The Unquiet Prime Minister
Currie, Duncan
The Unquiet Prime Minister Japan's premier makes his first visit to Washington. by Duncan Currie The last time a Japanese premier met George Bush in America, ten months ago, he wound up touring...
...This fits with the broader U.S...
...He quickly backtracked from his "comfort women" comments after seeing the fuss they provoked, and he agreed last October to launch a joint history project with China, which is now (when Hong Kong is included) Japan's biggest trading partner...
...strategy of engaging China while also checking the rise of Chinese power and preserving a regional order favorable to democracy...
...The alliance remains structurally robust: America and Japan share too many interests for there to be any real breakdown...
...Abe was responding, in part, to a resolution introduced in the House of Representatives by California Democrat Mike Honda, which demands that Tokyo apologize frankly for the wartime sex slavery...
...Hill doesn't see Japan as a dependable ally...
...appeasement—trumps most other worries...
...Though he pledged to honor the Kono Statement—Japan's 1993 apology for the military broth-els—and later apologized for the suffering of the "comfort women" (as they are euphemistically known in Japan), the damage was done...
...By foolishly donning the revisionist historian's cap, Abe distracted attention from his foreign policy, which Foreign Minister Taro Aso likes to call "value-oriented diplomacy...
...Despite the recent controversy, Wen Jiabao visited Japan in mid-April, the first such trip by a Chinese premier in seven years...
...On April 16, the United States, Japan, and India staged their first joint naval exercise...
...The "history issue" flared up again on March 1, when Abe appeared to deny that Japanese soldiers had coerced tens of thousands of Asian women into sexual slavery during World War II...
...Lots of diplomats are really pissed off...
...less comfortable acknowledging this history...
...Junichiro Koizumi won't soon be confused with the King, but the "Sayonara Summit" of June 2006 affirmed his status as one of Bush's favorite foreign leaders...
...Koizumi sent naval ships to the war in Afghanistan and ground troops to the war in Iraq, both in noncombat roles...
...Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has reportedly been reluctant to do so, for fear of angering Beijing...
...Squabbles over historical culpability should not discredit Japan's new foreign policy, which is healthy both for the region and the world...
...According to a BBC World Service Poll released in early March, 84 percent of Indonesians and 70 percent of Filipinos consider Japan a "mainly positive" global influence, as do 66 percent of Americans...
...Indeed, the best safeguard against dangerous Japanese nationalism has always been a healthy U.S...
...All of which the Bush administration has welcomed...
...sanctions...
...Yet that seems overstated...
...Like Koizumi, Abe seeks to move beyond Japan's postwar passivity...
...The February 13 agreement gave North Korea 60 days to shut down its Yongbyon nuclear reactor in return for massive dollops of fuel oil (or equivalent economic aid) and a separate pledge to reconsider U.S...
...Abe's ultimate goal, long prized by Japanese conservatives, is to amend the pacifist Article 9 of Japan's MacArthur-era constitution...
...Thanks in part to its foreign aid and burgeoning internationalism, Japan now commands remarkable goodwill, especially in Southeast Asia...
...alliance...
...Abe speaks frequently of Japan's "new values"—"freedom, democracy, human rights, and the rule of law"—and advocates a quadrilateral strategic dialogue among the United States, Japan, Australia, and India...
...Indeed, "he ignores Japan...
...envoy to the six-party talks on North Korea, Christopher Hill, believes Japan is "isolated" and "radioactive...
...Many Japanese complain of "apology fatigue," insisting their country has sufficiently expressed remorse for Tojo-era crimes...
...Boosting U.S.-Japan relations has been the heart of Bush's East Asia strategy since he took office...
...But when it comes to World War II controversies, Abe needs to take a hint from his predecessor's hero, Elvis Presley, and engage in "a little less conversation...
...Tokyo smells a U.S...
...But now many Japanese worry that Washington is undermining their position on North Korea...
...There won't be nearly as much bonhomie and backslapping when the new prime minister, Shinzo Abe, arrives for his first official U.S...
...The good news for Abe is that, given the apparent unraveling of the February 13 accord, he can make a strong case to Bush that Kim has again proven intransigent and duplic-itous...
...The Western media went ballistic...
...Still, the 60-day deadline came and went without any resolution of Yongbyon...
...Abe seems Duncan Currie is a reporter at The Weekly Standard...
...If Abe's comments were horrendous, so was his timing...
...A lot of what Japan is doing is balancing against China," says Susan Shirk, a top State Department Asia hand under President Clinton and author of the new book China: Fragile Superpower...
...Koizumi apologized several times for the damage wrought by Japanese militarism...
...On March 13, he signed a defense pact with Australian prime minister John Howard, the first formal Japanese security agreement with a country other than America...
...According to this official, who is very pro-Japan, the chief U.S...
...The problem is Chris Hill," says one prominent Japanese journalist, a self-described "realist" who requested anonymity...
...But Abe goes a step further, often sugarcoating those crimes...
...Naturally, Kim Jong Il upped the ante right away, demanding the Treasury Department first release the entire $25 million in North Korean assets at the Macau-based Banco Delta Asia that had been frozen since 2005...
...It's hard to disagree...
...Other senior Asia hands at Foggy Bottom reportedly share this opinion...
...The overall impression is that we went wobbly," says the former Bush official...
...policy shift: from pressure and isolation to piecemeal concessions...
...And Abe believes "it is essential that Japan strengthen its alliance with the United States," calling the bilateral relationship "invaluable and irreplaceable...
...bases on Okinawa, free trade, and energy policy...
...Yet in many ways this trip is more significant, as the alliance has hit a rough patch...
...by Duncan Currie The last time a Japanese premier met George Bush in America, ten months ago, he wound up touring Graceland and serenading his host with Elvis numbers...
...Since Abe took power in September, Tokyo has upgraded the Japan Defense Agency to formal ministry status and intensified cooperation with the Pentagon on missile defense...
...Its image may be mud in China and South Korea, but Australia, India, Vietnam, Thailand, and Singapore are all pursuing closer ties...
...visit this week...
...But for Japan, the specter of North Korea—and the fear of U.S...
...But Abe is more ideological than Koizumi...
...Thus, Abe's hope that Bush will support a four-way U.S.-Japan-Australia-India dialogue...
...As the Nikkei Shimbun, a centrist Japanese financial newspaper, wrote in a March 16 editorial, America must reassure Japan that it will not "settle for easy cosmetic solutions" to the North Korean threat...
...It's extremely bad politics internationally," says a former Bush administration official...
...Whether this journalist is correct—and his view of Hill appears to be widespread among Japanese media and policymakers—Japan reacted sourly to the February 13 North Korea nuclear deal, which Hill brokered...
...The Bush administration agreed...
...There will be plenty else for Bush and Abe to discuss, including the relocation of U.S...
...Farther down the road, Pyongyang could gain diplomatic recognition and more aid in return for full nuclear disclosure and dismantling...
...Abe, for his part, routinely stresses the need for "mutually beneficial" Sino-Japanese relations...
...He hopes to drag Japan from its guilt-driven foreign policy toward a "proactive diplomacy" based on "common values," such as freedom and democracy...
...He gives credence to Japan's World War II revisionists and regards the Tokyo Trials with suspicion...
...But Abe stained this moral clarity when he denied Japan's own record of kidnapping...
...Japan can justifiably claim the high ground in its dealings with North Korea, whose agents abducted at least 13 (and perhaps many more) Japanese citizens in the 1970s and 1980s...
Vol. 12 • April 2007 • No. 31
