Yesterday I just finished filing my tax return for the last year. I am very relieved now. This is a very big job for any freelance journalist in Japan. You need to support your tax return form by every single receipt, just in case the taxation authorities may examine your filing closely in the future.
Well, a lot of such precious taxes, including mine and yours, still go for military-related expenses in Japan, especially for US military bases! Here is a good story to think about it. Cheers, Kosuke
Okinawa and the new domino effect
By John Feffer
For a country with a pacifist constitution, Japan is bristling with weaponry. Indeed, that Asian land has long functioned as a huge aircraft carrier and naval base for United States military power. We couldn't have fought wars in Korea (1950-1953) and Vietnam (1959-1975) without the nearly 90 military bases scattered around the islands of our major Pacific ally. Even today, Japan remains the anchor of what's left of America's Cold War containment policy when it comes to China and North Korea. From the Yokota and Kadena air bases, the United States can dispatch troops and bombers across Asia, while the Yokosuka base near Tokyo is the largest American naval installation outside the United States.
You'd think that, with so many Japanese bases, the United States wouldn't make a big fuss about closing one of them. Think again. The current battle over the US Marine Corps air base at Futenma on Okinawa - an island prefecture almost 1,600 kilometers south of Tokyo that hosts about three dozen US bases and 75% of American forces in Japan - is just revving up. In fact, Washington seems ready to stake its reputation and its relationship with a new Japanese government on the fate of that base alone, which reveals much about US anxieties in the age of President Barack Obama.
What makes this so strange, on the surface, is that Futenma is an obsolete base. Under an agreement the George W Bush administration reached with the previous Japanese government, the US was already planning to move most of the Marines now at Futenma to the island of Guam. Nonetheless, the Obama administration is insisting, over the protests of Okinawans and the objections of Tokyo, on completing that agreement by building a new partial replacement base in a less heavily populated part of Okinawa.
The current row between Tokyo and Washington is no mere "Pacific squall", as Newsweek dismissively described it. After six decades of saying yes to everything the United States has demanded, Japan finally seems on the verge of saying no to something that matters greatly to Washington, and the relationship that Dwight D Eisenhower once called an "indestructible alliance" is displaying ever more hairline fractures. Worse yet, from the Pentagon's perspective, Japan's resistance might prove infectious - one major reason why the United States is putting its alliance on the line over the closing of a single antiquated military base and the building of another of dubious strategic value.
During the Cold War, the Pentagon worried that countries would fall like dominoes before a relentless communist advance. Today, the Pentagon worries about a different kind of domino effect. In Europe, North Atlantic Treaty Organization countries are refusing to throw their full support behind the US war in Afghanistan. In Africa, no country has stepped forward to host the headquarters of the Pentagon's new Africa Command. In Latin America, little Ecuador has kicked the US out of its air base in Manta.
All of these are undoubtedly symptoms of the decline in respect for American power that the US military is experiencing globally. But the current pushback in Japan is the surest sign yet that the American empire of overseas military bases has reached its high-water mark and will soon recede.
Toady no more?
Until recently, Japan was virtually a one-party state, and that suited Washington just fine. The long-ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) had the coziest of bipartisan relations with that city's policymakers and its "chrysanthemum club" of Japan-friendly pundits. A recent revelation that, in 1969, Japan buckled to president Richard Nixon's demand that it secretly host US ships carrying nuclear weapons - despite Tokyo's supposedly firm anti-nuclear principles - has pulled back the curtain on only the tip of the toadyism.
During and after the Cold War, Japanese governments bent over backwards to give Washington whatever it wanted. When government restrictions on military exports got in the way of the alliance, Tokyo simply made an exception for the United States. When cooperation on missile defense contradicted Japan's ban on militarizing space, Tokyo again waved a magic wand and made the restriction disappear.
Although Japan's constitution renounces the "threat or the use of force as a means of settling international disputes", Washington pushed Tokyo to offset the costs of the US military adventure in the first Gulf War against Saddam Hussein in 1990-1991, and Tokyo did so. Then, from November 2001 until just recently, Washington persuaded the Japanese to provide refueling in the Indian Ocean for vessels and aircraft involved in the war in Afghanistan. In 2007, the Pentagon even tried to arm-twist Tokyo into raising its defense spending to pay for more of the costs of the alliance.
Of course, the LDP complied with such demands because they intersected so nicely with its own plans to bend that country's peace constitution and beef up its military. Over the last two decades, in fact, Japan has acquired remarkably sophisticated hardware, including fighter jets, in-air refueling capability, and assault ships that can function like aircraft carriers. It also amended the 1954 Self-Defense Forces Law, which defines what the Japanese military can and cannot do, more than 50 times to give its forces the capacity to act with striking offensive strength. Despite its "peace constitution", Japan now has one of the top militaries in the world.
Enter the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ). In August 2009, that upstart political party dethroned the LDP, after more than a half-century in power, and swept into office with a broad mandate to shake things up. Given the country's nose-diving economy, the party's focus has been on domestic issues and cost-cutting. Not surprisingly, however, the quest to cut pork from the Japanese budget has led the party to scrutinize the alliance with the US. Unlike most other countries that host US military bases, Japan shoulders most of the cost of maintaining them: more than $4 billion per year in direct or indirect support.
Under the circumstances, the new government of Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama proposed something modest indeed - putting the US-Japan alliance on, in the phrase of the moment, a "more equal" footing. It inaugurated this new approach in a largely symbolic way by ending Japan's resupply mission in the Indian Ocean (though Tokyo typically sweetened the pill by offering a five-year package of $5 billion in development assistance to the Afghan government).
More substantively, the Yukio Hatoyama government also signaled that it wanted to reduce its base-support payments. Japan's proposed belt-tightening comes at an inopportune moment for the Obama administration, as it tries to pay for two wars, its "overseas contingency operations", and a worldwide network of more than 700 military bases. The burdens of US overseas operations are increasing, and fewer countries are proving willing to share the costs.
Of dugongs and democracy
The immediate source of tension in the US-Japanese relationship has been Tokyo's desire to renegotiate that 2006 agreement to close Futenma, transfer those 8,000 Marines to Guam, and build a new base in Nago, a less densely populated area of the island. It's a deal that threatens to make an already strapped government pay big. Back in 2006, Tokyo promised to shell out more than $6 billion just to help relocate the Marines to Guam.
The political cost to the new government of going along with the LDP's folly may be even higher. After all, the DPJ received a healthy chunk of voter support from Okinawans, dissatisfied with the 2006 agreement and eager to see the American occupation of their island end. Over the last several decades, with US bases built cheek-by-jowl in the most heavily populated parts of the island, Okinawans have endured air, water, and noise pollution, accidents like a 2004 US helicopter crash at Okinawa International University, and crimes that range from trivial speeding violations all the way up to the rape of a 12-year-old girl by three Marines in 1995.
According to a June 2009 opinion poll, 68% of Okinawans opposed relocating Futenma within the prefecture, while only 18% favored the plan. Meanwhile, the Social Democratic Party, a junior member of the ruling coalition, has threatened to pull out if Hatoyama backs away from his campaign pledge not to build a new base in Okinawa.
Then there's the dugong, a sea mammal similar to the manatee that looks like a cross between a walrus and a dolphin and was the likely inspiration for the mermaid myth. Only 50 specimens of this endangered species are still living in the marine waters threatened by the proposed new base near less populated Nago. In a landmark case, Japanese lawyers and American environmentalists filed suit in US federal court to block the base's construction and save the dugong.
Realistically speaking, even if the Pentagon were willing to appeal the case all the way up to the Supreme Court, lawyers and environmentalists could wrap the US military in so much legal and bureaucratic red tape for so long that the new base might never leave the drawing board.
For environmental, political, and economic reasons, ditching the 2006 agreement is a no-brainer for Tokyo. Given Washington's insistence on retaining a base of little strategic importance, however, the challenge for the DPJ has been to find a site other than Nago. The Japanese government floated the idea of merging the Futenma facility with existing facilities at Kadena, another US base on the island. But that plan - as well as possible relocation to other parts of Japan - has met with stiff local resistance. A proposal to further expand facilities in Guam was nixed by the governor there.
The solution to all this is obvious: close down Futenma without opening another base. But so far, the US is refusing to make it easy for the Japanese. In fact, Washington is doing all it can to box the new government in Tokyo into a corner.
Ratcheting up the pressure
The US military presence in Okinawa is a residue of the Cold War and a US commitment to containing the only military power on the horizon that could threaten American military supremacy. Back in the 1990s, the Bill Clinton administration's solution to a rising China was to "integrate, but hedge". The hedge - against the possibility of China developing a serious mean streak - centered around a strengthened US-Japan alliance and a credible Japanese military deterrent.
What the Clinton administration and its successors didn't anticipate was how effectively and peacefully China would disarm this hedging strategy with careful statesmanship and a vigorous trade policy. A number of Southeast Asian countries, including the Philippines and Indonesia, succumbed early to China's version of checkbook diplomacy. Then, in the last decade, South Korea, like the Japanese today, started to talk about establishing "more equal" relations with the US in an effort to avoid being drawn into any future military scrape between Washington and Beijing.
Okinawa and the new domino effect
By John Feffer
Now, with its arch-conservatives gone from government, Japan is visibly warming to China's charms. In 2007, China had already surpassed the US as the country's leading trade partner. On becoming prime minister, Hatoyama sensibly proposed the future establishment of an East Asian community patterned on the European Union. As he saw it, that would leverage Japan's position between a rising China and a United States in decline. In December, while Washington and Tokyo were haggling bitterly over the Okinawa base issue, DPJ leader Ichiro Ozawa sent a signal to Washington as well as Beijing by shepherding a 143-member delegation of his party's legislators on a four-day trip to China.
Not surprisingly, China's bedazzlement policy has set off warning bells in Washington, where the People's Republic is still a focus
of primary concern for a cadre of strategic planners inside the Pentagon. The Futenma base - and its potential replacement - would be well situated, should Washington ever decide to send rapid response units to the Taiwan Strait, the South China Sea, or the Korean peninsula. Strategic planners in Washington like to speak of the "tyranny of distance", of the difficulty of getting "boots on the ground" from Guam or Hawaii in case of an East Asian emergency.
Yet the actual strategic value of Futenma is, at best, questionable. The South Koreans are more than capable of dealing with any contingency on the peninsula. And the United States frankly has plenty of firepower by air (Kadena) and sea (Yokosuka) within hailing distance of China. A couple thousand Marines won't make much of a difference (though the leathernecks strenuously disagree). However, in a political environment in which the Pentagon is finding itself making tough choices between funding counterinsurgency wars and old Cold War weapons systems, the "China threat" lobby doesn't want to give an inch.
Failure to relocate the Futenma base within Okinawa might be the first step down a slippery slope that could potentially put at risk billions of dollars in Cold War weapons still in the production line. It's hard to justify buying all the fancy toys without a place to play with them.
And that's one reason the Obama administration has gone to the mat to pressure Tokyo to adhere to the 2006 agreement. It even dispatched Secretary of Defense Robert Gates to the Japanese capital last October in advance of president Obama's own Asian tour. Like an impatient father admonishing an obstreperous teenager, Gates lectured the Japanese "to move on" and abide by the agreement - to the irritation of both the new government and the public. (See Gates gets grumpy in Tokyo, October 28, 2009)
The punditocracy has predictably closed ranks behind a bipartisan Washington consensus that the new Japanese government should become as accustomed to its junior status as its predecessor and stop making a fuss. The Obama administration is frustrated with "Hatoyama's amateurish handling of the issue," writes Washington Post editorial page editor Fred Hiatt. "What has resulted from Mr Hatoyama's failure to enunciate a clear strategy or action plan is the biggest political vacuum in over 50 years," adds Victor Cha, former director of Asian affairs at the National Security Council. Neither analyst acknowledges that Tokyo's only "failure" or "amateurish" move was to stand up to Washington. "The dispute could undermine security in East Asia on the 50th anniversary of an alliance that has served the region well," intoned The Economist more bluntly. "Tough as it is for Japan's new government, it needs to do most, though not all, of the caving in."
The Hatoyama government is by no means radical, nor is it anti-American. It isn't preparing to demand that all, or even many, US bases close. It isn't even preparing to close any of the other three dozen (or so) bases on Okinawa. Its modest pushback is confined to Futenma, where it finds itself between the rock of Japanese public opinion and the hard place of Pentagon pressure.
Those who prefer to achieve Washington's objectives with Japan in a more roundabout fashion counsel patience. "If America undercuts the new Japanese government and creates resentment among the Japanese public, then a victory on Futenma could prove Pyrrhic," writes Joseph Nye, the architect of US Asia policy during the Clinton years. Japan hands are urging the United States to wait until the summer, when the DPJ has a shot at picking up enough additional seats in the next parliamentary elections to jettison its coalition partners, if it deems such a move necessary.
Even if the Social Democratic Party is no longer in the government constantly raising the Okinawa base issue, the DPJ still must deal with democracy on the ground. The Okinawans are dead set against a new base. The residents of Nago, where that base would be built, just elected a mayor who campaigned on a no-base platform. It won't look good for the party that has finally brought real democracy to Tokyo to squelch it in Okinawa.
Reverse island hop
Wherever the US military puts down its foot overseas, movements have sprung up to protest the military, social, and environmental consequences of its military bases. This anti-base movement has notched some successes, such as the shut-down of a US navy facility in Vieques, Puerto Rico, in 2003. In the Pacific, too, the movement has made its mark. On the heels of the eruption of Mt Pinatubo, democracy activists in the Philippines successfully closed down the ash-covered Clark Air Force Base and Subic Bay Naval Station in 1991-1992. Later, South Korean activists managed to win closure of the huge Yongsan facility in downtown Seoul.
Of course, these were only partial victories. Washington subsequently negotiated a Visiting Forces Agreement with the Philippines, whereby the US military has redeployed troops and equipment to the island, and replaced Korea's Yongsan base with a new one in nearby Pyeongtaek. But these not-in-my-backyard (NIMBY) victories were significant enough to help edge the Pentagon toward the adoption of a military doctrine that emphasizes mobility over position. The US military now relies on "strategic flexibility" and "rapid response" both to counter unexpected threats and to deal with allied fickleness.
The Hatoyama government may indeed learn to say no to Washington over the Okinawa bases. Evidently considering this a likelihood, former deputy secretary of state and former US ambassador to Japan Richard Armitage has said that the United States "had better have a plan B". But the victory for the anti-base movement will still be only partial. US forces will remain in Japan, and especially Okinawa, and Tokyo will undoubtedly continue to pay for their maintenance.
Buoyed by even this partial victory, however, NIMBY movements are likely to grow in Japan and across the region, focusing on other Okinawa bases, bases on the Japanese mainland, and elsewhere in the Pacific, including Guam. Indeed, protests are already building in Guam against the projected expansion of Andersen Air Force Base and Naval Base Guam to accommodate those Marines from Okinawa. And this strikes terror in the hearts of Pentagon planners.
In World War II, the United States employed an island-hopping strategy to move ever closer to the Japanese mainland. Okinawa was the last island and last major battle of that campaign, and more people died during the fighting there than in the subsequent atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined: 12,000 US troops, more than 100,000 Japanese soldiers, and perhaps 100,000 Okinawan civilians. This historical experience has stiffened the pacifist resolve of Okinawans.
The current battle over Okinawa again pits the United States against Japan, again with the Okinawans as victims. But there is a good chance that the Okinawans, like the Na'vi in that great NIMBY film Avatar, will win this time.
A victory in closing Futenma and preventing the construction of a new base might be the first step in a potential reverse island hop. NIMBY movements may someday finally push the US military out of Japan and off Okinawa. It's not likely to be a smooth process, nor is it likely to happen any time soon. But the kanji (a form of Japanese writing) is on the wall. Even if the Yankees don't know what the Japanese characters mean, they can at least tell in which direction the exit arrow is pointing.
John Feffer is the co-director of Foreign Policy in Focus at the Institute for Policy Studies and writes its regular World Beat column. His past essays, including those for TomDispatch.com, can be read at his website.
(Copyright 2010 John Feffer.)
(Used by permission Tomdispatch)
Friday, March 5, 2010
Sunday, January 31, 2010
POINT OF VIEW/ Steve Clemons: With allies that can say no, U.S. power in decline
THE ASAHI SHIMBUN
2010/01/21
Four strategic allies of the United States--Germany, Japan, Israel and Saudi Arabia--have each been saying "no" to the White House. The leaders of those nations have rebuffed President Barack Obama on key policy requests without taking the consequences, which itself illustrates a sharp downturn in global American power.
The United States under Obama's leadership presumes it sits at the head of the global power table, but increasingly, the world sees a once great nation that has fallen, that has traded substantive power for pretense, and which is being seen as impotent because it can't realize it must re-earn its leadership rather than assert illusions.
At the Group of 20 economic summit in London, held while the global economy tilted toward collapse, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Obama engaged in polite but serious debate on fiscal expansionary policies versus fiscal conservatism. Their exchange became the distinctive memory of the gathering as it overshadowed the efforts of British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and French President Nicolas Sarkozy to steal the show. Merkel rebuffed Obama's economic leadership and views, and Obama, swallowing his pride, maintained an image of cordiality and friendship with Merkel--despite her refusal to budge.
Japan, which, like Germany, was defeated by the United States in World War II and then rebuilt via American patronage and stewardship, has undergone significant political change following the Democratic Party of Japan's historic victory over the long-reigning Liberal Democratic Party in the Aug. 30, 2009, Lower House election.
For years, the United States has acted as if the basic "do what we say" dynamic toward Japan would never be challenged--despite a clear struggle within Japan over its emergent national identity. At the same time, Japan grappled with how to adopt healthy nationalism and reposition itself as it marks the 50th anniversary this year of its security alliance with the United States. The rising power of China is a further complication.
Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama is apparently trying to demonstrate that America is trailing history rather than leading it, while the United States defensively clings to protecting an agreement on the relocation of the U.S. Marine Corps Air Station Futenma in Okinawa Prefecture. That agreement was reached between the environmentally-insensitive and corruption-blind LDP and the U.S. administration headed by George W. Bush.
Hatoyama promised during his campaign that the base deal would not go through. Despite some bludgeoning of Japan's ambassador to the United States, Ichiro Fujisaki, by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton over the issue, and direct pressure from Obama, Hatoyama has refused to walk the course the United States has been pushing. This was despite threats by the United States that failing to yield might undermine core tenets of the relationship.
Ultimately, the U.S. obsession with the Futenma arrangement shows weakness rather than strength. This is because the United States needs Japan's economic and military resources as a full partner, not ambivalence, in standing up to China's rise. The United States would be undermining its own security to trade the broad strengths of the U.S.-Japan security relationship with the relatively minor issue of Futenma.
Probably, many people do not recall that Futenma was the very first "deal" Walter Mondale, as U.S. ambassador to Japan, clinched with the late Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto. It was signed in the aftermath of the rape of a 12-year old girl in Okinawa Prefecture by three U.S. servicemen. The deal then was to absorb Futenma into Kadena Air Force Base to combine the Air Force and Marine Corps functions into other U.S. military facilities there.
Ultimately, inter-service rivalry on the American side undermined this keystone agreement, which was a major element in revisions for the global realignment of U.S. forces. Obama and Clinton have shown little historic understanding of the roots of the Futenma problem. Instead, they engaged in saber-rattling in a manner that made it look as if the Obama team was threatening something it could not afford to lose, further enhancing the political benefits to Hatoyama of being seen to resist American pressure.
Saudi Arabia is not often acknowledged publicly in Washington as an ally, but in many ways the Saudis for decades have been America's most significant strategic partner in the Middle East, adjusting oil production and supply in patterns that helped Washington's strategic interests.
Most recently, the Saudis used their influence on Pakistan in providing oil at subsidized rates. This was intended to encourage Pakistan to take bolder action against al-Qaida and Taliban groups operating in the Swat valley of North-West Frontier Province.
When George W. Bush was running for president, his father arranged for Prince Bandar al-Sultan, then Saudi Arabia's ambassador to the United States, to secretly tutor him on foreign policy issues while traveling aboard the campaign aircraft.
During the Soviet military intervention in Afghanistan, the United States was allied with the Saudis in arming and equipping the Mujahadeen, many of whose leaders at the time are now enemies of the United States.
But recently, when Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah was asked by Obama to put forward a number of key concessions toward Israel as part of the "opener" in changing the dynamics of antagonism in the Middle East toward Israel, he refused.
The king had already initiated and resurrected a normalization proposal between the Arab League and Israel, first offered in Beirut in 2002, only to see it largely ignored and used occasionally and symbolically by the U.S. administration at moments of political expediency.
Abdullah warned Obama that Benjamin Netanyahu, the new prime minister of Israel, would ultimately embarrass the president as well as those who jumped the gun by trying to raise the ante in restarting the Middle East peace process. Not only did the Saudis rebuff Obama, they proved to be correct, identifying early on that the White House didn't realize that America's superpower status had been punctured badly during the Bush years. The Saudis also correctly surmised that before states would throw their lot behind American leadership, the White House would have to prove it had power to reshape and sculpt global relationships. Being told to trust that Israel would behave responsibly was not a convincing first move by the Obama team toward the Saudis.
Finally, Israel itself said "no" to the United States and Obama in the loudest and most politically consequential way. As a largely client state of the United States, which is overwhelmingly dependent on U.S. aid and transfer payments as well as an iron-clad security guarantee, Israel's schizophrenic approach to the Palestinian issue and a two-state solution has been one of many frustrating realities of the Middle East peace process. The government under former Prime Minister Ehud Ohlmert repeatedly and passionately stated that Israel's only chance at survival as a Jewish state and a functioning democracy was to make a two-state solution work. Netanyahu's government is highly ambivalent at best about the position of the previous government and has done much to undermine progress in negotiations with the Palestinians.
To kick-start the peace process in the aftermath of the Gaza conflict, Obama selected former U.S. Senator George Mitchell, a distinguished peace-forger, to take on the task as his special envoy. The White House decided that to convince the Arab world it was serious, it committed itself to put pressure on Israel to halt all new settlement activity. This raised hopes in the Arab world that Obama was serious, but it raised hackles inside Israel that Obama would ultimately sell out Israel's basic security.
Netanyahu demonstrated his statecraft skills in a high stakes but successful gamble in knocking back Obama. He rebuffed decisively the notion that settlements could be the portal through which Middle East peace talks were restarted. Consequently, the White House, which often internally compares itself to a hybrid of the Lincoln and Kennedy administrations, found that Netanyahu had become what Nikita Khruschev had been to John F. Kennedy.
Netanyahu, an ally, had shown the limits of Obama's power to resculpt Middle East realities--at least until there is some escalating political crisis between Israel and the United States in which Obama reclaims the heavyweight champion ring from Netanyahu.
Each of these episodes has its own distinctive political circumstances and ought to be grouped together only cautiously. But the fact remains that America's allies are rebuffing the United States more regularly and overtly than would have been imagined a decade ago. Global analysts often refer to the troubling behavior of problematic nations like Iran or North Korea or non-allies like China and Russia as yardsticks by which to measure America's weak position in the world.
But it is in the decisions of allies that the absence of what had been long-established equilibriums becomes clear and worrisome.
Despite the global fascination with Obama and his inspiring oratorical sketches of what the world could expect of itself and what nations could collectively do to meet the enormous challenges ahead, doubts remain about America's ability to achieve the objectives it sets out for itself.
The world sees the United States unrealistically threaten Japan with strategic rupture over a minor base issue in Okinawa Prefecture, where the United States maintains 39 military installations. It sees the United States try to convince the Arab world that it is serious about peace between Israel and the Palestinians by promising a settlement freeze and then reversing itself and acquiescing to Israel's recalcitrant prime minister. It sees the long-term, back room-managed U.S.-Saudi relationship contribute nothing to Obama's script for bringing lasting peace to the Middle East. It sees Obama politely humbled and rebuffed by Germany, a global capital surplus nation, at the G-20 summit in London. This happened at a time when Germany's own growth and welfare are tied in part to reflating the U.S. economy, which consumes Germany's exports.
America's current national security objectives are greater than its means, and the White House is demonstrating that it can't juggle all of these challenges at once. American power and leverage are dissipating in the face of too many failed causes.
It is time for America to rethink its national security course and re-prioritize its core goals. If America is to rebuild its power, it must accomplish what it sets out to do. That way, it can gain momentum from each small success. Recognizing the constraints on American power today, Obama nonetheless can reinvent America's position by scoring well-thought out victories. This would require Obama to defy conventional wisdom and not give in to countervailing forces.
Restarting a credible Russia-U.S. effort to reduce stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction and nuclear materials, which the Obama team may yet pull off, would be one such positive gain. Pushing ahead with talks to normalize relations between Syria and Israel comes to mind. Ending the restrictions on American citizens travel to Cuba and finally ending an anachronistic Cold War 90 miles (144 kilometers) from U.S. shores would also buy Obama global credits.
The White House can overcome the structural collapse of American power brought on by the Bush years by convincing its allies through prudent actions that America is worth backing again. Renewed and refocused momentum in the U.S. foreign policy agenda may convince foes that America's considerable assets would be more shrewdly used to help lead the world into a more stable and reorganized equilibrium.
Only this kind of progressive realist path will secure a positive foreign policy legacy for Obama and assure that the United States re-earns admission to global leadership from its current position as an anachronistic, reactive power falling behind events rather than leading them.
***
The author directs the American Strategy Program at the New America Foundation, a nonprofit, nonpartisan public policy institute, and publishes the political blog The Washington Note.
2010/01/21
Four strategic allies of the United States--Germany, Japan, Israel and Saudi Arabia--have each been saying "no" to the White House. The leaders of those nations have rebuffed President Barack Obama on key policy requests without taking the consequences, which itself illustrates a sharp downturn in global American power.
The United States under Obama's leadership presumes it sits at the head of the global power table, but increasingly, the world sees a once great nation that has fallen, that has traded substantive power for pretense, and which is being seen as impotent because it can't realize it must re-earn its leadership rather than assert illusions.
At the Group of 20 economic summit in London, held while the global economy tilted toward collapse, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Obama engaged in polite but serious debate on fiscal expansionary policies versus fiscal conservatism. Their exchange became the distinctive memory of the gathering as it overshadowed the efforts of British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and French President Nicolas Sarkozy to steal the show. Merkel rebuffed Obama's economic leadership and views, and Obama, swallowing his pride, maintained an image of cordiality and friendship with Merkel--despite her refusal to budge.
Japan, which, like Germany, was defeated by the United States in World War II and then rebuilt via American patronage and stewardship, has undergone significant political change following the Democratic Party of Japan's historic victory over the long-reigning Liberal Democratic Party in the Aug. 30, 2009, Lower House election.
For years, the United States has acted as if the basic "do what we say" dynamic toward Japan would never be challenged--despite a clear struggle within Japan over its emergent national identity. At the same time, Japan grappled with how to adopt healthy nationalism and reposition itself as it marks the 50th anniversary this year of its security alliance with the United States. The rising power of China is a further complication.
Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama is apparently trying to demonstrate that America is trailing history rather than leading it, while the United States defensively clings to protecting an agreement on the relocation of the U.S. Marine Corps Air Station Futenma in Okinawa Prefecture. That agreement was reached between the environmentally-insensitive and corruption-blind LDP and the U.S. administration headed by George W. Bush.
Hatoyama promised during his campaign that the base deal would not go through. Despite some bludgeoning of Japan's ambassador to the United States, Ichiro Fujisaki, by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton over the issue, and direct pressure from Obama, Hatoyama has refused to walk the course the United States has been pushing. This was despite threats by the United States that failing to yield might undermine core tenets of the relationship.
Ultimately, the U.S. obsession with the Futenma arrangement shows weakness rather than strength. This is because the United States needs Japan's economic and military resources as a full partner, not ambivalence, in standing up to China's rise. The United States would be undermining its own security to trade the broad strengths of the U.S.-Japan security relationship with the relatively minor issue of Futenma.
Probably, many people do not recall that Futenma was the very first "deal" Walter Mondale, as U.S. ambassador to Japan, clinched with the late Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto. It was signed in the aftermath of the rape of a 12-year old girl in Okinawa Prefecture by three U.S. servicemen. The deal then was to absorb Futenma into Kadena Air Force Base to combine the Air Force and Marine Corps functions into other U.S. military facilities there.
Ultimately, inter-service rivalry on the American side undermined this keystone agreement, which was a major element in revisions for the global realignment of U.S. forces. Obama and Clinton have shown little historic understanding of the roots of the Futenma problem. Instead, they engaged in saber-rattling in a manner that made it look as if the Obama team was threatening something it could not afford to lose, further enhancing the political benefits to Hatoyama of being seen to resist American pressure.
Saudi Arabia is not often acknowledged publicly in Washington as an ally, but in many ways the Saudis for decades have been America's most significant strategic partner in the Middle East, adjusting oil production and supply in patterns that helped Washington's strategic interests.
Most recently, the Saudis used their influence on Pakistan in providing oil at subsidized rates. This was intended to encourage Pakistan to take bolder action against al-Qaida and Taliban groups operating in the Swat valley of North-West Frontier Province.
When George W. Bush was running for president, his father arranged for Prince Bandar al-Sultan, then Saudi Arabia's ambassador to the United States, to secretly tutor him on foreign policy issues while traveling aboard the campaign aircraft.
During the Soviet military intervention in Afghanistan, the United States was allied with the Saudis in arming and equipping the Mujahadeen, many of whose leaders at the time are now enemies of the United States.
But recently, when Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah was asked by Obama to put forward a number of key concessions toward Israel as part of the "opener" in changing the dynamics of antagonism in the Middle East toward Israel, he refused.
The king had already initiated and resurrected a normalization proposal between the Arab League and Israel, first offered in Beirut in 2002, only to see it largely ignored and used occasionally and symbolically by the U.S. administration at moments of political expediency.
Abdullah warned Obama that Benjamin Netanyahu, the new prime minister of Israel, would ultimately embarrass the president as well as those who jumped the gun by trying to raise the ante in restarting the Middle East peace process. Not only did the Saudis rebuff Obama, they proved to be correct, identifying early on that the White House didn't realize that America's superpower status had been punctured badly during the Bush years. The Saudis also correctly surmised that before states would throw their lot behind American leadership, the White House would have to prove it had power to reshape and sculpt global relationships. Being told to trust that Israel would behave responsibly was not a convincing first move by the Obama team toward the Saudis.
Finally, Israel itself said "no" to the United States and Obama in the loudest and most politically consequential way. As a largely client state of the United States, which is overwhelmingly dependent on U.S. aid and transfer payments as well as an iron-clad security guarantee, Israel's schizophrenic approach to the Palestinian issue and a two-state solution has been one of many frustrating realities of the Middle East peace process. The government under former Prime Minister Ehud Ohlmert repeatedly and passionately stated that Israel's only chance at survival as a Jewish state and a functioning democracy was to make a two-state solution work. Netanyahu's government is highly ambivalent at best about the position of the previous government and has done much to undermine progress in negotiations with the Palestinians.
To kick-start the peace process in the aftermath of the Gaza conflict, Obama selected former U.S. Senator George Mitchell, a distinguished peace-forger, to take on the task as his special envoy. The White House decided that to convince the Arab world it was serious, it committed itself to put pressure on Israel to halt all new settlement activity. This raised hopes in the Arab world that Obama was serious, but it raised hackles inside Israel that Obama would ultimately sell out Israel's basic security.
Netanyahu demonstrated his statecraft skills in a high stakes but successful gamble in knocking back Obama. He rebuffed decisively the notion that settlements could be the portal through which Middle East peace talks were restarted. Consequently, the White House, which often internally compares itself to a hybrid of the Lincoln and Kennedy administrations, found that Netanyahu had become what Nikita Khruschev had been to John F. Kennedy.
Netanyahu, an ally, had shown the limits of Obama's power to resculpt Middle East realities--at least until there is some escalating political crisis between Israel and the United States in which Obama reclaims the heavyweight champion ring from Netanyahu.
Each of these episodes has its own distinctive political circumstances and ought to be grouped together only cautiously. But the fact remains that America's allies are rebuffing the United States more regularly and overtly than would have been imagined a decade ago. Global analysts often refer to the troubling behavior of problematic nations like Iran or North Korea or non-allies like China and Russia as yardsticks by which to measure America's weak position in the world.
But it is in the decisions of allies that the absence of what had been long-established equilibriums becomes clear and worrisome.
Despite the global fascination with Obama and his inspiring oratorical sketches of what the world could expect of itself and what nations could collectively do to meet the enormous challenges ahead, doubts remain about America's ability to achieve the objectives it sets out for itself.
The world sees the United States unrealistically threaten Japan with strategic rupture over a minor base issue in Okinawa Prefecture, where the United States maintains 39 military installations. It sees the United States try to convince the Arab world that it is serious about peace between Israel and the Palestinians by promising a settlement freeze and then reversing itself and acquiescing to Israel's recalcitrant prime minister. It sees the long-term, back room-managed U.S.-Saudi relationship contribute nothing to Obama's script for bringing lasting peace to the Middle East. It sees Obama politely humbled and rebuffed by Germany, a global capital surplus nation, at the G-20 summit in London. This happened at a time when Germany's own growth and welfare are tied in part to reflating the U.S. economy, which consumes Germany's exports.
America's current national security objectives are greater than its means, and the White House is demonstrating that it can't juggle all of these challenges at once. American power and leverage are dissipating in the face of too many failed causes.
It is time for America to rethink its national security course and re-prioritize its core goals. If America is to rebuild its power, it must accomplish what it sets out to do. That way, it can gain momentum from each small success. Recognizing the constraints on American power today, Obama nonetheless can reinvent America's position by scoring well-thought out victories. This would require Obama to defy conventional wisdom and not give in to countervailing forces.
Restarting a credible Russia-U.S. effort to reduce stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction and nuclear materials, which the Obama team may yet pull off, would be one such positive gain. Pushing ahead with talks to normalize relations between Syria and Israel comes to mind. Ending the restrictions on American citizens travel to Cuba and finally ending an anachronistic Cold War 90 miles (144 kilometers) from U.S. shores would also buy Obama global credits.
The White House can overcome the structural collapse of American power brought on by the Bush years by convincing its allies through prudent actions that America is worth backing again. Renewed and refocused momentum in the U.S. foreign policy agenda may convince foes that America's considerable assets would be more shrewdly used to help lead the world into a more stable and reorganized equilibrium.
Only this kind of progressive realist path will secure a positive foreign policy legacy for Obama and assure that the United States re-earns admission to global leadership from its current position as an anachronistic, reactive power falling behind events rather than leading them.
***
The author directs the American Strategy Program at the New America Foundation, a nonprofit, nonpartisan public policy institute, and publishes the political blog The Washington Note.
Friday, January 29, 2010
(WSJ) Okinawa Upset
I liked this column pretty much. It's definitely worth reading. Cheers, Kosuke
Okinawa Upset
Sunday's election deals a blow to U.S.-Japan relations, but the damage isn't fatal.
By TOBIAS HARRIS
This year marks the 50th anniversary of the U.S.-Japan alliance, but an election in the tiny city of Nago, Okinawa (population 59,742) may have unsettled the relationship. Nago is home to Camp Schwab, a Marine camp that is scheduled to be the site of a new American air base under the terms of a military realignment program agreed on by Japan and the United States in 2006. On Sunday, Nago elected a new mayor, Susumu Inamine, who opposes that plan. His victory has been interpreted as a victory for opponents of the 2006 agreement.
The biggest loser may have been the Hatoyama government, which campaigned last year on a promise to revisit the agreement but is now realizing the difficulty of finding an alternative. With Mr. Inamine's victory, the government will find it harder to retreat from its opposition to the 2006 roadmap, particularly given its sagging popularity and the corruption scandal surrounding Ichiro Ozawa, secretary general of the Democratic Party of Japan.
By the same token, Washington also lost Sunday. Some analysts have cautioned the Obama administration not to push the Hatoyama government too hard on Futenma, arguing that doing so could cause considerable harm to the alliance even if the U.S. were to get its way on the realignment of U.S. forces. With the election of Mr. Inamine the risks from pressuring the Hatoyama government have grown, not only because Washington will appear to be strong-arming a democratically chosen national government, but also because it would be pressuring that government to ignore a vote in a municipality directly affected by realignment.
Mr. Hatoyama has said that his government will make a decision on the 2006 agreement in May. In the meantime, the Obama administration must give serious thought to whether the 2006 agreement is worth poisoning the U.S.-Japan relationship. As it stands, Washington will either have to enlist the Hatoyama government as an ally in imposing the agreement on Nago—which seems like an unlikely partnership—or it will have to pressure both the Hatoyama government and the people of Nago to accept an agreement that neither desire.
The U.S. must bear considerable blame for insisting so strongly on an agreement that no Japanese government could sell to the Okinawan people for environmental, moral and historical reasons. While Washington would prefer to debate Futenma simply on the basis of strategic considerations, the reality is that for the people most affected by the 2006 roadmap, realignment is anything but a strategic question. The Okinawan people have been asked for too long to bear too great a burden—which includes the social and environmental costs of hosting more than half the U.S. forces in Japan—for them to accept the roadmap quietly, whatever its merits.
The election, moreover, is another reminder of the tension between the U.S.-Japan alliance and the development of Japanese democracy—or indeed democracy in any longtime U.S. ally, as the U.S. found when South Korea transitioned from one-party rule. The DPJ's victory in August, as the first unambiguous power transition from one ruling party to another in the postwar period, marked the first opportunity for the Japanese public to reconsider Japan's alliance with the U.S. While the DPJ is not opposed to the alliance—both the prime minister and Foreign Minister Katsuya Okada have stated their support repeatedly—the DPJ is opposed to how the alliance was handled by the Liberal Democratic Party. The DPJ alleges that the LDP ran the alliance behind closed doors and put the interests of the U.S. before those of the Japanese people, amounting to an unequal partnership between the two countries. Both the secret agreements on nuclear weapons under investigation by the Japanese foreign ministry and the 2006 roadmap are part of the DPJ's case against the U.S.-LDP alliance. And the vote in Nago is the latest sign that Japanese voters—at least in a city where the alliance is a local issue—buy the DPJ's argument that the relationship needs to be changed, at least as it pertains to them.
There is a silver lining here. Insofar as the Nago election makes the rejection of the 2006 roadmap more likely, this presents an opportunity for both Washington and Tokyo to step back and reconsider how the alliance should function and how it should be sold to the Japanese people in Japan's new democracy. The age when the alliance could be managed by bureaucrats and experts from both countries has passed.
The discussion now needs to include more voices from across Japan's political spectrum, from local governments as well as the elite ministries. It should be a two-way discussion, of course: the localities must learn to think in terms of national interests even as the U.S. government has learned to be more sensitive to local concerns. But the U.S. government needs to think harder about how to build support for the alliance, and not only in communities asked to host American forces. It must be able to explain plainly to Japanese citizens why they are there in the first place.
Ultimately the U.S. needs to worry less about the 2006 agreement, and more about building a sustainable foundation for the U.S.-Japan alliance by moving beyond the one-party regime that had been so amenable to U.S. interests for so long.
Mr. Harris, a former aide to a DPJ lawmaker, is a doctoral student in political science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Printed in The Wall Street Journal, page 012
Copyright 2009 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved
Tuesday, January 19, 2010
My latest story for Japan Focus
Hatoyama to Nanjing, Hu to Hiroshima? The New Face of China-Japan Relations
Kosuke Takahashi
TOKYO - With the world economy's center of gravity shifting from the West to the East, led by China's rising economic and corresponding political power, the year 2010 may witness a series of epoch-making events in Asia.
A grand rapprochement between Japan and China could be one such happening. The idea has recently been floated through the media by anonymous diplomatic sources in Tokyo and Beijing, attracting attention among experts worldwide.
The French newspaper Le Figaro reported from Tokyo on January 6 that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) had delivered to the ruling Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) the script of a spectacular reconciliation this year between the two countries. The report said that China had proposed that Japanese Prime Minister Hatoyama Yukio begin the process by going to Nanjing, where a mass killing of Chinese civilians by the Japanese Imperial Army took place in December 1937 and subsequently.
This first visit to Nanjing by a Japanese prime minister since the war would present to the Chinese people Tokyo's official apologies without ambiguity, easing lingering anti-Japanese sentiment among the Chinese public that many associate with unresolved conflicts over the war that ended more than six decades ago. In return, some months later, on August 15, the anniversary of the Japanese surrender in 1945, Chinese President Hu Jintao would go to Hiroshima, the first city to experience atomic bombing, and declare the three non-nuclear principles: China will not make a nuclear first strike, will not attack any non-nuclear country and will not export nuclear arms. The French paper named as its source only "our information".
Meanwhile, the Yomiuri, Japan's largest daily newspaper, also reported from Beijing on January 6 that China had unofficially sounded out Japanese government sources on a visit by Hatoyama to Nanjing, likely around the time he goes to the Shanghai Expo's Japan Day on June 12, with Hu visiting Hiroshima around the time of the November Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit to be held in Yokohama. The Japanese paper said reciprocal visits would aim at improving feelings between the two peoples. Still, unlike Le Figaro, the Yomiuri mentioned nothing about apologies or nuclear promises. It cited "several Japanese and Chinese sources".
China's Foreign Ministry denied the Yomiuri report on January 7, with ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu saying the media rumors of a Nanjing trip were "groundless". But she also said, in what sounded like a non-denial-denial, "It is too early to confirm the details." On the same day, Japan's chief cabinet secretary, Hirano Hirofumi, also denied the reports, saying "at this point, we are not considering" a visit by Hatoyama to Nanjing.
"I have not heard of any such plan," a top Japanese Foreign Ministry official told Asia Times Online, speaking on condition of anonymity. "My guess is that some persons involved might have presented their wish list to have better relations. There is nothing concrete about it." This official's comment suggests that such talks are still going on either at lower government-to-government levels or through party-to-party channels.
The reports by Le Figaro and the Yomiuri followed a similar report in November by the Japanese business magazine, Weekly Toyo Keizai. It reported a secret diplomatic schedule being prepared by relevant Chinese and Japanese players. It predicted that the visit to Beijing one month later by Ozawa Ichiro, secretary general of the DPJ, accompanying more than 600 people, including 143 DPJ lawmakers from the upper and lower houses of the Diet (parliament), would be the first of several Japan-China exchanges. The visit was conducted as part of regular exchanges between the DPJ and the CCP, whose general secretary is Hu.
Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping, who is widely seen as the front-runner to succeed now President Hu in the fall of 2012, visited Emperor Akihito on December 15 last year. This was the Japanese emperor’s first audience with a Chinese vice president since April 1998, when Hu visited Japan as vice president.
A day earlier at a banquet welcoming Xi, Hatoyama heaped praise on the Chinese guest as a man who is certain to become the country's leader.
Xi’s meeting with the emperor, however, stirred up controversy in Tokyo, as the Hatoyama administration had arranged it in breach of Imperial protocol which requires that a foreign government’s request for an imperial audience be submitted at least one month in advance, China's request for the audience was filed in late November—less than one month before the actual audience.
The Imperial Household Agency had strictly requested this protocol, especially after the emperor underwent surgery to treat prostate cancer in 2003, making his health the top priority of the agency.
Under these circumstances the audience highlighted the degree to which the Hatoyama administration is striving to improve Tokyo’s ties with Beijing.
The media reports by Le Figaro and the Yomiuri have triggered strong reactions. After Le Figaro's report, China's Global Times posted a questionnaire about possible Japan-China grand rapprochement on its Chinese-language website to which more than 30,000 Internet users responded.
When asked whether the Japanese leader should apologize at the Nanjing Massacre Memorial Museum, 95.0% said "yes". Only 1% said "no". When asked whether the Japanese leader's apology would lead to Japan-China reconciliation, 24.7% said "yes" and 29.5% said "no". However, when asked whether the Japanese leader could apologize in Nanjing, 17.1% said "yes" and 30.9% said "no." The remaining 52% offered no opinion (yes and no).
Japanese leaders' visits to this memorial are nothing new. Nonaka Hiromu, then acting secretary general of the Liberal Democratic Party, visited the memorial on May 9, 1998, laying flowers at the site and becoming the first leader from his party to do so. In the same month, former Japanese prime minister Murayama Tomiichi visited the site. However, no incumbent prime minister has visited the memorial.
Even if speculation over Hatoyama's visit to Nanjing and Hu's visit to Hiroshima turns out to be just that, it is still intriguing, as a possible indication of China-Japan rapprochement at a time when US-Japan relations are experiencing strains related to US plans to build a new base at Henoko on Okinawa in the face of deep-seated Okinawan opposition.
At the grass-roots level, there have been indications of easing of tensions centered on the war and war memory. From August 15 to November 15 last year, Japanese manga artists held an exhibition at the Nanjing Massacre Memorial Museum titled “My August 15.” This exhibition displayed 130 drawings depicting Japanese war experiences and condemning war atrocities and reflecting on militaristic brutality, but also showing the Japanese people as victims of war, including settlers in Manchuria and residents of Japanese cities destroyed by bombing. On the opening day of August 15, 2009, the 64th anniversary of the end of the war, some 20,000 people crowded the museum. It had taken seven years to arrange the exhibit in Nanjing on the theme of “My August 15”, the exhibit having been displayed in Japan in 2002.
For China, Nanjing is a microcosm of Japan's brutal colonial occupation. China’s Nanjing Massacre Memorial Museum and some scholars say that as many as 300,000 civilians, non-combatants, and surrendered soldiers were killed by Japanese troops from December 1937 through January-February 1938; at least 20,000 women were raped. Recent research by Japanese scholars, while recognizing that a major massacre occurred prior to and during the capture of the city, have estimated the deaths in the range of tens of thousands to more than 100,000. Although Japan has recognized that the mass killing of ordinary Chinese took place, calling it either the Nanjing Incident or the Nanjing Massacre, the number of dead has remained a point of contention between the two nations.
For Japan, Hiroshima is a crucial legacy of the Second World War. The United States dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, and Nagasaki three days later, on August 9. Approximately 140,000 people in Hiroshima and over 70,000 in Nagasaki were killed in a blink of an eye. In a Japanese census of 1950, 284,000 people reported having been exposed to radiation from atomic bombs in the two cities. The mayors and citizens of both cities have since appealed for recognition of the cruelty of the atomic bombs and elimination of nuclear weapons worldwide.
Since 1996, when then-prime minister Abe Shinzo chose Beijing for his first overseas visit, China seems to have refrained from using the historic Japan card to mobilize its own people and pressure Japanese leaders. Historically, the CCP has drawn legitimation from its struggle against the Japanese invader.
Why then might China want Hatoyama to visit Nanjing? There are conflicting views among Japanese experts. Some say that in preparation for a succession of power in 2012 and beyond, Beijing's internal political battles are intensifying. They note that a faction associated with ex-president Jiang Zemin, who irritated Japanese leaders by bringing up the history issue during a dinner banquet at the Imperial Palace with the emperor in November 1998, has been gaining ground recently. Many Japanese experts believe that Xi has the backing of Jiang, for whom he served as first vice premier, as well as the backing of the so-called princelings in the party, the children of high-level officials born to the party elite whose power extends across the party and business.
Others believe that Beijing wants to settle the historic issues once and for all, to enable the two nations, whose economies are so deeply intertwined, to build a future-oriented relationship of mutual trust, much like the Franco-German reconciliation that president Charles de Gaulle of France and West German chancellor Konrad Adenauer launched by signing the Elysée Treaty in 1963. The foundation of Franco-German cooperation has since been at the center of European integration.
Some US officials and experts may be displeased to see Tokyo's approach to Beijing at a time of conflict in US-Japan relations.
In a commentary titled "Japan's risky rapprochement with China" published on December 21 by The Wall Street Journal, Kelly Currie, a non-resident fellow of the Project 2049 Institute, a Washington think-tank, wrote:
Prime Minister Hatoyama will likely continue his promised efforts to "rebalance" Japanese relations with the US and China, but now that he's actually responsible for governing, Mr Hatoyama needs to ask himself: Which country would ultimately keep the Japanese people's best interests at heart - democratic America or authoritarian China? If the prime minister answers the latter, then the Japanese public - and the Obama administration - really will need to start worrying.
Relations between Japan and China have been rapidly improving since Hatoyama's China-friendly administration was inaugurated last September, as have relations between Beijing and Taipei since the mainland-friendly administration of President Ma Ying-jeou took office in Taiwan in May 2008. With China looming ever more important in the regional and world calculus, it is not surprising that the US administration of Barack Obama has followed suit.
Every country, driven by economic and political pragmatism, is rushing to come to terms with Asia’s and the world’s rising power. Japan is no exception. The result is the opening of a new and unsettled period in Japan-China-US trilateral relations, whose impact will be felt across East Asia, the Asia-Pacific and the world.
Kosuke Takahashi is a Tokyo-based journalist. Besides Asia Times Online, he is Tokyo correspondent for Jane's Defence.
This is a revised and expanded version of an article that appeared at Asia Times Online.
Recommended citation: Kosuke Takahashi, "Hatoyama to Nanjing, Hu to Hiroshima? The New Face of China-Japan Relations," The Asia-Pacific Journal, 3-4-10, January 18, 2010.
Kosuke Takahashi
TOKYO - With the world economy's center of gravity shifting from the West to the East, led by China's rising economic and corresponding political power, the year 2010 may witness a series of epoch-making events in Asia.
A grand rapprochement between Japan and China could be one such happening. The idea has recently been floated through the media by anonymous diplomatic sources in Tokyo and Beijing, attracting attention among experts worldwide.
The French newspaper Le Figaro reported from Tokyo on January 6 that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) had delivered to the ruling Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) the script of a spectacular reconciliation this year between the two countries. The report said that China had proposed that Japanese Prime Minister Hatoyama Yukio begin the process by going to Nanjing, where a mass killing of Chinese civilians by the Japanese Imperial Army took place in December 1937 and subsequently.
This first visit to Nanjing by a Japanese prime minister since the war would present to the Chinese people Tokyo's official apologies without ambiguity, easing lingering anti-Japanese sentiment among the Chinese public that many associate with unresolved conflicts over the war that ended more than six decades ago. In return, some months later, on August 15, the anniversary of the Japanese surrender in 1945, Chinese President Hu Jintao would go to Hiroshima, the first city to experience atomic bombing, and declare the three non-nuclear principles: China will not make a nuclear first strike, will not attack any non-nuclear country and will not export nuclear arms. The French paper named as its source only "our information".
Meanwhile, the Yomiuri, Japan's largest daily newspaper, also reported from Beijing on January 6 that China had unofficially sounded out Japanese government sources on a visit by Hatoyama to Nanjing, likely around the time he goes to the Shanghai Expo's Japan Day on June 12, with Hu visiting Hiroshima around the time of the November Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit to be held in Yokohama. The Japanese paper said reciprocal visits would aim at improving feelings between the two peoples. Still, unlike Le Figaro, the Yomiuri mentioned nothing about apologies or nuclear promises. It cited "several Japanese and Chinese sources".
China's Foreign Ministry denied the Yomiuri report on January 7, with ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu saying the media rumors of a Nanjing trip were "groundless". But she also said, in what sounded like a non-denial-denial, "It is too early to confirm the details." On the same day, Japan's chief cabinet secretary, Hirano Hirofumi, also denied the reports, saying "at this point, we are not considering" a visit by Hatoyama to Nanjing.
"I have not heard of any such plan," a top Japanese Foreign Ministry official told Asia Times Online, speaking on condition of anonymity. "My guess is that some persons involved might have presented their wish list to have better relations. There is nothing concrete about it." This official's comment suggests that such talks are still going on either at lower government-to-government levels or through party-to-party channels.
The reports by Le Figaro and the Yomiuri followed a similar report in November by the Japanese business magazine, Weekly Toyo Keizai. It reported a secret diplomatic schedule being prepared by relevant Chinese and Japanese players. It predicted that the visit to Beijing one month later by Ozawa Ichiro, secretary general of the DPJ, accompanying more than 600 people, including 143 DPJ lawmakers from the upper and lower houses of the Diet (parliament), would be the first of several Japan-China exchanges. The visit was conducted as part of regular exchanges between the DPJ and the CCP, whose general secretary is Hu.
Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping, who is widely seen as the front-runner to succeed now President Hu in the fall of 2012, visited Emperor Akihito on December 15 last year. This was the Japanese emperor’s first audience with a Chinese vice president since April 1998, when Hu visited Japan as vice president.
A day earlier at a banquet welcoming Xi, Hatoyama heaped praise on the Chinese guest as a man who is certain to become the country's leader.
Xi’s meeting with the emperor, however, stirred up controversy in Tokyo, as the Hatoyama administration had arranged it in breach of Imperial protocol which requires that a foreign government’s request for an imperial audience be submitted at least one month in advance, China's request for the audience was filed in late November—less than one month before the actual audience.
The Imperial Household Agency had strictly requested this protocol, especially after the emperor underwent surgery to treat prostate cancer in 2003, making his health the top priority of the agency.
Under these circumstances the audience highlighted the degree to which the Hatoyama administration is striving to improve Tokyo’s ties with Beijing.
The media reports by Le Figaro and the Yomiuri have triggered strong reactions. After Le Figaro's report, China's Global Times posted a questionnaire about possible Japan-China grand rapprochement on its Chinese-language website to which more than 30,000 Internet users responded.
When asked whether the Japanese leader should apologize at the Nanjing Massacre Memorial Museum, 95.0% said "yes". Only 1% said "no". When asked whether the Japanese leader's apology would lead to Japan-China reconciliation, 24.7% said "yes" and 29.5% said "no". However, when asked whether the Japanese leader could apologize in Nanjing, 17.1% said "yes" and 30.9% said "no." The remaining 52% offered no opinion (yes and no).
Japanese leaders' visits to this memorial are nothing new. Nonaka Hiromu, then acting secretary general of the Liberal Democratic Party, visited the memorial on May 9, 1998, laying flowers at the site and becoming the first leader from his party to do so. In the same month, former Japanese prime minister Murayama Tomiichi visited the site. However, no incumbent prime minister has visited the memorial.
Even if speculation over Hatoyama's visit to Nanjing and Hu's visit to Hiroshima turns out to be just that, it is still intriguing, as a possible indication of China-Japan rapprochement at a time when US-Japan relations are experiencing strains related to US plans to build a new base at Henoko on Okinawa in the face of deep-seated Okinawan opposition.
At the grass-roots level, there have been indications of easing of tensions centered on the war and war memory. From August 15 to November 15 last year, Japanese manga artists held an exhibition at the Nanjing Massacre Memorial Museum titled “My August 15.” This exhibition displayed 130 drawings depicting Japanese war experiences and condemning war atrocities and reflecting on militaristic brutality, but also showing the Japanese people as victims of war, including settlers in Manchuria and residents of Japanese cities destroyed by bombing. On the opening day of August 15, 2009, the 64th anniversary of the end of the war, some 20,000 people crowded the museum. It had taken seven years to arrange the exhibit in Nanjing on the theme of “My August 15”, the exhibit having been displayed in Japan in 2002.
For China, Nanjing is a microcosm of Japan's brutal colonial occupation. China’s Nanjing Massacre Memorial Museum and some scholars say that as many as 300,000 civilians, non-combatants, and surrendered soldiers were killed by Japanese troops from December 1937 through January-February 1938; at least 20,000 women were raped. Recent research by Japanese scholars, while recognizing that a major massacre occurred prior to and during the capture of the city, have estimated the deaths in the range of tens of thousands to more than 100,000. Although Japan has recognized that the mass killing of ordinary Chinese took place, calling it either the Nanjing Incident or the Nanjing Massacre, the number of dead has remained a point of contention between the two nations.
For Japan, Hiroshima is a crucial legacy of the Second World War. The United States dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, and Nagasaki three days later, on August 9. Approximately 140,000 people in Hiroshima and over 70,000 in Nagasaki were killed in a blink of an eye. In a Japanese census of 1950, 284,000 people reported having been exposed to radiation from atomic bombs in the two cities. The mayors and citizens of both cities have since appealed for recognition of the cruelty of the atomic bombs and elimination of nuclear weapons worldwide.
Since 1996, when then-prime minister Abe Shinzo chose Beijing for his first overseas visit, China seems to have refrained from using the historic Japan card to mobilize its own people and pressure Japanese leaders. Historically, the CCP has drawn legitimation from its struggle against the Japanese invader.
Why then might China want Hatoyama to visit Nanjing? There are conflicting views among Japanese experts. Some say that in preparation for a succession of power in 2012 and beyond, Beijing's internal political battles are intensifying. They note that a faction associated with ex-president Jiang Zemin, who irritated Japanese leaders by bringing up the history issue during a dinner banquet at the Imperial Palace with the emperor in November 1998, has been gaining ground recently. Many Japanese experts believe that Xi has the backing of Jiang, for whom he served as first vice premier, as well as the backing of the so-called princelings in the party, the children of high-level officials born to the party elite whose power extends across the party and business.
Others believe that Beijing wants to settle the historic issues once and for all, to enable the two nations, whose economies are so deeply intertwined, to build a future-oriented relationship of mutual trust, much like the Franco-German reconciliation that president Charles de Gaulle of France and West German chancellor Konrad Adenauer launched by signing the Elysée Treaty in 1963. The foundation of Franco-German cooperation has since been at the center of European integration.
Some US officials and experts may be displeased to see Tokyo's approach to Beijing at a time of conflict in US-Japan relations.
In a commentary titled "Japan's risky rapprochement with China" published on December 21 by The Wall Street Journal, Kelly Currie, a non-resident fellow of the Project 2049 Institute, a Washington think-tank, wrote:
Prime Minister Hatoyama will likely continue his promised efforts to "rebalance" Japanese relations with the US and China, but now that he's actually responsible for governing, Mr Hatoyama needs to ask himself: Which country would ultimately keep the Japanese people's best interests at heart - democratic America or authoritarian China? If the prime minister answers the latter, then the Japanese public - and the Obama administration - really will need to start worrying.
Relations between Japan and China have been rapidly improving since Hatoyama's China-friendly administration was inaugurated last September, as have relations between Beijing and Taipei since the mainland-friendly administration of President Ma Ying-jeou took office in Taiwan in May 2008. With China looming ever more important in the regional and world calculus, it is not surprising that the US administration of Barack Obama has followed suit.
Every country, driven by economic and political pragmatism, is rushing to come to terms with Asia’s and the world’s rising power. Japan is no exception. The result is the opening of a new and unsettled period in Japan-China-US trilateral relations, whose impact will be felt across East Asia, the Asia-Pacific and the world.
Kosuke Takahashi is a Tokyo-based journalist. Besides Asia Times Online, he is Tokyo correspondent for Jane's Defence.
This is a revised and expanded version of an article that appeared at Asia Times Online.
Recommended citation: Kosuke Takahashi, "Hatoyama to Nanjing, Hu to Hiroshima? The New Face of China-Japan Relations," The Asia-Pacific Journal, 3-4-10, January 18, 2010.
Monday, January 11, 2010
My latest story: Hatoyama to Nanjing, Hu to Hiroshima? (Asia Times)
Hello, my friends. Here is my latest story published by Asia Times Online today. Thanks,
Kosuke
Hatoyama to Nanjing, Hu to Hiroshima?
By Kosuke Takahashi
TOKYO - With the world economy's center of gravity shifting from the West to the East, led by China's rising economic and corresponding political power, the year 2010 may witness a series of epoch-making events in Asia.
A grand rapprochement between Japan and China could be one such happening, and the idea has been recently floated through the media by some anonymous diplomatic sources in Tokyo and/or Beijing, attracting a lot of attention among experts worldwide.
The French newspaper Le Figaro reported from Tokyo last Wednesday that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) had delivered to the ruling Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) the script of a spectacular reconciliation this year between the two countries. The report said the CCP had proposed that Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama begin the process by going to Nanjing, where a mass killing of Chinese civilians by the Japanese Imperial Army took place in December 1937 and subsequent months.
This first visit to Nanjing by a Japanese prime minister since the war would present to the Chinese people Tokyo's official apologies without ambiguity, easing lingering anti-Japan sentiment among the Chinese public. In return, some months later, on August 15, the anniversary of the Japanese surrender in 1945, Chinese President Hu Jintao would go to Hiroshima, the first city to experience atomic bombing, and declare the three non-nuclear principles: China will not make a nuclear first strike, will not attack any non-nuclear country and will not export nuclear arms. The French paper named as its source only "our information".
Meanwhile, the Yomiuri, Japan's largest daily newspaper, also reported from Beijing on Wednesday that China had unofficially sounded out Japanese government sources on a visit by Hatoyama to Nanjing, likely around the time he goes to the Shanghai Expo's Japan Day on June 12, with Hu visiting Hiroshima around the time of the November Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit to be held in Japan. The Japanese paper said reciprocal visits would aim at improving feelings between the two peoples. Still, unlike Le Figaro, the Yomiuri mentioned nothing about apologies or nuke promises. It cited "several Japanese and Chinese sources".
China's Foreign Ministry denied the Yomiuri report on Thursday, with a ministry spokeswoman, Jiang Yu, saying the media rumors of a Nanjing trip were "groundless". But she also said, in what sounded like a non-denial-denial, "It is too early to confirm the details." On the same day, Japan's chief cabinet secretary, Hirofumi Hirano, also denied the reports, saying "at this point, we are not considering" a visit by Hatoyama to Nanjing.
"I have not heard of any such plan," a top Foreign Ministry official also told Asia Times Online, speaking on condition of anonymity. "My guess is that some persons involved might have presented their wish list to have better relations. There is nothing concrete about it." This official's comment suggests that such talks are still going on either at lower government-to-government levels or through party-to-party channels.
The reports by Le Figaro and the Yomiuri, however, followed a similar report in November by the Japanese business magazine, Weekly Toyo Keizai. It reported a secret diplomatic schedule being prepared by relevant Chinese and Japanese players. It predicted that the visit to Beijing one month later by Ichiro Ozawa, secretary general of the DPJ, accompanying more than 600 people, including 143 DPJ lawmakers from the upper and lower houses of the Diet (parliament), would be the first of several Japan-China exchanges. The visit was conducted as part of regular exchanges between the DPJ and the CCP, whose general secretary is Hu.
The media reports have triggered strong reaction. After Le Figaro's report, China's Global Times posted a questionnaire about this possible Japan-China grand rapprochement on its Chinese-language website. More than 30,000 Internet users have responded.
When asked whether the Japanese leader should apologize at the Memorial for Compatriots Killed in the Nanjing Massacre by Japanese Forces of Aggression, 95.1% said "yes". Only 1% said "no". When asked whether the Japanese leader's apology would lead to Japan-China reconciliation, 24.7% said "yes" and 29.5% said "no".
Japanese leaders' visits to this memorial are nothing new. Hiromu Nonaka, then acting secretary general of the Liberal Democratic Party, visited the victims' memorial in Nanjing on May 9, 1998, laying flowers at the site and becoming the first leader from his party to do so. In the same month, former Japanese prime minister Tomiichi Murayama visited the site.
Even if speculation over Hatoyama's visit to Nanjing and Hu's visit to Hiroshima turns out to be nothing, it is still intriguing, as it may indicate that Japan's shift toward Asia, especially China, and away from the United States, is taking shape.
China seems to have refrained from using the Japan historic card to control its own people since 1996, when then-prime minister Shinzo Abe chose Beijing for his first overseas visit out of a desire to strengthen ties with the leaders of Japan's important neighbor. Historically, the CCP's one-party regime has been legitimized, in part, by its struggle against the Japanese invader.
Why then does China want Hatoyama to visit Nanjing? There are conflicting views among Japanese experts. Some say that in preparation for a succession of power in 2012 and beyond, Beijing's secret battles are intensifying. A faction of ex-president Jiang Zemin, who annoyed Japanese leaders by bringing up the history issue during a banquet with the emperor, has been gaining ground recently. Others believe Beijing wants to settle historic issues once and for all, to enable the two nations to build a future-oriented relationship of mutual trust, much like the Franco-German reconciliation that president Charles de Gaulle of France and West German chancellor Konrad Adenauer started by signing the Elysee Treaty in 1963, a foundation of Franco-German cooperation that led to European integration.
Some US officials and experts, especially right-leaning military planners, may be displeased to see Tokyo's approach to Beijing at a time when the relocation issue of the US Marine Corps Air Station Futenma in Okinawa prefecture has been deadlocked.
In a commentary titled "Japan's risky rapprochement with China" published on December 21 by The Wall Street Journal, Kelly Currie, a non-resident fellow of the Project 2049 Institute, a think-tank in Washington, wrote:
Prime Minister Hatoyama will likely continue his promised efforts to "rebalance" Japanese relations with the US and China, but now that he's actually responsible for governing, Mr Hatoyama needs to ask himself: Which country would ultimately keep the Japanese people's best interests at heart - democratic America or authoritarian China? If the prime minister answers the latter, then the Japanese public - and the Obama administration - really will need to start worrying.
Well, the relationship between Japan and China has been rapidly improving since Hatoyama's China-friendly administration was inaugurated last September, as is the relationship between Beijing and Taipei since the mainland-friendly administration of President Ma Ying-jeou took office in Taiwan in May 2008. The US administration of Barack Obama has followed suit.
Every country, driven by economic and political pragmatism, is rushing to cash in on China's huge consumer market. Japan is no exception. As a result, Japan-China-US trilateral relations are giving off a lot of heat in the unsettled state of affairs of Northeast Asia.
Kosuke Takahashi is a Tokyo-based journalist. Besides Asia Times Online, he writes for Jane's Defence Weekly as Tokyo correspondent.
(Copyright 2010 Asia Times Online (Holdings) Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact us about sales, syndication and republishing.)
Kosuke
Hatoyama to Nanjing, Hu to Hiroshima?
By Kosuke Takahashi
TOKYO - With the world economy's center of gravity shifting from the West to the East, led by China's rising economic and corresponding political power, the year 2010 may witness a series of epoch-making events in Asia.
A grand rapprochement between Japan and China could be one such happening, and the idea has been recently floated through the media by some anonymous diplomatic sources in Tokyo and/or Beijing, attracting a lot of attention among experts worldwide.
The French newspaper Le Figaro reported from Tokyo last Wednesday that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) had delivered to the ruling Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) the script of a spectacular reconciliation this year between the two countries. The report said the CCP had proposed that Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama begin the process by going to Nanjing, where a mass killing of Chinese civilians by the Japanese Imperial Army took place in December 1937 and subsequent months.
This first visit to Nanjing by a Japanese prime minister since the war would present to the Chinese people Tokyo's official apologies without ambiguity, easing lingering anti-Japan sentiment among the Chinese public. In return, some months later, on August 15, the anniversary of the Japanese surrender in 1945, Chinese President Hu Jintao would go to Hiroshima, the first city to experience atomic bombing, and declare the three non-nuclear principles: China will not make a nuclear first strike, will not attack any non-nuclear country and will not export nuclear arms. The French paper named as its source only "our information".
Meanwhile, the Yomiuri, Japan's largest daily newspaper, also reported from Beijing on Wednesday that China had unofficially sounded out Japanese government sources on a visit by Hatoyama to Nanjing, likely around the time he goes to the Shanghai Expo's Japan Day on June 12, with Hu visiting Hiroshima around the time of the November Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit to be held in Japan. The Japanese paper said reciprocal visits would aim at improving feelings between the two peoples. Still, unlike Le Figaro, the Yomiuri mentioned nothing about apologies or nuke promises. It cited "several Japanese and Chinese sources".
China's Foreign Ministry denied the Yomiuri report on Thursday, with a ministry spokeswoman, Jiang Yu, saying the media rumors of a Nanjing trip were "groundless". But she also said, in what sounded like a non-denial-denial, "It is too early to confirm the details." On the same day, Japan's chief cabinet secretary, Hirofumi Hirano, also denied the reports, saying "at this point, we are not considering" a visit by Hatoyama to Nanjing.
"I have not heard of any such plan," a top Foreign Ministry official also told Asia Times Online, speaking on condition of anonymity. "My guess is that some persons involved might have presented their wish list to have better relations. There is nothing concrete about it." This official's comment suggests that such talks are still going on either at lower government-to-government levels or through party-to-party channels.
The reports by Le Figaro and the Yomiuri, however, followed a similar report in November by the Japanese business magazine, Weekly Toyo Keizai. It reported a secret diplomatic schedule being prepared by relevant Chinese and Japanese players. It predicted that the visit to Beijing one month later by Ichiro Ozawa, secretary general of the DPJ, accompanying more than 600 people, including 143 DPJ lawmakers from the upper and lower houses of the Diet (parliament), would be the first of several Japan-China exchanges. The visit was conducted as part of regular exchanges between the DPJ and the CCP, whose general secretary is Hu.
The media reports have triggered strong reaction. After Le Figaro's report, China's Global Times posted a questionnaire about this possible Japan-China grand rapprochement on its Chinese-language website. More than 30,000 Internet users have responded.
When asked whether the Japanese leader should apologize at the Memorial for Compatriots Killed in the Nanjing Massacre by Japanese Forces of Aggression, 95.1% said "yes". Only 1% said "no". When asked whether the Japanese leader's apology would lead to Japan-China reconciliation, 24.7% said "yes" and 29.5% said "no".
Japanese leaders' visits to this memorial are nothing new. Hiromu Nonaka, then acting secretary general of the Liberal Democratic Party, visited the victims' memorial in Nanjing on May 9, 1998, laying flowers at the site and becoming the first leader from his party to do so. In the same month, former Japanese prime minister Tomiichi Murayama visited the site.
Even if speculation over Hatoyama's visit to Nanjing and Hu's visit to Hiroshima turns out to be nothing, it is still intriguing, as it may indicate that Japan's shift toward Asia, especially China, and away from the United States, is taking shape.
China seems to have refrained from using the Japan historic card to control its own people since 1996, when then-prime minister Shinzo Abe chose Beijing for his first overseas visit out of a desire to strengthen ties with the leaders of Japan's important neighbor. Historically, the CCP's one-party regime has been legitimized, in part, by its struggle against the Japanese invader.
Why then does China want Hatoyama to visit Nanjing? There are conflicting views among Japanese experts. Some say that in preparation for a succession of power in 2012 and beyond, Beijing's secret battles are intensifying. A faction of ex-president Jiang Zemin, who annoyed Japanese leaders by bringing up the history issue during a banquet with the emperor, has been gaining ground recently. Others believe Beijing wants to settle historic issues once and for all, to enable the two nations to build a future-oriented relationship of mutual trust, much like the Franco-German reconciliation that president Charles de Gaulle of France and West German chancellor Konrad Adenauer started by signing the Elysee Treaty in 1963, a foundation of Franco-German cooperation that led to European integration.
Some US officials and experts, especially right-leaning military planners, may be displeased to see Tokyo's approach to Beijing at a time when the relocation issue of the US Marine Corps Air Station Futenma in Okinawa prefecture has been deadlocked.
In a commentary titled "Japan's risky rapprochement with China" published on December 21 by The Wall Street Journal, Kelly Currie, a non-resident fellow of the Project 2049 Institute, a think-tank in Washington, wrote:
Prime Minister Hatoyama will likely continue his promised efforts to "rebalance" Japanese relations with the US and China, but now that he's actually responsible for governing, Mr Hatoyama needs to ask himself: Which country would ultimately keep the Japanese people's best interests at heart - democratic America or authoritarian China? If the prime minister answers the latter, then the Japanese public - and the Obama administration - really will need to start worrying.
Well, the relationship between Japan and China has been rapidly improving since Hatoyama's China-friendly administration was inaugurated last September, as is the relationship between Beijing and Taipei since the mainland-friendly administration of President Ma Ying-jeou took office in Taiwan in May 2008. The US administration of Barack Obama has followed suit.
Every country, driven by economic and political pragmatism, is rushing to cash in on China's huge consumer market. Japan is no exception. As a result, Japan-China-US trilateral relations are giving off a lot of heat in the unsettled state of affairs of Northeast Asia.
Kosuke Takahashi is a Tokyo-based journalist. Besides Asia Times Online, he writes for Jane's Defence Weekly as Tokyo correspondent.
(Copyright 2010 Asia Times Online (Holdings) Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact us about sales, syndication and republishing.)
Friday, January 8, 2010
(Le Figaro) Chine-Japon : le grand rapprochement
http://www.lefigaro.fr/international/2010/01/04/01003-20100104ARTFIG00310-chine-japon-le-grand-rapprochement-.php
Entre les deux puissances d'Asie, le poids historique de sanglants conflits s'estompe au profit d'un pragmatisme économique et stratégique. 2010 s'annonce comme l'année de gestes de réconciliation spectaculaires, prélude à une alliance plus étroite.
Un Chinois s'incruste chez l'empereur ! Le chef de l'Agence impériale ne décolère pas. Il y a une semaine, le premier ministre japonais, Yukio Hatoyama, lui a imposé en catastrophe la visite impromptue du vice-président chinois, Xi Jinping, probable successeur du président Hu Jintao. Une faveur exceptionnelle lorsqu'on sait qu'en vertu du protocole il faut un mois pour être reçu par Sa Majesté Akihito. Cette précipitation en dit long sur l'extraordinaire importance que le gouvernement japonais attache à la Chine. Quelques jours plus tôt, le tout-puissant secrétaire général du Parti démocrate du Japon (PDJ), Ichiro Ozawa, avait mené à Pékin une délégation de 643 sympathisants et membres de son parti pour des entretiens au plus haut niveau. Téléspectateurs japonais et chinois ont pu assister en prime time à une scène surréaliste : Hu Jintao se prêtant, bon prince, à une photo souvenir individuelle avec chacun des 143 parlementaires PDJ venus pour l'occasion ! Quelques semaines avant, le ministre de la Défense japonais avait accueilli à bras ouverts son homologue chinois, annonçant des exercices militaires communs.
La haine était une raison d'être du PC
Et tout ceci n'est qu'un hors-d'œuvre. Selon nos informations, le Parti communiste chinois aurait soumis au PDJ le scénario d'une réconciliation spectaculaire cette année : Yukio Hatoyama irait d'abord à Nankin, lieu des pires atrocités commises par l'Armée impériale japonaise lors de sa conquête de la Chine, pour présenter au peuple chinois des excuses officielles sans ambiguïté. Quelques mois plus tard, le 15 août, jour de l'anniversaire du bombardement atomique d'Hiroshima, Hu Jintao se rendrait à son tour dans la ville japonaise martyre pour y exposer les «trois principes» de la doctrine nucléaire chinoise : ne pas bombarder le premier, ne pas attaquer un pays non nucléarisé, ne pas exporter l'arme nucléaire.
Ichiro Ozawa, chef d'orchestre de ce rapprochement spectaculaire, est un vieil ami de la Chine. Il a fait ses classes sous le premier ministre Kakuei Tanaka, précisément celui qui, en 1972, a négocié la normalisation des relations diplomatiques entre le Japon et son immense voisin. Aujourd'hui, il s'efforce de donner un coup d'accélérateur à un réchauffement entamé en 2006.
Avant cette date, les relations japonaises allaient de mal en pis, otages d'enjeux de politique intérieure des deux côtés. À Pékin, l'ex-président Jiang Zemin avait trouvé dans la haine du Japon un motif de rassemblement pour les patriotes chinois (et une raison d'être pour le Parti communiste, historiquement légitimé par la lutte contre l'envahisseur japonais). «Lorsqu'il est venu au Japon, Jiang Zemin nous a bassinés avec l'histoire même au banquet avec l'empereur. Quelle impolitesse !», se souvient un convive japonais encore ulcéré. Du côté du Japon, le premier ministre Junichiro Koizumi leur donna les verges pour se faire fouetter en se rendant au sanctuaire shinto nationaliste Yasukuni en 2001.
Des secouristes japonais
La haine atteint son paroxysme lors des violentes émeutes antijaponaises qui secouèrent la Chine en 2005. Depuis, elle s'est dissipée. «Le Japon et la Chine sont engagés dans ce qu'ils appellent un partenariat stratégique. Hu Jintao a décidé de faire passer au second plan les querelles historiques. Il ne parle plus que des relations sino-japonaises de l'après-guerre, qui sont sans nuage», explique Ryosei Kokubun, professeur de l'Université Keio, le meilleur spécialiste des relations entre les deux pays.
Les dirigeants japonais et chinois multiplient les visites officielles. En 2007, le premier ministre chinois, Wen Jiabao, a prononcé devant la Diète japonaise un discours, retransmis en direct à la télévision chinoise, dans lequel il saluait les multiples excuses du gouvernement japonais à propos de la Seconde Guerre mondiale.
En mai 2008, une tragédie a achevé de rapprocher les frères ennemis d'Asie. Après le tremblement de terre du Sichuan, le Japon fut le premier pays à envoyer une équipe de secours sur les lieux du sinistre. Malgré la méfiance réciproque entre les opinions publiques, la télévision d'État chinoise consacra une très large couverture aux efforts des soixante secouristes japonais. En première page, les journaux chinois publièrent la photo de ces ennemis d'hier, voûtés et silencieux, prostrés par leur impuissance face à la mort, au milieu des décombres. «À partir de ce moment, l'image des Japonais a changé en Chine», estime Ryosei Kokubun.
70 millions de touristes chinois en 2020
Les hommes politiques font du rattrapage accéléré par rapport aux patrons. Car les liens économiques n'ont jamais été aussi forts. L'empire du Milieu est devenu l'atelier du Japon, son principal partenaire commercial, et demain son premier client. Il est indispensable à des groupes comme Nissan, Honda et Toyota, tant pour la production que pour les ventes. À Tokyo, les touristes chinois se pressent dans les restaurants et les boutiques, se substituant aux Japonais assagis par vingt ans de stagnation économique. «Le ministre des Transports est surexcité : il prévoit 70 millions de touristes chinois en 2020, soit autant que les touristes accueillis en France chaque année», s'étrangle le représentant d'une compagnie aérienne européenne à Tokyo.
Le discret Centre d'amitié sino-japonaise, au cœur de Tokyo, est un symbole des relations discrètes qu'ont nouées les deux pays depuis vingt ans, pendant lesquels l'un s'est affaissé, l'autre a décollé. «Nous avons fondé le centre sur l'exemple du traité de l'Élysée entre de Gaulle et Adenauer, qui a initié les échanges de jeunes Français et d'Allemands. C'est le meilleur moyen de rapprocher nos deux peuples. N'oubliez pas que la Chine est vingt-six fois plus grande que le Japon, avec une population dix fois supérieure», explique le président fondateur du Centre, Tatsumi Murakami. Au-dessus de son bureau, une immense et magnifique calligraphie offerte par Hu Jintao, qui se lit ainsi : «Avec la force de la jeunesse, faire régner la paix dans le monde.» À l'époque de la création du Centre, la Chine était encore un objet d'angoisse pour les Japonais. «Le jour de l'ouverture, en 1988, un camion de l'extrême droite a fendu la foule des convives sans que personne ne l'arrête», se rappelle Tatsumi Murakami. Depuis, ce bâtiment austère a accueilli près de 4.000 étudiants, notamment des centaines de doctorants «qui aujourd'hui sont à des postes clés de l'État chinois, dans les universités ou les entreprises», se félicite-t-il. Les anciens étudiants de l'école restent en contact avec leur famille d'accueil japonaise, notamment grâce à un logiciel de traduction simultanée conçu par le centre.
Cette amitié fondée sur l'oubli demeure cependant fragile. Les occasions de malentendus et de conflit sont infinies entre les deux puissances. La dernière crise a été causée par une affaire de raviolis chinois avariés qui ont empoisonné des milliers de Japonais. Un an après les faits, Tokyo demande toujours des explications et laisse cette affaire influencer sa diplomatie.
Mais c'est l'accès à l'énergie et aux matières premières qui est la première source de conflits entre la Chine et le Japon. Les deux pays se battent, par compagnies interposées, dans le monde entier. Chinois et Japonais sont respectivement les deuxième et troisième plus importants consommateurs de pétrole. Dépourvu d'or noir, le Japon doit importer la quasi-totalité de ses besoins. La Chine, elle, était autosuffisante en pétrole jusqu'en 1993. Aujourd'hui, plus de la moitié de ses besoins pétroliers sont importés, et son appétit ne cesse de grandir. Or les ressources ne sont pas infinies. Ce conflit n'est jamais plus évident que dans les eaux qui séparent la Chine du Japon, où Tokyo et Pékin se disputent trois gisements de gaz naturel et de pétrole. Les chancelleries des deux rives promettent périodiquement un règlement à l'amiable, mais elles ne règlent rien du tout et les quelques vaisseaux militaires qui naviguent autour de ces gisements frôlent parfois l'escarmouche. «Toutes les estimations concordent : ces champs n'ont pas un grand potentiel. Ils peuvent déclencher au pire une crise diplomatique, mais probablement pas un conflit», tempère David Hewitt, analyste du secteur pour CLSA. Selon la compagnie chinoise Cnooc, qui a déjà commencé à explorer lesdits gisements à la barbe des Japonais, les réserves représentent 22 millions de barils de pétrole et 67 millions de barils (équivalents) de gaz naturel. Une goutte d'or noir à l'échelle des réserves chinoises (1% des réserves pétrolières et 7% des réserves gazières de la Cnooc), mais une manne substantielle par rapport à celle des réserves japonaises.
La guerre de l'énergie
Une partie de la classe politique met en garde contre un rapprochement politique inconsidéré avec la Chine. «C'est simple : le budget militaire du Japon est le plus transparent du monde, tandis que le budget militaire chinois est le plus opaque», résume l'ancien ministre de la Défense Gen Nakatani. «Il est normal que le budget militaire chinois augmente comme il le fait de 10% par an. Après tout, il ne fait que suivre la croissance de l'économie. Mais ce que nous voudrions savoir, c'est où va cet argent. Et on ne nous le dit pas», s'inquiète Shigeru Ishiba, un des principaux leaders de l'opposition. «La Chine n'a certes l'intention d'attaquer personne. Mais elle n'est pas une démocratie. Sa politique peut changer d'un instant à l'autre. Au moins, avec les États-Unis, nous partageons les mêmes valeurs», dit-il.
Dans les couloirs du centre d'amitié nippo-chinoise, le jeune So Chin Shu bachote son japonais. «La politique ? Je m'en fous. J'aime le Japon. Les mangas, les dessins animés, les jeux vidéo… Pour moi il était naturel de venir ici», tranche-t-il.
Entre les deux puissances d'Asie, le poids historique de sanglants conflits s'estompe au profit d'un pragmatisme économique et stratégique. 2010 s'annonce comme l'année de gestes de réconciliation spectaculaires, prélude à une alliance plus étroite.
Un Chinois s'incruste chez l'empereur ! Le chef de l'Agence impériale ne décolère pas. Il y a une semaine, le premier ministre japonais, Yukio Hatoyama, lui a imposé en catastrophe la visite impromptue du vice-président chinois, Xi Jinping, probable successeur du président Hu Jintao. Une faveur exceptionnelle lorsqu'on sait qu'en vertu du protocole il faut un mois pour être reçu par Sa Majesté Akihito. Cette précipitation en dit long sur l'extraordinaire importance que le gouvernement japonais attache à la Chine. Quelques jours plus tôt, le tout-puissant secrétaire général du Parti démocrate du Japon (PDJ), Ichiro Ozawa, avait mené à Pékin une délégation de 643 sympathisants et membres de son parti pour des entretiens au plus haut niveau. Téléspectateurs japonais et chinois ont pu assister en prime time à une scène surréaliste : Hu Jintao se prêtant, bon prince, à une photo souvenir individuelle avec chacun des 143 parlementaires PDJ venus pour l'occasion ! Quelques semaines avant, le ministre de la Défense japonais avait accueilli à bras ouverts son homologue chinois, annonçant des exercices militaires communs.
La haine était une raison d'être du PC
Et tout ceci n'est qu'un hors-d'œuvre. Selon nos informations, le Parti communiste chinois aurait soumis au PDJ le scénario d'une réconciliation spectaculaire cette année : Yukio Hatoyama irait d'abord à Nankin, lieu des pires atrocités commises par l'Armée impériale japonaise lors de sa conquête de la Chine, pour présenter au peuple chinois des excuses officielles sans ambiguïté. Quelques mois plus tard, le 15 août, jour de l'anniversaire du bombardement atomique d'Hiroshima, Hu Jintao se rendrait à son tour dans la ville japonaise martyre pour y exposer les «trois principes» de la doctrine nucléaire chinoise : ne pas bombarder le premier, ne pas attaquer un pays non nucléarisé, ne pas exporter l'arme nucléaire.
Ichiro Ozawa, chef d'orchestre de ce rapprochement spectaculaire, est un vieil ami de la Chine. Il a fait ses classes sous le premier ministre Kakuei Tanaka, précisément celui qui, en 1972, a négocié la normalisation des relations diplomatiques entre le Japon et son immense voisin. Aujourd'hui, il s'efforce de donner un coup d'accélérateur à un réchauffement entamé en 2006.
Avant cette date, les relations japonaises allaient de mal en pis, otages d'enjeux de politique intérieure des deux côtés. À Pékin, l'ex-président Jiang Zemin avait trouvé dans la haine du Japon un motif de rassemblement pour les patriotes chinois (et une raison d'être pour le Parti communiste, historiquement légitimé par la lutte contre l'envahisseur japonais). «Lorsqu'il est venu au Japon, Jiang Zemin nous a bassinés avec l'histoire même au banquet avec l'empereur. Quelle impolitesse !», se souvient un convive japonais encore ulcéré. Du côté du Japon, le premier ministre Junichiro Koizumi leur donna les verges pour se faire fouetter en se rendant au sanctuaire shinto nationaliste Yasukuni en 2001.
Des secouristes japonais
La haine atteint son paroxysme lors des violentes émeutes antijaponaises qui secouèrent la Chine en 2005. Depuis, elle s'est dissipée. «Le Japon et la Chine sont engagés dans ce qu'ils appellent un partenariat stratégique. Hu Jintao a décidé de faire passer au second plan les querelles historiques. Il ne parle plus que des relations sino-japonaises de l'après-guerre, qui sont sans nuage», explique Ryosei Kokubun, professeur de l'Université Keio, le meilleur spécialiste des relations entre les deux pays.
Les dirigeants japonais et chinois multiplient les visites officielles. En 2007, le premier ministre chinois, Wen Jiabao, a prononcé devant la Diète japonaise un discours, retransmis en direct à la télévision chinoise, dans lequel il saluait les multiples excuses du gouvernement japonais à propos de la Seconde Guerre mondiale.
En mai 2008, une tragédie a achevé de rapprocher les frères ennemis d'Asie. Après le tremblement de terre du Sichuan, le Japon fut le premier pays à envoyer une équipe de secours sur les lieux du sinistre. Malgré la méfiance réciproque entre les opinions publiques, la télévision d'État chinoise consacra une très large couverture aux efforts des soixante secouristes japonais. En première page, les journaux chinois publièrent la photo de ces ennemis d'hier, voûtés et silencieux, prostrés par leur impuissance face à la mort, au milieu des décombres. «À partir de ce moment, l'image des Japonais a changé en Chine», estime Ryosei Kokubun.
70 millions de touristes chinois en 2020
Les hommes politiques font du rattrapage accéléré par rapport aux patrons. Car les liens économiques n'ont jamais été aussi forts. L'empire du Milieu est devenu l'atelier du Japon, son principal partenaire commercial, et demain son premier client. Il est indispensable à des groupes comme Nissan, Honda et Toyota, tant pour la production que pour les ventes. À Tokyo, les touristes chinois se pressent dans les restaurants et les boutiques, se substituant aux Japonais assagis par vingt ans de stagnation économique. «Le ministre des Transports est surexcité : il prévoit 70 millions de touristes chinois en 2020, soit autant que les touristes accueillis en France chaque année», s'étrangle le représentant d'une compagnie aérienne européenne à Tokyo.
Le discret Centre d'amitié sino-japonaise, au cœur de Tokyo, est un symbole des relations discrètes qu'ont nouées les deux pays depuis vingt ans, pendant lesquels l'un s'est affaissé, l'autre a décollé. «Nous avons fondé le centre sur l'exemple du traité de l'Élysée entre de Gaulle et Adenauer, qui a initié les échanges de jeunes Français et d'Allemands. C'est le meilleur moyen de rapprocher nos deux peuples. N'oubliez pas que la Chine est vingt-six fois plus grande que le Japon, avec une population dix fois supérieure», explique le président fondateur du Centre, Tatsumi Murakami. Au-dessus de son bureau, une immense et magnifique calligraphie offerte par Hu Jintao, qui se lit ainsi : «Avec la force de la jeunesse, faire régner la paix dans le monde.» À l'époque de la création du Centre, la Chine était encore un objet d'angoisse pour les Japonais. «Le jour de l'ouverture, en 1988, un camion de l'extrême droite a fendu la foule des convives sans que personne ne l'arrête», se rappelle Tatsumi Murakami. Depuis, ce bâtiment austère a accueilli près de 4.000 étudiants, notamment des centaines de doctorants «qui aujourd'hui sont à des postes clés de l'État chinois, dans les universités ou les entreprises», se félicite-t-il. Les anciens étudiants de l'école restent en contact avec leur famille d'accueil japonaise, notamment grâce à un logiciel de traduction simultanée conçu par le centre.
Cette amitié fondée sur l'oubli demeure cependant fragile. Les occasions de malentendus et de conflit sont infinies entre les deux puissances. La dernière crise a été causée par une affaire de raviolis chinois avariés qui ont empoisonné des milliers de Japonais. Un an après les faits, Tokyo demande toujours des explications et laisse cette affaire influencer sa diplomatie.
Mais c'est l'accès à l'énergie et aux matières premières qui est la première source de conflits entre la Chine et le Japon. Les deux pays se battent, par compagnies interposées, dans le monde entier. Chinois et Japonais sont respectivement les deuxième et troisième plus importants consommateurs de pétrole. Dépourvu d'or noir, le Japon doit importer la quasi-totalité de ses besoins. La Chine, elle, était autosuffisante en pétrole jusqu'en 1993. Aujourd'hui, plus de la moitié de ses besoins pétroliers sont importés, et son appétit ne cesse de grandir. Or les ressources ne sont pas infinies. Ce conflit n'est jamais plus évident que dans les eaux qui séparent la Chine du Japon, où Tokyo et Pékin se disputent trois gisements de gaz naturel et de pétrole. Les chancelleries des deux rives promettent périodiquement un règlement à l'amiable, mais elles ne règlent rien du tout et les quelques vaisseaux militaires qui naviguent autour de ces gisements frôlent parfois l'escarmouche. «Toutes les estimations concordent : ces champs n'ont pas un grand potentiel. Ils peuvent déclencher au pire une crise diplomatique, mais probablement pas un conflit», tempère David Hewitt, analyste du secteur pour CLSA. Selon la compagnie chinoise Cnooc, qui a déjà commencé à explorer lesdits gisements à la barbe des Japonais, les réserves représentent 22 millions de barils de pétrole et 67 millions de barils (équivalents) de gaz naturel. Une goutte d'or noir à l'échelle des réserves chinoises (1% des réserves pétrolières et 7% des réserves gazières de la Cnooc), mais une manne substantielle par rapport à celle des réserves japonaises.
La guerre de l'énergie
Une partie de la classe politique met en garde contre un rapprochement politique inconsidéré avec la Chine. «C'est simple : le budget militaire du Japon est le plus transparent du monde, tandis que le budget militaire chinois est le plus opaque», résume l'ancien ministre de la Défense Gen Nakatani. «Il est normal que le budget militaire chinois augmente comme il le fait de 10% par an. Après tout, il ne fait que suivre la croissance de l'économie. Mais ce que nous voudrions savoir, c'est où va cet argent. Et on ne nous le dit pas», s'inquiète Shigeru Ishiba, un des principaux leaders de l'opposition. «La Chine n'a certes l'intention d'attaquer personne. Mais elle n'est pas une démocratie. Sa politique peut changer d'un instant à l'autre. Au moins, avec les États-Unis, nous partageons les mêmes valeurs», dit-il.
Dans les couloirs du centre d'amitié nippo-chinoise, le jeune So Chin Shu bachote son japonais. «La politique ? Je m'en fous. J'aime le Japon. Les mangas, les dessins animés, les jeux vidéo… Pour moi il était naturel de venir ici», tranche-t-il.
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