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Koizumi plays his North Korean
trump
By J Sean Curtin
After
being convincingly re-elected as his party's president,
Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi wasted little
time in reshuffling his cabinet. The fresh lineup is
skillfully designed to maximize the party's electoral
appeal as well as offering olive branches to Koizumi's
factional adversaries. Significantly, the new team also
signals a hardening in the administration's attitude
toward North Korea and places the rogue state at the
heart of Japan's foreign-policy agenda. The new emphasis
is almost certain to diminish the importance of other
key international issues, and this is arguably one of
the move's primary objectives.
Koizumi has
carefully regenerated his cabinet with lawmakers known
for their hardline positions on North Korea. So potent
is this new formula that within its inaugural week
bitter clashes erupted between the two countries at the
United Nations General Assembly.
The chief
drumbeater for the new cabinet hawks is Shinzo Abe, who
takes on the post of Liberal Democratic Party (LDP)
secretary general. This is a high-profile position that
ranks Abe as the party's No 2 man after the prime
minister. Immediately after taking up his new post, Abe
hit the airwaves with a series of straight-talking
interviews in which he outlined the government's more
robust approach to the Stalinist state.
In his
previous role as deputy chief cabinet secretary, Abe
made his name by championing the rights of the Japanese
abductees released by North Korea. He also hit the
headlines with his scathing attacks on Foreign Ministry
bureaucrats who he considered were too soft on
Pyongyang. These initiatives won him immense popularity
with the public.
Abe's meteoric rise is the most
striking feature of Koizumi's revamped squad. Abe is a
relatively youthful 49-year-old who was only elected to
parliament in 1993. These credentials would normally not
be enough to earn him a senior party post, but the
popularity he accumulated by bashing North Korea allowed
Koizumi to catapult him into the cabinet. His excellent
political pedigree has also enhanced his standing. Abe
is the son of a former foreign minister, Shintaro Abe,
and the grandson of a former prime minister, Nobusuke
Kishi.
Lining up behind Abe are the new minister
of economy, trade and industry, Shoichi Nakagawa, and
the new environment minister, Yuriko Koike. Both have
impeccable track records as hardliners in their dealings
with Pyongyang. This trio reinforces the tough-talking
Defense Agency chief, Shigeru Ishiba, who retained his
post in the reshuffle. Ishiba has proposed that under
certain circumstances, Japan should have the right to
conduct preemptive strikes against North Korea. The
combined force of these new voices has already drowned
out the more conciliatory tones of the foreign minister,
Yoriko Kawaguchi, who had sought dialogue with North
Korea over the abduction issue.
Koizumi has
several good reasons for this policy shift, the most
straightforward being that the move is highly popular
with the public. A less obvious but equally important
motive is that the increased attention given to North
Korea provides a means for lessening the impact of the
other pressing, and potentially damaging, foreign-policy
issue: postwar Iraq.
It is worthwhile briefly
examining the current predicament of British Prime
Minister Tony Blair, as it illustrates the sound logic
behind Koizumi's diversionary strategy. Both prime
ministers solidly supported the Iraq invasion, but their
fortunes have been very different.
Pre-conflict,
Blair was the dominant force in British politics. Today,
opinion surveys show that support for his premiership is
hemorrhaging and is now at all-time lows. Pollsters say
the electorate no longer trusts him because of Iraq. The
most recent poll shows that 53 percent of the British
public believes the Iraq war was unjustified, with just
38 percent believing it was right. On the eve of his
party's annual conference a poll of party members found
that 60 percent believe Blair was wrong to sanction war
against Iraq and more than 80 percent believe he
exaggerated the case for war either deliberately (37
percent) or unintentionally (44 percent). Support for
Blair's Labor Party is at rock-bottom. In a recent
by-election, his party was defeated by a staunchly
anti-war candidate, suffering a massive 28 percent swing
against them in one of their safest seats. Iraq has
split his party and derailed his premiership. Not
surprisingly, an increasing number of people in his own
party are demanding that Blair resign.
The
US-led invasion of Iraq was also deeply unpopular in
Japan, yet Koizumi's approval ratings were not adversely
affected. This feat was achieved by masterfully
utilizing North Korea as a way for deflecting public
unease about Iraq. It now appears that the same tactic
is being deployed again, this time to reduce potential
damage arising from an increasingly unpopular postwar
Iraq policy.
Washington has been pressing Tokyo
to commit troops to Iraq, something that is too risky to
contemplate with a general election anticipated for
November. However, once the election is over, troops
will probably have to be dispatched. Emphasizing the
threat posed by North Korea offers a way for reducing
some of the public disquiet over possible Japanese troop
casualties in Iraq.
In the coming months,
Koizumi faces some difficult decisions on Iraq,
especially if he commits troops on the ground. The
mounting woes of the once-mighty Tony Blair highlight
the extreme perils this issue can generate and explains
why it makes good political sense to concentrate the
public's mind on the dangers posed by a bellicose North
Korea. Whether this strategy is successful or not may
eventually determine Koizumi's own political fate.
J Sean Curtin is a GLOCOM fellow at
the Tokyo-based Japanese Institute
of Global Communications.
(Copyright 2003 Asia Times Online Co, Ltd. All
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