Japan

'Negotiated Nationalism' in Japan's Democracy 2.0

Erin Drankoski — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 11:44:00 -0400

Whether or not the newly dominant Democratic Party of Japan succeeds or fails at the helm of Japan's political order, a new era in Japanese history has begun--and the White House should embrace it.

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 lanes. There were plenty of threats in Japan’s neighbourhood, most notably the Soviet Union, China and North Korea. But Japan could not protect itself by rearming. Its rampages during the 1930s and 1940s, characterised by blood-curdling brutality, had culminated in the conquest of virtually all of East Asia. Not surprisingly, its wary neighbours watched its every move. Moreover, the horrors of the war, especially the atomic bombardment of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, convinced the Japanese people that violence must never again be an instrument of statecraft. This was a goal at once noble and sensible. Still, Japan had to confront the world as it was, not as Tokyo wished it to be. At minimum, living in a world in which power is the prime currency required a plan for survival.

Sixty years later, it is evident that Japan, its unenviable starting point notwithstanding, has been extraordinarily successful. It has become an economic powerhouse -- its $4.4 trillion economy is now second only to that of the United States -- fuelled by technological vitality and booming exports. Part of the reason for this achievement is that Japan has been able to remain safe in a dangerous world while spending on average less than 1% of its gross domestic product on soldiers and armaments.

Kenneth Pyle, a historian at the University of Washington, and Richard J. Samuels, a political scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, offer superb explanations of Japan’s success in the realm of national security. Their books are marked by erudition, thorough research, sound judgement, clear prose and the absence of arid theories and leaden jargon -- a rare combination in academic writing. Both studies have wide sweep -- especially Pyle’s, which devotes roughly half its pages to the latter part of the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth -- but neither was written to provide a history of Japan’s international relations. (The bulk of Samuels’s book is devoted to the years following the Second World War.) Both authors are interested primarily in how the end of the Cold War will affect Japan’s national-security strategy. This obliges them to consider the future of Japan’s alliance with the United States in some detail, for while Japan’s leaders managed the challenges they confronted after the Second World War with consummate skill, they could not have done so without the protection of a powerful patron: the United States...

For the full text of the article, please see the PDF attached below.

Books reviewed in this article

Kenneth B. Pyle, Japan Rising: The Resurgence of Japanese Power and Purpose, 420pp., Public Affairs.

Richard J. Samuels, Securing Japan: Tokyo's Grand Strategy and the Future of East Asia, 277pp., Cornell University Press.

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 which are being illustrated in Iraq, just as they were thirty years earlier in Vietnam) is its linear, deterministic quality. Even under the most favorable conditions, China has a long way to go before it catches up with the United States. Consider some typical measures of power. China’s GDP, rendered in current exchange rates, was $2.5 trillion in 2007, less than one-fifth of America’s $13.2 trillion. The gap is even wider if one takes account of those states (India, the major West European states and Vietnam) most likely to join the United States in a countervailing coalition against a “revisionist” China. Then there is the matter of America’s peerless capacity for technological innovation; China is in no position to close that gap anytime soon.

The same disparity is evident in military power. The American defense budget was $518 billion in 2005, roughly 43 percent of global military spending and equal to those of the next 47 countries combined. By contrast, China’s was $81 billion. Even assuming that Chinese spending is understated by 50 percent, the American military budget is four times larger. True, money is not the measure of all things, but a meticulous assessment of the Chinese armed forces by Anthony Cordesman and Martin Kleiber demonstrates that China lags far behind in more specific elements of military power as well. The People’s Liberation Army relies heavily on armaments that are knockoffs or modernized variants of Soviet systems from the 1950s and 1960s and are no match for their American equivalents in range, firepower, speed, accuracy and overall technological advancement. The Chinese leadership’s dogged efforts to create a modern military force by cutting manpower; upgrading the technological caliber of armor, aircraft, missiles and ships (with massive purchases from Russia); and investing in electronic and information warfare have not changed this picture -- and will not for decades to come.

The one advantage that Beijing has is that the United States has chosen to assume worldwide military commitments, while China concentrates its forces closer to home. The most important consequence of this contrast, itself indicative of the gap in power between America and China, is that while China would still be defeated in any confrontation over Taiwan, it has raised the risk that the United States would have to run to protect Taiwan.

The Chinese leadership would have to be extremely reckless and willing to jeopardize China’s galloping economic growth to initiate a war with the United States, and there is no evidence that it is made up of wild-eyed gamblers. Rather, Beijing, as Bates Gill shows, has chosen moderation of late and has sought to allay regional fears about its ascendancy by stressing that it is engaged in “peaceful development”, taking a leaf right out of Bismarck’s playbook.

One might counter that talk is cheap and dismiss the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) soothing messages as proof of its well-honed propaganda skills. But beyond the words, there have been real changes in Beijing’s deeds. Once suspicious of multilateral approaches to east Asian problems, China has begun to embrace them. For example, it has become an active participant in the ASEAN Plus-5 forum and an advocate of regional security structures for consultations. China has also begun to favor multilateral approaches to confidence building and territorial disputes. Beijing once derided the hypocrisy and double standard behind calls for nuclear non-proliferation but now supports efforts to stop the spread of nuclear arms and other Weapons of Mass Destruction; it has, for example, played a pivotal part in the six-party talks on North Korea’s nuclear program. Likewise, it once viewed terrorism as a manifestation of class struggle and a weapon of the oppressed but now sees it as a scourge, no doubt partly because of sporadic attacks in the Turkic-Muslim Xinjiang Autonomous Region. By and large, this strategy of reassurance has worked, allaying east Asian fears that Chinese dominance will bring upheaval and bullying in its wake. Moreover, in some parts of the region, Washington, not Beijing, is deemed the greater threat to peace.

Yet the expectation that China will remain responsible rather than turn revisionist, even as the balance of power starts to tip in its favor, could be upended by events. For one thing, it does not allow for the unexpected, most notably a latter-day Sarajevo-style syndrome, in which a crisis spins out of control, culminating in a large-scale conflict that nobody wanted, or even anticipated. Susan Shirk offers the latest version of this argument, stressing the Chinese leadership’s desire to exploit rising nationalism for its own ends. The CCP has done so because it faces a very big problem: It needs a new source of legitimacy. The arid slogans of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism have lost whatever appeal they may once have had for the populace, and the party has little to offer when it comes to building a 21^st-century economic system and making it more innovative. With its censorship of the Internet and other dysfunctional proclivities, it is more of an obstacle to innovation than a spur. The party leadership has adapted by leaning heavily on nationalism, stoking it during crises, and using it more generally to articulate the theme that China under its stewardship has erased the humiliations of the 19^thcentury and is fast becoming a front-rank power, respected by all, pushed around by none.

This is a risky gambit, though; China’s materialistic youths are also very nationalistic (though hardly unique in that regard). They monitor whether the regime is delivering on its bravado and whether it is standing up to adversaries, especially Japan and the United States. Prominent examples include the accidental bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade during the war over Kosovo in May 1999, the collision between a Chinese fighter jet and an American EP-3 surveillance aircraft in April 2001, and Japanese leaders’ visits to the Yasukuni shrine and sugarcoating of past imperialism.

Not only is the regime aware that it is judged by its performance rather than its pronouncements, it knows that mass demonstrations occasioned by perceived slights to China -- and such large-scale protests occurred during the incidents just mentioned -- could turn into mass protests aimed at the regime itself. This fear is not paranoiac; there is no dearth of kindling to stoke the fire. Today’s China is rife with revolts, some involving clashes with the security services, by workers and peasants -- and other segments of society -- over a range of issues: job losses, land seizures, rising socioeconomic inequality, corruption, environmental degradation and the ineffectiveness of courts. Moreover, the protests are growing in number and size and are becoming better organized. According to official Chinese data, the number of protests increased from 58,000 in 2003 to 85,000 in 2005 (almost four million people took part in 2004), and the Ministry of Public Safety likened the sharp upswing since the latter half of the 1990s to a “violent wind.” The true number -- tightly guarded by the authorities -- is quite likely to be much higher.¹

The question is whether the regime will be able to ride the nationalist wave during crises by showing the toughness needed to placate its citizenry, while also avoiding a conflict with potential adversaries like the United States or Japan. This is something of a high-wire act, particularly because the ability of the Chinese population to mobilize itself has been transformed by the Internet and mobile phones, themselves important symbols of the modernization that has followed Deng Xiaoping’s ditching of Maoist nostrums. Just recall how the Falun Gong faithful organized rallies and, following the regime’s crackdown, used the Internet to publicize their plight.

The possibility of conflict is all the more unpalatable for Beijing because China’s economic miracle is the result of shedding autarky and embracing economic interdependence or, in its turbo-charged variant, globalization. For example, if China were to unload its dollar holdings and opt for the euro as its main reserve currency, it would damage the American economy (the U.S. government would have to hike interest rates to keep attracting dollars). But Beijing would also wound itself. While Americans certainly benefit from the relatively inexpensive goods that U.S. companies import from China, it is no less true that a reliable American market is important to China. Its exports to the United States totaled $287 billion in 2006, making the United States the number one foreign destination for Chinese goods; on top of that, the United States is the fifth-largest source of foreign direct investment in China.

So, the costs of willfully creating instability -- indeed, of upheaval unrelated to Chinese actions -- have risen now that China’s economic engine is powered by capital inflows, global markets and reliable energy supplies. And the constraints imposed by such dependence will not diminish even though China will be less susceptible to economic sanctions as rising incomes expand the internal market.

Another side effect of economic success that is far more challenging for Beijing is the extent to which Deng’s reforms have transformed Chinese society. To ensure its survival, the CCP needs to maintain a monopoly on political power, a litany of social controls and communist ideology, all increasingly at odds with a complex, modern and materialistic society. This contradiction will have to be resolved. The far-reaching transformation of China will aggravate the tension between a static and repressive polity on the one hand, and a dynamic society and economy on the other, which are not only jettisoning the avowed ideals of the CCP, but also rendering the party itself an anachronism. Whether this occurs through sporadic clashes between the rulers and the ruled (the Tiananmen massacre was an early harbinger of this possibility, and recurrent protests by workers and peasants show that that event was not necessarily an aberration), the shedding of totalitarianism for a light-touch Singapore-style authoritarianism, the gradual emergence of a democratic polity or the breakdown of the system is hard to predict. But the problem is as substantial as it is undeniable.

Very few of the Sinologists who have been daring enough to venture predictions about China’s future have picked the last of these outcomes; rather, most assume that the regime will manage the problems it faces and that they are a sideshow to the main event: China’s emergence as a superpower. Not Gordon Chang. He believes China is headed for a crack-up and offers a long list of problems to back his claim. The banking system, forced for political reasons to lend money to sustain loss-making, state-owned enterprises -- millions are employed in these companies -- is vulnerable to what in the antiseptic language of economics are called “non-performing” loans, and Chang is convinced that the banks’ insolvency will spark an economic crisis. Along with the benefits it brings, accession to the WTO introduces competition from abroad, affecting production and employment at home. China’s rapid economic growth has raised living standards for millions, but has also created deep divides between the coastal regions and the interior and west, as well as between the poor peasants and workers and urban elite, something that the leadership and Chinese academics have noted with growing concern, viewing these chasms not only as unfortunate by-products of the economic boom, but also sources of social strife. These concerns are well-founded, judging by the increasing incidence of demonstrations -- some violent -- by poorer Chinese who feel that they have been denied their fair share of the burgeoning wealth or who have been evicted from their lands to make way for new homes and factories. Chang, like Shirk, also argues that an increasingly nationalistic generation of Chinese places pressure on the leadership to stand tall when tested by foreign adversaries -- or to lose what is fast becoming its principal source of legitimacy.

One manifestation of the inequality accompanying the skyrocketing economy is the so-called “floating population” of 140 million, consisting primarily of people who have fled the poverty of the countryside only to find themselves living on the margins of life in large cities, without rights to permanent residence and identity cards, and lacking reliable sources of income, decent housing and access to social services. Moreover, city dwellers view them, not without justification, as contributing to the increase in crime and believe that their willingness to work for less pushes wages down.² Perhaps sustained economic growth will solve such problems. To ensure this -- a precondition for social stability -- the regime needs investment capital, but there will be other claims on such funds. Now that birth rates have fallen sharply for the past several decades (on average, Chinese women now have 1.7 children, less than the 2.1 needed to maintain the current size of the population), the aged account for an increasing proportion of China’s population (the median age was 22 in 1980 but is estimated to increase to 41 in 2030).³ They must be cared for by the state or entrusted to their children, reducing net savings and investment in either case. Then there are environmental problems: It will also be exceedingly expensive to ameliorate the health problems rampant pollution is producing; water shortages are becoming severe and will worsen as a result of further economic growth and urbanization. The price tag of the multiple effects of environmental damage is estimated to be between 8 and 12 percent of China’s GNP, and continued economic growth will surely increase the burden.⁴ Finally, there is what might be called the Tiananmen–Falun Gong problem. The increasingly modern and educated citizenry created by the economic miracle will start chafing under the regime’s panoply of political restrictions and gain the confidence to make its dissatisfaction known, the more so if socioeconomic inequality and environmental problems continue to increase, widening and deepening popular discontent.

None of these difficulties in themselves will necessarily bring down the regime. Indeed, its success in managing numerous problems is striking. But their persistence and combined effects could take China down a road not anticipated by the orthodox “China rising paradigm.” The Soviet Union’s rapid disappearance should serve as a cautionary tale: The unexpected can occur, catching everyone off guard, and China’s current rulers, like their predecessors, could lose the “mandate of heaven.”

No matter what happens, Japan cannot help but be affected. If China’s ascent is uninterrupted, no other state will feel the consequences more, given the realities of demography (China’s huge advantage in population), geography (China’s proximity to Japan) and history (the legacies of conflict between China and Japan). So what will Japan do in the face of a China that seeks to rearrange the regional balance of power and defies the predictions of those who claim that its common sense and growing stake in stability will lead it to choose statesmanship over saber-rattling? Two important books, Securing Japan by Richard J. Samuels and Japan Rising by Kenneth Pyle, superbly assess the choices Japan is likely to make, while placing them in historical context.

Most observers expect little or no change in the way Japan has pursued security since 1945 and predict that it will continue a variant of the Yoshida Doctrine, promulgated by Japan’s first post–World War II prime minister, Yoshida Shigeru, which involved concentrating on economic development and trusting in American protection.

But while Japan may continue this “trading state” strategy, the assumption that it has no other realistic choice is not borne out by its history, a case that I have also made recently, and that Samuels and Pyle develop in more detail. (Though they do not believe that Japan will shift course as dramatically as I do -- going beyond beefing up its military power toward a strategy of autonomy, propelled by an increasing awareness that the American commitment to defend Japan is becoming less reliable.)⁵

The two most important conditions that could place Japan on a new path are China’s emergence as a front-rank power and Japan’s loss of confidence in America’s protection, or even its robust presence in northeast Asia. The Japanese officials and experts who believe that the American guarantee could become unreliable are not of one mind. Some believe that economic conditions in the United States (persistent budget and current-account deficits and mounting social problems) may prompt it to scale back military spending and commitments. Others doubt that the United States can be counted on to the degree it has been in the past because China’s growing might will require it to take increasing risks on behalf of its allies in the North Pacific.

To this list I would add the possibility that the United States will recast its own grand strategy. As I argue in The End of Alliances, for most of its history, the Republic was led by individuals who were chary of the expenses and obligations that accompany permanent alliances. Seen thus, the Cold War strategy of assuming expansive military commitments and forging open-ended alliances changed the prior pattern of American statecraft; since it was a fundamental change, a new orientation could scarcely be excluded. While neither Pyle nor Samuels predict so far-reaching an American reassessment -- that is not the purpose animating their books -- they show that the possibility is much discussed in Japanese national-security circles these days.

Samuels delves deep into Japanese political dynamics and reveals how Yoshida’s game plan, while still dominant, is now fiercely contested. Those who favor minimal additions to Japan’s military budget and forces still hold positions of power and the belief that there is no need to supplant a solution that has worked so well for so long is shared by most Japanese. Moreover, there are some points of convergence between Yoshida’s disciples and the pacifist left, particularly when it comes to preserving Article IX of the constitution, which commits Japan to renouncing the implements of war. (Japan skirted the literal wording of this provision in response to Washington’s reassessment -- particularly evident after the Korean War -- that its earlier decision to demilitarize Japan had to be abandoned because of the threats posed by China, the USSR and North Korea. Yoshida acceded to American wishes with great reluctance but insisted that Japan’s military power and obligations be placed within narrow bounds.)

But by the 1980s, a segment of Japan’s political class and foreign-policy community -- which has become particularly influential following the Cold War -- was arguing that while Japan should hold firm to the American alliance, it should strengthen its military capabilities. This segment also argued that Japan should undertake defensive missions further from the homeland, participate in UN peacekeeping operations and provide greater assistance to American forces in the Pacific. They advocated revising Article IX, discarding the self-imposed limits on defense spending (the 1 percent of the GNP ceiling that soon attained sacrosanct status) and the ban on exporting arms and military technology, and acquiring armaments that would provide Japan’s Self-Defense Forces (JSDF) more muscle and reach. Apart from such specific changes, the advocates of a stronger military with a more ambitious mandate want Japan to stop what they consider its self-flagellation for past misdeeds, abandon its pacifist security blanket and become a “normal country.”⁶

The extent to which this school has moved Japan away from the Yoshida consensus, while also strengthening the alliance with the United States, was evident even before the tenure of Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, but its influence became particularly pronounced once he was elected. Calls for rethinking Article IX have become standard. The Defense Agency gained ministerial status in 2007, and its influence has grown as the controls exercised by the powerful Cabinet Legislative Office have been diminished. Japanese ships provided logistical support for U.S. forces operating in Iraq and Afghanistan. Senior officials stated that pre-emptive attacks were justified to parry the threat presented by North Korea’s ballistic missiles and nuclear program. A small contingent from the JSDF was deployed to Iraq. Even the nuclear option, once a taboo, is now part of the national-security debate.

Political currents within Japan could also take Tokyo’s defense policy in a new direction. Those who favored unarmed neutrality, principally the Socialist Party, have become marginalized. Meanwhile, another group, although it certainly does not represent mainstream thinking, has become more prominent. Its adherents favor far more radical changes, including an end to the alliance with the United States, which they consider a symbol of subordination. The governor of Tokyo, Shintaro Ishihara, is the best-known advocate of these positions, but Samuels shows that they are supported by a number of other prominent thinkers, who present a coherent, if somewhat overwrought, appraisal of the growing threats facing Japan -- China in particular -- and stress America’s unreliability. Japan, these nationalists warn, will find itself alone and vulnerable unless it ditches the Yoshida Doctrine and goes well beyond the bounds envisaged by the “normal country” folks. But even if they prove to have little influence, the fact remains that the Nakasone-Koizumi line is well established and has already made a difference that would have appeared quite unlikely as late as the 1970s.

If the United States, for whatever reason, reduces its military presence in the North Pacific, China begins to throw its weight around and the comity between Tokyo and Washington starts to erode, Pyle’s argument will almost certainly be validated. The idea that external shifts will bring about major changes in the theory and practice of Japan’s military policy may even exceed what he envisions -- the gap between the “normal country” proponents and nationalist groups that Samuels analyzes could close and public opinion could come to favor a reevaluation of the limits placed on the JSDF. This scenario goes beyond what even Pyle expects, and far beyond what Samuels foresees, but it is hardly improbable, certainly not if one considers the long sweep of Japanese history and the major recalibrations that have occurred in the balance of power over the centuries.

Would northeast Asia become a more dangerous place if there were to be so radical a change? The mainstream view is that it would, and it certainly cannot be dismissed. But if in fact China proves the optimists wrong -- does not collapse as Gordon Chang expects and instead surpasses the United States much more rapidly than he envisaged and sets out to alter the balance of power aggressively -- Japan’s choices are not limited to minimalism or militarism. It can develop a far more capable military and, together with a coalition that could include the United States, India, Vietnam, Indonesia and Australia (and perhaps Russia, depending on whether it chooses to help balance China or to safeguard its sparsely populated and hard-to-defend Far East by placating Beijing), create a new equilibrium.

There are already some signs that new alignments are jelling in anticipation of a stronger China. After decades of estrangement during the Cold War, India and the United States are forming a strategic partnership, with Washington violating its non-proliferation policy to help consolidate the alliance. American arms manufacturers are eyeing an Indian market once dominated by the Soviet Union, anticipating that India will need to modernize its armed forces and have the cash to buy what it needs. India and Japan have begun military-to-military contacts and have also held joint naval exercises and operations in which Australia and the United States have participated. The United States and Vietnam have moved from enmity to cooperation. Leaders in these countries deny that China has anything to do with all this (and Indian officials, eager to dispel the notion that they are colluding with Washington, will doubtless point to an India-China naval exercise), but such protestations are scarcely persuasive, for the historical record is unambiguously clear: When a state makes dramatic gains in power, it provokes an opposing coalition. And there is no doubt who is the rising power.

The replication of this process in Asia would be neither an aberration nor, necessarily, something to fear. Imagine a China that continues to shed its revolutionary past, adopts pragmatism and stability as its watchwords, and becomes ever more intertwined with the global economy. The awareness that the intemperate quest for a Pax Sinica would inevitably provoke a countervailing alignment, tax China’s resources and overextend its military power should restrain Beijing. Conversely, a belligerent China’s freedom of action would be reduced by an opposing coalition, especially one that stretches Chinese resources across several widely separated fronts. Everyone benefits if a state bidding to become the new hegemon treads lightly -- including the putative hegemon itself. That is a lesson offered by both Sun Tzu and Bismarck.

Books Discussed in this Article

Anthony H. Cordesman and Martin Kleiber, Chinese Military Modernization: Force Development and Strategic Capabilities (Washington, DC: Center for Strategic and International Studies, 2007), 226 pp.

Bates Gill, Rising Star: China’s New Security Diplomacy (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 2007), 267 pp.

Susan L. Shirk, China: Fragile Superpower (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), 336 pp.

Gordon Chang, The Coming Collapse of China (New York: Random House, 2001), 346 pp.

Kenneth B. Pyle, Japan Rising: The Resurgence of Japanese Power and Purpose (New York: PublicAffairs, 2007), 420 pp.

Richard J. Samuels, Securing Japan: Tokyo’s Grand Strategy and the Future of East Asia (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2007), 277 pp.

Notes

1. Thomas Lum, “Social Unrest in China”, Congressional Research Service, May 8, 2006, available at http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/row/RL33416.pdf; “China Grows More Wary over Rash of Protest”, washingtonpost.com, August 10, 2005; the quotation is from Sinologist Dorothy Solinger, “Worker Protest in China -- Plentiful but Preempted”, Taipei Times, February 18, 2005.

2. T. Wing Lo and Guoping Jiang, “Inequality, Crime, and the Floating Population in China”, Asian Criminology, Vol. 1 (2006), pp. 112.

3. Data from Nicholas Eberstadt, “Will China Continue to Rise?” (unpublished manuscript).

4. Elizabeth Economy, “The Great Leap Backwards”, Foreign Affairs, Vol. 86, No. 5 (September/October 2007), pp. 47.

5. Rajan Menon, The End of Alliances (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007).

6. The JSDF has capabilities that are much greater than its innocuous-sounding name would suggest. Japan may spend barely 1 percent of its GDP on defense, but given the size of its economy, its military budget is the fourth highest (or fifth, depending on the year) in the world, which means that even a small increase in the proportion devoted to the military can make a considerable difference. Furthermore, its technological prowess gives it the capacity to manufacture modern weapons that few other states can.

Steven Clemons Interviews Ronald Spector on Book TV

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

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

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… more

The Sins of the Sons

Cecille Isidro — 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 Japan’s upper house, putting it 24 seats short of controlling that chamber of Japan’s legislature.

The reasons for Abe’s loss are diverse, ranging from being in the wrong place at the wrong time as the government had to admit during his tenure that it lost more than 50 million pension records. Abe did little to get ahead of the crisis in public confidence, however, and has spent more time engaged in ideological crusades like instilling nationalism in the public schools and committing to revise the article 9 anti-war clause of the constitution, rather than working to address the economic anxieties of many average Japanese. And while most Japanese cabinets have their share of money and sex scandals, Abe’s cabinet ranks among the worst in recent memory.

Sunday’s election was a serious political shipwreck for Abe and his party that in many ways is good for Japan’s democracy, given that the Japanese citizens have made incumbents accountable by supporting opposition political machinery rather than a new combination of LDP insiders. For decades, the LDP assuaged occasional flair-ups in constituent frustration by dumping one party chief and taking on one of his intra-party rivals inside the LDP.

Unfortunately however, Abe is doing the Bushian thing -- denying that a change of course is needed and indicating that he will continue largely in the same direction he has been going. And his party stakeholders are leaving him in place as if the crippling election results were something that can be easily shrugged off.

Abe is like George W Bush in more ways than even their similarly dogged denial of political realities. Like Bush, who has used his presidency in part as a rebellion against the cautious national-security realism of his presidential father, Shinzo Abe has moved in vectors that are diametrically the opposite of his famous father, the late foreign minister Shintaro Abe.

Father versus son narratives may not sound that compelling to many observers as explanations of the Iraq war, in Bush’s case, or a combination of denial of history and strident, hawkish nationalist revivalism in Abe’s. But I think that there is a lot of explanatory power in the classic cliche of dad-son identity troubles.

Abe’s father would have been prime minister of Japan had his health not unexpectedly cratered, and his feats as an activist Japanese foreign minister were extremely impressive when few Japanese leaders or diplomats ever become "known personalities" beyond the Japanese archipelago.

Abe the elder was seeking to establish a new international identity for Japan as a global heavyweight whose sovereignty was derived from soft-power success within an interdependent world. Shintaro Abe has never received the respect due to him for playing a key role in what was called "Abe shuttle diplomacy" between Iran and Iraq during their long war.

His son has cultivated, much like Bush and his guru Karl Rove, his own "fundamentalists" in Japan’s political order. Like Bush’s southern conservative fundamentalists who often reject empiricism and rationality when it comes to questions of science versus faith, Abe’s fundamentalists embrace a "patriotism of thought" that others have called "historical amnesia" or "history denial." Much of this group reviles China, disdains Korea and thinks that Japan should be preparing itself for inevitable regional military conflict.

Abe the younger has helped sculpt a new rightwing nationalism that has exploited the stress-filled fissures in debates about what Japan was and was not responsible for during the 1930s and during the second world war. Abe has helped engineer a new political current that rejects Japanese responsibility for wartime atrocities. While he has affirmed earlier "official apologies" Japanese leaders have made to Chinese, Koreans, various prisoners of war and others, he has also been quoted rejecting the notion that Japan’s behavior constituted crimes or that apologies should be extended.

During a recent trip to the US, Abe confirmed a national apology for the recruitment and enslavement of women as sex slaves, or "comfort women," in a meeting with Bush -- only to deny he had made such an apology as soon as he got back to Japan.

The late foreign minister Shintaro Abe -- after whom the Japan Foundation has named its highly sought-after fellowships for international academics and public intellectuals -- would never have engaged in such crude and mangled duplicity about Japan’s wartime past. Abe the elder was a nationalist, but he was committed to a healthy, liberal nationalism. His son seems more committed to a nationalism that is anti-intellectual, ideologically predetermined and at odds with the real issues that Japan is facing.

Abe not only lost the election on Sunday, but on Monday, in Washington, Congressman Mike Honda succeeded in passing by voice vote unanimously in the House of Representatives a resolution urging Japan to apologise for forcing thousands of women to serve as sex slaves for its military personnel deployed throughout Asia during the second world war.

The Japanese right wing had been pulling out all the stops trying to stop this House measure from passing. It failed, much like Japanese citizens in the election on Sunday punished Abe and the LDP for being disconnected from the reality of average Japanese concerns on the economy or their quality of life, or the corruption and incompetence of government.

Japan-at-the-crossroads stories are cliches, but the swing to the right of Japan’s official establishment and the counterweight of house resolutions and electoral punishment do give hope that Japan still has a chance to emerge as a "normal nation" with a normal kind of patriotism comfortable with its history and able to think through its interests.

But that path will look a lot more like Abe’s father’s course -- just as the way for America to get out of the mess George W Bush has created will look a lot like what George HW Bush would have done.

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

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… more

The Rise of Japan’s Thought Police

Cecille Isidro — 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 Tamamoto, the editor of Commentary, an online journal run by the Japan Institute of International Affairs. The article expressed concern about the emergence of Japan’s strident, new "hawkish nationalism," exemplified by anti-China fear-mongering and official visits to a shrine honoring Japan’s war dead. Komori branded the piece "anti-Japanese," and assailed the mainstream author as an "extreme leftist intellectual."

But he didn’t stop there. Komori demanded that the institute’s president, Yukio Satoh, apologize for using taxpayer money to support a writer who dared to question Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi’s annual visits to the Yasukuni Shrine, in defiance of Chinese protests that it honors war criminals from World War II.

Remarkably, Satoh complied. Within 24 hours, he had shut down Commentary and withdrawn all of the past content on the site -- including his own statement that it should be a place for candid discourse on Japan’s foreign-policy and national-identity challenges. Satoh also sent a letter last week to the Sankei editorial board asking for forgiveness and promising a complete overhaul of Commentary’s editorial management.

The capitulation was breathtaking. But in the political atmosphere that has overtaken Japan, it’s not surprising. Emboldened by the recent rise in nationalism, an increasingly militant group of extreme right-wing activists who yearn for a return to 1930s-style militarism, emperor-worship and "thought control" have begun to move into more mainstream circles -- and to attack those who don’t see things their way.

Just last week, one of those extremists burned down the parental home of onetime prime ministerial candidate Koichi Kato, who had criticized Koizumi’s decision to visit Yasukuni this year. Several years ago, the home of Fuji Xerox chief executive and Chairman Yotaro "Tony" Kobayashi was targeted by handmade firebombs after he, too, voiced the opinion that Koizumi should stop visiting Yasukuni. The bombs were dismantled, but Kobayashi continued to receive death threats. The pressure had its effect. The large business federation that he helps lead has withdrawn its criticism of Koizumi’s hawkishness toward China and his visits to Yasukuni, and Kobayashi now travels with bodyguards.

In 2003, then-Japanese Deputy Foreign Minister Hitoshi Tanaka discovered a time bomb in his home. He was targeted for allegedly being soft on North Korea. Afterward, conservative Tokyo Gov. Shintaro Ishihara contended in a speech that Tanaka "had it coming."

Another instance of free-thinking-meets-intimidation involved Sumiko Iwao, an internationally respected professor emeritus at Keio University. Right-wing activists threatened her last February after she published an article suggesting that much of Japan is ready to endorse female succession in the imperial line; she issued a retraction and is now reportedly lying low.

Such extremism raises disturbing echoes of the past. In May 1932, Japanese Prime Minister Tsuyoshi Inukai was assassinated by a group of right-wing activists who opposed his recognition of Chinese sovereignty over Manchuria and his staunch defense of parliamentary democracy. In the post-World War II era, right-wing fanatics have largely lurked in the shadows, but have occasionally threatened those who veer too close to or speak too openly about sensitive topics concerning Japan’s national identity, war responsibility or imperial system.

What’s alarming and significant about today’s intimidation by the right is that it’s working -- and that it has found some mutualism in the media. Sankei’s Komori has no direct connection to those guilty of the most recent acts, but he’s not unaware that his words frequently animate them -- and that their actions in turn lend fear-fueled power to his pronouncements, helping them silence debate. What’s worse, neither Japan’s current prime minister nor Shinzo Abe, the man likely to succeed him in next month’s elections, has said anything to denounce those trying to stifle the free speech of Japan’s leading moderates.

There are many more cases of intimidation. I have spoken to dozens of Japan’s top academics, journalists and government civil servants in the past few days; many of them pleaded with me not to disclose this or that incident because they feared violence and harassment from the right. One top political commentator in Japan wrote to me: "I know the right-wingers are monitoring what I write and waiting to give me further trouble. I simply don’t want to waste my time or energy for these people."

Japan needs nationalism. But it needs a healthy nationalism -- not the hawkish, strident variety that is lately forcing many of the country’s best lights to dim their views.

Steven Clemons

Operations — Mon, 17 Apr 2006 17:00:00 -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… more