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Japan-US relations: The North Korean
option
By Gilbert
Rozman
(Posted with permission from Foreign Policy Research
Institute)
On August 27, when emissaries
from the administration of US President George W Bush
met with Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, each
had a secret to share. Koizumi informed the Americans of
his impending announcement that he would visit Pyongyang
in mid-September for the first summit between leaders of
Japan and North Korea. In turn, Deputy Secretary of
State Richard Armitage revealed that the US was in
possession of evidence that North Korea was secretly
enriching uranium, in violation of its 1994 agreement
with the United States and other assurances that it had
discontinued all nuclear-weapons development.
It
is unlikely that either was happy to hear the other's
news. Japanese policy makers may have found it hard to
grasp that North Korea was so duplicitous and the United
States so determined to pressure it to abandon its
dangerous behavior that Japan, as an ally of the US,
really had no leverage to conduct an independent foreign
policy. Despite earlier hints that secret talks were
proceeding between Japan and North Korea, the news that
Koizumi was discussing large- scale economic assistance
to Pyongyang and would proceed with his trip also had to
be disconcerting for the Bush administration as it
launched a two-front campaign - with the United Nations
Security Council and the US Congress - for intrusive
arms inspections in Iraq as the threat of war to topple
Saddam Hussein loomed.
While it appears Japan
and the US have since cooperated in dealing with North
Korea, we should be alert to differences and consider
Japan's reasoning in the context of its persistent
search for at least the past 15 years to find a balance
between sticking with its ally, the United States, and
"re-entering Asia".
To those who expect little
from Japan's diplomacy, Koizumi's announcement that he
would go to Pyongyang to meet North Korean leader Kim
Jong-il came as a surprise. Soon, however, the few
observers who reacted with either alarm or delight to
what they saw as a rare independent move were
outnumbered by those who downplayed the import of the
summit. The latter recalled the summit of June 2000
between Kim Jung-il and South Korean President Kim
Dae-jung, when all the hoopla proved ephemeral as the
former stonewalled on his commitments. Nor could they
recall a time when a Japanese leader had made a bold
breakthrough at a summit, and after seeing Koizumi fail
to deliver on much of his domestic agenda, they doubted
he would do so in the global arena. The initiative also
appeared to be largely in the hands of the Bush
administration, which, after labeling North Korea part
of the "axis of evil", seemed unlikely to approve a
compromise offering it a soft landing. Finally, the main
agenda item was the return of abducted Japanese
citizens, an issue of great emotional appeal inside
Japan but tangential to significant security questions.
After the trip, yet another reason arose to
discount the momentary candor of mutual Japanese-North
Korean apologies and pledges of future cooperation. When
the United States dispatched assistant secretary for
East Asian and Pacific Affairs James Kelly to Pyongyang
two weeks later, it appeared that a coordinated approach
long urged by Seoul was under way to explore just how
far the North would compromise on security in order to
achieve its goals for economic reform and political
recognition. As the Japanese public became absorbed in
the tragic stories of the families of at least 13
Japanese whose kidnapping by North Korea had just been
admitted at the summit, eight of whom were said to have
died, it paid little heed to geopolitical issues. Once
again it seemed that an initiative by a Japanese leader
would not bring any dramatic departure from the pattern
of reliance on US leadership.
On October 29-30,
when Japanese diplomats met with North Korean
counterparts in Kuala Lumpur, the same message emerged:
the North rebuffed Japan's interest in discussing its
nuclear-weapons program and allowing the surviving
family members of the kidnapping victims in North Korea
to go to Japan.
What many observers have missed
is a continuing thread in the evolution of Japan's
foreign policy in the post-Cold War era, one that leads
to a different conclusion about the significance of
Koizumi's trip to North Korea. Looking back, we can
identify a streak of failed breakout strategies aimed at
giving Japan an independent voice on the global stage.
Each strategy has had implications for US-Japanese
relations and provides clues about how Japan wants to
reshape overall East Asian security. Although
unsuccessful, this succession of attempts to take the
initiative can be predictive of Tokyo's next likely
moves. The old left, though fading, has long dreamed of
a breakout strategy. The resurgent right has pressed for
it, although often differing on how to proceed.
Mainstream as well as maverick Liberal Democratic Party
(LDP) leaders are tantalized by its potential impact on
public opinion. The goal is shared across the political
spectrum, even if no single approach has appeal.
Japan's motive for distancing itself from the
United States but not breaking the bonds of alliance
lies less in any new perception of a military threat
than in lingering discomfort over loss of voice in
international circles. Many have a sense that, as
politician Ichiro Ozawa put it, Japan is not a "normal"
state (see Ozawa Ichiro, Blueprint for a New Japan:
The Rethinking of a Nation, 1994). So far they
cannot agree on what it takes to become "normal", but
each time hopes arise for a breakthrough with one or
another significant foreign partner the nation rallies
around the prospect that it will finally happen. Chances
are low that Tokyo could cut a deal with Pyongyang when
it remains an outcast for its threatening behavior, but
they rise considerably if Pyongyang really determines to
bargain its weapons of mass destruction (WMD) chips for
a large economic payoff and recognizes the promise, in
an age of unwelcome unilateralism, of multilateral
diplomacy at the regional crossroads of great powers. If
North Korea's choice remains an enigma, the record since
the 1980s demonstrates Tokyo's restlessness as it awaits
the right opportunity.
Japan-Russia
The first option was
to reach a deal with Russia for the return to Japan of
four islands held by the Russians since World War II,
justifying a celebratory mood that the era of
victimization was over and justifying a great power
partnership that would increase Japan's leverage. Hints
that Japan would pay handsomely (more than US$25
billion, according to stories early in 1991), intensive
wooing of former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and
former Russian president Boris Yeltsin, and a flood of
writings about the growing importance of economic power
all reflected this option. The payoff looked promising:
the world's fallen superpower would cut a deal with the
aspiring superpower that symbolically at least would
suggest that they were trading places.
Japan-China
The second option was
to become a bridge between Beijing and Washington,
leaving Tokyo as the pivot in this increasingly
important triangular relationship. After the United
States imposed sanctions on China for its repression of
demonstrators in June 1989, Japanese were optimistic
that their greater cultural similarities with Chinese
and their preference for gradual change and no open
criticism would forge a lasting bond. While the US
allowed human-rights concerns to shape its behavior,
China would appreciate that not only did Japan have the
most to offer for its economic interests but also it
could associate itself with "Asian values" as a
replacement for the archaic rhetoric of socialism and a
source of support for a gradual transition different
from what the US demanded.
Economic
regionalism
In its search for an
international voice Japan counted most of all on a third
option: leadership over economic regionalism, although
the scope of the region kept changing. Would it be a
maritime region anchored in South Korea and Taiwan,
economically dependent on Japanese firms? The Sea of
Japan economic rim, corralling a desperate Russian Far
East, cut adrift without Moscow's subsidies? A broader
region including Southeast Asia and anchored in
Indonesia, where the most Japanese official development
assistance (ODA) went? Understandably, most blueprints
for regionalism incorporated China. This was the crown
jewel in dreams of catching up to the European Union and
North American Free Trade Area (NAFTA), but it was an
economically dependent country that would be drawn into
a web of interdependency regardless of political
posture.
Japan-Russia (Part 2)
In
the mid-'90s it was clear that Japan had failed in all
of its early options, but soon the search resumed. Its
fourth option was to restart negotiations with the
Russians, changing the tone of the talks and considering
more compromise ideas. Despite excessive optimism from
mid-1997 to autumn 1998, this approach was getting
nowhere until Vladimir Putin was elected president in
March 2000. Then, bilateral talks were transformed by a
small group of politicians and Foreign Ministry
officials who were prepared to compromise with Russia by
securing the return of two islands first and leaving the
fate of the other islands uncertain. Later the Japanese
media would charge that this group, led by Suzuki Muneo,
only had personal gain in mind, but there is no doubt
that at least some of the impetus for a compromise with
Russia was to gain leverage against China and, in
general, raise Japan's voice as a great power. Putin's
help to Koizumi in arranging for the summit in Pyongyang
could be the opening wedge in building a sense of common
purpose.
Japan-South Korea
A fifth
option emerged when South Korean President Kim Dae- jung
agreed, in return for a written apology over Japan's
conduct in the years to 1945, to promise that Seoul
would stop playing the "historical card". Japanese
anticipated that at last they would have one reliable
regional partner and looked ahead to co-hosting the
soccer World Cup in 2002, when ties could be solidified.
As in the case of China a decade earlier, they expected
to send the Emperor for the first time to South Korea.
This would mark the opening ceremonies and would be the
culmination of normalization in political and cultural
ties to buttress strong economic ties. Hopes for a
free-trade area with South Korea came to the foreground.
Yet Japan's approval of new middle-school textbooks in
2001 rekindled Korean anger over the history issue and
scuttled any chance of a visit by the Emperor. If shared
success in the World Cup rekindled Japan's hopes, it was
still searching for a lever to pry open relations. Joint
concern about being caught in the middle between
Washington and Pyongyang could serve that purpose.
The new regionalism
While most
global attention concentrated on the rivalry between
Japan and China, some Japanese and Chinese strategists
anticipated a new regionalism that would lock the two
countries together in an economic community that could
serve as a balancing force in the world. Even if China
and Japan nervously eye each other, they increasingly
appreciate the advantages of combined regional
influence. Having hesitated about regionalism through
much of the 1990s, Beijing shifted its position and also
adopted a "smile diplomacy" towards Japan. Both
countries proceeded through ASEAN+3 and South Korea to
explore regionalism. The fact that Japanese industry was
hollowing out and moving to China as trade kept growing
boosted the prospects for economic regionalism. That, in
turn, was bound to have implications for political
relations and security ties. Japan's sixth option is to
pursue regionalism, engaging China. Unlike the dream of
regionalism in the early 1990s when Japan's leadership
could not easily be contested, this option would
presumably be a union of equals. When first China and
then Japan appealed at the ASEAN+3 meetings early last
month to accelerate talks on free trade, hopes for
regionalism were growing.
Japan's North
Korean diplomacy: A new option?
After Bush
threw down the gauntlet to North Korea by labeling it
one member of the "axis of evil", Japan's prospects for
a foreign-policy breakthrough inevitably turned to the
space between the US and the other countries of
Northeast Asia looking for a way to avoid a dangerous
confrontation. Security loomed as the region's foremost
challenge as Japan's secret negotiations with North
Korea left it probing whether it could play an
independent role in this divisive atmosphere. The United
States is the driving force; we need to look at its
expectations for Japan before examining the response.
The Bush strategy for East Asia calls on Tokyo to
turn back the clock 20 years to the time when Ron-Yasu
talks first recognized Japan as an "unsinkable aircraft
carrier". Labeling North Korea as part of the "axis of
evil" harks back to the moral struggle against the "evil
empire" of the Soviet Union. Of all the United States'
allies, Japan most thoroughly embraced a moralistic view
of evil Soviets, reflected in a campaign to regain the
"Northern Territories" from the country that had
unjustifiably seized them in August 1945. With recent
media outrage over the abduction of Japanese decades ago
driving condemnations of Pyongyang and memories of the
1998 missile test over Japanese territory rekindling
feelings of insecurity, Americans have reason to expect
shared indignation to lead to a common purpose. Even
more so, rumblings about North Korean development of
nuclear weapons in defiance of past promises should
register loudest in Japan, against which North Korea's
missiles are targeted.
Many in Japan approached
the summit with North Korea hopefully. Aware that
Japanese had been skeptical of Kim Dae-jung's summit in
Pyongyang in June 2000, they argued that North Korea was
different. It was more desperate, and it was in a hurry
to act before the US attacked Iraq, leaving it first
among the axis of evil, and before the South Korean
elections, when a less cooperative leader was likely to
emerge. The media reported on a secret message from
Pyongyang in October 2001 seeking improved relations and
suggested that after Bush's State of the Union address
the desire had intensified (see Nikkei Shimbun,
September 8, 2002).
Although some claimed that
Bush had tried to tie the hands of Tokyo as well as
Seoul, they concluded on the contrary that he had driven
Pyongyang to turn more to Tokyo (Mainichi Shimbun,
September 7, 2002). Even the conservative Yomiuri
Shimbun insisted that Japan was not just a messenger; it
had real negotiating power enabling it to use its "aid
card" as a bargaining chip (August 31, 2002). Tokyo
University Professor Akihiko Tanaka explained that
Koizumi's visit could have great significance for East
Asian international politics comparable to US president
Richard Nixon's 1972 visit to China. If North Korea
changed, regional politics would change. A joint
resolution similar to that approved by Kim Dae-jung in
1998 would transform historical consciousness at the
same time as security issues were resolved and economic
cooperation was expanded (Mainichi Shimbun, September
15, 2002).
When Japanese heard that Kim Jung-il
had admitted the earlier abduction of Japanese citizens,
relief mixed with anger. Some wanted to avoid looking
back, which could drag them into more polemics about
Japanese treatment of Koreans through 1945, while others
joined many South Koreans, Chinese, and Russians in
yearning for a soft landing for the North instead of a
confrontational approach. Yet increasingly the mood
turned negative as Japanese worked through the shock of
the human rights tragedies for the families of kidnap
victims, especially by trying to get the real stories
and following closely the visits by those still alive
who had left family members behind in North Korea. On
top of these absorbing human-interest stories came news
of North Korea's nuclear-weapons program and a standoff
with the United States.
Again Japanese leaders
found what had appeared to be a promising option for a
diplomatic breakthrough failing to materialize. If
Washington would not talk to Pyongyang until it stopped
its flagrant violation of previous agreements and
Pyongyang refused to discuss the matter with anybody but
Washington, Tokyo had no alternative but to wait on the
sidelines. Meanwhile, the North Koreans saw no need to
make further compromises on the abduction issue if they
could expect no payoff. Yet the Bush administration
declared its interest in multilateral diplomacy to deal
with this problem, appealing directly to Chinese
President Jiang Zemin when he visited the US president's
ranch in Crawford, Texas, in October and to Koizumi and
Kim Dae- jung when he met them the next day at the Asia
Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in Mexico, to
coordinate closely. Had Putin not canceled his visit
because of the hostage crisis at a Moscow theater, no
doubt he would also have been encouraged to press Kim
Jung- il. Even if Tokyo was unlikely to lead the way,
Japanese could at least see the beginnings of a
diplomatic opening.
Although Japanese debates
have yet to fix on what the country may seek from active
diplomacy with North Korea, there are at least three
likely choices. First, a prime minister such as Koizumi
would hope for a continued boost in the polls and
recognition within the LDP that he has a special
personal role to play in an ongoing diplomatic process.
Many prime ministers since Yasuhiro Nakasone have sought
to make a mark on diplomacy that would extend their stay
in office and boost their grip over the
foreign-policy-making process. Koizumi may see this as
his one prospect.
Second, becoming an actor in
the North Korean endgame promises to boost Tokyo's
standing with Seoul, Beijing, and Moscow, as well as
with Washington. It would have to be consulted more
seriously with implications for other bilateral matters.
With all of the Asian countries concerned about US
unilateralism and the United States most eager for
Japan's support, Japan stands in an enviable position.
North Korea is keen on its economic assistance and may,
if it can get beyond the initial standoff with the US,
see an advantage in making Japan its prime target.
Third, the North Korean option has great meaning
for Japan's own quest for a symbolic end to the abnormal
era begun in 1945. After all, this is the one country
with which there are no diplomatic relations and no
progress in discussing the legacy of the occupation era.
North Korea desperately needs an infusion of Japanese
money; so it is not hard to imagine that some sort of
deal can be arranged with implications for regional
security, regional economic integration, and Japanese
national identity. Of course, the opening of North Korea
holds lots of peril, and a record of failure in
exploring six previous options is not a basis for
optimism now.
US-Japanese relations are
conspicuously shifting from bilateral ties to regional
balancing. Washington has grown more assertive in what
it seeks from Tokyo, while the latter is focusing more
closely on its neighbors in Asia as it decides how to
respond. This means taking into account both what these
countries consider to be their national interests and
what Japan defines as its own interests, separate from
those of the United States. The transformation can be
traced in Japan's response to changing US expectations
in its relations with Moscow, Beijing, Taipei, Seoul,
and Pyongyang. More US consistency, more active pursuit
of Japan, and clearly tilting to Japan will not quench
the yearning for balanced ties between Asia and the
West.
Japanese sensitivity to US handling of
bilateral relations should not obscure real differences
in policy preferences. Tokyo perceived Japan-bashing in
US president Bill Clinton's early tough trade talks;
Japan-passing in the search for a breakthrough with
China and then the near-reconciliation with North Korea
in Clinton's second term; and Japan-wooing under the
Bush administration, first for regional and then for
global objectives. In each case, the Japanese recognized
that the United States was pursuing its own national
interests and showed concern whether their country's
national interest was the same. Wariness persists
whether Washington distances itself too much or draws
too close. Always, it is assumed that US national
interests as determined by a small group will prevent
Japan from maximizing pursuit of its own national
interests.
The United States cannot succeed by
separating Japan from the Asian continent. Its only
effective strategy is to work with Japan to develop
Northeast Asian regionalism, promote Russo- Japanese
relations, stabilizing Sino-Japanese relations, and
coordinate with Japan and South Korea in a shared
strategy for a soft landing in North Korea should it
make essential concessions. The security alliance
between the US and Japan shows no sign of dimming the
latter's restless search for another framework in Asia;
Washington should see it as a building block to that
end, over which it is well positioned to exert its
influence. New Japanese interest in joint development of
missile defenses should be understood as a prudent
response to the threat from North Korea. Nonetheless, we
should expect other steps that will use multilateralism
to keep alive Japanese hopes of "re-entering Asia".
Gilbert Rozman is Musgrave professor
of sociology at Princeton University and a senior fellow
at the Foreign Policy Research Institute. This article
draws on the Bobby Hall Luxenberg Memorial Lecture,
delivered on October 19, 2002, and is part of a larger
article to be published in Orbis, FPRI's quarterly
journal of world affairs.
(This article was
provided by the Foreign
Policy Research Institute, a non-profit organization
in Philadelphia devoted to bringing the fruits of
scholarship to bear on foreign-policy issues.)
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