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3 The paradox of East Asian
peace By John Feffer
function to a certain degree, it
retains a positive image for much of the Japanese
population. Not so for North Korea, which is
viewed as the more "clear and present danger",
with the abduction issue as the thin edge of the
wedge.
Japanese public support for
constitutional changes and a "normal" military is
soft. Only 30% support changing Article 9, the key
clause restricting Japan to defensive operations.
Even fewer
support the notion of creating
an actual offensive army. The main opposition
party has done well at the polls by challenging
the ruling party's headlong rush toward a more
offensive military and foreign policy. Given this
soft support from the public, hardliners in the
Liberal Democratic Party have relied on North
Korea to help push through the changes. When North
Korea launched the Taepodong rocket over Japan in
1998, the then-Japanese prime minister joked about
sending Kim Jong-il a birthday present for
providing the rationale to push through what might
have otherwise been unpopular military reforms.
This policy on North Korea has positioned
Japan to the right of the United States during the
six-party talks. Tokyo has been the most skeptical
participant in the discussions and has voiced
considerable concern that Washington will remove
North Korea from various sanction lists
(particularly the "terrorism list"). Japan has
been the most vocal regional backer of the
Proliferation Security Initiative, a missile
defense system, and UN sanctions against North
Korea. Even as North Korea dismantles its Yongbyon
facilities and prepares a list of its nuclear
programs, the influential Japanese newspaper
Yomiuri Shimbun published a multi-part series on
the growing North Korean nuclear threat.
Nevertheless, Japan too can see a value in
a regional peace and security mechanism. Just as
South Korea wants to anchor unification in a
regional process to allay outside anxieties, Japan
recognizes that concerned neighbors will accept
its "normal" military policy more readily within
certain limits. A regional security order can
provide such limits. At the same time, Japan can
also benefit a great deal economically from a
radical drawing down of tensions. The Japanese
construction industry eagerly eyes the profits to
be gained from the capital that could flow from
Tokyo to Pyongyang as a result of any future
normalization agreement.
As such, Japan
plays a pivotal role in determining whether a
regional peace and security order can become a
short-term inevitability or whether it will remain
a long-term impossibility. Tokyo can decide to
emphasize military threat and undermine steps
toward the construction of a regional security
system. Or it can focus on the economic benefits
that would accrue in the case of a regional
detente.
Current Prime Minister Yasuo
Fukuda has promised a "dialogue-oriented" approach
to diplomacy, which would be more conducive to a
regional peace structure than the policies of his
predecessor Shinzo Abe. At the same time, the
Fukuda government has continued to threaten a
rupture with the United States if the latter
removes North Korea from the terrorism list.
And the current Defense Minister is
Shigeru Ishiba, who once threatened to attack
North Korea preemptively. The head of the
Democratic Party, Ichiro Ozawa, has been similarly
ambiguous about his position. In 2002, he boasted
of Japan's ability to produce nuclear weapons and
win any war it decided to seriously wage. Yet
Ozawa has emerged as a chief critic of the
Koizumi-Abe plans to stretch the Japanese
constitution to allow various military activities,
mostly in support of US operations elsewhere in
the world. The Japanese ruling elite contains
different tendencies. Indeed, each Japanese
politician seems to contain both a hawk and a dove
side. The country clearly could go either way.
Japan must make a decision not just about
North Korea but about itself and the role it wants
to play in East Asia. So far, Japan has resisted
undertaking the kind of historical truth-telling
and regional reconciliation that Germany
more-or-less embraced in the Cold War period and
that enabled European integration and then German
reunification to proceed. Japan can play a similar
role in East Asia, but this will likely require a
regime change in Tokyo - not just a change in
government but a fundamental change in perspective
toward history and Japan's neighbors.
So,
we confront another paradox. The country that most
wants to move rapidly from defense to offense
holds the key to whether the region as a whole
moves slowly away from offense and toward defense.
The Japanese constitution has put partial
restraints on the Japanese military for more than
half a century. It would be a fitting legacy if
Japan would help regionalize such principles in a
peace and security structure in Northeast Asia.
A final paradox Even if North
Korea fully commits to complete, verifiable,
irreversible dismantlement of its nuclear program
and the United States endorses a robust
multilateral structure in Northeast Asia, the
chief driving force of militarism in the region
will remain intact: military spending. Between
2002 and 2007, the military budgets of five of the
six countries in the six-party talks increased by
50% or more. US spending, which continues to
represent nearly half of all global military
expenditures, has risen to its largest levels
since World War II.
South Korea has
increased spending from $17 billion to $26
billion, more to placate conservatives leery of
the engagement policy with North Korea than to
meet any significant threat from the North.
Russia, awash in energy revenues, hopes to regain
its lost global status by building and selling
weapons like a superpower. China would like to
have a military that is the match of its
world-class economy. North Korea, under the
military-first doctrine, increased military
spending by 50% even during a continued period of
economic austerity. Only Japan has seen no
significant increase in defense spending, though
quite a few politicians advocate doing away with
the informal ceiling on military expenditures of
1% of gross domestic product and the Bush
administration has tried to push Japan in this
direction.
The countries in the six-party
talks are responsible for some of the fastest
increasing military budgets in the world (the
United States, China, Russia). And together they
account for over 60% of world military
expenditures. [1]
In addition to these
increases in military spending, the United States
and Russia are the world's largest military
exporters and China is in the top ten. China and
South Korea are among the top 10 arms importing
nations. Japan and the United States are working
together on a missile defense program. And, if
North Korea indeed gives up its nuclear program,
it will come under internal pressure to beef up
its conventional forces.
A regional peace
and security mechanism in Asia, if it doesn't
address this central fact of an arms race among
the participants in the six-party talks, will be
toothless. More critically, since the six
countries represent the lion's share of world
military spending and arms exports, a significant
restraint on Pacific militarism will have global
implications. The solution to the global arms race
lies in the hands of countries involved in the
six-party talks - or, rather, the citizens of
those countries who press for a freeze and then
substantial cuts in military spending. If the
world's most profligate military spenders commit
to real demilitarization - and not just a
restraint on North Korea's nuclear program - then
they will resolve the final security paradox of
Northeast Asia.
By so doing, they will
bury the Cold War once and for all.
Note 1. In 2005, the
world spent a little over $1 trillion on the
military. Of that, the United States spent about
$504 billion, Japan $44 billion, China $44
billion, South Korea about $20 billion, and Russia
$31 billion. Given the difficulty in computing
exchange rates, North Korea was not included in
this calculation. Figures in constant 2005 dollars
from Stockholm International Peace Research
Institute.
John Feffer is the
co-director of Foreign Policy In Focus.
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