Japan, US and the North Korea
dilemma By Donald Kirk
WASHINGTON - Japan's Prime Minister Yasuo
Fukuda may have reason to feel that President
George W Bush more or less snubbed him in their
meetings here last week.
Unlike a series
of other heads of state, Fukuda was not invited to
Bush's homestead in Crawford, Texas. Nor was there
any happy talk about going to Crawford "next time
you're here".
The chill in the atmosphere
surrounding the White House welcome for Fukuda
contrasted with the warmth surrounding the
visit of Junichiro Koizumi,
the prime minister who stepped down in favor of
Shinzo Abe, Fukuda's much maligned predecessor.
Koizumi delighted in the visit to Crawford, posing
in a cowboy hat, as had China's former president,
Jiang Zemin, and Russia's President Vladimir
Putin.
So rightist and pro-American was
Abe that he too undoubtedly would have got the
coveted invitation to Crawford had he stayed
around long enough. Clearly, however, the US and
Japan will have to be on much better terms than
they are now if Fukuda is to join the ranks of
foreign visitors to the Bush ranch. Right now, the
US and Japan appear on a collision course in a
corner of the world that both see as vital to
national security, that is, northeast Asia,
specifically the Korean Peninsula.
The
differences between the two were etched clearly as
Fukuda and Bush sparred politely over the question
of how to deal with North Korea. The problem is
simple. Bush is anxious for a foreign policy
"success" that may be inscribed in his "legacy" as
president, and it looks as though detente on the
Korean peninsula may be about the best he can hope
for after a record of failure, disappointment and,
on occasion, half-success in the middle east.
The sense is that Bush may actually be
able to claim the North Koreans have lived up to
their agreements of September 19, 2005, February
13 of this year and, finally, October 3 when they
signed on to a deal for disabling their entire
nuclear complex at Yangbyon and coming through
with a list of their nuclear inventory.
On
the basis of that record, Bush, winding up his
meeting with Fukuda, could cite with a straight
face what he said had been "measurable results"
for disabling Yangbyon. The results were measured,
as the Americans were quick to note, by a US-led
technical team in Yangbyon making sure that all
the critical elements, including the five-megawatt
reactor and the reprocessing facility, were out of
commission, "disabled" and ready for complete
dismantlement.
Fukuda knew exactly what
Bush has in mind as the next step. Bush wants to
be able to remove North Korea from the State
Department's list of nations sponsoring terrorism.
Never mind that North Korea has never
acknowledged, much less apologized, for blowing up
a Korean Air 707 over the Indian Ocean 20 years
ago or assassinating 21 people in an attempt to
kill then-president Chun Doo-hwan in Rangoon in
1983. Never mind a long list of episodes along the
demilitarized zone between the two countries, and
never mind the kidnapping of hundreds of people,
most of them South Korean fishermen but also a
much smaller number of Japanese.
It's the
Japanese, of course, that Fukuda worries about. No
one thinks for a moment that Fukuda worries about
a blown-up Korean plane or the assassination of a
bunch of Koreans.
No way, however, can
Fukuda endorse removal of North Korea from the US
list of terror-sponsoring nations if the North
refuses to come clean on how many Japanese are
held there, how many have died in captivity and
what North Korea plans to do about them. Since
North Korea is not likely to respond to such
concerns, it’s pretty safe to guess that Japan
will be holding out the kidnapping of Japanese as
an obstacle to rapprochement with North Korea for
a long time.
The Japanese stand may seem
not only highly nationalistic but also rather
petty in the grand scheme of relations in
Northeast Asia. While anyone can feel for the
grieving families of kidnap victims, how important
are they in a region where many millions have been
killed in wars for centuries culminating in the
bloodshed of World War II and then the Korean War?
The answer is that the Japanese kidnap
victims stand as symbols among Japanese of their
power complexes, of the rule they once held over
the Korean peninsula and much of China, and of a
willingness, under certain circumstances, to go to
war again.
Japan today cannot "punish"
North Korea for holding its citizens, much less
stage an attack on the North Korean nuclear
complex similar to the attack on the US naval base
at Pearl Harbor in December 1941. The risks would
be far too enormous for Japanese trade and
commerce, for Japan's military alliance with the
US, for Japanese relations with China, a rising
military as well as commercial power.
Less
certain, though, is how Japan will respond in the
next few years. The rightist inclination of a
series of Japanese leaders suggests that Japan is
likely to do away with article nine of the "peace
constitution" as dictated by General Douglas
MacArthur after World War II.
Article nine
forbids Japan from waging war overseas and
prescribes tight limits on the extent to which
Japan can build up militarily. Japan's economy is
so huge that the Japanese military establishment
possesses enough sophisticated weaponry to count
as a major military power, but without the
constitutional constraint Japan would present a
far more serious threat than it now poses in the
region.
The response of Koreans to
Japanese rearmament is going to be complex. As
long as Japan focuses on North Korea, South Korea
can view rising tensions between Japan and North
Korea as a diversion from problems that North
Korea poses for South Korea. If incidents were to
occur, however, it's safe to assume that South
Koreans would not be sympathetic with Japan.
Memories of Japanese domination of the Korean
peninsula run deep, and the underlying fear
persists that Japan might in some unforeseen
conflict attempt again to inflict its own harsh
rule.
For now these fears are abstract.
The United States bases its strategy in the region
on a balance in which the US and Japan cooperate
for mutual defense. The US-Japan "special
relationship" would completely break down were
Japan to resort to a "punitive" military policy
toward North Korea.
The US-Japan
relationship, however, rests on a quid pro quo
under which Japan pays lip service to US aims in
Iraq and Afghanistan. The US also wants Japan to
resume refueling ships in the Indian Ocean - a
long-standing deal that was blocked by Japan's
upper house, now under the control of foes of the
Liberal-Democratic Party that has held sway over
Japan for so long. In the interests of Japanese
support elsewhere in the world, it's conceivable
Bush could hold off on removing North Korea from
the list of terrorist countries.
Then
what? North Korea would not be able to assume the
role it craves in the international financial
system, and the North would go on playing games
with its nuclear program, delaying on shutting
everything down, refusing to get rid of the six to
twelve nuclear warheads it's produced and making
trouble for South Korea in deals for trade and
transportation.
In this impasse, South
Korea's own interests are not altogether clear. A
conservative government may well demand more from
North Korea than the current government has been
getting in return for all its aid and trade. North
Korea may choose to exacerbate tensions, as it has
done so often in the past.
If Bush delays
removing North Korea from the terrorist list, then
possibly the six-party diplomacy of the past few
years could fail. If Bush removes North Korea,
however, then US-Japan relations are likely to
deteriorate. Lost in this discussion is the
underlying question, iIs North Korea no longer a
terrorist state? If nothing else, North Korean
diplomacy has succeeded in dividing allies, a
strategy that enhances North Korea's own security
as surely as nuclear weapons.
Journalist Donald Kirk has been
covering Korea - and the confrontation of forces
in Northeast Asia - for more than 30 years. (Copyright 2007 Asia Times Online Ltd. All
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