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.

It Was A Drag When You Left; It Was A Drag When You Were Here

With the flameouts and censures last fall of Defense Minister Ishikawa Tatsuo and Consumer Affairs Minister Yamaoka Kenji, the two close confidants of Ozawa Ichiro in the Cabinet, the cabinet of Prime Minister Noda Yoshihiko became essentially Ozawa-influence free. In order to fill the holes in the cabinet ranks he appointed Tanaka Naoki, a weak Ozawa ally (and a defense ignoramus) as his new minister of defense and the incompetent Hirano Hirofumi, former Prime Minister Hatoyama Yukio's right hand man, as his minister of education, culture, sports, science and technology -- the latter choice seemingly an attempt to drive a wedge between the underrepresented Ozawa and his ally/puppet Hatoyama.

However, as a part of his promise to be a "no sides" leader of the ruling party – i.e., willing to appoint members of all the Democratic Party of Japan's various sub-groups to positions in the government and the party, the sub-cabinet level senior vice-ministerial and parliamentary vice-ministerial posts were filled chock-a-block with Ozawa loyalists.

So it was not terribly surprising that in what may have been meant as a symbolic action on Friday night, four Ozawa loyalists offered their letters of resignation from their government posts, this after the Cabinet approved the bill raising the consumption tax to 10%. Nor was it terribly surprising that 29 Ozawa loyalists offered their letters of resignation from their party posts over the weekend.

Today, Prime Minister Noda, after indicating he would ask the four sub-cabinet officials to withdraw their resignations, brought the resignation letters to the Cabinet, which promptly accepted them. (J)

One reason given for this change of heart is the demand, made by the Liberal Democratic Party yesterday (before, during or after the storm?) that the party status of Financial Services Minister Jimi Shozaburo and the four Ozawa loyalists be clarified before the LDP would acknowledge the government’s representatives sent to Diet committee meetings. (J)

While the complaints of the main opposition party might play a part in the Prime Minister Noda's calculations, his following through on the acceptance of the resignation of the four is only a means to pretend to follow the LDP's lead when he is indeed acting out of his own self-interest. One cannot avoid the impression that LDP leaders have transformed themselves into the Sideshow Bobs of this process, barking complete nonsense from the sidelines. As for Noda, he asked his least credible interlocutor, Chief Cabinet Secretary Fujimura Osamu, to make the calls asking for the four Friday night walkouts to come back.

Accepting the resignation of the four sub-cabinet officials sends two messages. One is to the 29 DPJ MPs who have tendered their resignations from their party posts. The message reads, "Don't believe what the papers say. You're next."

The other message is to Ozawa Ichiro himself. It most likely reads something like, "If you, of your own volition, want to rid the DPJ of your influence by having your people resign from their government and party positions, be my guest. Oh, and by the way, if you have been reading the papers, you may have noticed that the LDP and the New Komeito have targeted your friend Tanaka for a censure motion (E). Considering how much he has done for me and my reputation, please do not expect me to fight too hard on his behalf."

Very Kind Of Them #6

The East Asian Forum has published an essay of mine on the reshuffle of the Cabinet (Link).

A few of my snarkier observations were wisely excised by the wonderful editors of the EAF. Unwisely, I will post them here.

Re: The consumption tax

Once the proposed hike in the consumption tax is complete, the tax rate will still be below European value added taxes and in line with Australia's and New Zealand's goods and services taxes. It will be unpopular because it is regressive and reaches out to tap the many elements of society who, though one subterfuge or another, manage to avoid or evade income taxes.

Re: Okada Katsuya

Known by his critics as "The Taliban" for his unswerving views, Okada reportedly refused the position of chief cabinet secretary when Noda formed his first cabinet on September 2 of last year. Okada purportedly preferred to stay out of the limelight in preparation for a challenge for the post of party leader at the next party leadership election, scheduled for September this year. Okada's unpopularity with middle-ranking members of the DPJ, who remember how he led the party to ignominious defeat in the 2005 House of Representatives election, also played a part in his decision to sit back and cool his heels for a while.

Re: Matsubara Jin

The appointment of Jin Matsubara, one of the rare foreign policy and security hawks in the DPJ, should probably be seen a sop to the families of those abducted by North Korean agents in the 1970s. The families of the abductees and their supporters have felt that the DPJ has given them short shrift, as the during the 2 1/2 years the DPJ has been in power the abductees portfolio has changed hands seven times.

The appointment of hardliner Matsubara to the main homeland security and the abductees positions makes it unlikely that Japan will make a meaningful contribution to discussions among regional actors of new strategies of dealing with the DPRK in the aftermath of the passing of Kim Jong-il and his replacement by his son Jong-un. Instead, Japanese insistence on a "final resolution" of the abductees issue will continue to be throwing sand into the gears of any proposed shift in policies.

Re: Hirano Hirofumi

As for the appointment of Hirofumi Hirano, it is bald attempt on the part of prime minister Noda to curry favor with the group of DPJ parliamentarians loyal to former prime minister Yukio Hatoyama. Hirano put in a disgraceful performance as chief cabinet secretary during the Hatoyama Cabinet and was ineffective as a negotiator with his opposition counterparts during his recent stint as parliamentary affairs chairman.

Re: Ozawa Ichiro and the Kizuna Party

The two ministers who had to be replaced after being censured, Yasuo Ichikawa and Kenji Yamaoka, are close associates of Ichiro Ozawa, the DPJ's problematic former leader and major power broker. Ozawa, who is both under party disciplinary sanction and criminal indictment, still managed to attract 109 Diet members, most of them members of the DPJ, to an anti-consumption tax study group session he led immediately after the main DPJ party convention on January 16.

Rumors that Ozawa loyalists might turn against prime minister Noda in a no-confidence vote this spring or even form a new party in the near future gained considerably more credibility in the last days of December when nine members of the DPJ with strong bonds to Ozawa left the party and founded Kizuna, a new, anti-consumption tax, anti-Trans Pacific Partnership party.

The Ozawa Candidacy Frenzy

"Why?"

At one point, it is the question one has to ask.

"Why is Ozawa Ichiro, architect of both the Democratic Party of Japan's stunning victory in the August elections of 2009 and the stunning defeat in the July elections of this year, going through the motions of running against current prime minister Kan Naoto for the position of DPJ party leader, when no one aside from his cronies or acolytes wants him to? He is despised by the public, or at best deeply mistrusted. He would be electoral poison for the party in local elections. His policy platform, as outlined in the 2009 Democratic Party Manifesto, cannot be enacted, either due to the lack of funds in the national budget or the inability to pass enabling legislation through the opposition-dominated House of Councillors. Ozawa faces indictment by the the Tokyo No. 5 Committee for the Inquest of Prosecution for falsified political fund reports, an almost inevitable event that will trigger his immediate resignation from all public and party posts.

The incentives for his running all point in the negative direction. If he wins the contest, he destroys the party: either metaphorically through the collapse of its public support or physically as large groups break off, forming new parties. If he loses a formal leadership contest, he gashes his aura of awesome power. The humiliation of losing could indeed drive him to leave the party, with a passel of his followers in tow (taking his ball and going home -- which he has done time and time again).

Given all the bad an Ozawa candidacy could cause, why are we seeing his followers and dependents -- Yamaoka Kenji , Mitsui Wakio, Tarutoko Shinji et al falling over one another in ever more grandiose and sycophantic predictions of how inevitable and wonderful an Ozawa candidacy should be?

An enervated political press

We are still in August, after the July elections yet before the fall extraordinary session of the Diet. In normal times - that is to say Liberal Democratic Party times - there would be would be nothing much to report on in terms of political stories aside from who was playing golf with who in Karuizawa.

However, this year, the reporters have the September 14 DPJ election. Reporting upon what is happening in the election itself would be too much. It is actually three different elections being conducted under three different sets of rules, with far too many participants -- regular party members and supporters, DPJ members of local assemblies, and then and only then the DPJ members of the Diet. Keeping track of all of as it evolves organically, especially what the hundreds of thousands of party members are thinking, is simply too for a single reporter or even a gang of them to follow.

Why not then invent a false narrative, of a champion rising up to challenge the party status quo -- which has been the status quo, mind you, for all of two and a half months. A first attempt to promote Kaieda Banri fizzled out, not the least of which because replacing Kan, a battle-hardened, willy, Tokyo-based party founder with a mop-haired, sallow,Tokyo-based party tag-along did not meet basic plausibility standards.

So began the speculation that the Man, the Dark Lord, the Hidden Power would himself challenge Kan for the post of party leader. What a fantastic story! Ozawa with his legion of loyalists and dependents, calling in all the various favors so many in the party owe to him in order to defeat Kan, whose support is a shallow agreement that he is probably the best man for the job and the best person to represent the party before the people. Ozawa, who crawls back from the humiliation of Kan suggesting he remain quiet for the sake of the party and his own good, to force Kan to himself taste the bitterness of defeat. The return of the driven proponent of profligacy and centralization of power against the more circumspect advocate of moderation in policy and delegation of powers and responsibilities.

And oh the palace politics! The screams, whispers and crashes from behind the shoji screens! The dueling sound bites from the partisans on either side!

That's entertainment!

Yes. Precisely.

Which is why the television and print news media, which swarmed around the Ozawa's stroll into Hatoyama Yukio's garden party in Karuizawa on Thursday like a media rush around the Narita gate arrival of a South Korean boy band, should be ashamed of themselves. They are not reporting the news, they are manufacturing it, then hyping it, all in the hopes of drawing viewers to believe important a struggle that in objective terms may not even exist.

There is no such thing as bad publicity

One of the ancillary features of the coverage of the purported Ozawa challenge to Kan's leadership is the driving out of any serious coverage of what other parties are doing. Closely following the machinations and covert meetings of the groups of the DPJ, most of overlap in many ways (you would need a Venn diagram of intersecting circles to give a sense of the structure of the DPJ, when all you needed for its predecessor the LDP was a list of the factions names and their members' names) crowds out all other national political news, relegating reporting on other parties (Does anyone remember the last time Watanabe Yoshimi and the Your Party made the evening newscast?) to the margins.

The DPJ is on the news? No, the DPJ is the news!

Of course, focusing so much attention on a real/unreal/surreal (chose one) battle within the DPJ runs the risk of reminding the public of the raging factional battles of the unmissed LDP. Minister Ren Ho specifically mentioned this danger on Friday.

Regaining some measure of respect

As suspiciously high number of those most active in the promotion of an Ozawa candidacy are the Diet members who lost the most in the transition from the Hatoyama to the Kan administrations. The poster boy for this movement is Hirano Hirofumi, who made a complete hash of the position of Chief Cabinet Secretary during the Hatoyama Cabinet. He has been attending all the meetings that either openly or surreptitiously are in favor of drafting Ozawa to challenge Kan.

Having seriously damaged individuals like Hirano as the most visible advocates is possibly an indication that Ozawa himself is not planning to mount a challenge, and is only lending his name to others so that they may regain some of their former stature -- however, temporary that elevation to their former statuses may be.

Titanic ego

In the end, this dramatic buildup may lead to an even more dramatic announcement later this week or early next (the candidate list is formalized on September 1). Ozawa may indeed actually believe that he and not Kan Naoto should be leader of the DPJ and by extension, the prime minister of Japan. He may be surround by yes-me and yes-women convincing him that he not has the right, he has the votes to prevail.

If he does announce himself a candidate, then all hell breaks loose. Foreign Minister Okada Katsuya, who is rarely a wordsmith, still put the problem most succinctly:

"That a person who has a chance of being indicted should become the party leader and the prime minister leaves me with a sense of uneasiness."

It Was All So Much Easier In The Old Days

Lost in the general languor and mental sloth of Golden Week, former Chief Cabinet Secretary and éminence grise Nonaka Hiromu spilled the beans in a major way on how the Liberal Democratic Party governments managed polish their images and get things done. In a parallel with former Ministry of Foreign Affairs official Yoshino Bunroku's decision to come clean on his involvement in the negotiation and coverup of secret agreements made with the U.S. government over the reversion of Okinawa, Nonaka recently gave a glimpse into the way the Chief Cabinet Secretary could use the secret bank secret attached to the office for the purposes of "information gathering."

According to Nonaka, who served served as Chief Cabinet Secretary from July 1998 to October 1999, he would withdraw 50 to 70 million yen per month from the secret account to disperse to various persons. To the prime minister he would give 10 million a month, and to House of Representatives and House of Councillors Diet Affairs chairman he would each give 5 million a month - this in order to smooth the passage of legislation. He would also send aides to drop off packets of money at the offices of opposition politicians and, shockingly, political commentators and journalists. According to Nonaka only one of the latter, TV Asahi host Tahara Soichiro, ever refused to accept the money offered. Opposition lawmakers would ask for money prior to making visits to North Korea, in order make their visits go more smoothly.

Passing on secret account funds to opposition members in case they needed to bribe North Korean officials can be seen as falling under the rubric of information gathering. However, the belief that the Chief Cabinet Secretary's secret account was accessible for pretty much any kind of activity seems to have been widespread. Nonaka claims that one politician-turned-political-commentator telephoned Prime Minister Obuchi asking for 30 million yen as a celebratory contribution toward the building of a new home for himself, knowing that the money would be drawn from the secret account.

One has to wonder, given Nonaka's revelations, what the Hatoyama goverment's situation might be if it made as profligate use of the Chief Cabinet Secretary's account as it predecessors. The DPJ, when it was in opposition, roundly criticized the abuse of the secret account, assuming, seemingly quite correctly, that money from the account was being used to buy off opponents and paying off election expenses. Chief Cabinet Secretary Hirano Hirofumi was roundly criticized for at first absurdly refusing to admit that the account existed (Why he would do this, when his party had long demanded greater clarity regarding the account, taxes the brain) then for declaring that he would not disclose in any way how the money was being used. On Friday, however, the Cabinet revealed that it was returning unused secret funds to the general account, having somehow been unable to spend them.

The Hatoyama government may be suffering from teething problems not just because it is drawing less from the secret account but because it is using the funds in more in a more ethical and justifiable manner. From the way the Prime Minister has been ridiculed by the press since the very first weeks of his tenure in office, one has to guess that Hirano has not followed the precedent of using some of the funds from the account to buy off journalists.

The PM Stumbles Out of a Bad Golden Week

Today is, almost mercifully, a newspaper holiday. Prime Minister Hatoyama Yukio wasted a set of perfectly beautiful warm days on the main island in a fruitless and humiliating series of presentations of his ideas about moving the Marine Corps Air Station Futenma to new, less-inhabited areas of Japan's maritime margins. After a miserable Golden Week, he will at least be spared a thrashing at the hands of the nation's print press.

In truth, the prime minister's plan is not bad. It gets the Marines and their aircraft out of Ginowan, eliminating the supposedly crucial and insoluble problem of trying to operate a major military airfield in the center of a city. The plan also cancels the insidious land reclamation portion of the relocation of the Marines to Henoko. Instead of paving over yet another section of Japan's nearshore areas, the plan will locate the runways for the replacement base entirely on land. This clears the hurdle of preserving dugong habitat (what the dugongs will think of helicopter noise is another matter) and perhaps more important, Democratic Party of Japan Ozawa Ichiro's political promise that the beautiful ocean around Henoko will not be compromised. Finally the PM's plan moves at least some Futenma's U.S Marines personnel and maneuvers out of the Okinawa Prefecture, as the he promised to do. True, a move of some portion of the activities of U.S. Marines to nearby Tokunoshima fulfills the PM pledge to "move Futenma outside the prefecture" on the barest of technical grounds -- but somthing is at least better than nothing.

The problem the PM faces is not with the plan itself. The plan at least is an improvement on the plan the Liberal Democratic Party and the United States agreed upon in 2006. Yes, it does not represent a full transfer of Futenma outside of the prefecture as the PM promised last year. Yes, it ticks off the American military. Yes, it angers the populace of Tokunoshima. But finding a median solution, where all are called upon to sacrifice, is in the very nature of democratic politics.

The problem the prime minister faces are his own, regarding preparation and presentation. On the campaign trail last year, the now-PM made a very serious promise to the people of Okinawa -- that the main islands and the U.S. would finally do right by them. However, he did so while lacking the infrastructure capable of delivering on that promise. When he became prime minister he had no plan of his own to implement. He did not even have an individual inside the DPJ or the Government selected to be in charge of the project. Eventually the task devolved upon the uninspiring Chief Cabinet Secretary Hirano Hirofumi -- but that assignment came about more out of precedent than out of a matching of man and mission.

70% of everything is preparation, 20% natural ability and 10% chance*. If you have a plan and a means of implementing it, you are 70% of the way to your goal. Coming into office without a plan, the PM found himself faced with delivering on his promise based on what is normally only 30% of a successful outcome.

Some talented individuals really can indeed improvise, cobbling together a successful plan and its presentation on the fly.

Unfortunately, if past experiences with "the space man" had not been sufficient to hint that the PM lacked the flair and fearlessness to conjure up a popular, workable plan from thin air, the last seven months have clearly proven that he does not. He has appeared alternately to have no allegiance to any fixed goals or values or, conversely, enthralled to the very last thought to enter his head. He is furthermore, and has probably from birth, a terrible communicator -- so that when he does indeed decide what his views are on a subject, he is unable to find the words and gestures necessary to transmit his commitment to his views.

(For the PM's polar opposite in this regard, see Koizumi Shinjiro. Koizumi fils could make a reading of the tax code sound like an inspiring call to arms.)

As for the 10% of any successful outcome that is the result of pure chance -- no one has a means of controlling that. The PM certainly does not and has not.

So into this short week, faced with a populace annoyed at the sudden halt to their week-long sojourns under sunny skies, stumbles the prime minister. He has two days to generate absolute fantastic news himself or hope that some magical bit of news emerges (Note to PM: on Sunday Ishikawa Ryo started the day 6 shots back in 19th place, then proceeded to shoot a 58 over a par 70 course to blow away the field - and that still did not distract the people's attention from your terrible trip down south) to stimulate a warm feeling about the country's future. For after the terrible atmospherics of the PM's last few days, it would not be surprising if a telephone poll of voters conducted this next weekend finds Cabinet support numbers to have fallen into the high teens.

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* The "7-2-1 rule" is my own, based on my experiences of leading hiking trips - MTC.

I Don't Know No Hatoyama Cabinet

The pollsters may ask selected voters over the weekend about whether or not they support it. The news media may report about its gatherings, or use its name as a shorthand for the government.

However, after yesterday's Cabinet meeting, the term "Hatoyama Cabinet" ceased to have anything but a technical meaning. The fight, short as it was, over Kamei Shizuka's draft of a law revising the Post Office privatization act, has broken it. You could tell by the body language. When a usually taciturn-to-the-point-of-morose figure like Chief Cabinet Secretary Hirano Hirofumi is laughing and gesticulating like an albatross on nitrous oxide trying to take flight, you can be sure the event has hit the skids.

So deep was the wound in the collegiality of the cabinet inflicted by the Prime Minister by his forcing the acceptance of the Kamei draft that participants afterward did not even camouflage their jostling for position at a run for the prime ministership. Nakedly ambitious Internal Affairs and Telecommunications Minister Haraguchi Kazuhiro -- a supporter of embattled Democratic Party of Japan Secretary-General Ozawa Ichiro -- told reporters that what the PM had forced the Cabinet to approve was "the Kamei-Haraguchi bill." National Strategy Minister Sengoku Yoshito, the acknowledged leader of the anti-Ozawa wing of the DPJ and a fierce opponent of Kamei draft, explained his acquiescence to the bill in a calculatingly petulant verbal stiletto to the ribs of Hatoyama:

"Well, it's because I am in the Cabinet, isn't it?" ("Datte, naikaku ni irun da mon.")

Today Prime Minister Hatoyama will face off against Liberal Democratic Party President Tanigaki Sadakazu in Party Leader Question Time. A sad, bizarre, infuriating performance it will be: neither is the leader of anything.