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SPEAKING
FREELY
Japan overrated as US ally
By Mindy Kotler
Speaking Freely is an Asia Times
Online feature that allows guest writers to have
their say. Please click here if you
are interested in contributing.
The United States and
Japan have been in the midst of an old-fashioned
trade war. For more than 15 months, Tokyo has closed
its US$1.4 billion market for US beef because of one
case of mad-cow disease discovered in December 2003.
Beef exports are just one of many economic and
foreign-policy disputes grating at the US-Japan
relationship. Until now, the emphasis on military
security has helped characterize relations as the
"best ever". The recent visit of US Secretary of
State Condoleezza Rice, however, highlights the
imprudence of letting one issue control the agenda
when dealing with Japan.
Modernizing
the security alliance with Japan has been
President George W Bush's most important foreign policy
in Asia. His administration began in 2000 with
a written plan and seasoned experts to draw Japan
closer into the alliance. Economic issues were
approached gingerly, due to Japan's fragile
economy and the desire to reduce diplomatic
tensions. The September 11, 2001, terrorist
attacks on the United States hardened this Bush
administration bias toward Japan.
There has been some modest response from Japan.
It has improved its domestic terrorism
legislation, made preparations for revising its
no-war constitution to permit combat, and sent troops to Iraq.
A Japanese oiler now sits in the Indian Ocean
fueling US and allied naval ships, Japan's
Maritime Self-Defense Forces (SDF) did participate
in a Proliferation Security Initiative exercise,
and Tokyo has signed on to a missile defense plan.
Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi did all
this in spite of substantial domestic opposition.
These developments to the United States' advantage
have come at the expense of other potentially
contentious issues with Japan. Besides the beef
issue, other economic irritants include Tokyo's
excessive currency manipulation to sustain the
value of the yen, its unwillingness to take a
leadership role in the Doha trade round, laxity in
financial reconstruction and deregulation, steel
dumping, continuing to keep its market closed to
apples, and its refusal to extradite a Japanese
scientist indicted for economic espionage.
And the scorecard on
foreign policy has not been all that great. In
contrast to US policies, Japan has refused to
halt investment in Iran's Azadegam oilfield or to end aid
to Myanmar, and it has held its own negotiations
with North Korea despite being part of
the suspended six-party negotiations. More troubling
has been Tokyo's series of "rock" grabs in
the territorial waters of China, South Korea, and Russia
and Prime Minister Koizumi's insistence on
visiting the Yasukuni Shrine that holds the ashes
of Japan's World War II soldiers and convicted
war criminals. By aggressively resurrecting
these historical disputes, Japan has succeeded in
deepening the already many fissures between Tokyo and
its Asian neighbors, all of whom are needed by
the United States to maintain regional stability.
Even Japan's gesture of sending troops to
Iraq is beginning to look hollow. Six hundred-odd
members of Japan's SDF are sitting in a
custom-built desert bunker guarded, until last
week, by Dutch troops and now by the British and
Australians. The locals rarely see the Japanese -
who had proclaimed they were undertaking a
strictly "humanitarian" mission of reconstruction
and other aid - and Iraqis express disappointment
about the quality of aid offered. Indeed the one
time the SDF did venture out, it was to set up a
"friendship" monument, which the Iraqis promptly
blew up.
If the advantages of Japan's
support on Iraq are beginning to diminish, so are
those of Japan's alliance support. Japan has
balked at concluding a long-negotiated relocation
of the US Air Force base at Futema, decided to
decrease the "sympathy budget" that supports US
bases in Japan, disagreed with US defense
transformation plans to move the US Army's 1st
Corps Headquarters to Japan, balked at moving US
troops to other locations in Japan outside
Okinawa, and objected to inter-operability between
forces.
Even "resolved", the
beef dispute is unlikely to go away. One result of
the eventual lifting of the beef-import ban is the
likely imposition of high tariffs. By World
Trade Organization rules, Japan can increase its beef
tariff from 38.5% to 50% if there is a
year-on-year increase of more than 17% in imported
beef on a cumulative quarterly basis. This
"safeguard clause" is certain to be activated once
the imports go from zero to anything. In the past,
the US Trade Representative called this move
"inappropriate" and said it "considers this
safeguard to be a right and not a rule, and as
such, believes Japan can choose not to exercise
it".
Yes, Japan has moved incrementally
toward a more contemporary security strategy. How
much of this turns into an "alliance" remains to
be seen. As Prime Minister Koizumi's veiled threat
to have Japan stop buying US Treasuries after
President Bush asked him to open up the beef
market showed recently, economic issues remain
linked to Japan's notion of its national security.
Separating trade and financial concerns from what
defines a US-Japan alliance was only the White
House's wishful thinking.
Mindy
Kotler is founder
and director of the Japan Information Access
Project in Washington, DC. The Project is
an independent, non-profit research center
studying US policy relationships with Japan and
Northeast Asia.
(Copyright 2005
Mindy Kotler.)
Speaking Freely is an
Asia Times Online feature that allows guest
writers to have their say. Please click here if you
are interested in contributing. |
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