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Japan: Deputy
superpower
By Richard Hanson
TOKYO - This is a story about superpowers and
war in the post-September 11 era. Superpowers?
Okay, granted there is only one, the United
States, left as a certified superpower in the post-World
War II/Cold War sense of things. This is the mightiest
and wealthiest country around - so much so that its
current leaders have the nerve to take on, virtually
unilaterally, a quixotic crusade against "evil" in
Operation Iraqi Freedom along with the UK, Spain and
several former Eastern Bloc countries.
Japan,
which officially supports the war in Iraq, is not on the
list of countries that are fighting or have military
forces on the ground in Iraq, but there is an argument
to be made that Japan is reluctantly on the path pushed
by circumstances not entirely of its own making - to
becoming, for lack of a better word, a new kind of
superpower, in a class of is own.
Far-fetched?
Consider this.
Japan has a genuine allergy to
big-power military matters, an affliction that traces
its roots to Article 9 of its Peace Constitution, which
renounces war and the threat or use of force as a means
of settling international disputes.
For more
than a half century, Japan's low profile on the war
front is due in large degree to the Supreme Commander
Allied Powers, General Douglas MacArthur, who handed
down the country's hastily composed pacifist pledge in
1946. In Japan, The US tried to create a democracy out
of what already functioned as a defective constitutional
parliamentary government (with democratic elections).
The results were stunning. Japan is one of the
staunchest democracies in the world, bar none. True to
Article 9, Japan has not initiated any aggressive acts
of war. While the US wages war in Iraq, Japan is facing
its nearby axis of evil contender in North Korea,
relying in large part for stability on its Security Pact
with the United States.
But the numbers show
that Japan already ranks at the very top among most
powerful military nations in the world. The United
States is the hands-down No 1 superpower, boasting the
world's supreme military and nuclear might, as well as
its largest economy. On the next rung down, there are
Russia and Japan. They vie for second and third place on
the chart of second-tier superpowers. Depending on how
spending is accounted for, Japan is ahead and the gap
between it and Russia is growing. This is not a result
of reckless military buildups. The secret to becoming,
for example, the number two naval power in the world, as
Japan has, is simple. Over the past decade, parliament
has consistently increased each year defense spending by
a modest percentage.
Japan has done this
regardless of economic growth rates, and while it was
spending (some would say wasting) public funds to
attempt to bolster economic activity during much of the
recession-pocked 1990s, no less. This was from a sea
change in political attitudes since the 1960s and 1970s,
when defense spending was crudely measured to stay
within an arbitrary 1 percent of the gross national
product.
Japan now spends about US$48 billion a
year on defense. That adds up. It bought the world's
second-largest, most modern (high-tech) and growing
navy, air force and ground forces around. Can Japan
defend itself? Not against a nuclear-missile attack
launched without warning by a madman. No nation is safe
on that count. But Japan is safe if a threat to its
territory comes from just about any other conventional
source.
In any case, in a ranking of the
second-tier wanna-be or reluctant superpowers, Japan
would be in a class of its own. These are some of the
reasons:
Japan is non-nuclear. The government has as standing
policy Japan as a nuclear-weapon-free zone. These days,
it is only marginally due to its historic distinction as
the only country to be bombed by nuclear weapons. Others
have suffered the fallout. The Defense Agency has long
studied and rejected any serious ambition to build a
nuclear arsenal. Even North Korea's dictator Kim Jong-il
can do that. Japan relies on its defense pact with the
United States for the US to nuke whoever nukes Japan. As
for other weapons of mass destruction, Japan's brutal
record in wartime germ warfare still haunts.
Japan renounces war. This has already been given a
liberal interpretation. If Japan can get the technology
right, it probably would not hesitate to fire first if
the other guy were about to fire. In late 2001, a
Japanese Coast Guard (not Maritime Self-Defense Forces)
sank a North Korean spy ship in waters claimed by
China.
Japan's political leadership. This is the tricky
part. But a look at the current leadership under Prime
Minister Junichiro Koizumi, 62, suggests that Japan is
not rushing headlong into anything without making sure
that the nation's first line of defense is intact. The
first rule for any leader is to remain in power. Of
prime concern for any aspiring tier-two superpower is to
stay on the good side of No 1. Koizumi has made a career
out of doing that. He is following the advice of
previous Japanese prime ministers who have enjoyed
relatively long terms in office.
Koizumi's model
and mentor is former prime minister Yasuhiro Nakasone.
In early 1983, when president Ronald Reagan was battling
the Evil Empire of superpower USSR, he found a true ally
in the hawkish Nakasone, who offered up Japan as an
unsinkable aircraft carrier in America's battle with
evil.
For Koizumi, Japan's superpower status can
instead be measured by what it is capable of doing in
keeping the peace as a military and economic power,
while maintaining a democratic form of government, and
more or less keeping up good relations with the United
States. This fits the dictionary definition of a
superpower, which is a power that is superior or great
or any of the top countries competing with one another
for influence over other states.
Japan
qualifies in the sense that it has proved itself
superior in some things if not always great. Japan is
the world's second-largest economy, despite economic
(though, in truth, mostly political) problems. As for
the second point, Japan is mostly seeking influence over
its neighbors in a positive sense.
Japan does
not want enemies, and is committed to resolving most
issues peacefully. One involves the northern islands
seized by the old Soviet Union in 1945. Its greatest
problem at the moment is North Korea, which it can only
deal with in tandem with the US.
Relations with
the US have been tense at times. In 1991, as Gulf War I
crescendoed to a violent climax, the United States
Treasury badgered Japan (which was still flush with
bubble-era cash) to ante a large chunk of money to pay
for America's war bills, in lieu of direct military
support. After heated exchanges over how much Japan
would pay that left a bad taste, the Diet (parliament)
finally ordered the substantial sum of 1.2 trillion yen
paid from the national treasury. This made the Japanese
citizens largest single bankroller of Gulf War I, but it
didn't raise Japan's public esteem very much. When the
time came to cash the check (wire transfer, in fact),
the US Treasury whined that Japan's banner-headlined
US$10 billion contribution had dwindled to $9 billion
as the yen exchange rate dropped 10 percent when the war
was won (eventually, Japan kicked in more).
All
in all, Japan's relations with the US were under strain
over vitriolic trade disputes. At the time, when
president George Bush Sr made an official visit to
Japan, an ailing president Bush left a symbolic footnote
to those times. On camera, he vomited on the lap of his
host, prime minister Kiichi Miyazawa, at the formal
state dinner.
Gulf War II is different in two
ways. First, long before the war in Iraq, Koizumi and US
President George W Bush had a chance to get to know each
other. Second are the effects of September 11, 2001, and
how it changed the world.
As fate would have it,
Koizumi and Bush have found it remarkably easy to get
along with each other, sort of the odd couple of the
very big and small superpower world. The Koizumi-Bush
connection began serendipitously in the pre-September 11
world. As it turned out, they came into office within
three months of each other in early 2001, both under
extraordinary circumstances.
Bush was sworn in
as president of the United States on January 20, 2001,
under a dark cloud of doubt over the legitimacy of a
razor-thin vote count in the state of Florida, in which
a court ruled in favor of the conservative Republican
Party candidate, ending eight years of Democratic Party
rule. Bush faced a hostile Democratic majority in the
Senate.
Three months later, in mid-April,
Junichiro Koizumi emerged as a dark-horse candidate for
the leadership of Japan's ruling Liberal Democratic
Party, which was in shambles over the sudden resignation
of a disgraced prime minister Yoshiro Mori. Koizumi,
from the Mori faction but running on a radical
structural reform platform, stunned everyone with a
landslide victory over the Old Guard former prime
minister Ryutaro Hashimoto, who controlled the largest
personal faction in the LDP. Hashimoto, the guardian of
pork-barrel politics, became Koizumi's worst enemy. From
the start, the ruling LDP was split, with a large
anti-Koizumi block out to get him.
Koizumi's
popularity, with well over 80 percent support in the
polls, soon helped LDP win a crucial Upper House
election in July 2001. Koizumi's enemies retreated.
Bush, meanwhile, was limping by on a Republican
platform that his Democratic opposition attacked
fiercely. Such was the scene when the new Prime Minister
Koizumi made his obligatory first official visit to
Washington to meet Bush. They seemed to hit it off,
playing a bit of toss for the press - two handsome,
somewhat awkward leaders trying not to drop the ball.
Upon returning home, Koizumi soon fell into his
own political morass. To fulfill a campaign promise,
Koizumi went to the highly controversial Yasukuni Shrine
to pray for the spirits of Japan's war dead on August
15, the date of the end of World War II. This inflamed
memories of Japanese wartime atrocities around the
globe, especially in South Korea and China. Calls for
his resignation were heard. His LDP enemies concurred.
Things looked grim.
Then, out of the blue, came
September 11, 2001. The rest is history. George W Bush's
presidency was reborn. He rose to the challenge of the
role of a strong, righteous leader in the battle against
terrorism and evil. A man of deep Christian faith, Bush
saw a battle of good and the evil in the world. In
Afghanistan, he battled the oppressive Taliban and their
partners, al-Qaeda.
Koizumi, reeling from
Yasukuni Shrine fiasco, reacted immediately by going to
the aid of Japan's closest ally. Japan also felt the
aftershocks of September 11. Within weeks, Koizumi's
government drafted and passed an emergency plan (with
time limits) that committed Japan's military to the
US-led war effort in Afghanistan. Three destroyers and
other ships were sent to aid allied ships in the Indian
Ocean. This was unprecedented. Bush was grateful for
this show of solidarity.
This reporter watched
as the Japanese navy escorted the Japan-based aircraft
carrier USS Kitty Hawk from its home port of Yokosuka,
Koizumi's home district, from Tokyo Bay on its way to
war. Koizumi rode the September 11 wave through January
2002, when he hosted a successful fundraising conference
on rebuilding Afghanistan. That too pleased Bush, whose
support had soared in the wake of the bombings.
Koizumi's support in the polls remained in the 80th
percentile.
Koizumi soon ran into his own
trouble. An unfortunate row within the LDP and a messy
midnight sacking of his popular female foreign minister
Makiko Tanaka angered his female constituency. Within
days, support ratings in the polls collapsed from the 80
percent level to below 50 (about where it is now).
Bush tried to help. In February, he made his
first-ever trip to Japan, for a summit with Koizumi.
Bush pointedly used his high-flying popularity (by then
more than 80 percent) to cheer his ally.
But
Bush had already raised the heat in Northeast Asia by
declaring North Korea one of his three targeted states
in the "axis of evil", just as Koizumi was making his
own historic plans to visit North Korea. In September,
he became the first leader to visit Pyongyang to meet
"Dear Leader" Kim Jong-il and start talks on normalizing
relations. That was also when Kim shocked Japan by
finally admitting that his country had abducted Japanese
more than two decades ago.
Tensions in the
region became critical when North Korea then disclosed
to the United States that it was violating the 1994
framework agreement in which North Korea ceased
production of nuclear weapons in exchange for aid
shipments from the US and assistance in developing
nuclear reactors for power.
These events took
the wind out of Koizumi's triumph. But they did not keep
the prime minister from sticking to his guns in
supporting Bush the Christian warrior as momentum toward
war in Iraq began to build. Behind the scenes, Japan
lobbied for support as the United States pressed the
United Nations Security Council for a resolution paving
the way to war to disarm and remove Saddam Hussein and
his regime from Iraq.
This was a delicate matter
for Koizumi. Feelings ran high in Japan against war in
the Persian Gulf region, though not as virulently as
they did in France and Germany, and in the United
States. Koizumi's approval ratings suffered, though not
precipitously.
The issue of war scratches deeply
into Japan, though not in the sense of past wars. It is
more that Japan has steered clear of wars for half a
century, all while surrounded by some of the most
volatile potential regional conflicts on Earth. The
dilemma faced by Koizumi was simple. Koizumi had to
convince most people that support for US war plans was
in the best interest of Japan, even if public opinion
was running heavily against him.
So Koizumi did
what he often has done in the past. Serious politicians
don't pay attention to the polls, says one political
columnist who advises Koizumi. Koizumi is a serious
politician. Most Japanese politicians try to skirt
tough issues, such as publicly supporting a US president
hell-bent on war. Not Koizumi. And this isn't just
grandstanding.
The prime minister not only comes
from a family of serious politicians, but he comes from
a family that for three generations has been elected
from one of the most heavily pro-military constituencies
in Japan.
Koizumi grew up in a military town. He
speaks of defense matters out of conviction, just like
the Texas-influenced George W Bush.
Koizumi was
born in 1942 during World War II in Yokosuka city on the
tip of Tokyo Bay. He is a third-generation politician
who was elected to the Diet 30 years ago. His favorable
view of the military comes naturally. Like his
grandfather and his father (a director general of the
Defense Agency in the 1960s), he hails from the
electoral district that includes Yokosuka, in Kanagawa
prefecture adjacent to Tokyo.
Yokosuka is the
home of Japan's navy and is the home port for the US 7th
Fleet. Kanagawa prefecture houses most of the US
military presence on the main Japanese island of Honshu.
No wonder Koizumi was keen to support Bush in the
Afghanistan war by sending several of Japan's most
advanced naval ships to the Indian Ocean in support
roles for the coalition.
They were dispatched
under the Anti-Terrorism Special Measures Law, passed by
Koizumi after September 11, 2001 (and up for renewal
this coming May 17). This law is not as Byzantine as
what Bush pushed through in the US after September 11,
but it was heavy stuff for Japan.
Two weeks ago,
as the US defied the United Nations, which refused to
sanction war against Iraq, and set a deadline for
hostilities to begin, Koizumi's strong support for the
US sent his popularity polls plummeting. Most Japanese
surveyed opposed going to war in Iraq. Koizumi took his
case to the people.
The prime minister gave an
impassioned address to this year's 400 graduates of the
Defense Agency College, located in his home town of
Yokosuka.
When the United States, an absolutely
invaluable Japanese ally is sacrificing itself, it is
natural for our country to back the move as much as
possible, he told the young future officers of the
Self-Defense Forces as their commander-in-chief.
This was classic Koizumi: loyal to his allies.
This is the same Koizumi who still repeatedly visits the
Yasukuni Shrine, where he prays to the spirits of
Japan's war dead, who include several Class A war
criminals. He does so in part for politics, but he also,
like most Japanese, believes that the spirits of the
dead (especially those who die violently) need to be
looked after, sort of like the way every religion looks
after the souls of its dead.
A week ago, as the
cruise missiles started flying over the deserts of Iraq,
Koizumi in spirit was marching shoulder-to-shoulder with
Bush, Tony Blair and the rest of the band of allies who,
each for their own reasons, agreed to support Bush.
On the day fighting began, Koizumi addressed
Japan: President Bush said this was not an attack on
the people of Iraq but was meant to give them freedom
and a prosperous life. I think so too, and I support
Bush's policy.
Bluntly, Koizumi told his nation
that this was quid pro quo. "We do not know when there
will be a threat against Japan," he said, "America has
said clearly that any attack on Japan is an attack on
the United States ... The Japanese people must not
forget that this provides a strong deterrent against an
attack on Japan."
The reference is to the clear
and present danger of the threat posed to Japan and
others by North Korea. America's interest in North Korea
is equally serious, since it has a pact to defend South
Korea if that country is attacked. The US has 37,000
troops in place on the southern half of the Korean
Peninsula.
In Koizumi's view, this gives Japan
and the US more than enough common interest to be the
closest of allies.
In Japan, the recent
developments in Iraq and North Korea have helped keep
Koizumi's opponents at bay. That is important for
Koizumi. In April, there will be a series of important
local elections. And next September, Koizumi is up for
re-election at the ruling LDP's annual convention and
therefore his hold on the Prime Minister's Official
Residence.
In two weeks, he'll celebrate both
his second year as prime minister as well as the second
year of his relationship with Bush, who is also up for
re-election next year.
So should Japan take a
shot at being that new kind of superpower, with
reluctance and lots of preconditions? Hard to tell, but,
meanwhile, Prime Minister Koizumi is holding his own in
the polls.
(©2003 Asia Times Online Co, Ltd. All
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