Diverging tale of two allies, Koizumi and
Blair J Sean Curtin
After the
shock resignation of the leader of Japan's main
opposition party, Naoto Kan, Prime Minister Junichiro
Koizumi is looking stronger than ever. The latest
opinion survey shows a solid 53 percent approval rating
for his administration, despite deep public misgivings
over Japan's involvement in Iraq. A new NHK poll
indicates that 69 percent of Japanese now disapprove of
US policy in Iraq, with just 19 percent saying they
support it.
Surprisingly, the controversial
conflict has so far failed to weaken Koizumi's position
and in some respects appears to have strengthened it.
However, as the tribulations of British Prime Minister
Tony Blair clearly illustrate, the unstable situation in
Iraq can easily destroy the career of even the most
skillful of political leaders.
While most
Washington-friendly, pro-war leaders struggle to justify
the increasingly volatile conflict to skeptical
electorates, Koizumi seems strangely immune to most of
its corrosive effects. Former opposition Democratic
Party of Japan (DPJ) leader Kan (who resigned this week
in a pension non-payment scandal) was a bitter opponent
of the war, a position popular among the voters. Even
so, he was unable to utilize the issue effectively
against Koizumi, failing to dent the premier's
popularity.
How has Koizumi managed to defy
political gravity? Can he escape a Blair-style meltdown
in the perilous arena of the United States-led war in
Iraq and its perilous physical rebuilding and political
rehabilitation?
Koizumi kept his pants, Blair
bare Ryoji Yamauchi, a political commentator and
president of Asahikawa University, offers some insights.
He told Asia Times Online, "Koizumi has very skillfully
exploited a mixture of nationalism and North
Korea-phobia to protect himself from Iraq blowback. For
Blair, there is no such cover. He had to justify his
actions with weapons of mass destruction [WMD] threats
that turned out to be false. Koizumi kept his pants,
while Blair was stripped naked."
He elaborated,
"Koizumi made out that Japan had no real choice but to
send troops to Iraq if we wanted American support in
dealing with North Korea. For Blair, going to war seems
to have been an act of faith in [US President George W]
Bush. Koizumi's strategy has been the most successful.
Recently, it enabled him to sidestep the controversy
stirred up by the abuse of Iraqis by the Americans.
Koizumi basically told the public that 'this is a
terrible thing, but nothing to do with Japan'. The fact
that Japanese troops in Iraq have barely stepped ...
outside their luxury base also reinforces the impression
that the torture of detainees is not Japan's
responsibility."
In London, Amnesty
International issued a damning report saying the British
army has been killing civilians in Basra, al-Amara, and
other areas it controls in southern Iraq. The report was
based on research in February and March and documents
what it calls the intentional shooting of an
eight-year-old girl, among other victims; Britain had
said she was shot accidentally. Torture and abuse of
Iraqi prisoners by British troops also has been widely
reported. In March the Red Cross reported grave
violations against civilians and abuse of prisoners by
British troops.
But in Japan, which dispatched
troops on a strictly humanitarian mission, the horrors
encountered by combat troops seem far away. Yamauchi
said, "Koizumi has also fired up the passions of
neo-conservatives and nationalists by portraying the
dispatch of Japanese troops to Iraq as a matter of
national pride. This helps explain why some people
support the dispatch, but oppose American policy in
Iraq. The Iraq war has stirred up some strange emotions
in Japan and many people are now questioning our blind
support for America.
"While Japan might emerge
more militaristic from Iraq," Yamauchi said, "Japanese
people will certainly be less pro-American."
Best of times for Koizumi, worst for
Blair There are many parallels between the two
prime ministers, but as in the best Charles Dickens
novels, destiny has dealt them decidedly different
fates. Prewar, both men were hugely popular within their
respective political realms. In the face of strong
domestic opposition, both men were among the staunchest
international supporters of Bush's invasion of Iraq, and
the two are considered some of the US president's
closest foreign allies.
Currently, the premiers
also face very similar domestic challenges, but as in an
epic novel, their fortunes are now beginning to diverge
radically. While the sun shines on Koizumi, storm clouds
gather around Blair, who has lost his popularity and may
soon find himself out of office.
In both
countries there is a deep sense of public unease about
Iraq policy. Looming elections will give voters a chance
to express their dissatisfaction. In Japan, Koizumi
faces crucial elections in July for the Upper House of
the Diet, or parliament. Early next month, Blair has
local and European elections as well as the mayoral
election in London. A bad result for either leader would
substantially weaken his position and might eventually
lead to resignation.
Koizumi's troops may
stay, Blair's may go In London and Tokyo, the
situation in Iraq is a dominant theme. The most recent
polls indicate that 55 percent of Britons want their
troops pulled out of Iraq after power is transferred to
an interim Iraqi government at the end of June and just
28 percent want them to stay. In Japan, the most recent
NHK poll indicates that 47 percent of people are against
Japanese troops being deployed in Iraq, while 44 percent
support the current dispatch.
For Koizumi this
is an astonishingly good position, especially
considering that Japan has a war-renouncing constitution
and a pacifist world view. Lawmakers had to draft a
special law in order to dispatch Japanese troops to
war-torn Iraq.
For Blair, the opinion surveys
are a disaster, revealing the extent of public
opposition to the country's involvement in the conflict.
The difference between the two polls also illustrates
how skillfully Koizumi has managed the situation, while
for Blair they underscore his miscalculation about the
strength of British anti-war sentiment.
Koizumi awaits electoral success, Blair
awaits defeat With the main opposition DPJ
dumping its leader in the run-up to the July Upper House
elections, it may be difficult for the party to regain
the momentum necessary to mount a serious challenge to
Koizumi's governing Liberal Democratic Party (LDP). In
the recent unified by-elections, which followed the
release of Japanese hostages held in Iraq, the LDP
scored a sweeping victory. A recent poll gave Koizumi a
66 percent approval rating for his handling of the
hostage crisis.
Resolving the hostage issue
along with a strong showing in the July by-elections
would indicate that the LDP holds the political
initiative, despite its unpopular Iraq policy. While
Koizumi is well positioned to consolidate his grip on
power in the forthcoming elections, his British
counterpart is reading from an entirely different
script.
A whole series of recent opinion polls
indicate that Blair is on the ropes over his Iraq
policy, which has deeply angered many of his Labour
Party's core supporters. While other domestic issues
have caused Blair trouble, it is widely acknowledged
that Iraq has inflicted massive damage on his
once-gleaming reputation.
The most recent
opinion poll gave Blair's party just 32 percent support
and the main opposition Conservatives 36 percent,
followed by the smaller opposition Liberal Democrat
Party at 22 percent. The last time Labour sank so
abysmally low in the polls was back in 1987, when
Conservative Margaret Thatcher was prime minister.
Most alarming for Blair, according to the same
poll, two in five of his party's supporters claim they
will use the June local and European elections "to send
a message to the government" by either abstaining or
switching their vote. In an attempt to capitalize on the
feeling of disillusionment with Blair, the leader of
opposition Liberal Democrats, Charles Kennedy, has said
a vote for his party is a vote against the war. Last
year, a similar strategy catapulted his party to a
crushing by-election victory in one of Labour's safest
seats.
If the results are as bad as the polls
predict, Blair will have to fight hard to stay in
office. The only electoral success Blair's party is
likely to enjoy next month is in the London mayoral
election, where the incumbent, Ken Livingston, is
standing for re-election. However, the
independent-minded Livingston is one of Britain's
fiercest opponents of the war. He helped organize events
against Bush when he visited London last year and
refused to meet him. He also famously described Bush as
"the greatest threat to life on this planet that we've
most probably ever seen".
Koizumi's
leadership safe, Blair's in danger Within
Koizumi's own party, there is currently no figure who
could successfully challenge him for the leadership, a
point overwhelming demonstrated last year, when Koizumi
was decisively re-elected as president of the LDP. For
Blair, this also used to be true, but anger about Iraq
has altered the scenario.
Recent opinion polls
suggest that Britain's finance minister, Gordon Brown,
would make a more popular prime minister than Blair and
would likely secure victory for Labour at the next
general election. Brown is also Blair's main political
rival, which has fueled speculation about an imminent
change in leadership. Brown has also been largely silent
on Iraq, creating the impression that it was very much
"Blair's war".
If Labour performs as badly as
predicted, there will be immense pressure on Blair to
resign. Already leading figures in his party have urged
him to consider quitting because he has become an
electoral liability. One of the chief reasons Koizumi's
party has stuck with him is because he is considered an
electoral asset.
If Blair is forced to step
down, it would be a spectacular reversal of fortune for
a man who has won two landslide general election
victories and seemed invincible prior to Iraq. For Bush,
the loss of his greatest international supporter would
be a severe blow in an increasingly difficult
re-election year. Ironically, the only political
survivor may be Koizumi, the leader of a war-renouncing
country. At times, war really does seem like the
unfolding of miscalculations.
J Sean
Curtin is aGLOCOMfellow at the Tokyo-based
Japanese Institute of Global Communications.
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