US-Japan security conference: Déjà vu, but not quite all over again

Kudos to the Center for a New American Security (CNAS) for co-sponsoring June 17-18 THE event of the year on US-Japan security relations, in this the 50^th anniversary of the bilateral security treaty. In its short existence, CNAS seems to have captured the Washington think tank Japan portfolio, displacing the illustrious CSIS and others.

 

Having said that, no one would blame first-day attendees for forgetting that the alliance has just been through one of the most trying and contentious periods in its history – the still-unresolved Futenma controversy. Even the conference name – “150 Years of Amity & 50 Years of Alliance” – inadvertently encouraged a kind of selective memory, skipping over as it does a few years of ‘unfortunate disagreement’ in the mid-20^th century. (The “150 Years” refers to the 1860 visit of Japan’s first-ever diplomatic mission to Washington. The delegation stayed at none other than the Willard Hotel – scene of the CNAS conference.)

 

The underlying, unstated theme was “emphasize the positive,” which was not necessarily a bad thing. Alliance supporters, exhausted after the recent Futenma brouhaha, were in real need of a morale boost. And there are genuine reasons for alliance optimism; common democratic values and common national interests act as powerful forces binding the US and Japan.

 

But there is the small matter of the ongoing overhaul of Japan’s political system, which last year swept the Democratic Party (DPJ) to power, and left Washington’s erstwhile ally, the LDP, in the proverbial dustbin of history. Many in Washington remain decidedly uneasy about the rise of the DPJ, and like to believe that the Obama Administration’s “tough love” over Futenma taught the DPJ a necessary lesson in geo-strategic reality.

 

The DPJ, for its part, is looking ahead to the July 11 Upper House elections, and sees no need to disabuse Washington of such, rather superficial, assessments.

 

And so it went on the first day: a lot of useful happy talk that reminded attendees of the vital importance of the alliance, but little acknowledgement of the enormous changes underway in Japan that will require recalibration of alliance content and management.

 

Four presentations were of particular note.

 

Former Deputy Secretary of State Rich Armitage engaged in his familiar, friendly nudging of Japan to accept greater direct military involvement in international security affairs. Armitage makes no bones of his concern about China’s rising military capabilities and apparent big-power ambitions, and advocates a common US-Japan response. He lamented the “humiliation” inflicted on Japan by China recently in the form of symbolic naval and aerial muscle-flexing toward Japanese vessels in waters between the two countries.

 

For years, Armitage’s unabashedly pro-Japan views were reassuring to LDP leaders and alliance managers in the foreign and defense ministries in Tokyo. But top DPJ leaders are more wary, citing his critical view of diplomatic initiatives toward China undertaken during the Hatoyama administration, and his critique of DPJ opposition to refueling operations in the Indian Ocean. Armitage has repeatedly urged American officials to be more sensitive to the views of Okinawans about the heavy presence of US bases in their prefecture. Months ago he urged the Obama administration to develop a “Plan B” to the controversial Henoko facility planned to replace the Futenma US Marine air station. But Armitage also raised concerns that former Prime Minister Hatoyama’s questioning of the Henoko plan might reveal more general opposition to all US bases in Japan.

 

In his CNAS remarks, Armitage praised Prime Minister Naoto Kan for his unwavering support for South Korea in the wake of North Korea’s sinking of an ROK naval vessel. Curiously left unsaid was that Hatoyama purposely visited Seoul prior to his more celebrated visit to Beijing last October, and that Foreign Minister Okada, within the Hatoyama cabinet, never flinched in backing Seoul in the wake of the North Korean aggression.

 

However inadvertently, Armitage contributed to a prevailing mood in Washington that Hatoyama was somehow anti-American.

 

In reality, Hatoyama was never anti-American, nor has Kan suddenly discovered the virtues of unquestioned alignment with the United States.

 

The ever-optimistic Joe Nye followed Armitage, and declared that the US-Japan alliance is stronger today than 20 years ago. The threat posed by North Korea, the unknown purposes to which a rising China will devote its power, and a range of transnational problems like global warming, all work to bring the US and Japan together.

 

Nye minced no words about North Korea, saying its leaders lie, cheat, and steal. He said the country benefits from the “leverage of weakness.” China, Pyongyang’s only benefactor, is reluctant to crack down on the Kim Jong Il regime for fear of provoking a chaotic collapse. The US, Japan, and China, he says, have to carefully discuss regime collapse contingencies.

 

Meanwhile, he said, the US-Japan alliance serves as a hedge against the possibility that a rising China will not prove cooperative or peaceful.

 

DPJ leaders are generally supportive of this two-pronged approach to Beijing. But they point out with considerable frustration that Hatoyama was widely criticized in Washington for seeking to engage China, while the Obama administration thought nothing of sending several hundred US officials to Beijing for the recent strategic dialogue with Chinese leaders.

 

Meanwhile, Yoichi Funabashi, the influential editor-at-large for Asahi Shimbun, graciously began his talk by thanking the thousands of US servicemen and women who have served in Japan, as well as Japan’s Self Defense Forces, for having helped preserve peace and stability in Northeast Asia. Funabashi, who has come under significant criticism inside Asahi as overly pro-American, outlined an alliance division of labor between a ‘civilian power’ Japan and a ‘military power’ United States.

 

The most anticipated talk of the day came from Akihisa Nagashima, the Kan administration’s parliamentary vice minister of defense. Nagashima, a genuine expert on defense issues, is well-known and well-respected in Washington, where he studied and worked for many years before joining the DPJ and winning election to the Diet.

 

The substance of Nagashima’s talk began with concerns about the rise of China, and the need for the US and Japan together to formulate what he called a credible hedging strategy.

 

Overall, he called for a strengthening of Japan’s operational capabilities, a deepening of operational coordination with US forces, and the expansion of Japan’s peacekeeping operations. Concerning the latter, he was critical of some US officials – left unnamed was former US Assistant Secretary of Defense Richard Lawless – who have called on Japan to scale back on PKO and other overseas operations in favor of concentrating on defense of Japan and immediately surrounding areas. (Lawless is upset that PKO operations lead to time-consuming and sometimes embarrassing Diet questioning, which is actually an argument for a permanent peacekeeping law in Japan rather than a rationale for scaling back peacekeeping.)

 

Nagashima was very familiar with defense jargon common in the US, including the “air-sea battle” concept made popular in the recent Quadrennial Defense Review.

 

He was also comforting to many Americans with his repeated reassurances that Kan is a “realist” on defense issues, not a dreamer or “idealist” in the Hatoyama vein. Kan will surely support the May 28 joint agreement on Henoko, Nagashima said.

 

None of the specifics Nagashima mentioned fell outside of stated DPJ policy. Overall, however, his remarks amounted to an ambitious agenda for cooperation.

 

Personally, Nagashima is an internationalist-realist who favors an expansion of Japan’s military capabilities. He favors more autonomous ability of Japan to help shape and determine its own national security environment. Like Hatoyama and other DPJ leaders, he was scornful of an LDP that seemed to all-too-willingly align with Washington, even though he believes it is fundamentally in Japan’s strategic interest to strengthen the bilateral alliance.

 

He is also part of a DPJ leadership that, above all, wants to convey to Japanese voters a sense of stability and competence prior to the July 11 elections. That includes putting to rest any doubts of the government’s ability to manage the critical US alliance. Thus the repetition of Kan’s full support for the May 28 joint agreement, even though there remains widespread skepticism within the DPJ that the Henoko facility will ever be built.

 

Also conveniently forgotten in Washington is that Nagashima played a critical role in ultimately ending Japan’s refueling of allied naval vessels in the Indian Ocean. In late 2007, when the DPJ was still in the opposition, Nagashima used Diet questioning periods to reveal sloppy accounting of the end-use of oil delivered to American vessels, and demonstrated that some oil was probably used by Americans ships that backed US combat operations in Iraq.

 

The DPJ was very critical of former LDP Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi’s support for the US invasion of Iraq.

 

Details of the continuing Futenma-Henoko saga were barely touched upon in the first-day discussion. We’ll take up the issue soon.