postal reform legislation and then dissolved Japan's Lower House, most observers thought that Koizumi was committing political seppuku. The opposition party thought it would inherit a relatively easy victory and did little to connect to the aspirations of Japan's voting public.

While this week's story is indeed the story of a brilliant politician, it is also the story of a stunted political opposition whose pretenses to lead Japan are undermined by the incompetence and lack of clarity of its leadership. Despite the LDP's success, the absence of credible opposition belies a troubling degree of democratic immaturity in Japan.

A critical question looking forward will be whether the Democrats will continue to cede their new ideas to the LDP, or whether they too will come up with a bold new approach to becoming a viable second party.

Enronization of the Bush Administration

Cecille Isidro — Sat, 16 Aug 2003 00:00:00 -0400

President George W. Bush has become the new Kenneth Lay. As chief executive officer of the former juggernaut Enron Corp., Lay presided over a network of deception and malfeasance that led to one of the greatest investor ripoffs in U.S. corporate history. Enron inflated reported income and conducted much of its business through off-balance-sheet transactions hidden from analysts, the Securities and Exchange Commission, and the general public.

In public, Bush repeatedly denounces these "serious abuses of trust by some corporate leaders." But given the disturbing sleight of hand manipulations by his administration regarding the search for weapons of mass destruction, or WMD, in Iraq, the president seems to be more inspired than repulsed by Lay's deceptive wizardry.

Bush has triggered a tectonic shift in the management of official secrets, hiding more from the public across all policy sectors -- not just national security -- than any president since the conspiracy-obsessed Richard Nixon. He has fostered a White House culture that is casual about facts and is comfortable with making unsubstantiated national security assertions.

One of the major violations of trust between this president and the American public is his unqualified assertion in his January 2003 State of the Union address that Iraq maintained an extensive WMD program and sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa. Bush's comfort with concealing inconvenient facts is equally evident in the burying of a Treasury Department report on the long-term economic impact of growing budget deficits and an Environmental Protection Agency study on global warming and potential remediation strategies. This president does not like bad news or news that conflicts with his agenda -- no matter how objective -- even if it is commissioned by members of his own Cabinet.

U.S. citizens are this nation's stakeholders, and the president has been misleading the public, distorting fact, and contriving false realities with the aim of sending men and women into harm's way. No serious commentator denies the horror and tragedy that a virulent and dangerous form of transnational terrorism visited upon symbols of American power in New York and Washington on 9/11, but Bush's incursion into Iraq is controversial not because America should not be able to strike at those responsible for imminent threats to this nation but because it is increasingly unclear that Saddam Hussein, as despicable a tyrant as he was (and there are many more in the world), was an immediate danger.

Hussein's removal was not worth the friendly fire inflicted upon longstanding alliances that America has needed in the past and will need again.

The president would do well to revisit his clever quip during the presidential debates regarding his favorite philosopher. He used to say that when confronted with a challenge, he would ask himself, "What would Jesus do?"

With some reflection, Bush would realize that little of his administration's obsession with secrets and its tendency to spin false truths would be consistent with this self-revealed touchstone of faith that he shared with the nation. More importantly, however, duplicity of the magnitude now unfolding in Washington is inconsistent with democracy.

Enron executives felt secure enough in their environment to mislead the public and enrich executives at the expense of stakeholders without accountability -- or to come out far enough ahead that any penalties would pale in comparison to their personal gains. This strategy worked until Enron's collapse, and now some are caught in the legal mechanism of accountability at a staggeringly large cost to the public. America's image in the world as a bastion of stockholder accountability, good governance and a place where hard, honest work leads to empowerment and potentially to wealth, was damaged by Enron-style crony capitalism.

Bush's team may eventually be held accountable for its deceptions, but the judiciary and the legislature appear remarkably contrite given what appears to be serious executive office malfeasance. America's current board of directors -- Congress and the Supreme Court -- like the boards of Enron, MCI, Adelphia and other top-tier blue chip firms that deceived investors and the nation, is failing in its responsibility to check a president who needs to be brought into line.

The fall of Enron and the ongoing prosecution of the worst at the company's helm depended on whistleblowers and average people at the firm who were willing to tell the truth about the crimes committed by Enron executives. Accountability rests on exposure and on a personal morality of honesty and commitment to public trust that many in this nation do feel and that did exist among many Enron employees whose livelihoods were ruined by Lay and his collaborators.

Today a national whistleblower is needed, someone in Bush's administration who can copy the foot-thick file of official secrets in his or her desk to reveal the overreach, fabrication and distortions of intelligence that the president used to deceive Congress, America's allies and the public in order to conduct the invasion of Iraq.

Bush has called those who question his assault on Iraq and the legitimacy of this incursion "historical revisionists." But the term applies more appropriately to this Ken Lay-like president/CEO who seems to have only disdain for the constraints of our kind of government. For all the pretense of his early statements that his would be a "presidency defined by humility and honesty," and an administration that "would inspire trust from its citizens," it has turned out to be anything but.

Many in the nation admire and respect the leadership qualities of this president. But someone in government today needs to expose the now-classified and cloaked record of what the president knew about the Iraq WMD intelligence gap and when he new it, to paraphrase former Senate Majority Leader Howard Baker about Richard Nixon.

Americans deserve honesty, and if there is malfeasance, Congress and the courts should not let it be buried in a labyrinth of official secrets for future generations to uncover.

U.S. Policy Crucial to Stability

Cecille Isidro — Sat, 03 Nov 2001 00:00:00 -0500

U.S. President George W. Bush has injected potentially destabilizing dynamics into the domestic political arenas of many nations by pressuring all countries essentially to swear loyalty oaths to the United States and to work with him in going "after terrorism wherever we find it in the world . . . getting it by its branch and root."

Russia, China, Tunisia and even North Korea, in addition to nearly every other nation in the world, have signed on to the president's campaign and are remaking their own moral profiles and the world's geopolitical landscape in the process. Some in the White House know that this collaboration is unsustainable without an American commitment to replace the anger with which it has created this new order with other incentives.

While many Americans erupt in rage when anyone ties the need to change U.S. behavior to the circumstances that led to the unthinkable Sept. 11 terrorist assault, most non-Americans believe that future stability depends on the U.S. and G-7 nations winning the affections of the silent majorities in developing nations, particularly Islamic countries.

New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani refused a $10 million donation from Saudi billionaire Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal when he suggested that America needed to resolve the Mideast standoff and help secure the establishment of a Palestinian state to stave off many of the violent tensions emanating from this region.

Bin Laden deserves no legitimacy, but the point that Alwaleed makes was vital for America to have comprehended and to have taken action on before this terrorist tragedy. Even America's closest allies in Germany, Japan, France and Britain are quietly lobbying for America to demonstrate less unilateral arrogance by embracing such popular international issues as curtailing greenhouse gas emissions and prohibiting use of land mines.

But the greatest challenge that the Bush team is mulling over is how to capture the world's imagination about a better, fairer, stronger system of international governance that is inclusive and respectful of developing nations.

Some in the administration believe that the best way to move forward is incrementally and routinely and do not want to recast American environmental or trade strategies in any new ways.

Other U.S. officials, particularly in the State Department, feel compelled to reinforce the fragile threads of cooperation with gestures on international environmental, labor and general trade policy and want the perception of America's heavy-handed presence in world affairs to be replaced by collaboration.

The problems with the sensitive route are many. First, the administration is populated more by unilateralists and neoconservatives who sneer at institutional encumbrances like the United Nations than by diplomatic consensus builders like Secretary of State Colin Powell. Also, when it comes to designing alternative schemes of world order, much of the developed world has little trust in unconstrained U.S. leadership.

In this regard, other potential lead nations are in short supply. Japan is economically stagnant and internationally immature. Britain has forfeited its potential role as the nouveau John Maynard Keynes redrawing important global institutions of the 21st century and has instead resurrected the spirit of Churchill in the form of Prime Minister Tony Blair -- leading spear-carrier for the American empire. Germany seems tied in knots about the subject of military deployments and is neglecting the questions of what sort of software operating system the world needs to run on now.

Strangely, France -- with experience in empire and a well-known independence of the U.S. -- may be the very nation that America needs to strike the call for a new, more compassionate global order. Given the French elections next May, either President Jacques Chirac or Prime Minister Lionel Jospin have a lot to gain by constructing the platform on which the world's greatest political and economic thinkers could replace or adjust the Bretton Woods institutions. Their goal could be a new grand bargain between developing and developed nations that mixes regulation and markets to achieve a more humane strain of globalization. While America cannot overtly lead this charge, it could enthusiastically cooperate.

Since Oct. 29, nations have been discussing in Marrakesh the next steps for implementing greenhouse gas reduction strategies and ratification progress of the Kyoto Protocol. America has been present -- but thus far has not suggested a credible alternative course of action, as it promised it would do when it withdrew its support for the Kyoto agreement.

On Nov. 9, member nations of the World Trade Organization are scheduled to meet in Doha, Qatar. Here the U.S. is petitioning for a new round of trade talks to include agriculture, services and potentially nontrade subjects such as investment and the environment.

In both cases, America has played hardball with other nations -- refusing many concessions to developing countries that have called for greater flexibility in implementing agreed trade rules that often produce severe economic hardships and political consequences.

The U.S. and other G-7 nations have an important opportunity to use Marrakesh and a WTO round as the starting points of a grander, positive vision for the world. Given the stakes involved today, the world needs to believe that America will lend a hand to those in need -- as it once so heroically did at the end of World War II -- and will temper its considerable power with compassion.

Americans will never forego the belief in leadership and in the calculus that sometimes calls for independent action when no others will act. But in trade, in environmental matters, in making the World Bank and IMF work for today's world rather than for a world 50 years ago -- America and its key partners have the opportunity to reacquaint themselves with the citizenries of nations that have been alienated and left behind as the developed world has raced ahead.