Japan

Reorienting Japan

Ron Tang — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 03:25:00 -0400

Of all the countries to emerge from the wreckage of the Second World War, perhaps none overcame post-war adversity quite as successfully as Japan. By the time the country surrendered in 1945, it was in dire straits. It had lost some 2.8 million people during the war, 3.8% of its 1939 population. Thousands more were so severely maimed or ill that they would never resume productive lives. The once-prosperous Japanese economy was in ruins, and virtually everything the country needed to recover traversed long, vulnerable sea… more

The Changing of the Guard

Ron Tang — Tue, 01 Jan 2008 00:00:00 -0500

The view that sometime during this century a “changing of the guard” will occur, when China will displace the United States in much the same way as America did Britain, is widely held. It unites liberals and conservatives, optimists and pessimists, most of whom accept the proposition that “the East is back”, with China leading the pack. The debate is over when the shift will happen and what a world that currently bears an American stamp will look like after China has become Mr. Big.

The main problem with the narrative about China’s challenge to American supremacy (the limits of… more

Steven Clemons Interviews Ronald Spector on Book TV

Communications — Sun, 09 Dec 2007 15:28:00 -0500

New America in the News:

Historian Ronald Spector documents the Allies occupation of the Pacific theater following the end of World War II. Mr. Spector says that the Japanese surrender on August 14, 1945 did not usher in peace but rather marked the start of several regional battles as formerly occupied countries demanded their independence. Ronald Spector discusses his book In the Ruins of Empire with Steven Clemons, director of the American Strategy Program and senior fellow at the New America Foundation. Mr. Clemons formerly served as the executive vice president of the New America Foundation and is co-founder and director of the Japan Policy Research Institute. ...

Watch the video of the interview here.

The Advocate Quotes Afshin Molavi on the Global Economy

Communications — Wed, 08 Aug 2007 10:21:00 -0400

New America in the News:

In 1913, a young Franklin D. Roosevelt wrote in a private letter that a war among the major European powers would be so deadly and destructive that it could not be imagined. In 1914, he learned differently.

There are so many historic examples of war being so unlikely, so terrible in its prospect that it just "could not" happen. And yet it did.

That is why, in the large sweep of history, people who want to see peace should never underestimate the potential for war. Even those, like the mistaken Roosevelt, who feel rising prosperity is an antidote to conflict.

For centuries, the Silk Road of central Asia was a long and difficult, but valuable, pathway between the eastern and western worlds. Today, analyst [Afshin] Molavi says, a new Silk Road runs through the emerging economies of China, India and the Persian Gulf.

"The new Silk Road is largely the result of the confluence of China's and India's economic growth and high oil prices," said Molavi, a fellow at the New America Foundation in Washington.

"Key 'caravan posts' on the new Silk Road are regional economic 'winners' or rising stars: Dubai, Beijing, Mumbai, Chennai, Tokyo, Doha, Kuala Lumpur, Singapore, Hong Kong, Riyadh, Shanghai, Abu Dhabi," Molavi wrote in The Washington Post. "The old Silk Road civilization centers such as Persia (Iran), the Levant (Lebanon, Syria, Jordan) and Mesopotamia (Iraq) lag behind."

Vast real estate and industrial construction projects are under way along the new Silk Road, with Chinese, Korean, Indian and Japanese companies competing feverishly for business. While Molavi noted that American officials are busy with the crises in Iraq and Afghanistan, the United States should not miss the significance of long-term development along the new Silk Road.

Is prosperity an antidote for conflict?

"Security in the Persian Gulf is now as important to Beijing and New Delhi as it is to Washington. China will no longer be content to perch under America's security umbrella, and the Indian navy now more assertively patrols the Arabian Sea," Molavi argued. "What's more, China and India have far more influence with Iran than we do - and less tolerance for a disruptive war. Many of the (Iranian) Islamic republic's political elites are also business elites, eager to find a way out of conflict."

Perhaps, as Molavi argued, a Western strategy of seeking to engage the volatile regimes of Iran and China into an emerging new Silk Road economy will have a moderating impact on their policies. But good behavior and economic prosperity don't always go hand in hand.

Look at China's aggressive military build-up in a region where it has no realistic security threats. Look at Iran's nuclear ambitions and deranged threats to eradicate Israel from the map.

Economic engagement is important in itself, and as a secondary security strategy. But we should not make the same prediction young Mr. Roosevelt made almost a century ago.

For more on this story, please visit The Advocate web site.

The Sins of the Sons

Articles — Wed, 01 Aug 2007 10:26:00 -0400

In Japan (and the US perhaps), embarrassment and shame are so, well, 20th century. In the old days, a hot financial scandal or political defeat would lead at minimum to resignation -- and occasionally, to far worse self-inflicted circumstances, such as ritual suicide.

But none of that for Japan’s embattled Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who has accepted responsibility but refused to resign for the collapse of his government coalition’s standing in the upper house of Japan’s National Diet in last Sunday’s elections. The Liberal Democratic Party, which Abe heads along with its coalition partner, the New Komeito, lost 30 seats in… more

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

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

New America in the News:

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 the Ogasawara Islands, and brought them into Japanese ports in the 1950s and 1960s.

"Tokyo could request short-term deployment of U.S. nukes on Japanese soil" Clemons said. A longer-term possibility, he added, would be for Japan to develop but not declare a nuclear weapons capability, remaining vague about what arms it actually possessed -- something Israel has done to deter an attack by its Arab neighbors...

For the complete article, please visit The Japan Times website.

Book Launch: Shutting out the Sun

Communications — Fri, 06 Oct 2006 15:15:00 -0400

A New America Event
10/05/2006 - 12:15pm

Michael Zielenziger's new book, Shutting Out the Sun, offers an intelligent, insightful look into the economic disquiet and disturbing social trends afflicting Japan. Though once on the verge of eclipsing the United States as the world’s dominant economic power, Japan failed to recover fully from the economic collapse of the early 1990s and now confronts a Japanese society and economy jeopardized by disaffected youth.

Exploring the reasons behind Japan’s status as the industrialized nation with the highest suicide rate and the lowest birthrate, as well as rising rates of depression among young people, Zielenziger argues that Japan’s tradition-seeped society and aversion to change, coupled with its distrust of individuality, are stifling the reforms and impetus necessary for economic revival. Unconventional and controversial, Shutting Out the Sun is a bold attempt to explain Japan’s stagnation and its implications for the rest of the world.

This event featured a brief presentation by Zielenziger, followed by a question and answer session moderated by Steven Clemons, who directs both New America's American Strategy Program and the Japan Policy Research Institute.

The Rise of Japan’s Thought Police

Articles — Sun, 27 Aug 2006 21:41:00 -0400

Anywhere else, it might have played out as just another low-stakes battle between policy wonks. But in Japan, a country struggling to find a brand of nationalism that it can embrace, a recent war of words between a flamboyant newspaper editorialist and an editor at a premier foreign-policy think tank was something far more alarming: the latest assault in a campaign of right-wing intimidation of public figures that is squelching free speech and threatening to roll back civil society.

On Aug. 12, Yoshihisa Komori -- a Washington-based editorialist for the ultra-conservative Sankei Shimbun newspaper -- attacked an article by Masaru… more

Steven Clemons

Operations — Tue, 18 Apr 2006 01:00:00 -0400

Senior Fellow and Director, American Strategy Program

Steven Clemons directs the American Strategy Program at the New America Foundation, which aims to promote a new American internationalism that combines a tough-minded realism about America's interests in the world with a pragmatic idealism about the kind of world order best suited to America's democratic way of life. He is also a Senior Fellow at New America, and previously served as Executive Vice President.

Publisher of the popular political blog The Washington Note, Mr. Clemons is a long-term policy practitioner and entrepreneur in Washington, D.C. He has served… more

Japan, Game Over

Communications — Tue, 19 Nov 2002 11:00:00 -0500

A New America Event
11/19/2002 - 12:00pm

This autumn events in Tokyo led many observers to believe that Japan was ready to restructure its profoundly dysfunctional banking system. These hopes were soon dashed, however, as the "forces of resistance" to economic reform marshaled their resources and persuaded Prime Minister Koizumi to eviscerate the banking program. A mood approaching dejection has subsequently fallen over Japan specialists in that country and around the world.

Robert Madsen contends that the temporary surge in optimism was unrealistic. Not only are the political barriers to reform so formidable as to prevent any but the most rash of prime ministers from undertaking it, but the chances of such a campaign resolving Japan's economic problems are at this point negligible. Reform may still help on the margin, but the most important factors in Japan's return to macroeconomic stability must be price inflation, a significant change in the exchange rate, and greater exports. Rather than continuing to urge the country to reorganize its banking and industrial sectors, therefore, the United States must soon begin preparing for the consequences of an eventual market-driven adjustment. These include political instability within Japan; increased tensions in Tokyo's diplomatic and trading relationships; and, quite possibly, a wave of price deflation that spreads around the globe and pushes other economies toward, or into, recession.