The Three States Solution - an immoderate suggestion

Shisaku readers: This has little or nothing to do with Japanese politics. However, this is my blog and I needed to get this off my chest. Thanks.

MTC

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The Three States Solution

People of the United States of America: there is a way out of this.

Imagine if in the first week of January in 2017, newly elected and returning members of Congress gather as they do in Washington. However, in an agreed-to change, the Representatives and Senators of the North Atlantic and Pacific Coast states are not present. Instead the members of Congress from those regions gather elsewhere – the members from the North Atlantic states in Boston and the members of Pacific Coast states in Salem, Oregon. They all swear oaths to uphold the Constitution. However, in Boston and in Salem, the name of the country is changed. The Boston group swears allegiance to the Union of North Atlantic States (Nordlantica). The Salem group swears allegiance to the Union of Pacific States (Pacifica).

On January 20th, three presidents are sworn into office. In Washington D.C. President Donald Trump is sworn into office without incident. In Boston President Hillary Clinton is sworn in (as is Vice-President Bernard Sanders). In Salem Hawaii-born President Barack Obama takes his third oath of office as president.

The divorce is peaceful: there are no border fences; commercial, transportation links stay open. The U.S. dollar remains the common currency for the interim as the New York and San Francisco Federal Reserve banks take over the role of central bank for the two new countries. Persons and corporations in the two new nations receive instructions on where to send their Internal Revenue Service checks by April 15. Elements of the Federal Government in each region remain in place and functioning, with the photos on the walls of the president and vice-president being the only initial indication of the new situation.

In security and foreign policy, the new states divide up the assets and responsibilities of the pre-2017 United States of America. The tanks, planes, aircraft carriers and submarines are apportioned equally. Nordlantica automatically becomes a member of NATO and takes up U.S. responsibilities there. Pacifica similarly takes up all current U.S.A. alliances with Asian countries – allowing President Trump and members of his administration to decide whether to involve their nation in world affairs or not.

Another major change comes in the matter of nuclear weapons. In order to maintain world balances and in line with the presumed preferences of their publics, Nordlantica and Pacifica turn over all nuclear weapons in their possession to the U.S. of A. (the new formal acronym, to distinguish the remainder state from the pre-2017 U.S.A). They join the United Nations and the world community as declared non-nuclear weapons states.

In time, the physical differences between the three countries emerge. New passports and currencies are issued, new national anthems and national flags are chosen. The G7 becomes the G9. Pacifica joins the TPP; Nordlantica the TTIP; the U.S. of A. joins neither. Instead, U.S. of A. commentators weigh the pros and cons of their nation joining OPEC.

To be sure the divorce may not be painless. Post-breakup Nordlantica and Pacifica may face a surges in residency and citizenship requests, even refugee flows, from persons seeking to flee an unhealthy human and civil rights climate in the U.S. of A. Presidents Clinton and Obama may be calling on the citizens of their respective nations to be as inclusive toward immigrants as they currently claim to be. 

* * *

Too fanciful? The Soviet Union broke up peaceably. The Czech Republic and Slovakia divorced without acrimony. Trying to hold culturally and politically divided countries like Yugoslavia and Russia, by contrast, led to catastrophic human/civil rights abuses and war.

A common theme in recent years is how divided the U.S.A. has become. Indeed, like the War of the Roses or the Gempei wars, the division is color-coded: Red America versus Blue America. The mystery is why Americans keep trying, election after punishing election, to stay together. Certainly they live with the legacy of the Civil War, with a stern marble Abraham Lincoln and his “A House divided against itself cannot stand” looming over their heads. However, the current situation – of mutual loathing, street protests, alliances of convenience with foreign powers, plotting and counterplotting to game the Electoral College, depression and anger -- cannot stand either.

So as regards the "united" part of the United States of America, why not, as a rather popular tune of recent years advised, just let it go? As three nations, indivisible, Americans would be a lot happier.

Abe Shinzo's Secrets

About three weeks ago Timothy Langley and I had a long YouTube conversation about the implications of the Wikileaks release of July 31 (Link). The release itself featured rather innocuous information regarding Japanese trade and climate change thinking in 2007. What was stunning was the information demonstrated that the United States' National Security Agency was intercepting, translating and then disseminating the transcripts of the telephone calls of Japanese government officials in Tokyo.

At that time of our conversation Mr. Langley told me that despite efforts of the current governments to downplay the significance of this spying, the story was not going away.

Looks like he was right:

Abe Asks U.S. to Investigate Alleged NSA Spying on Japanese Government
Wall Street Journal

TOKYO—Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Wednesday asked U.S. President Barack Obama to investigate alleged spying by the National Security Agency on the Japanese government and companies, Mr. Abe’s spokesman said.

Documents posted online by WikiLeaks last month suggested that conversations involving government officials, central bankers and Japanese companies had been secretly intercepted by the U.S. agency. In a phone conversation Wednesday morning Tokyo time, Mr. Obama expressed regret that the issue has caused trouble for Mr. Abe and the government, according to Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga...

(Link)

It is a rare instance where the United States feels a need to express its regrets to a leader of Japan. Abe, however, has received an apology of sorts (Mr. Abe now knows what it is like to hear "Regret" when what one wants to hear is "Sorry") both from U.S. Vice President Joe Biden (Link) and now from President Obama himself.

During the recording of the podcast on August 7, I thought the issue with legs would be the hunt for the door openers. The extent and depth of the infiltration into the communications of government officials, particularly the extraordinary number of telephone numbers tapped inside Japan's Ministry of Finance, indicated full cooperation, either knowing or unknowing, of Japanese entities and individuals. My thought was that the current Abe administration would demand to know who allowed the NSA access to Japan's communications networks or even physically into the ministries and the Prime Minister's Residence, that these collaborators or dupes might be reprimanded or even punished.

My thinking now, in light of Prime Minister Abe and President Obama having a conversation on a subject that should have been closed by the previous conversation with Vice President Biden, is that the prime minister has a much bigger worry on his mind.

The Wikileaks release featured analyses of internal communications from Abe's first term in office. The list of high priority targets includes "EXEC SCY TO CHIEF CAB SCY" - the executive secretary to the chief cabinet secretary -- meaning that the U.S. was listening in on the calls made by the executive secretary of the person who is the operations command center of Japan's bureaucracy, the Cabinet and the Prime Minister's staff.

Bad enough news for the alliance-- one has to have a serious attitude problem to dare tap such a nexus of power in a country that supports the U.S. in almost every instance (not to mention figures out how to pay for a lot of what the U.S. wants to do).

The timing of the tapping activity and closeness to the center of the intercepts, however, raises a searing question for Abe: what, if not everything, the United States government knows and has shared about what transpired inside the Prime Minister's Residence in late July, August and early September, 2007.

The facts that his Diet colleagues do not know.

The facts that his supporters do not know.

The facts that possibly only his closest aides, Aso Taro and Yosano Kaoru know.(Link)

The sports newspapers and the weeklies accounts of Abe's last weeks in office in 2007 were pretty wild and woolly. Abe has been insulated from the repercussions of these "revelations," however, because everyone knows the sports newspapers and weeklies will print anything, no matter how implausible, misrepresented or just plain made up.

But if the U.S. was listening in to the calls being made by Yosano's executive secretary, then some folks, maybe a lot of folks, might just know...the truth.

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Only semi-prophetic was I on Monday. While I did guess correctly that a close associate of the prime minister would claim the Abe administration's prudent stewardship of the Japanese economy was the reason for the sudden surge in the value of the yen, I missed guessing the identity of the perpetrator. I had hoped the claimant would be LDP Political Research Council Chair Inada Tomomi. Instead, it was the equally close Friend of Shinzo, Economic Revitalization Minister Amari Akira, who checked in with the fundamental stability claim (Link).

Image courtesy: Prime Minister's Residence

Imagine Abe Shinzo, Idealist Liberal Icon

You may Say I'm a Dreamer
But I'm Not the Only One.
I Hope Someday You'll Join Us
And the World Will be as One.

-- John Lennon, "Imagine" (1971)

In our future, the highway to peace and prosperity rolls out wide before us. Our responsibility to the next generation is to bring this region's potential for growth into full bloom.

So once again, Japan for the rule of law. Asia for the rule of law. And the rule of law for all of us. Peace and prosperity in Asia, forevermore.

Abe Shinzo

Keynote Address to the Shangri-La Dialogue

30 May 2014

- He is for rapid and dramatic increases in the percentage of women in corporate management, and has set a goal of reserving 30% of all government positions for women.

-- He has ordered a massive build out of child care to eliminate waiting lists.

-- His government is considering eliminating the deduction for non-working spouses, which will encourage (force?) a movement of Japan’s highly trained but underemployed women into the work force.

- His government has warned the sprawling and electorally powerful agricultural cooperatives that their days are numbered.

- He replaced a conservative governor of the Bank of Japan with a radical bent on creating 2% inflation, no how lousy the BOJ’s portfolio becomes.

- His government is confronting the issue of the mistaken transfer of wealth from the young to the old even though seniors vote in vastly greater numbers and may punish his party at the polls.

- His government and party have approved massive fiscal stimulus bills in the face of daunting government deficits and national government debt.

- He is a strong advocate for labor immigration, setting a target of 220,000 new immigrant worker arrivals per year ad infinitum.

- He is emphasizes the importance of the rule of law and collegiality in international affairs. (Link - check out the intelligent comments!)

- He browbeats corporate managements for their stinginess in paying their workers and their failure to offer more permanent employment positions.

- He speaks about "proactive pacifism" -- not just the defense of Japan but greater participation by Japanese forces in the defense of others.

Sure he has some legacy issues -- Yasukuni, history awareness, education, the Special Secrets Protection Act (which, upon reflection, should be called the "Protection of Lying Ministers From Embarrassing Revelations Act"). Sure he still listens to and employs some out-and-out-idiots (Link) and has a Nigel Tufnelesque hard time discerning stupidity from cleverness. Sure he is way too close to some corporate empire builders.

However, in a world where demagogues offering nativist, isolationist, oligarchic, constrictive and violent solutions to problems, Abe is rowing hard in the opposite direction. Indeed, with President Barack Obama crippled by his low popularity and the likely loss of control of the U.S. Senate to the Know-Nothing Republicans, Abe Shinzo should perhaps now be considered the standard bearer of liberalism around the world.

Imagine that.

Very Kind Of Them #20

Lucy Craft interviewed a bunch of smart, smart folks - Andrew Horvat, Miyake Kunihiko and Michishita Narushige -- for a report on President Barack Obama's Senkakus declaration and the significance of rebalancing for Japan.

And she also talked to me. (Link - audio)

Out of my depth again.

Rebalancing is what it says it is. It is taking U.S. attention away from regions where leaders and elites spend too much of their time thinking about how to destroy human life to the region of the world which has been working the hardest to improve the sad lot of humanity. Forces within China, tempted by the weakening of the international system by the many stupdities of America's great national nightmare (a.k.a., the G. W. Bush Presidentcy), wish for understandable but selfish reasons to throw a wrench into the workings of this the greatesst prosperity engine in human history.

The U.S. and its allies wish only to offer the suggestion, "Chinese patriots, think this through first. Cogitate upon whether what you dream of doing is really worth the pain."

Very Kind Of Them #18

Kirk Spitzer asked me a few questions about the Obama visit last week, particularly why there was not a clear public delineations of differences as to history, or at least not during the time President Obama was in Tokyo:

"Obama signals deepening commitment to Japan, Abe"

I tossed out a few more ideas, which perhaps I should post sometime later this week.

Yeah, It Is A Golden Week, For Him

"You know, for some reason, I just feel this belongs around my neck."


Last week, Abe Shinzo got U.S. President Barack Obama to say the magic words: the Japan-U.S. Security Arrangements cover the defense of the Senkakus. (Link)

He hosted the president (OK, His Majesty was the nominal host, it being a state visit and all) in a visit without a hint of public acrimony and even a little warmth in between the two leaders. (Link)

His negotiators went nose-to-nose with their American counterparts in Trans Pacific Partnership talks...and when those negotiators did not see on the table a deal they wanted, they asked for a break, leaving the Americans at once flabbergasted and unable to express their frustration in public. (Link - J)

When President Obama made a strong statement in South Korea criticizing the treatment of the comfort women, Abe found it in himself to express his own, heartfelt sorrow (No coughing back there! You hear me? I mean it, no coughing!) at the suffering of the women. (Link - J)

The Liberal Democratic Party and New Komeito-backed candidate won the Kagoshima District #2 by-election, completing what seems to be the LDP's and the Abe Cabinet's Immaculate Extrication from the Tokuda family's systematic and flagrant violations of election laws. (Link)

And to top off the weekend, the pro-Henoko base LDP-New Komeito-Democratic Party of Japan-backed candidate in the Okinawa City election defeated his anti-Henoko rival, demonstrating that not even the humiliation of the local LDP chapter over the Henoko base and/or the pressure put on ailing Okinawa governor Nakaima Hirokazu could defeat the ruling coalition's punching power. (Link - J)

If the equities markets do not go into free-fall this morning over the delay in any sort of deal on TPP -- which they probably will not, given that no one wants to mess up his or her Golden Week holiday plans -- the PM is likely to be in an insufferable state of smug satisfaction all the way to May 7.

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Photo image courtesy: Abe Shinzo official Facebook page.

Japan's Research Whaling: The Few, The Proud, The Few

The poor wee thing...

The speeches were defiant, the fists were pumped. Representatives from faraway locales feeling similarly beset came to show their support. (Link -J)

However, in the the bleak emptiness of what was once a crowded port area, the pathos of the start of Ayukawa's 2014 research whaling season could not be missed. As a surfeit of helmeted public security forces putt-putted around in the tiny harbor, disorganized ranks of hunters, their feeble numbers boosted by platooned female office staff members in uniform, pledged to fight to keep Japan's whaling traditions alive.

If this was an pep rally, it was for an industry on its way out. (Link - J -video)

The 18 April 2014 Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries handout makes clear, Japan's ambitions as regards a revival of commercial whaling are modest and growing ever more so.

In the aftermath of the International Court of Justice's invalidation of the Southern Ocean pelagic research whaling program (JARPA II), the Ministry hopes to submit a new Southern Ocean research whaling plan to the International Whaling Commission's scientific committee next year, with MAFF offering no projection of a desired date for an actual resumption of JARPA permit whaling.

As for the North Pacific research whaling program (JARPN II), rather than being increased to compensate for the loss of the southern hunt, it has seen its quotas lowered for all species, with a complete abandonment of the pelagic hunts for Minke and Sperm whales. (Link - J)

Species quotas for Japan's northern great whale hunts in 2014, and the previous year's quotas:

Coastal whaling

Minke 100 animals (120)

Pelagic whaling

Minke 0 (100)
Bryde's 20 (50)
Sei 90 (100)
Sperm 0 (10)

The start of the coastal portion of JARPN II 2014 was delayed for four days. According to new reports the cause of the delay was the implementation of measures responding to the ICJ's ruling. However, a wish to delay the opening of the season until after U.S. President Barack Obama was well outside the country might also have played a part in the decision.

Hayashi Yoshimasa, you do eat right (Link) but where is thy ambition? Why do you not adhere to the tradition of obdurate stupidity of the great MAFF minister of old?

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Screen shot of first Minke whale taken in 2014 coastal research whaling hunt courtesy NHK.

Very Kind Of Them #17

Lesley Clark of McClatchy News has done a terrible thing: she has reported my views accurately and succintly.

"World War II Complicates Obama's Trip to Asia"

Talk about a tiny basket of ideas that manages to offend just about everybody.

A Pair Of Readings For The Obama Visit

Two folks I like a lot, whom I am on good terms with, and who might as well be on separate planets, writing about this week's visit by President Barack Obama.

Sheila Smith
"Our Anxiety as the President Heads to Asia" (Link)

Stephen Harner
"After Multiple Dissings, A Wary Japan 'Welcomes' Obama" (Link)

The really fun part of the exercise? Knowing which one is the ex-diplomat.

Nota Bene - Harner knows I really disagree with his assessment of Robert Kelly's essay for The Diplomat.

Prior To President Obama's Arrival - A Question Of Atmospherics

Source: Clay's Flickr photostream, under a Creative Commons License.

The Sunday visit to Yasukuni Shrine by Chairman of the National Public Safety Commission and Kishi family retainer Furuya Keiji (Link), the April 12 visit to the shrine of Minister of Interal Affairs and Communications Shindo Yoshitaka (Link), Prime Minister Abe Shinzo's sponsorship yet again of a masakaki decoration for the shrine during its Spring Festival (Link) and the battalion of members of the Diet scheduled to pay their respects at the shrine on Tuesday, all right on the eve of the Obama visit should not necessarily be viewed as provocative pandering to revisionist, fantabulist followers in defiance of the United States's message of disappointment at Prime Minister Abe Shinzo's visit on 26 December 2013 (Link)and the laying of wreaths at Chidorigafuchi by visiting U.S. Secretaries Chuck Hagel and John Kerry on 3 October 2013. (Link)

Instead getting all the visits of those who are just hell bent to pay some sort of tribute to Japan's loyally self-sacrificing imperial subjects out of the way before President Obama's plane touches down is supposed to be as a concession of sorts to the United States.

The insistence of the current level of reverence as moderation will suffer a loss of credibility if

a) either Finance Minister Aso Taro, State Minister for Administrative Reform Inada Tomomi and/or Education Minister Shimomura

b) any Liberal Democratic Party member of the Diet shows up at Yasukuni during the Obama visit.

Aso has been keeping his head down ever since his infamous "Is there not something to learn from the overthrow of the Weimar Constitution?" musings of last year (Link) and Inada and Shimomura deferred their visits. If any of these three ministers pops up in Kudanshita any time between now and Wednesday noon -- then we should not be surprised to see fireworks -- which in this blessed land are usually a summer phenomenon.

Incidentally, I recently visited the attached Yushukan (Link). I had long eschewed going, not wishing to give a yen to the shrine or its affiliates. However, when a certain officer of the Congressional Research Service asked if I were available to tag along on a visit, I broke my longstanding vow.

On the whole I found the place a lot less lurid than I expected, with the arguments more allusive and evasive than I could have imagined. Some parts are heinous -- the description of the fall of Nanjing, for example. However, on the whole, I came away with the feeling of the hopelessness of Japan's imperial enterprise, with all its jury-rigged suicide systems and walls of the faces of, as Steven Stills once wrote about a different time and a different struggle, "All the brave soldiers |That cannot get older." (Link - video)

If the goal of the Yushukan is to fill one with a sense of awe or sadness, it fails. What even the mildly questioning mind comes away with is a sense of the essential and obvious stupidity of the Japanese imperial enterprise.

The section of the museum on the build up to the Pacific War, with the focus on Japan's resources crisis in the face of U.S. embargoes, is a window into the fear Japanese conservatives have about energy, particularly nuclear energy and the nuclear fuel cycle. Looking at the exhibits at the Yushukan it is not surprising that the present generation -- who have never known anything but abundance -- are nevertheless paranoid about Japan ever being pushed into making a strategic choice out of a want of raw materials.

Rex Omnis Qui Videt, Shinzo Abe Est

© Jeff Cable Photography

O Fortuna!
Velut luna
Statu variabilis!

O Fortune!
Varying in state
like the Moon!

- Carl Orff, Carmina Burana (1935-36)

Yesterday morning I was seated in the far left side of the Ascot banquet hall of the Hotel Okura. From out of the dark on the far right, avoiding a piece of equipment dropped in his path (the special police had something to say about that afterward) walked in Abe Shinzo, the prime minister of Japan.

Or at least that is what my eyes, my program and everyone around me was telling me.

The man delivered a set speech for fourteen minutes and fifteen seconds, then sat down in an armchair answering questions from the chairman of the day's proceedings for another ten and a half minutes.

I have had Abe Shinzo in my line of sight since October 2005, when I attended a conference on Japan's defense at the hotel nearest the Kantei. Abe, the then Chief Cabinet Secretary, was the keynote mealtime speaker.

The speech then was unimpressive. The phrase best describing its delivery: "still wet behind the ears."

Halfway through Abe seemed to lose himself, using the expression ware-ware ("we" "us") to explain what his grandfather Kishi Nobusuke was doing during the build up toward the signing of the revised Security Arrangements between Japan and the United States.

I turned to my tablemate (Dr. Richard Samuels of MIT) with a look on my face of "Did Abe Shinzo just refer to himself as a comrade-in-arms of his grandfather during the Ampo struggle, when he was all of six years old?"

I had Abe Shinzo right in my face every day during his first year as prime minister. I recall the expression of utter, contemptuous boredom on his visage on last day of the Diet session, as he sat on the dais watching vote after railroading vote in the House of Councillors plenary session, the opposition having left the chamber (except for the Communists, who stayed) after the insult of the morning votes -- and the look of his eyes, visible just over the shoulder of a desperate and sweating SP, as he was driven to a specially prepared ward in the Keio University Hospital just seven weeks later.　(Link)

I have watched him on a daily basis in the fifteen months since his return to the premiership: struggling to remember his routines, spluttering in Diet interpellations on the simplest of questions, mawkishly flailing his way through some simply embarrassing speeches. (Link)

That man, the Abe Shinzo I know, or thought I knew, did not show up at the Japan Summit 2014.

Someone else did.

The person called Abe Shinzo at the dais and in the armchair yesterday was not Abe Shinzo, grandson of Prime Minister Kishi Nobusuke, grandnephew of Prime Minister (and Nobel Peace Prize winner) Sato Eisaku. He was Abe Shinzo, Prime Minister of Japan, President of the Liberal Democratic Party -- pure and simple. When he sat down in the armchair to answer the hard ball questions thrown at him by The Economist's Asia chief Dominic Ziegler, throwing them right back at his interrogator when when answering was not in his interests ("Since what you are asking pertains to what tactics my country will be using [at the Trans Pacific Partnership negotiations] I obviously cannot provide details") -- Abe owned that chair like I have never seen any Prime Minister of Japan own a piece of furniture. Not quite a Vladimir Putin slouch -- but Abe still sat in that chair as if he had brought it with him from home.

This was not your "wet behind the ears" botchan, acting out the role of prime minister with the shadow of imposture looming over him. Those who still look at Abe Shinzo that way are living in the past -- and it might as well be the distant past.

Was Abe's astonishing poise, humor and self-confidence all an act?

Maybe. But then he and his handlers should be triply congratulated for having him put on this act in front of not just the domestic and international news media but an overflow crowd of the world's investment community -- at a time when Abenomics in need of a PR boost...and furthermore on the eve of an incredibly important official visit by U.S. president Barack Obama.

If the Abe Shinzo who showed up yesterday meets an Obama delegation believing that he has to ingratiate himself to them, then the Americans are going of find out what the phrase "hitting a brick wall" means.

Failure at the final push for a TPP agreement this weekend? Abe Shinzo will not give a damn -- and nobody around him will either.

Abe's Cabinet is enjoying an insane 60% support rating (latest Kyodo News poll). His party holds the commanding heights in the Diet, the policy debate and the public's imagination. The number of persons answering the question of "Why do you support Prime Minister Abe?" with the plaintive and honest, "Because there is no other suitable person around" is climbing. "Because there is no other suitable person around" is indeed now the most common answer to the question of why voters support the PM, outdistancing the "high expectations for the economy" response (29% of respondents versus 21% again in the latest Kyodo poll).

And now even the Chinese and the South Koreans are trying to make nice. (Link)

Abe Shinzo 2.0, Spring Edition is so comfortable in his own skin he is even letting his beloved hair go, allowing the gray to show.

Fortune.

Changeable like the Moon.

Indeed.


Later - provisional translation of the Prime Minister's speech to The Economist Japan Summit 2014: "Japan towards 2020: time to get started." (Link)

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Partial reproduction of photo image of 15 April 2014 "blood moon" by professional photographer Jeff Cable. Click here for the original image and here to read the explanation of how it was created.

Photo image of Abe speaking at the Japan Summit 2014 courtesy JapanRealTime.

Three Cartoons By Sato Masaaki On The Abe-Park Meeting

Tokyo Shimbun editorial cartoonist Sato Massaki is a national treasure. With the U.S.-Japan-South Korean trilateral meeting on the fringes of the nuclear security summit at The Hague, the first face-to-face meeting of any substance between the leaders of Japan and South Korea since Abe Shinzo became prime minister, only hours away, here are a trio of recent Sato cartoons on the fraught Abe-Park relationship.

[N.B. The sequence of cells within a cartoon is supposed to be read from the top right to the bottom left.]

"A Collection of Contemporary Disappeared Items"
Published: 18 March 2014


Click on Image To Enlarge

Relevant URLs:

"Japan's Beethoven Admits He Is A Fraud"
http://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-26039226

"Reliability of STAP cells 'breakthrough' questioned"
http://www.nhs.uk/news/2014/03March/Pages/Reliability-of-stem-cell-breakthrough-questioned.aspx

"For Abenomics, 'Third Arrow 'Is Hardest -- And Most Needed"
http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2014/02/25/for-abenomics-third-arrow-is-the-hardest/


"Ending? Beginning?"
Published: 22 March 2014


Click on Image To Enlarge

Two hooks here. The seemingly eternal run of noontime variety show Waratte ii to mo ("It's OK to Laugh") comes to a close on April 1. Abe, in tribute to the show's longtime appeal and in order to counter his reputation of being a stiff, made the first and what will be last appearance by a sitting prime minister on the show on Friday. (Link)

The recurring bit in the show is to have the guest call up a "friend" on the telephone and invite that friend to appear on the show. The friend, after some banter, is supposed to agree with a cheery "that sounds good."

In reality, Prime Minister Abe called up superstar actor and musical performer Kimura Takuya, who did his part by replying cheerily in the affirmative. In Sato's cartoon world, Abe calls up President Park of South Korea. Her response to his invitation to appear is a grudging, scowling, shrugging resignation.


"We Want This To Be A Match Without An Audience”
Published 25 March 2014


Click on Image to Enlarge

The title reference is to the Urawa Reds - Shimizu S-Pulse match played to a stadium of empty seats in a league punishment for a fan group's display of a xenophobic banner. (Link)

However, the audience behind Madame Park that Mr. Abe and for the most part U.S. President Barack Obama want gone is composed of North Koren leader Kim Jong-un, a South Korean flag-waving President Xi Jinping of China and the comfort woman statue installed both in front of the Japan Embassy in Seoul and in a park in the California city of Glendale.

On Hugh White's China-American Mirages

A huge　fan am I of the East Asian Forum (Link). Dr. Peter Drysdale and associates publish pertinent articles by smart authors on a huge variety of topics. Though I wish I could be more omnivorous, I usually have to restrict myself to the contributions on Japan. While not everything that gets published is great (an occasional contribution by yours truly slips in, for example) the EAF essays in the build up and aftermath of the 21 July 2013 election were thought-provoking and enriching. Stalwarts authors like Aurelia George Mulgan and Soeya Yoshihide were their usual fascinating selves, while new talents like Ben Ascione and Toshiya Takahashi offered balanced broader pictures of the landscape of this blessed land's politics.

In its admirable open-mindedness the EAF every so often publishes a huge white whale of an essay that demands attention and, if possible, a harpooning. The Moby Dick of this weekend, which has caused me to leave the confines of my usual Japan-only reading list, comes from Dr. Hugh White of Australia National University: "Containing or counterbalancing China." (Link)

Dr. White is a prolific and much-quoted author of Big Cross-Temporal Themes And Hard-Nosed Advice pieces about foreign policy. In this essay, he tries to distill and transmit his ideas on the future of American power in the Indo-Pacific region in the face of a rising China, a theme he has explored at length elsewhere. (Link)

The essay, after a little revving up of mental engines, launches with a cascade of related questions and a brief answer.

The key questions are pretty simple: what is the aim of the current US policy towards China? What are its likely costs? Will it succeed? What if it fails? And what are the alternatives?

America's primary aim in relation to China today is to preserve its position as the primary strategic power in Asia. This aim is seldom scrutinised or even acknowledged. It is taken for granted because it assumes that primacy is the only conceivable strategic role for America in Asia, that perpetuating US primacy is thus the only alternative to strategic withdrawal, and that US primacy therefore provides the only possible basis for a stable and secure future for Asia, as it has done for so many years past. And it assumes that everyone else wants Asia to remain peaceful, and that they all agree that continued US primacy is the only way to ensure that.

Uhhhhhh…no.

And no, no, and uhhhhh...no.

While the usual pattern is to smack the first answer, then knock off each subsequent answer in turn, that is not the best way to proceed here. The last three statements can be disposed of without refutation, as they are little more self-aggrandizing positioning of the author as a seer who has thought about the implications of China's rise -- and detractors as acolytes of dead religions who have not examined their received notions.

Which leaves the first answer to the first question as worthy of contention:

"America's primary aim in relation to China today is to preserve its position as the primary strategic power in Asia."

No.

America's aim in its Asia Pacific policy is not primacy. It is presence with depth. The U.S. wants East Asia to operate in ways that further U.S. interests in the aggregate. It is agnostic on the means by which this influence is exercised or the particular hierarchy of interests it is pursuing at any one moment. What the U.S. seeks most of all, however, is to never be reliant on an ideal set of reactions by regional participants to systemic stress or a crisis.

Call it the anti-Blanche DuBois Strategy, where the ultimate goal is to never be dependent on the kindness of strangers. (Link)

Primacy in a region is only one means of realizing U.S. policy. Building up the capacities, either individually or in concert, of allies is another.

That U.S. policy is not obsessed with being the big boss but is instead careful about remaining flexible and sensitive to change in the region is why U.S. community of Japan watchers is so split over the downfall of Hatoyama Yukio. Hatoyama had faults by the bucketful (Link). He was clearly doomed by his dependence on then Secretary-General Ozawa Ichiro and Chief Cabinet Secretary Hirano (The Stupidest Person To Ever Serve in the Kantei) Hirofumi.

However, the United States government's intransigence in the face of Hatoyama's attempt to reopen the issue of the relocation of Marine Corps Airbase Futenma -- a conversation the United States had an obligation to have, as Japan had just changed governments after decades of a single party's dominance -- set the stage for Hatoyama's whirling dervish death spiral of contrite reversals.

The Obama Administration's intransigence, undermining as it did the duly elected government of an ally, leaves the Japan analysis community divided into antagonistic tribes. On the one side is the shrugging (and occasionally smirking) defenders of U.S. interference and on the other the holding-their-heads-in-their-hands-in-disbelief critics. Members of either camp can lunch together but cannot start talking about Hatoyama or the Democratic Party of Japan without the conversation degrading into testy sniping over the U.S. government's having transgressed or not transgressed a fundamental principle of U.S. policy.

Getting back to the essay, Dr. White's initial wrong assumption -- that the U.S. is wedded to primacy in the region -- cripples the rest of Dr. White's argument and his prescriptions. While well begun is half done, badly begun means even the sharpest of cooks (and Dr. White is sharp) can only pull out items seemingly half-baked.

How did Dr. White misread the fundamental nature of the goal of U.S. policy in the Indo-Pacific?

One strong candidate is the conflation of strategic and tactical mendacity. Strategic mendacity is the mask of wisdom one must adopt when one cannot, for propaganda purposes, admit the fluidity of situations and limits of human knowledge. Tactical mendacity is an intentional spewing forth of a mix of truth and falsehood under the guise of appearing to get something done.

For those with a greater interest in tactical mendacity, the philosopher John Frankfurt has written the book on it, calling it by its common name. (Link)

White has listened to purveyors of tactical mendacity on the Indo-Pacific -- members of the U.S. Congress, a lot (but not all) of the uniforms in the uniformed services, think tank enablers in Washington...and their respective correlates in the Chinese establishment. He concludes that what they have been saying is indicative of intents or plans.

However, what they are saying is complete...tactical mendacity. It is neither true nor false. Whether the adamant stomping of "America cannot accept a peer rival in the Pacific" or the sly misrepresentation of history of "China seeks a level of military power commensurate with its traditional cultural and economic role" -- the obvious impracticality of the goal should be a flashing red sign with the words "Ignore Me" on it.

Strategic mendacity -- the obvious and not-so-obvious nonsense that governments say because they have to keep up appearances -- is by contrast a worthy subject of attention and dissection. The lies governments tell because they have to can be lined up alongside truths, with the writer and the reader learning something from the differences in between the two.

As for truth, what Xi Jinping and Barack Obama can talk about in private...or what Abe Shinzo and Barack Obama can talk about in private, if and when President Obama feels confident that Prime Minister Abe understands the difference between reality and strategic mendacity -- that neither Dr. White nor I can be privy to for a very long span of decades.

Taking in Chinese Pride of Place

On February 2, Democratic Party of Japan Secretary-General Ozawa Ichiro had a long-overdue meeting with U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs Kurt Campbell. In a press conference this past Monday, Ozawa confirmed that Campbell invited him to visit Washington during the Golden Week holidays, preferably with a retinue in tow similar to the one that Ozawa brought with him to China in December. During his stay in the U.S. capital, Ozawa and his people would have the chance meet with various Administration officials and inside-the-Beltway power brokers.

Ozawa explained that he had responded positively to Campbell's invitation, provided two points were made crystal clear aforehand:

1) That those meeting Ozawa would understand that the visit was not in order to discuss policies but to forge a basis for friendly relations between the U.S and the DPJ, and

2) That he would have a lengthy and well-publicized meeting with President Barack Obama.

Tobias Harris, who has taken a long look at Ozawa's seeming jump into the foreign policy arena sees the two demands as contradictory to Ozawa's ultimate goals.

At a press conference Monday he said that policy discussions are the job of the government, i.e. if the US government thinks that it can treat with Ozawa in order to find a breakthrough on Futenma it will be disappointed. Instead Ozawa views a Washington trip as necessary to build relations between the DPJ and the Democratic Party — and accordingly he wants a guarantee that a meeting will be scheduled with President Obama. That strikes me as an odd condition considering that Ozawa stated that he will not be going to discuss policy. Why should the president meet with a party official there on party business? LDP officials may have met with the US president when they visited Washington — Abe Shinzo, for example — but if foreign policy is being made by the cabinet, what business does a party official, even the secretary-general, have making a meeting with the president a precondition of his visit?

Ozawa's probable answer to this seeming conundrum is not so difficult to work out. As the quotes in the Sankei Shimbun's version of Monday's press conference indicate, Ozawa is looking at the visit to Washington through Chinese eyes. In December, the Chinese made their own president Hu Jintao available for a long one-on-one sit-down meeting with Ozawa, who is formally only the leader of the Japanese party with the largest number of seats in the Diet. Hu also accepted being used as a political prop, standing for hundreds of individual handshake and group photographs with Ozawa's traveling party.

If Ozawa were to accept only a short, perfunctory meeting with President Obama, one with minimal publicity, the Chinese would surely feel as though Ozawa were indicating that presidents Hu and Obama were not on the same level.

So Mr. Harris should expect Ozawa to ignore his advice...

If Ozawa is serious about not interfering with the Hatoyama government's foreign policy making, he should make a point of having only brief, perfunctory meetings with administration officials, especially considering that sometime around Golden Week the government will presumably have reached a decision regarding the 2006 realignment plan.

...in favor of keeping his own council.

In the grander scheme of things, one must remember that Ozawa plays for the very long term. The Chinese trust Ozawa, possibly even like him...and it has taken him 25 years to cultivate this relationship. Ozawa is also concerned most of all with defending that which he has already achieved.

Relations with the Obama Administration? A spring chicken, a puff of air, a work not even in progress yet, by comparison.