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Koizumi: Party player or US
puppet?
By Tim Shorrock
WASHINGTON - On November 9, Japan faces a
general election for its powerful Lower House in which
foreign policy will play a major role.
The
opposition Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) hopes to
capitalize on public opposition to the recent decision
by Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi and his ruling
Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) to send a small squad of
Self-Defense Forces (SDF) to Iraq and to provide US$1.5
billion in funds for reconstruction to the war-torn
country.
Many DPJ candidates believe that the
SDF deployment is unconstitutional and could involve
Japan in a foreign war for the first time since World
War II ended in 1945.
In Hokkaido, where the
SDF's 7th Infantry Division is based, DPJ candidate
Chiyomi Kobayashi is running on an anti-war platform,
the Asahi Shimbun newspaper reported this week.
Pointing out that more than 100 soldiers have
been killed in Iraq since US President George W Bush
announced the end of major fighting, Kobayashi argued
that "casualties among SDF troops sent there could
occur".
DPJ leader Naoto Kan, who plans to make
a major issue out of Japan's economy, says November's
vote will be "the first real election in 10 years to
decide who should govern".
The LDP, meanwhile,
is trumpeting Japan's alliance with the United States,
its role in multilateral talks to defuse the nuclear
crisis with North Korea and Tokyo's importance to
regional trade and economic growth as examples of
Koizumi's growing stature as a diplomat.
By
retaining Koizumi, who enjoys a 50 percent approval
rating, the party argues that Japan will continue its
tough policies toward North Korea, which admitted last
year to kidnapping over a dozen Japanese nationals, and
will play a stabilizing role in both the Asia-Pacific
region and the United Nations.
Koizumi himself
sought maximum exposure during Bush's weekend stopover
in Tokyo, playing up their mutual camaraderie and joint
commitment to fighting international terrorism.
Bush called Koizumi "a good friend, a very
strong leader" and said the "relationship between Japan
and the United States is very good". Koizumi was
exuberant, calling their discussions "very frank,
meaningful, interesting, fantastic".
Internationally, however, there is considerable
debate about whether Koizumi's diplomacy marks a
departure from the past or is simply a rehash of past
Japanese practices of following the lead of Uncle Sam
wherever he goes.
"It seems that he does not
follow the traditional and somewhat caricatured pattern
of a Japanese prime minister who can only act after
joint foreign pressure," said Akihiko Tanaka, director
of the Institute of Oriental Culture at the University
of Tokyo.
Koizumi can act with clarity and
"doesn't equivocate" when faced with a crisis, Tanaka
told a seminar in Washington this month on Japan's
foreign policy sponsored by the Sasakawa Peace
Foundation USA.
However, Steven Clemons,
executive vice president of the New America Foundation
and an observer of US-Japan relations, disagreed with
Tanaka's thesis.
"When [US Assistant Secretary
of State] Richard Armitage said 'Show the flag', Koizumi
raised it as fast as he could," Clemons said. Koizumi,
he added, has shown signs of being "highly sycophantic
and obsequious" toward the United States.
Tanaka
offered two examples in his positive portrait of
Koizumi: the actions the prime minister took immediately
after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, and
his diplomatic overtures toward North Korea.
At
Bush's request, after the terrorist attacks on New York
and Washington, said Tanaka, Koizumi's government
quickly agreed to send Japanese Aegis warships to the
Arabian Sea to support Bush's military actions against
al-Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan.
Koizumi, Tanaka added, also made a "proactive"
decision in 2001 to visit Pyongyang with the intention
of reaching a sweeping new agreement with North Korea's
Kim Jong-il.
But Tanaka said Koizumi's policies
in the Middle East show the limits of Japan's pro-US
foreign policy. "It was unprecedented for Japan to
operate ships on distant seas," he said. On the other
hand, "those missions are not combat duties and are
limited to gas stations".
Similarly, the
non-combat Japanese troops that will be sent to Iraq by
the end of the year will be for "logistic and
reconstruction and humanitarian" duties.
However, Tanaka believes that Koizumi's
decisiveness is underscored by his diplomatic initiative
in Korea and his unequivocal stand that no progress will
be made with the Kim regime in Pyongyang until the
question of the abductions is settled.
Voters
meanwhile may be less impressed with his skills in
fighting off entrenched economic interests within his
bureaucracy.
Tanaka noted that many of Koizumi
's trade initiatives in Asia have not gone anywhere
because of stiff opposition from the LDP, particularly
the protected agriculture sector. "It is bad for the
Japanese to have a prime minister who is not good at
preparing the groundwork for long-term policies," he
said.
Clemons countered that Koizumi's actions
after September 11 were politically calculated. Koizumi
"raced towards" September 11 "to distract Japan from the
structural problems of its economy", he said.
Under Koizumi, Clemons argued, Japan has ceded
the "high ground" it once held in the United Nations
when "Mother Teresa types" such at Sadako Ogata served
in high-ranking positions and Japan frequently took the
lead on issues concerning global governance.
Instead, during the emotional debate prior to
the US invasion of Iraq, Koizumi read a statement "that
could have been written" by a Japan specialist at the
National Security Council, he said.
"There was
no sense Japan had gone through its own internal
calculations of national interest and to what degree it
would support the United States and under what
conditions," continued Clemons. In essence, under
Koizumi, Japanese foreign policy "has morphed" and
"embedded itself" into the unilateralist policies of the
Bush administration.
In doing so, he said,
"Koizumi is playing with fire". Rather than send troops
or reconstruction money into a conflict that may be
escalating and is facing growing criticism in the United
States, Japan could make a greater contribution by
revving up its economy through economic reform so the
United States can "stop being the consumer of last
resort", Clemons said.
Clemons' comments seemed
to be underscored on Monday by reports from Bangkok,
where Bush and Koizumi gathered with other leaders from
the Asia-Pacific at the Asia-Pacific Economic
Cooperation forum summit for talks dominated by Bush's
anti-terrorism agenda. Often, Koizumi was left largely
to follow the US lead instead of projecting a Japanese
position.
In any case, Kan, the opposition's
candidate for prime minister, is an "extremely
articulate and very effective debater and could
outperform Koizumi on TV", concluded Tanaka. "It will be
a most interesting election."
(Inter Press
Service)
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