Message Management Missing in Noda’s Honolulu Trade Initiative

I’d been telling everyone who would listen that Noda would take Japan into the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) FTA negotiations if only because there was no way that he could back down without becoming the third lame-duck prime minister in the first three years of the Democratic Party of Japan’s hold on power. He made me a little nervous with his one-day delay of the announcement, but he did came through and the threat of secession from DPJ dissidents proved to be a bluff…for now. The TPP negotiations should take another year or more, which means that Noda does not have any related legislative action to worry about during the 2012 regular Diet session. However, the opposition will have a couple of matters with which it will test the prime minister to see if they can erode public trust in his governance. And his DPJ opponents will not be happy about them either.

First, he reportedly gave favorable notice regarding Japanese import restrictions on U.S. beef. Actually I’ve been bewildered by recent talk regarding the Noda administration’s willingness to revisit this issue, specifically to raise the import eligibility of U.C. cattle from 20 months old to 30. Leaving aside my personal views on the issue itself, it seemed odd to me that the Noda administration would make a valuable concession even before the TPP negotiations had started. I can think of no other explanation than that it was an “omiyage,” a present, to make the Noda-Obama go smoothly. Maybe it helped, maybe it didn’t, who knows. I’ve always believed that this tactic, long favored by the Japanese authorities, is demeaning and serves mainly to keep the Japanese political masters happy—whee, I got a lot of applause when I addressed the plenary!, President So-and-So shook my hand! that kind of thing—but that’s beside the point. The problem here is that the Noda administration has so far given no official indication that the beef issue is in play. In fact, the news that Noda notified Obama took the Japanese media by surprise. There’s a good political, if unscientific, reason that Japan is one of the few countries to maintain a 30-month age limit on properly processed U.S. beef. The Japanese public was scared out of its wits by the mad cow disease breakout and the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries had to go well beyond what the science around the issue required. (In our defense, we are no more (or less) irrational than our American/British/Chinese/…Luxembourgian/…/South Korean/…/Zimbabwean friends. It’s just that we each care insanely about different things. Okay, maybe Luxembourgers don’t, though who knows…) This will cause problems. After all, this is a food safety issue. It has obvious international ramifications, but first and foremost, it’s a matter of domestic regulation. I think that Noda got it ass backwards, and the media, the opposition and his DPJ opponents are going to (rightfully in my opinion) take him to task for it.

Second, the White House announced that President Obama “welcomed Prime Minister Noda's statement that he would put all goods, as well as services, on the negotiating table for trade liberalization.” Now this may seem to you mere recognition of reality. After all, if Noda had said that agriculture, or anything else for that matter, was off the table, his bid to take Japan into the TPP negotiations would have collapsed on the dry dock. However, lobbies and Congress feed off trade issues, so the White House in its press secretary readout obviously did what it could to ensure smooth sailings as far as officially accepting Japan as a TPP negotiating member with as few domestic strings as possible. (A negotiator always looks to expand his/her mandate.) The Japanese side, incredibly, not only failed to anticipate the White House spin but did not put out any statement regarding the bilateral meeting except a bland, all-points-covered summary from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA). The prime minister’s team—Kantei?—missing in action. (See if you can find anything at the Kantei website.) It wound up issuing a denial that Noda had said any such thing. Bad for relations with the White House, and fodder for opposition guns when the Diet resumes operations on the Prime Minister’s return from Honolulu.

SOTU: I Don’t See England, I don’t see France

But I do see Europe.

Yesterday, Paul Sracic emailed me his quick response to President Obama’ State of Union address, which included the following take on Japan:

No one in the U.S. will care about this, but Obama mentioned China, India, and South Korea several times -- but never Japan. Do you think that the Japanese people will care/notice this?

Sure enough, the story showed up later that day on the Yomiuri and Sankei websites (and this morning in the Yomiuri and I sure Asahi hardcopy versions). Paul is an expert on US politics (he’s quoted on the SOTU itself in a Reuters wire), but he obviously figured out how the Japanese mind works while he was in Japan on his Council of Foreign Affairs fellowship Fulbright Scholarship. The headlines say it all:

Yomiuri: “Japan” Goes Unmentioned This Year Too: exhibits the strengths of South Korea, China (hardcopy version)
Sankei: Country Names Mentioned in Obama Speech: South Korea Most Often, at Five; Japan Zero (online version)

Sankei does the whole SOTU BRICs count: China four times, India three times, Russia twice, and Brazil once. (Ian Bremmer believes that Russia isn’t a real BRIC, but that’s another story.)

If this sounds familiar to you, you’re right. We went through this during the 2008 presidential primaries, when many people here gave John McCain the thumbs-up over Hillary Clinton in the Foreign Affairs essays contest because McCain issued a paean to the US-Japan relationship while Clinton mentioned China more often than Japan. Note, though, that Clinton’s essay was more about the foreign policy and security challenges that the United States faced, and how she would deal with them. Obama is naming names mainly as countries that are doing things that the United States should emulate at home. And no, as the Sankei count shows, England and France don’t show up either. But Europe does, as in: “Countries in Europe and Russia invest more in their roads and railways than we do.”

The silver lining for Japan is that this wakeup call is good news for people here who are pushing reform.

“Tremors of an Age of the Warring States in International Trade”

Here’s a look into what goes on in the minds of many people here—probably more in the media and political ranks than the business world—regarding the US treatment of the Toyota recalls.

---

Yasuhiko Ohta, a member of the Nikkei board of editors, has a column in the 20 March edition entitled “Tremors of an Age of the Warring States in Trade(通商戦国時代の響き)” that criticizes the Japanese Government for staying above the fray on Toyota’s braking problems in the United States. He thinks that “the Toyota bashing in the US carried an element of political and diplomatic problems from the outset,” citing LaHood’s role as a member of the Obama cabinet in “setting fire to the US consumer’s sense of unease through [his] congressional testimony,” the “leading role played by the US Transportation Department’s National Highway Traffic Safety Administration in criticizing Toyota,” and the prominence of congressmen and senators from regions that have strong connections with the UAW and US auto manufacturers as the angry voices in Congress. He goes on to claim that “the pressure leading to trade friction is in the danger zone, where a small incident can lead to a blowup.” He takes President Obama’s State of the Union address and sees Obama’s goal to “double our exports over the next five years” as leading to a push to “take away shares of emerging markets from corporations from other countries by force if necessary.” He closes with the following two parargraphs:

“The curtains are rising on an Age of Warring States in Trade. Shouldn’t the uproar surrounding the recalls be understood within that larger context?

Toyota tripped on its own regarding the safety problems of its product. But it is also true that pressure to trip up competitors is mounting on a level other than safety. Since the Hatoyama administration does not have the diplomatic power against the US to resolve the issue, Toyota must work on the Obama administration on its own.”

Americans probably don’t need me to tell you how incomplete and misguided this analysis is with regard to Toyota’s predicament. But this is no nationalist or conspiracy theorist blogger, but a member of the Nikkei board of editors. So, even discounted for Nikkei’s dislike of the Hatoyama administration and its budget-busting handout policies, you have to believe that this is the kind of thinking that is fairly common in the Japanese establishment. Now, some things that these people miss:

1. LaHood’s personality as a big reason why he wings it, his political cachet as a Republican in a Democratic cabinet as the reason why he is allowed to do so.
2. The NHTSA’s need to cover its butt.
3. The UAW’s grip over the Detroit Three contrasted to its lack of influence over the largely union-free Japanese manufacturers.
4. The countervailing congressional voices from constituencies with Toyota operations.

I hope this helps anyone who has to explain what’s going down over there. And the real trade war story, if there is going to be one, will of course be a US-China story.

”Hatoyama vs. Obama”? Doesn’t the Emperor Count?

The following is adapted from my response to a visiting scholar whose friend back in the US wanted to know if there was any veracity to this article in Shūkan Bunshun, a weekly general interest magazine whose sensationalism is around 5 on a scale of 1 to 10 in this publishing category. The scholar notes that the Free Republic is a far right blog. He himself comes across as a moderate Republican—hey, if you’re recruiting, HA and LG…

Short answer: Who knows? But leaving aside my views on the veracity of independent (i.e. not published by the major dailies) weeklies, including the authenticity of their sources, the article boils down to two points:

1) The Hatoyama administration is dithering over Futenma because the DPJ fears the SDP.
2) The two sides got into a diplomatic pissing match because Obama administration is pissed off at the Hatoyama administration for dithering over Futenma.

1) is only partly true. SDP’s internal dynamics—the election manifesto, the leftish elements, its unanimously anti-military base Okinawa contingent, Hatoyma’s personality, Okada’s personal attachment to the Kadena option—have at least as much to do with the confusion as the SDP’s position does. To look at it from another angle, I don’t think this is a coalition breaker for the DPJ.

As for 2), this is the first time that I heard speculation that Obama had delayed his departure one day to express his displeasure. I’m sure there has been some speculation about Hatoyama’s motives. Me? I think a tit-for-tat would not be conducive to a satisfactory resolution of the problem. But then, maybe none of the advisors on either side is smarter than your average kindergartener.

I can think of perfectly legitimate reasons for Obama not leaving Washington immediately after a top-priority, inconclusive NIC session with no easy conclusions, leaving most of the principals behind to wrestle with the question in his absence. (Now that would have been Kobe beef for the right-wing media/blogs.) Of course anything is pure speculation unless one has access to his full itinerary—which I assume that the Japanese writer is likewise not privy to.

As for Hatoyama, the reason given in Tokyo was that he left because he didn’t want to skip the APEC inaugural dinner. And what’s wrong with that? So he should have accommodated the last-minute changes in Obama’s itinerary by staying on for the last, ceremonial leg of Obama’s visit and given up engaging, as a newly-minted Japanese PM, in Asia-Pacific summitry in Singapore? What kind of message would that have sent to Japan’s neighbors, especially when he would be hosting next year’s APEC summit? The clincher in my view is our Emperor, who, from a ceremonial perspective, is better than a run-of-the-mill [head of state]. The Chinese authorities have been using their Hu-Wen tag team (and odd-couple Jiang-Zhu before that) to great logistical advantage; now, Moscow is putting Medvedev and Putin to the same task. True, the Emperor has no power—but does Dmitry?

Occam’s Razor, I think.

That said, if some people want to take a single tabloid article as gospel, that's their problem, not mine.

There's Less to U.S.-Japanese Frictions than Meets the Eye

From The Call, a little perspective on Japan-U.S. relations as things heat up around troops realignment. It got out there a little more slowly than I’d hoped because of unavoidable circumstances that I won’t go into here, but it’s not as if it’s already dated, so there you are.

Here’s an earlier piece if you want to know what our thoughts were on the outlook immediately after the DPJ victory. What’s striking to me is that on both issues (refueling operations, Futenma), the Hatoyama Cabinet has been consistently sending mixed signals that add to the problems. I think that I see this elsewhere, and it’s usually a bad thing. If Hatoyama is not careful, the media and hence the voting public will begin dealing with him as a continuation of the recent string of ineffectual prime ministers.

DPJ Crosses Red Line with Support for Anti-Helicopter Base Candidate

I’ve believed, like many people here, that if only Prime Minister firmed up and took the heat for sticking with the 2006 agreement to move the U.S. Marine helicopters on Futenma Base to a base to be built offshore of Camp Schwab on the coral seas of the remotest part of Nago City, everyone except the pacifist SDP would fall into line, the bulk of the Marine forces at Futenma could be relocated to Guam, and Futenma would revert to Japan to be used for non-military purposes. After all, the DPJ manifesto and the subsequent DPJ-SDP-PNP policy pact had only carried a vague reference to revisiting the U.S. troop realignment, and even the reprisal in the policy pact—hammered out on the DPJ side by Katsuya Okada—had been a grudging concession to the SDP. The DPJ would—did—have more than enough on the domestic agenda without U.S. relations becoming an unwelcome distraction. The projected landfill might be something of an eyesore, but few people would notice, as Henoko, the part of Nago where Camp Schwab now resides, is one of the most sparsely populated areas in all of Okinawa. More significantly, the helicopter base would bring welcome Tokyo money. Perhaps that is why Nago has elected three pro-base mayors—albeit professing great reluctance and a powerful sense of public duty—in a row. Thus, I had believed Foreign Minister Okada’s most recent brainstorm to relocate the helicopters to Kadena Air Base to be no more than a strawman, to be knocked down by the U.S. side—which the Obama administration promptly proceeded to do at all levels from the Defense Secretary on down—and by the Okinawans themselves—which the good assemblymen of the Kadena township immediately proceeded to do, in a unanimous vote that rejected the idea and, for good measure, called for easing the burden on their own shoulders.

So there the matter would end, and the DPJ administration would have to bow to the inevitable. But what do I know? For Okada has continued to pursue the Kadena option as his “personal proposal,” and at least one news report claims that a senior member of the ruling coalition (phrasing that indicates that the person is not a member of the Hatoyama administration) has sounded out the locals with a scrap-and-build plan to move 28 out of the 48 U.S. F-15s stationed on Kadena Base. I am sure that the Obama administration will be very surprised, and not in a nice way, if the Hatoyama administration ever puts this on the negotiating table. I cannot believe that the Hatoyama would put placating the DPJ (and its own most radical, ex-Socialist elements) ahead of Japan and the United States’ individual and joint security concerns, but, as Okada himself admits, there’s no way of moving the helicopters to Kadena if it increases the net burden. Besides, the U.S. side has made it clear that air traffic control requirements preclude the location of the helicopter fleet conjointly with conventional aircraft on the existing space in Kadena.

So is Okada, and by extension Hatoyama, continuing to play the Kadena card as a show of exhausting all possible avenues? Perhaps. But in the meantime, the locals are getting restless. The good assemblymen of Nago have become irritated at the dithering and are threatening to rescind their offer to host the helicopters. An even more ominous turn in local politics, has the DPJ reportedly deciding to back an anti-helicopter base candidate against the pro-base incumbent in the January mayoral election. This, to me, effectively precludes the possibility of the Hatoyama administration giving the nod to Nago as the site within the year—for good, if the DPJ-backed anti-base candidate wins,

What will the fallout of the birth of an anti-base administration in Nago be like? In the near future, nothing—on the ground at least. The relocation of the U.S. troops from Futenma grinds to a stop, and everything is frozen in situ. But frustration and mistrust will build up among everyone involved—the people of Futenma, the Obama administration, the U.S. military, the Japanese national security establishment—with longer-term, negative consequences all around.

Is Japan a Client State of the United States? And What of It?

The following is my response to a comment from Matt Dioguardi, with whom I had other enjoyable disagreements in the past, on this post. The blog rejected it as being too long—it only accepts up to 4,096 characters—so I’m posting it here as a separate post.

Matt: Always good to hear from you, although—because?—we hold very different views on many things. I think that the notion that major policy changes will not occur in Japan until something happens to drastically alter the U.S.-Japan relationship is certainly a defensible one, but unless properly defined and qualified, it throws out most of severely limits the notion of “major” on the economic front. Moreover, I don’t read anything that McCormack writes since I made it half way through a talk that he gave on North Korea and concluded that he was nuts; we can agree to disagree here. That said, let’s see if I have anything meaningful to say on the points that you raise.

“Japan exports to America, and reinvests in American Treasury bonds.”

Rephrase it “America borrows from Japan and uses the money to buy things from Japan”, and you begin to wonder which one is really the client. Actually, both statements put a highly simplified, anthropomorphic gloss on what is a complex phenomenon with a very large number of actors driven by many factors from both within and outside of the relationship. Moreover, there are so many policy decisions that must be made that have no direct bearing on the relationship (although many if not all of them are bound to affect our external balance in ways that produces changes in our foreign currency reserves) and yet are so momentous.

Incidentally, defined more precisely, there is a conscious choice that the Japanese government could make that would drastically alter the situation that is described in your statement. Namely, the Japanese government could decide not hold currency reserves and leave everything to market forces. Now, to engage in my own anthropomorphism, “Japan” still could run a trade surplus and “reinvest” the proceeds in American Treasury bonds, but this is one road that few countries running trade surpluses if any will ever take.

“Japan keeps a fairly vague stance (with meaningless rumblings of nationalism), while America does the heavy lifting diplomatically for Japan.”

This is a sweeping statement that could be said of every liberal democracy that does not have a) a nuclear arsenal; b) the capacity to project a serious military force beyond its borders (conduct major landing operations, dispatch multiple aircraft carrier fleets); and c) a permanent seat with veto powers on the UN Security Council. Also note that Japan is a regional power. It has played a meaningful role in Asian (defined as east of Bangladesh) politics that has usually but not always been consonant with the interests and values of the government or the majority of the public of the United States. The Middle East is just not our bailiwick, though events there do seriously affect our economy. But then, do France and the U.K. do any “heavy lifting”? Or to put it another way, do their opinions matter to the governments and increasingly the public of Egypt, Iran, Iraq and Saudi Arabia and other states in the region? The United States is the sole global superpower; as such, “America does the heavy lifting [militarily and almost ipso facto] diplomatically for all of us. There is some change afoot, which does not bode well for the rest of us, but there things stand for the moment. There are paradigms and paradigms; that fact that one cannot—should not?—be changed of our own volition does not render all other meaningless. Or is that not the point of your rhetorical flourish?

Note also that for both statements, you could insert “China” in place of “Jaan” and still end up with coherent, defensible statements. So would McCormack consider China to be a “client state” of the United States? Are we all “client states”? Just askin’.

“There's a speech on-line where Abe praises Japan's new two party system, and indirectly the growing opposition. Strange, if he were really ideologically driven, who cares about how many parties there are? Oh, well, gee, America has a two party system, so that must be good.”

Let’s face it, Abe, is only saying the right thing. Anything else would sound pretty gauche. Of course he is not the only one who is calling for a two-party system. The LDP has had a nice 55-year run, but it has gone stale and many serious problems are piling up that cannot all be blamed on the bureaucracy—I think that the idea is, If the bureaucracy is at fault, then what were you guys in the Diet doing on our munificent payroll?—there’s a widely held public desire for an alternative. It’s more a vote against a mono-party system than a vote for a two-party system. Also, note that the United States is not the only two-party democracy on this planet. In fact, at first glance, nations lacking serious social/cultural/ethnic divides and/or powerful regional rivalries tend to drift towards political systems with one or two dominant parties and a smattering of smaller, special-interest or ideology-driven parties. Even the United States has a socialist Senator. So no, nobody wants it just because America has one. If that were the case, it would happened long ago, when U.S. influence was much stronger here.

“We won't see seismic changes in Japan until the relationship with America seriously stumbles and/or collapses.”

I am unable to address this point unless I know what you mean by “seismic.” I have very limited power to think about economic and political matters in purely metaphorical terms.

”Say if the dollar suddenly dropped to about 40 yen to the dollar. That would make Japanese politics very lively over night.”

Hard to argue with that statement.

“Until something happens, well, not much is gonna happen. Of course, you knew that, didn't you?”

No, I don’t, honestly. I don’t know until it actually doesn’t happen. The political inertia is pretty strong though, that I’ll certainly agree to. Is that somehow a side effect of being a “client state”? I know that there are political commentators and academics who will write reams of stuff from such perspectives. Some are entertaining, a few can even be insightful, but it’s not my cup of tea. I prefer sturdy, fact-based logic.

There you are, Matt

We Are Not Alone: Ambassador to-Be to London Louis Susman, Another Obama Bagman Extraordinaire

And the British media “are in a tizzy”.

I’ve been reading and hearing from a variety of sources that the Japanese authorities were not pleased to hear that a last-minute switch resulted in Jon Roos’ secondment to the U.S. Embassy in Tokyo, so I’m happy for the peace of mind of those people to know that we are not the only ones who have been pissed off. What’s a little weird is the fact that Susman’s name has already been in the hat for months. Didn’t that give the British enough time to get over it?

Beyond the surprise element—no one wants to be blindsided—what a government official that I talked to said made the most sense to me. He agreed that the Roos nomination was a sign of U.S. satisfaction with Japan as a trusted ally and that it was not unreasonable to assume that Japan should be happy that Tokyo is seen as a posh reward on a par with London, Paris, and Rome. However, the Japanese side is not as happy with the U.S. treatment of Japanese concerns, most notably the abduction issue—thus, in his view, the dissatisfaction with what was being seen in some quarters as a manifestation of benign neglect. We agreed that it was likely that the Japanese side would eventually be happy that an ambassador with real leverage with the President and his staff—after all, Schieffer is just a friend, and Nye is just an academic—would be in town.

Meet John V. Roos, U.S. Ambassador-to-Be in Tokyo

My negative powers of prediction have worked their magic again; I have hexed Joseph Nye, and John V. Roos, a Silicon Valley lawyer and major Obama fundraiser, has been tapped as Ambassador to Japan. According to the Asahi, the decision was precipitated by Jon Huntsman’s nomination as Ambassador to China (the balance!), the switch from Nye coming at the last minute.

The Asahi says that the Obama administration is tracing the “Schieffer” pattern in prioritizing the personal relationship over experience. Not so. That was certainly the case with Schieffer, a native Texan like Bush, though a Democrat from Texas. But Roos was an early supporter of and fundraiser for Obama; I’m sure the two hit it off, but the decision itself is very much political. In that sense, it’s actually the “close ally” treatment that places like London, Paris and (likely) Rome are used to getting, where major donors/fundraisers are routinely awarded extended vacations. Again, we are reminded of the difference between partnership and relationship.

---

Not that there’s any reason to believe that Roos will be less effective. In fact, I think he’ll be a great hit here.

More Thoughts around the Taepodong Launch (and a Notice)

”The last time North Korea tested such a missile, in 1998, it sent a shock wave around the world, but especially to the United States and Japan, both of which North Korea regards as archenemies. They recognized immediately that a missile of this type makes no sense as a weapon unless it is intended for delivery of a nuclear warhead.”
Ashton B. Carter and William J. Perry, “If Necessary, Strike and Destroy”, The Washington Post (22 June 2006)

The North Korean perfection of a long-range nuclear missile capability against the United States, Japan, or the Republic of Korea would pose an imminent threat to the vital interests of our country.
Philip Zelikow, “Be ready to strike and destroy North Korea's missile test”, Foreign Policy (22 February 2009)

The first op-ed, by a former Defense Secretary (Perry) and an Assistant Defense Secretary (Carter) in the Clinton Administration, came on the eve of the first launch of the Taepodong 2 and called on the Bush administration to conduct a preemptive strike if the North Korean authorities continued preparations. We know how that turned out. Zelikow, a career diplomat and counselor to Secretary of State Rice at the time (2005-2007), had opposed a preemptive strike at the time, by his own account arguing:

“(1) attainment of a long-range or intercontinental missile capability would require more tests, so this one did not place North Korea at the threshold of an operational capability; and (2) given point #1, it was better to use the test to draw a ‘red line’ with support from the international community.”

Zelikow believed that the conditions had been satisfied and urged the newly-minted Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to draw a red line. We know how that turned out as well, less than two months later.

Note that both op-eds assume that the Taepodong is a threat to Japan in the same way that it is a threat to the United States (though Carter and Perry are somewhat less explicit on that point). This is odd, since the long-range nuclear missile capability that a Taepodong 2 with a nuclear warhead poses makes sense only as a means to reach U.S. targets. Instead, it is the 200 or so land-mobile midrange Rodongs that pose an imminent danger to Japanese security.

The long-range Taepodong’s deployment may affect U.S. strategic thinking regarding retaliation under the mutual security treaty in the event of a North Korean missile attack on Japan. This is by no means trivial even if it is merely a matter of perception, since this could affect the deterrence value of the U.S. nuclear umbrella. The situation is further complicated by the fact that the emergence of a North Korean threat to its 50 states will change the balance of U.S. concerns between counter-proliferation and deterrence—the second rising in relative importance—and align them more closely to Japan’s.

I’m not sure where this is leading to, so I’ll leave it at that for now.

In the meantime, let me go back to the op-eds that started this train of thoughts and ask: Where did this implicit assumption by top officials that there is no discernable distinction between U.S. and Japanese interests regarding the Taepodong come from?

I think it all goes back to the late 1990s, when the Japanese government was still reluctant to sign on to the expensive and experimental missile defense system that the United States had been urging Japan to adopt. But it all changed in 1998, when North Korea flew Taepodong 1 over Japan. This was not in itself out of the ordinary if you believed that North Korea’s claim that it was a satellite launch and North Korea had observed, instead of neglected, the proper protocols regarding such an event. Of course no one believed North Korea’s claim and North Korea dispensed with the niceties. So the launch caused great public consternation in Japan and became a material factor in the Japanese government’s decision to sign on to the U.S. program (which Secretary Gates is now trying to pare back under the Obama administration). In other words, it was the Japanese public that bought into the notion that the Taepodon was a threat to Japan. The writers of the op-ed, with nothing else to go by, have unthinkingly accepted this Japanese conventional wisdom.

But this begs yet another question: Why did the Japanese authorities also buy into this idea and agree to purchase a missile defense system that, if you agree with Keiichiro Asao, does not address the main Japanese concern—the hundreds of land-mobile Rodongs whose main targets are on Japanese territory—but was instead actually geared toward the relatively small number of the more expensive and cumbersome long-range missiles that nations such as North Korea and Iran might launch against the United States. But here again, I am at a loss; I can do some speculating, but I don’t have enough dots to connect to make it anything more than a list of possibilities.

---

Sorry, my explanation regarding the significance of the three sets of bureaucratic appointments by Prime Minister Aso within the context of the broader relationship between politics and the bureaucracy is still on the backburners. If it turns out to be too long and complicated to deal with on a blog, I’ll put together the main points of my argument and post that.

Some Thoughts around the North Korean Missile/Projectile/Rocket Launch

I am watching Sunday Project, a one-hour, forty-five minute news show; this week it’s the Taepodon 2 launch, from start to finish. Among other things, they’re showing an estimate based on known facts that the rocket will reach Japanese territory within two minutes of launch and leaves it within four of it. Moments later (or so I remember) the regular news room breaks in with the announcement that the Taepodon 2 has launched successfully at 11:30. (Good thing I changed my mind about the likely launching schedule.) I look at the clock; it’s 11:35, going on 11:36. And it’s a good clock. So, by the time the information reached the Japanese public, the projectile was already on its way over presumably safer international waters. That wasn’t a warning call; it was for all practical purposes an all-clear.

Experts gave a variety of explanations for North Korea’s insistence on actions: a) a deterrent—against the U.S., on both offense and defense; b) negotiation tactics—like the 2006 “nuclear” test that led to the bilateral negotiations (which the Bush administration had been resisting fiercely; c) (on a related point) getting the United States to pay attention—the Obama administration has been putting “Asia” on the backburners; d) cash cow—as in $1.5 billion in annual missile sales including what looks like a joint-venture relationship with Iran; and e) domestic politics—impressing the masses and placating the military. Though there’s no way of knowing what goes on in the individual and collective minds of the North Korean leadership from Kim Jong Il down, each explanation seemed to me to have a measure of truth to it. All in all, they reinforce my conviction that there is little short of regime change that would induce them to give this up, or the nuclear weapons program.

This does not directly impact Japan in terms of national security; our main concerns are the smaller, mobile, rapid-fire Rodongs—all 200 of them with nowhere to aim at except Japan. However, this does change the game for the United States, as I’ve mentioned before, and that impacts Japan. There has been an underlying tension between the two allies regarding North Korea’s nuclear program; to grossly simplify the situation, Japan fears an attack while the United States fears proliferation. From Japan’s point of view, taking North Korea off the U.S. list of terrorism sponsors did nothing, but it at least bought time for the United States.

Incidentally, we don’t hear about their drugs and counterfeiting operations anymore. What gives?

What Do You Make of the New U.S. Ambassador in Tokyo?

I thought so.

Well, as long as people don’t notice and wouldn’t care if they did…Actually, I’m posting this to use my negative powers of prediction to hasten the nomination of whomever. And it’s probably not Joseph Nye. There, I’ve said it. Now, place your bets.

Seriously, the tranquilizing effect of a 1.5-hour interview in Washington and a three-day trip to Tokyo is amazing. Japan is definitely low priority on the Obama agenda; every nation should be so lucky.

If North Korean “Satellite Launch” Impacts Japan-U.S. Alliance, It Will Be by Accident

Question: If North Korea claims that it is a launch of a satellite, would you still consider such a launch to be a target of interception?
Minister: As far as such a launch has any impact on Japan, I would consider it a matter of course to respond to it…According to Article 82-2 of the Self-Defense Forces Act, the subject of our interception consists of “missiles and other objects that are deemed to cause serious damage to human life and property due to their fall and are not aircraft”, so even if it is a rocket, an artificial satellite that has the possibility of going out of control and falling on our country is obviously included, so I think that it is natural to respond to that situation.
—from Defense Minister Yuichi Hamada’s March 3 press conference; the English-language abstract is available here

Sounds reasonable. The United States will be in a similar situation with regard to its own territory. So within minutes after North Korea launches the latest version of the Taepodong, the U.S. surveillance system will calculate the trajectory of the projectile and determine where it is likely to fall. If it is determined that it is likely to fall on Japanese territory, the two AEGIS-equipped destroyersescort vessels currently deployed by the JSDF will attempt to intercept it. (The Land Forces’ Patriot missiles will intercept it on the way down if the AEGIS system fails to do the job.) The half-dozen U.S. AEGIS-equipped vessels in the neighborhood should also be obligated to attempt an intercept under the Mutual Defense Treaty, although I’m not as sure on this point.

However, if it’s determined that the projectile is likely to land on U.S. territory, the Japanese AEGIS system cannot intercept it under the current official interpretation of the Japanese Constitution regarding collective self-defense. Although North Korean authorities would never dare to aim the launch at U.S. (or for that matter Japanese) territory, the rocket does have a long range if there’s any truth to the speculations, and there’s a fairly good chance that the rocket could accidentally go astray at or immediately after the launch.—at which point there is a small but undeniable possibility that this asymmetrical and technically remediable gap in the “mutuality” of the national security relationship will pass from the theoretical to the actual.

---

Satoshi Morimoto, my favorite North Korea expert in Japan—he always seems to know what he’s talking about—has a fairly detailed explanation of the technical and political issues in a Sankei column.

Aso Meets Obama, Medvedev. What Gives?

There’s little that can be settled between someone with a four-year lease on power with a one-off extension option for the landlord and another guy who faces near-certain eviction in less than seven months. No to worry though; there are no purely bilateral issues of major concern, and the global financial/economic crisis is…well, global. At the regional level, Futenma, Guam, and the rest of the U.S. troop realignment issues are what they are (where Ozawa’s latest statements are far more interesting and somewhat alarming, given the political winds), and North Korea is…North Korea, the pending Taepodon 2 “satellite” launch notwithstanding. So Prime Minister Aso took the twelve-hour flight to Washington, had a one-hour get-together (half that, really, if you consider the interpretation) with President Obama—no lunch, no press conference—and took the flight back home; the clock started running again on the embattled Prime Minister as if nothing had happened.

The only effect seems to have been to give the President of the United States a four-year pass against charges of Japan passing NTTIAWWT. Think of it as a follow-up to Hillary Clinton’s visit and talk with family members of abductees. Speaking of whom, it may only have been a scheduling glitch, but I think it was a clever idea to insert Indonesia between Japan and China and South Korea in her itinerary. By breaking the sequence with a country of clearly less political consequence, the U.S. government minimized the political significance of the order of the visits.

---

Russian President Medvedev made an offer his Japanese counterpart couldn’t refuse when he invited Aso to Sakhalin Island for the Wednesday launch of the LNG plant that will send 65% of its 9.8 million-ton annual production to Japan*. It should be good publicity, foreign and domestic, for the Kremlin in the face of issues with Ukraine and serious knock-on effects on Western European customers, all of it unfolding within a broader, alarming context of plummeting energy prices. Aso’s visit also provides political closure to an obscure but not insignificant legal issue regarding the final status of Sakhalin Island. The USSR never signed the San Francisco Peace Treaty, under which Japan gave up sovereignty over what was then a strategically significant but barely habitable piece of real estate, along with the Kurile Islands. So Sakhalin (and the Kurile Islands) must be part of the final bilateral treaty that will settle all issues including the four islands most commonly referred to as the Northern Territories. It was a bargaining chip, albeit very minor. Aso’s visit laid that issue to rest.

In return, Aso got a promise of a May visit by Prime Minister Putin and a pledge to settle the issue within “our generation”, which the Japanese side is spinning as “during the current administrations.” The last point should be alarming to Japanese nationalists; Russia has never shown any hint of any intention to give up anything more than the two near-most (from the Japanese perspective) and smallest islands except in President Yeltsin’s weakest moments—only a hint at that, mind you—and Putin’s Russia has gone some ways in reverting to its old empirical ways since then. Meanwhile, Aso as Foreign Minister all but gave away his own game plan when he talked about splitting the islands in half by area—giving Japan the three smaller islands and a significant portion of the fourth—before there was any inkling that negotiation were going to start any time soon. At bottom, actually, is Aso’s moderate pragmatism—something most Western observers miss because of his sometimes nationalistic pronouncements—but it certainly won’t help him with a significant portion of his support from the LDP right.

* The rest goes to South Korea and the U.S.

Ozawa-Clinton Meeting On

The Ozawa-Clinton meet-and-greet is on after all: the DPJ had second thoughts and asked the U.S. side, who obliged. If you like the over-under kind of bets, then you must be curious about the odds of Ichiro Ozawa serving if the DPJ wins. Well, they’ve just gone up as the result of the about-face. More substantially, it’ll be interesting to see how Ozawa handles issues related to the U.S. military presence in Japan (ex. Japanese sendoff gift for U.S. troops headed to Guam, U.S, relocation within Japan) and the overseas projection of Japanese Self-Defense Forces (ex. Afghanistan, refueling operations in the Indian Ocean, piracy off the Somalia coast).

Some Thoughts on Hillary Clinton’s February 13 Speech

Hillary Clinton’s 13 February speech at the Asia Society in New York, two days before her trip to Japan, South China, South Korea and Indonesia, has already been widely reported and is available in its entirety, including the Q&A, here. As English-language speakers no doubt are already aware, a substantial part of her talk is about the financial crisis, North Korea’s nuclear program, and climate change and China. I hope my comments shed some light on her talk that has otherwise not been covered.

---

The substantive part of Hillary Clinton’s speech begins with a tribute to the progress that Asia has made in the fifty years since the founding of the Asia Society. In the process, she gives a list of the traditional sights and sounds of Asia that have caught her attention in her travels over the years.

I think of the elegant temples of Kyoto, or the rituals of nomadic life outside Ulaanbaatar, the intricate handwork of traditional craftspeople in Chiang Rai, the vibrant markets of Hanoi, Hong Kong, and Dhaka; the grand hotels of Singapore and Manila, the calligraphers practicing their art in Xi’an, the historic dress of Seoul and the traditional dances of Jakarta, or the strum of the sitar in New Delhi.

In doing so, she implicitly refers to: Japan, Mongolia, Thailand, Vietnam, China (twice: one state, two systems), Bangladesh, Singapore, the Philippines, South Korea, Indonesia, and India. They can be sorted into: Northeast Asia (four; excluding North Korea and Russia), ASEAN (four; with Malaysia the one major member missing), and South Asia. Her visits to Central Asia—she visited Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan as First Lady—Pakistan, West Asia (Afghanistan) and the Middle East (Iraq) go unmentioned.

These omission are not unreasonable, since she is weaving a story of progress as the backdrop for a “new era of diplomacy and development in which [the United States] will use smart power to work with historic allies and emerging nations to find regional and global solutions to common global problems.” The “common global problems” that she specifically cites here are: financial instability and economic dislocation, terrorism and weapons of mass destruction (for all practical purposes nuclear proliferation), food security and health emergencies, climate change and energy vulnerability, stateless criminal cartels and human exploitation. The U.S. outreach, using smart power, will extend beyond governments and “engage civil society.”

There is a strong emphasis here on dialogue; “we are ready to listen”. This is very much Obamaesque. But it is in this context that a couple of other countries (as well as China) receive less favorable attention when she says, “As part of our dialogues, we will hold ourselves and others accountable as we work to expand human rights and create a world that respects those rights, one where Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi can live freely in her own country, where the people of North Korea can freely choose their own leaders, and where Tibetans and all Chinese people can enjoy religious freedom without fear of prosecution.”That’s Burma and North Korea, as well as China. (Note, though, the carefully crafted ambiguity of the phrase “Tibetans and all Chinese people”—not “Tibetans and Chinese” of course, but not “all Chinese people, including Tibetans,” either.

Of these global concerns, Clinton first takes up global financial crisis and its economic impact. Nothing really new here; I’ll just note that she invokes the importance of international partnerships and avoiding protectionism.

The second major item on the ticket is North Korea’s nuclear program. But before that, she touches briefly on “maintaining our historic security alliances in Asia and building on those relationships to counter the complex global threats we face” and goes on to state “I’m very pleased that Japan and South Korea this week agreed to joint assistance for reconstruction efforts in Afghanistan, and that both countries continue to work with us on global security, especially in combating piracy off the Horn of Africa.” Ichiro Ozawa, the leader of the main opposition party, has reportedly been spouting some unrealistic thoughts about dispatching the Japan Coast Guard there. No wonder he has been doing his best to avoid Clinton’s outstretched hand. At least she didn’t mention the refueling operations.

Back to North Korea: she states the obvious with regard to the Obama administration’s continued commitment to the Six-Party process and her intent to discuss this with Japan, China, and South Korea on this visit. The U.S. position is clear and unchanged from the central premise, however unrealistic, of the Six-Party process:

“If North Korea is genuinely prepared to completely and verifiably eliminate their nuclear weapons program, the Obama Administration will be willing to normalize bilateral relations, replace the peninsula’s longstanding armistice agreements with a permanent peace treaty, and assist in meeting the energy and other economic needs of the North Korean people.”

After 165 words on this subject (out of a total 3,382 words for the entire speech, frills and all) she follows with 32 words on—what else?

“On a related matter, I will assure our allies in Japan that we have not forgotten the families of Japanese citizens abducted to North Korea. And I will meet with some of those families in Tokyo next week.”

It is now all about not forgetting, it seems. Such meetings have become a rite, sealed in a place where time goes by so slowly, until regime change—or something very similar—heralds the beginning of the end for North Korea’s nuclear weapons program and hauls Japan’s financial assistance into the picture..

Next, Clinton expends 276 words on climate change and the need for clean sources of energy. She emphasizes the need for “partnerships that promote cleaner energy sources, greater energy efficiency, technology transfers that can benefit both countries, and other strategies that simultaneously protect the environment and promote economic growth”, and sees such collaboration as “a real opportunity to deepen the overall U.S.-Chinese relationship”. Nothing remarkable here about the substance, but note the careful distinction here between the plural “partnerships” and the singular “relationship”.

But I digress. Before leaving climate change and energy behind, note that Clinton also mentions working with Japan and South Korea, as well as Indonesia, on clean energy. Not that anything dramatic is going to happen any time soon—is it my imagination, or are pundits with the least energy background the most enthusiastic supporters of collaboration?—but it’s not all China here.

This is followed by a riff on “development” as one of the three D’s—the others are defense and diplomacy—that are vital to U.S. security, and cites Indonesia, and more broadly ASEAN, favorably in this context, saying, “we look forward to working with our other partners and friends in the regions, allies like Thailand and the Philippines, along with Singapore, Malaysia, and Vietnam, to ensure that ASEAN can live up to its charter, to demonstrate the region’s capacity for leadership on economic, political, human rights, and social issues.” A shoutout to Australia, which is not on the itinerary, follows. After that, it’s a rundown of specific, bilateral issues that she will be discussing on her visit.

The key sentence with regard to Japan:

“Our security alliance with Japan, 50 years old next year, has been, and must remain, unshakable.”

. It’s not easy to be more explicit than that. Her agenda: signing the Guam International Agreement to move U.S. troop out of “the peace and stability of Asia and increasingly focuses on global challenges”. Again, a problem for the Ozawa DPJ, given its challenge of the price tag, the Japanese,, trillion-yen and upwards, payout. At the bilateral level, China receives by far the most space (295 words to Japan’s 159). But it’s a desire for “a positive, cooperative relationship.” Speaking of which…

Earlier, I took note of the care with which Clinton used the words “relationship” and “partnerships”. The same care can be seen in her use of words regarding bilateral issues here. More broadly, I was reminded of the sentence that touched the nerves of the Japanese establishment in her Foreign Affairs essay where she said:

”Our relationship with China will be the most important bilateral relationship in the world in this century.”

It had MOFA officials counting the number of times “Japan” and China” appeared in this essay as well as her campaigning speeches and reportedly asking visiting Japan hands to divine the meaning of it all. All too often, The Japanese authorities and the Japanese media fail to see that Clinton, as well as other responsible U.S. figures, routinely distinguish between “relationship(s)”, “partnership(s)”, and “alliance(s)”. Then of course there’s “engagement”. This is not a mere quibble. These distinctions are essential to understanding, constructing, and explaining the conceptual framework that is the foundation of the foreign and national security policies of Japan, indeed, of any sovereign state.

After China, the speech ends on a positive if unremarkable note, with the following call:

Let us commit ourselves to providing the kind of outreach and responsiveness, understanding, and commitment that will lead not just to a better understanding, but positive actions to improve the lives of our own people here and those who live in Asia today.

And who can disagree with that?

Some Implications of South Korea’s Help on Japan’s Abduction Issue

I’ll have to issue a corrective regarding my previous post on Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s visit regarding a possible meeting with family members of abductees. I’d overlooked the change in South Korea’s policy regarding its own abductees under the Lee Myung-bak administration and more broadly the impact of an overall shift away from the ten-year-old Sunshine policy. This point was driven home for me when South Korean Foreign Minister Yu Myung-Hwan announced that he was helping to arrange a meeting between Kim Hyun Hui, one of the North Korean agents responsible for the 1987 Korean Air Flight 858 bombing and now living in South Korea in relative seclusion, and family members of Japanese abductee Taeko Yaguchi, who had been tasked with teaching Kim the Japanese language and Japanese customs.

I can’t imagine the Lee administration following Japan’s lead in asking Clinton for a face-to-face with South Korea’s own abduction constituency—it makes South Korea look weak and reliant on the United States, always bad politics over there, and it’s not going to help right things anyway—but the South Korean gesture has raised the media’s attention. I believe that this slightly raises the stakes for both Clinton and North Korea with regard to her response to the Japanese request. Moreover, it’s one thing for the United States to indulge Japan as an act of diplomatic courtesy; it’s another for the three parties to act in consonance, if not in unison. The North Korean response will be that much harsher. The Kim Jong Il regime is playing its latest Taepodon caper for much larger stakes in its bid for face and more fungible goodies, but it may nevertheless see such a gesture as an indication of a harder line from the Obama administration than the late-Bush administration’s sliced-salami concession tactics.

A Few Thoughts on Hillary Clinton’s Upcoming Visit

I thought that the AP wire that I linked to in this previous post implicitly said everything that absolutely needed to be said about Secretary of State Clinton’s East/Southeast Asia trip, and I still do. But there are a couple of bits of trivia in the Japanese media about which I have a few thoughts that might be of use to you. By that, I mean a) the U.S. attempt to set up a meeting with Ichiro Ozawa and b) the Japanese attempt to set up a meeting with the family members of the abductees.

The DPJ’s attempt to bask in the afterglow of its U.S. namesake’s across-the-board victory in the November elections notwithstanding, I will be pleasantly surprised if the Ozawa-Clinton meeting happens. The DPJ does not want to have its differences with Japan’s most important military ally (the only other one being Australia) and within its own party ranks regarding a) the U.S. military presence in Japan and b) the Japanese role regarding operations in and around Afghanistan and off the coasts of Somalia aired in public. It would be unsettling. Ozawa would be particularly problematic as the DPJ interlocutor, since he has been personally responsible for the policy positions that have led to the bilateral discord regarding the overseas projection of the Japanese military. Add to that, Ozawa… being Ozawa…

Incidentally, there’s nothing odd about a State Secretary meeting the head of the DPJ. After all, the DPJ is the leading opposition party. I wonder how it works the other way around though. What if Foreign Minister Hirofumi Nakasone tries to do the same if and when he visits the United States? Nothing wrong with meeting the head of the Republican Party, but Michael Steele, the Chairman? Please. Not John McCain either, he only came close; now, he’s just a senator. George W. Bush? Maybe, but only as a courtesy call, which leaves the question open. There’s something to be said for the parliamentary system where official visits are concerned.

The other meeting, the one with family members of the abductees, is clearly not a top priority item for the Clinton side, if claims of her scheduling difficulties mean anything. The fact that the story of the logistical problem is emanating from Japan’s Chief Cabinet Secretary* indicates that the Aso administration is either not pushing too hard, which would mean that it is unlikely to happen; or lowering expectations to get the most out of a, say, ten-minute interlude in an Aso-Clinton meeting during which a few family members are shuffled in and out of the Prime Minister’s office. If I absolutely had to make a call, it would be the latter—it would be so easy to engineer—but either way, the consequences would be trivial. Some people in Japan will like Clinton (and the Obama administration) less if she doesn’t meet them. But Japan’s stance with regard to North Korea and more broadly the bilateral alliance including U.S. troop realignment will remain unchanged. Clinton-family facetime will earn some credits with the nationalist crowd, but that’s not where the real public and LDP opposition to Aso is coming from. Remember, this episode is playing out against a backdrop of increasing “abduction fatigue”. Wounds may never heal, but we at least learn to live with the pain; the media’s diminishing treatment of the issue reflects this fact of life. Moreover, a meeting may only exacerbate the sense of futility, which would be a negative for the Aso administration.

All this, of course, is predicated on the assumption that the regional problems of major concern for the bilateral alliance are chronic, not acute, in nature and require careful management, not dramatic initiatives. That includes North Korea, despite its most recent Taepodon threat. The short-term course for the overseas projection of the Japanese military is also set for the moment. The results of the upcoming Lower House election can change this, as well as the Japanese stance on U.S. troops realignment, but there’s little short of throttling Ozawa that Clinton can do to affect the outcome. Hey, maybe that’s why Ozawa…

The report is available from this short-lived Mainichi link. Oddly, the full reports of the Chief Cabinet Secretary’s press briefings for that day (available on the Sankei website) do not include this point. Perhaps the Mainichi chased him down after the press briefing. Takeo Kawamura, the current CCS, is regarded as a lightweight, but to his credit appears to be uncommonly accommodating with the press. He held two press briefings on Sunday.

U.S.-Japan Security Treaty Applies to Senkaku Inlands

I’ve begun going through Wikileak and this CRS report caught my eye. The report makes a strong, unequivocal case that “while maintaining neutrality on the competing claims, the United States agreed in the Okinawa Reversion Treaty to apply the [U.S.-Japan] Security Treaty to the treaty area, including the Senkaku (Diaoyu) islands.” The unstated flip side of the coin is that neither Takeshima (Dokto to some of you) nor the Northern Territories are covered.

Does Any Other Country Obsess about Its Next Ambassador from the United States?

Chuck Hagel is reportedly the current frontrunner to Replace Ambassador Schieffer in Tokyo but Joseph Nye is still in the running. Of course you’d know nothing about that unless you followed the Japanese media. Other than the top Ambassador to the U.N.—currently a Cabinet-level post—there’s little to no speculation in the U.S. media on U.S. ambassadorships as a part of the transition. Is there any other nation in the world where this is going on? After all, ambassadors haven’t been making any important decisions since the advent of the telephone, have they?

In any case, Chuck Hagel would not quite be the status symbol embodied by a true national figure, he is nevertheless the Magic Republican, a decent mainstream conservative Senator who broke with President Bush on the war in Iraq—think Roger Maris instead of Mickey Mantle, but not Billy Martin either. I think that the message would be more or less the same regardless of which one (or any other meaningful candidate) winds up in Tokyo.

Incidentally, this dialogue continues.