Very Kind Of Him #56

Even though the disputes Stephen Harner and I have over Chinese international conduct and the outlook for a Pax Sinica can only be described "volcanic," Mr. Harner was incredibly kind to me the other day, mentioning my East Asia Forum post in his latest essay for Forbes. (Link)

As one example of my differences with Mr. Harner's assertions, I cannot see how Japan's national interest would be served by its joining in the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank. I do know that Japan's interest is served by not closing the door on Japan's participation at some later date, which Chief Cabinet Secretary Suga Yoshihide has done by saying that "Japan has no plans to participate at the present time." (Link - J Video)

Oh, maybe participate, someday. Just not today.

Comprendo, mi amigo?

Coming Up At Temple University Japan - ICAS In December: Sracic and Okumura

I cannot attend but I hope you can what is likely to be a no-holds barred intellectual tussle between two sophisticated veterans. Paul Sracic and Okumura Jun will tangle this month at Temple University Japan - ICAS over a deceptively simple-looking and very much hush-hush question: if push comes to shove in the East China Sea, would the United States really go to war with China over the Senkakus?

http://www.tuj.ac.jp/icas/event/will-the-us-defend-the-senkakus-paul-sracic-and-jun-okumura/

The pair have already gone through a couple rounds of sparring over at The Diplomat:

- Will the U.S. Really Defend Japan?

- Yes, the U.S. Will Defend Japan

- Will the U.S. Defend Japan? More of a Definite Maybe

I would love to see the pair in live action...but I will be otherwise occupied that eve.

If you wish to attend, make sure to find out whether the event is being held at the Azabu Campus or the Mita Campus. A long trudge awaits you if you show up at the wrong venue.

To RSVP for the event, email ICAS at: icas@tuj.temple.edu

Denny Roy Being Helpful on Chinese Intentions

A question one hears with increasing frequency in foreign affairs discussions is an exasperated "What do the Chinese think they are doing?" I confess to having asked the question, and not facetiously either, more than a few times.

Denny Roy of the East-West Center has just produced a startlingly brief (just over 1000 words) essay offering the answers (plural) to the above question. A mere double handful of national goals seem to circumscribe and propel Chinese diplomatic and security behaviors.

I take issue with the assertion at the beginning of the concluding paragraph ("Most Chinese do not now aspire to superpower status"? Ah non, non, no, au contraire, mon ami, they really do aspire to it) but I most certainly will keep the essay nearby (figuratively speaking) to consult whenever the Beijing regime's actions and reactions befuddle me.

Recommended reading. (Link)

What I Wish I Had Told Al-Jazeera

I appeared on Al-Jazeera yesterday, offering two minutes worth of thoughts, such as they may be, on the new Defense White Paper. (Link - and Link J)

What I managed to blurt out was, well, solid, moderate, perhaps even far-seeing -- but definitely not great television.

When asked out how the White Paper defines Chinese actions in the East China Sea, what I should have said was:

"This year's White Paper declares that certain Chinese actions, such as the unilateral declaration without consultation of an Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ) to be 'profoundly dangerous acts.' Non-Japanese media organizations like the Financial Times have flagged the operative adjective here, calling it a condemnation. (Link)

All apologies to the editors of the Financial Times but calling what the Chinese government has been doing 'dangerous' is not a condemnation: it is a simple statement of fact. Indeed 'dangerous' all by its lonesome is an understatement. The authors of the report should have been more prolix, describing China's moves as 'profoundly dangerous, provocative acts, the kind of stupid crap that leads to the therts of wars and stuff' -- and even that would have only been a simple statement of fact."

Oh well, better luck next time...


Later - Writing in The Diplomat, Clint Richards sees the language of the Defense White Paper as unhelpfully incendiary (Link). Richards seems to be arguing that in order to secure of a face-to-face meeting between Abe Shinzo and Xi Jinping the Japanese government should suppress a public accounting of national policies and official interpretations of current events.

Prime Minister Abe Tries It Latin Style

Prime Minister Abe Shinzo has arrived in Trinidad and Tobago (Link - J) for a two day visit (Link), a part of his 11 day summer smash tour of five Latin American and Caribbean countries (Link). Tomorrow, he will be meeting with 14 heads of state attending the CARICOM conference, adding a big chunk to his already impressive list of meetings with heads of states. He then heads on to stops in Colombia, Chile and Brazil.

While the first visit of a prime minister of Japan to Latin America in a decade -- yes, the last Japanese premier to survive in office long enough to make such a trip was Koizumi Jun'ichiro -- should be significant in its own right, the leisurely (for Abe Shinzo) jaunt is being treated as an echo of Xi Jinping's July 15-22 visit to the region. (Link).

To be brutal but fair, the Abe visit does pale beside the Xi tour. Xi came to the region as a collaborator in the establishment of a new world order (the BRICS summit in Brazil - Link), as a big time customer of a national champions (Link), as a banking hyperpower (Link) and as a potential savior of limping, pariah economies ( Link and Link). Abe comes as a supplicant (groveling for votes for a UN Security Council non-permanent seat, which permanent member China never has to do - Link), as a top salesman of Japanese goods and services (with 70 Japanese corporate executives in tow, including the head of the Nippon Keidanren Link - J), as a celebrant of his blood ties to better, bolder times in Japan's diplomatic history (Link - J) and as a guarantor that Japan is not dilly-dallying on the Trans Pacific Partnership. (Link)

Not an impressive comparison. Just in terms of striking business deals, a customer is usually far more welcome than a salesman.

However, Abe will come away from his long summer trip with his reputation for incessant activity intact. He has in 18 months in office made 23 trips abroad. Admittedly, 10 of those trips abroad were for international conferences. Still, he has touched down in at least 3 countries on a single trip 11 different times since he became premier in December 2012. By September he will set a new record for all postwar prime ministers in terms of number of foreign countries visited -- and this only from his current term, not counting the countries he visited his first 2006-07 term. (Link - J)

Maybe he should take on "The Blur" as a nickname...

Later - Clint Richards of The Diplomat delivers a more positive review of Abe's Latin Swing. (Link)

Later still - Peter Ford of The Christian Science Monitor talks to Japan-based experts regarding the Xi vs. Abe comparison, among them the prime minister's most important message sculptor. (Link)

As for the psychological underpinnings of the trip, The Japan Times offers a compilation article with yes, more Taniguchi. (Link)


Original image courtesy: Abe Shinzo official Facebook page.

No Mr. Abe, You And China Together Are Still Not Enough

Interesting figures in the Nihon Keizai Shimbun this morning:

Q: Shall the Constitution be reinterpreted in order to make it possible to exercise the right of collective self-defense?

Agree 28%
Disagree 51%

Q: Should their be preparations be brought forward on the legal basis for [ having the Self Defense Forces involvement] so-called gray-zone incidents?

Should be 68%
Should not be 13%

Q: Should SDF units participating in peacekeeping activities be allowed to rush to the armed defense (kaketsuke keigo) of other peacekeeper and/or civilians?

Allowed 47%
Not allowed 34%

Q: Is it necessary to invoke the right collective self-defense?

Necessary 37%
Not necessary 47%

A remarkably level-headed set of numbers, no? The voters in this poll clearly want the government to have a capacity to deploy the SDF in situations where opponents are in plain clothes but way too much for constabulary forces like the Japan Coast Guard to handle, such as trawler-fulls of Chinese special forces disguised as fishermen landing on the Senkakus. They are also generally in favor of a partial normalization of the behavior of Japanese forces in peacekeeping operations, making the SDF contingent valuable as a military, rather than just a logistics force.

At the same time, the voters are at best ambivalent about invoking the right of collective self defense per se. They are also deeply skeptical about reinterpretation, the Constitutional bugbear that Prime Minister Abe's advisors and councils failed to think through until this year.

The error as regards reinterpretation was one of language and group think -- too few people involved in a discussion of a subject using the same limited vocabulary. For the reformers in Japan's defense establishment, all the Cabinet had to do was interpret (kaishaku) the Constitution in a new way. It did not dawn upon them that to undo a previous determination of unconstitutionality required reinterpretation (kaishaku o henko) -- which only the Supreme Court or a constitutional amendment can do.

Meanwhile, on the subject of meeting and beating the threats to the nation, the Chinese air force and Chinese official news organs this weekend sought to regale us with their well-known talents for physical comedy Link) and satire. (Link).

Such kidders.

Despite these shenanigans on the part of the powers that be in China which could lead to a sudden to dump the 1946 Constitution, the Japanese public keeps its eyes on the edifice of their democratic form of government and the foundations of the rule of law and popular sovereignty.

Pretty impressive, no?

On The Bending A Knee To The PRC

Just give me what I want
And no one gets hurt

- U2, "Vertigo" (2004)

I have been thinking for a very long time about writing a post on the Accommodate China group of scholars and writers and its sister group, the America's Asian Alliances Are A Burden group.

The problem has been trying to find a way to disagree without being disagreeable -- to the Chinese people, to responsible officials in the Chinese government , to those who argue that the Unites States has to to spike the hopes of its Asian allies.

In the interim, a few initial propositions:

1) As regards historical inevitability, one cannot have it both ways. One cannot at once argue that

- China is returning to its historical level of influence and activity in world affairs

and

- "No, no. Don't worry, the Chinese are not going to walk down the path of conflict we have seen in previous rises of great authoritarian states."

Does history repeat itself or not? Decide. Please.

2) A free people never accommodates itself to the demands of a tyrannical state unless it is to join in common cause to defeat an even more threatening tyranny.

3) Criticizing the governments of smaller, weaker states for standing up for their rights and interests and complimenting them for being pragmatic when they go down on bended kneed before another power is not the wise counsel of a friend.

4) The value of a state can be measured by one's willingness to still live in it after being stripped of all wealth, influence or power.

Corollary: if you would not ever want to be reduced to the position of the least of citizens of a state, then you should not be an advocate for that state or for good relations with that state.

Peaceful relations? Sure. Good relations? No.

5) Selfishness, willful ignorance and narcissism, combined or separate, are not realism.

6) It's all in the timing. In 2007, Abe Shinzo and his friends were freaks because they were paranoid about China's military rise and a global public-private effort by Chinses to undermine Japan's stature in the world.

In 2014, not quite so freakish these views are, eh?

As an aside, not directly connected to the rise of China but which bubbled up during my reading of one particular recent, much-circulated essay on the unconsidered costs of U.S. alliances in East Asia:

7) What is it about a unified Korean people that should get us all misty-eyed? Should we not give as little of a damn about a unified Korea as we do about a unified Kurdistan?

ADIZ-y

Three thoughts as regards the Chinese declaration of an Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ) including the airspace over the Senkakus.

1) Some of the world's media and Japanese officials have portrayed the U.S. Air Forces' flying of two B-52s unannounced into the Chinese ADIZ on November 26 as a gutsy finger-in-the-eye response to the Chinese declaration. Some in Japan also see it as a strong vote in support of the Japanese government's contention that the zone is invalid. (Link)

This would seem to be an over reading of the U.S. Defense Department's actions.

U.S. military aircraft never announce their entry into the ADIZs of other nations, unless of course under orders to do so. Not alerting the Chinese as to the entry of the B-52s into the new ADIZ was standard operating procedure.

So the B-52s were not challenging Chinese resolve. They were just flying.

2) Some commentators on last week's events concluded that while there may be teething problems and that some adjustments may needed, China's new ADIZ is entirely within its rights and is thus here to stay. (Link)

Maybe.

ADIZs are seen as extensions of a country's right to establish conditions for entry into its territory or airspace. An ADIZ thus assumes a clear position on sovereignty.

By declaring an ADIZ extending over the Senkakus, over which Japan has had administrative control since 1972 and which the Japanese government insists are Japan's alone, the Chinese government has taken the argument over its claims on the Senkakus out of the realm of conjecture and the hands of Coast Guard ship commanders and given it over to military air forces commanders and fighter pilots on both sides -- with all the possibilities of errors snowballing into mass conflict that such a handover might produce.

If China were to now try to ease tensions by carving out from their new ADIZ the airspace above the Senkakus and the corridor projecting back to Japan's airspace, the resulting ADIZ would not affect the status quo in terms angry meetings of militaries. It would, however, be read as a tacit acknowledgement of Japan's sovereignty over the Senkakus.

So the ADIZ will either result in the degradation of Chinese security or the undermining of China's territorial claims on the Senkakus.

So China is within its rights? Maybe. Within its right mind? Seemingly not.

3) By declaring that it will enforce its claims over the Senkakus with fighter jets, the Chinese have brought the tale of the Senkakus close to its only reasonable end game scenario, undoing the damage inflicted upon the region by the duplicitous, self-serving Nixon Administration: the United States recognizing Japanese sovereignty over the islands.

One hopes that Vice President Biden made this point clear in his talks with President Xi two days ago.

Are We Of His World Or Merely On It?

This is my world
and I am
World Leader Pretend.

- REM, "World Leader Pretend" (1988)

What does Kasai Yoshiyuki want?

- A leveraged buyout of the management of his homeland, installing a chief executive with significant self-worth issues? Check.

- A fantasy vanity maglev project through the heart of his country, with hostage shareholders and ultimately the taxpayers footing the bill? Check.

- The militarization of Japan's space policy? Check.

- U.S. high speed rail policy muddled by sales of advanced railway technology? Check.

- Japan-U.K. strategic relations muddled by sales of advanced railway technology? A work in progress.

- The United States, Japan and India forged into a politico-economic strategic iron triangle? A work in progress.

- A more strongly pro-government and pro-nuclear NHK? Check.

- The use of influence over the prime minister and the cash generated by the Shinkansen in a zero sum game of influence intent on countering China in every corner of the globe, no matter how remote? Check.

The above is just what's available after only a few minutes diddling around in English.

It is probably best to familiarize yourself with Kasai Yoshiyuki's world*. Because if your life is in some way linked to Japan, you already live in it.

--------------------

* Go ahead, Google him. In various combinations: "Yoshiyuki Kasai Shinzo Abe" "Yoshiyuki Kasai China" "Yoshiyuki Kasai India" "Yoshiyuki Kasai space" "Yoshiyuki Kasai Huntington Huffington Post" "Yoshiyuki Kasai Tomohiko Taniguchi" -- it's great fun.

Philosophical Difference

Otto: Apes do not read philosophy.

Wanda: Yes they do, Otto. They just don't understand it.

-- A Fish Called Wanda (1988)

I have a standard paragraph about the impossibility of trying to accommodate the international claims of the present Chinese government. It hinges on the hopeless anachronicity of Chinese assertions:

"China's is only major government, aside from government of Bolivia, that insists its 19th maximum area of administration should delineate its natural borders. The key difference is that Bolivia lost its access to the sea, condemning the country and its people to isolation from world prosperity. As a consequence the Bolivian claims, though retrograde, at least engender some degree of sympathy."

My illustration is not particularly strong, however. There are probably a few other countries contesting for territories and Exclusive Economic Zones based upon the legacy of the grand Era Of Empire -- but none so blatantly, loudly and dangerously as the current Beijing regime.

Which is why I am glad that Sinologist J. Mohan Malik of the Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies has produced a long essay for The Diplomat examining the modern Chinese failure, intentional or not, to accept the premises for the proper limits on the interactions of nation-states.

History the Weak Link in Beijing's Maritime Claims

The essay may not be as rigorous as policemen and policewomen of international law would want. However, it still manages to lay down the main point -- that China's current territorial and maritime claims are embodiments and efflorescences of narratives, not de jure claims made under the auspices of international law. As such they are indefensible, provocative, potentially unlimited and certain to promote conflict.

It has been this anachronicity, or even a-chronocity, of China's claims that justifies the current Japanese government position of there being no dispute over the sovereignty of the Senkakus. Many extremely competent, even visionary security policy practitioners have argued that Japan would be conceding nothing of substance by admitting the existence of a dispute and indeed would be strengthening its position as regards both policing the Senkakus and bringing international pressure to bear on the can of worms that is Dokdo (Link). In theory, maybe, but trying to reposition Japanese assertions of sovereignty within a framework of international law seems pointless if the Chinese side is talking about rights and claims predating and outside the Westphalian framework.

With the Chinese officials lumbering about, ostensibly trying to craft coalitions of the unwilling against nations arguing the validity of their own claims (Link) the best course for the Japanese government is to just sit tight and wait for the next bout of Chinese government overreach -- based largely, in Malik's view, upon a inability to accept discontinuities in the conduct of international relations.

In the grander scheme, China's officials and China's defenders are frequently adept at quoting principles of international law in order to justify Chinese behavior. They just seem unclear on the point of the whole enterprise. Whether intentionally or not, they fail to understand that international law is not an instrument of state power. It is a replacement of the exercise of power. The paradox of great power -- and a great one it is, for its spares humankind from an eternity of horror -- is that it bides longest in the hands that wield it the least.

Worth My Time - Readings For August 21

-- Over at the semi-revived NPR Japan Forum, Dr. Alessio Patalano on the opportunistic braying about the purportedly inappropriate choice of "Izumo" as the name for the Japan Maritime Self Defense Forces latest and largest destroyer:

For the record, in the JMSDF (like in the IJN) names are chosen based on the Kantei meimei kijun (Fleet's naming principles). According to this regulations, destroyer, cruisers, and - a century ago - battleships, were named after natural phenomena, mountains, or ancient regions. The 'wind' class of ships, the 'rain' class of ships, as much as Hyuga, Ise, and other recent ships - all follow this regulations.

The IJN, had originally named the cruiser 'Izumo' after the ancient name of part of today's Shimane province (Izumo no Kuni).

So why the JMSDF decided to name the new destroyer after the original cruiser Izumo?

The reason is not related to the ship's serving as the flagship of the 3rd fleet that served in China - by then, the ship was mostly a training vessel and was recalled into service as a command ship because whilst antiquated for the day, its main armament and accommodations were good enough for the role it had to play in command and naval gunfire support operations.

Let me make this clear, no military organisation would ever name its next flagship after a ship that was famous for 'naval gunfire support operation' - whether that operation was conducted against Brest, Copenhagen, Shanghai, Kagoshima, Genoa, or wherever else. Professional military organisations think in terms of what the ship is likely to mean to the crew and to the organisation, and making the argument that the JMSDF would allow to have the new flagship named Izumo because of the Second Sino-Japanese war is either devious, or based on a complete lack of knowledge of how professional militaries work. Or a combination of both.

In fact, the reason for the JMSDF to choose this name is related to the more important facts that the cruiser Izumo was the flagship of the 2nd fleet during the Russo-Japanese war under Admiral Kimamura's command - serving admirably in all the war's major operations; and also the flagship of the 'Mediterranean Squadron' that provided convoy escorts in the Med during WWI. In between these two conflicts, the Izumo served also on a number of international diplomatic missions. The cruiser Izumo was scrapped in 1947, which made it also one of the longest serving ships in the IJN.

Ship names are selected after long discussions within the JMSDF and the Maritime Staff Office. Very senior retired officers contribute to this debate too. I had the opportunity to follow the naming process of two major vessels recently, including Hyuga, and there is little in the Japanese process that is different from any other navy with an important past...

(Link)

Furthermore, while the MSDF does reuse names, it rewrites them so as to clarify that the new names are not to be strictly identified as revivals of the pre-1945 names. The ship christened this summer is the いずも, with the name written in katakana hiragana. The older Izumo was the 出雲, with the name in Chinese characters.

Details, details...but piddling they are not.

- Earlier this year, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe publicly promised the aging former residents of Japan's Northern Territories and their descendants that he will exert every effort to win back all four of the Kurile Islands and island groupings currently under Russian administration. All or nothing.

The possibility that he may be willing to stiff the former residents and greenlight a plan to divide of the islands, in return for a Russo-Japanese peace accord, is intriguing:

The one difference this time around is Tokyo's determination to get a deal done and normalize relations with Russia. Abe's summit in Russia last winter should not be viewed as mere window-dressing. In fact, the visit marked the first time a Japanese leader had made an official state visit to Russia since former Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi and Putin met for three days in 2003. Abe has motivation to get a deal done with Russia and his government has been sending feelers out on a compromise deal. Shotaro Yachi, one of Abe's personal confidants and a special advisor to the Cabinet, recently teased out the idea broached by Putin last year of hikiwake – or a "comprise" [sic] on the territorial row. Yachi noted in an interview before the recent Upper House elections that, "Japan needs to go into the negotiations with a strong determination to settle this issue once and for all while Putin remains president. If Putin broaches the idea of a hikiwake, we shouldn't reject the idea outright. We should explore the possibilities of a hikiwake in a form that would be acceptable to Japan."

This is a considerable shift in thinking for Japan and Yachi indicated that there needs to be recognition that a deal may result in political blowback: "No solution is going to win unanimous popular support in either Japan or Russia. An acceptable compromise would be one that a majority in both countries can support. But that will entail a larger agreement embracing cooperation in areas like energy and the environment. Hopefully, people will see it as a win for both sides once all of those elements are taken into account. The key is putting together an agreement that doesn’t give one side a clear victory over the other."

(Link)

Of course, if a Democratic Party of Japan government or its top diplomatic advisors had ever mooted the possibility of a strategic, sacrificial, half-a-loaf solution to the continuing dispute over the North Territories/Southern Kuriles, The Yomiuri Shimbun, the Sankei Shimbun, their respective media groups' radio and television networks and the guys in the sound trucks would all be screaming, "Treason!"

How nice it is to be Abe Shinzo.

-- And in the eternal "MTC, you are simply wrong" category, I very much look forward to reading Alaistair Iain Johnston's "How New and Assertive is China's New Assertiveness?" (Link) -- to find out how much of my concern about Chinese adventurism is the result of my ignorance abetted by media outlets hyping unrelated and possibly innocent events.

Tip of the hat for the link to Amy King and Shiro Armstrong at the East Asia Forum.

Of China’s Pizza Preparations, Chess And Miyazaki Hayao

Commenter Jeremy Whipple asked me a few weeks back for my take on Brahma Chellaney’s essay, "China's salami slice strategy," published in The Japan Times. (Link)

Basically I am on the same line, verse and page as Chellaney. To be honest, I have the greatest difficulty not falling for any essay bringing up the Aksai Chin, the only major region of Earth resistant to a one-degree of separation challenge (No matter how many persons you know, you do not know anyone who has been there).

I would differ with Chellaney in repeated use of "China" as a singular origin for Chinese actions. Chinese government ministries, state owned enterprises and People's Liberation Army commands create facts on the ground surprising not only to the targeted regions but to the top central government civilian officials in Beijing. Too often the spokespersons of the Foreign Ministry are just blinking at the camera lights, unable to even offer even standardized cover stories for events -- the anti-satellite interceptor test in 2007 being the starkest example of the FMPRC's being the last to know.

I also have problems with Chellaney's use of the word "strategy." If there is no controlling hand, or small set of hands, deploying the various capabilities of state and quasi-state actors, can one call result a strategy? If the scattered actions evolve out the intrinsic structures or ideologies of the state, is that not more an ethos than a strategy? If it is in the nature of states at China's levels of wealth and income distribution to experience disjointed security policy entrepreneurship, should we not be talking about a zeitgeist rather than a strategy?

Strategy also always implies sacrifice, which sends us back to the question of the ability to decide*. If the blur of action emanates not from a single node but disparate points on a grid, adopting an attitude of "We know what you are doing so cut it out!" is probably pointless. For the smart-aleck reply would be, "If you know what we are doing, please tell us. We are always playing catch-up with our own people."

As for what a state should do in the face of an expansionist power, controlled or uncontrolled, I find the prescriptions of Bruce Pandofini's Commandments of Chess (Link) helpful in clearing away the dross and foam. I cannot judge the merits of the application of these commandments to the chess board. However, I sense that the person reputed to be America's greatest teacher of chess has to at least have a few worthwhile insights into the fundamental principles as regards protecting a vulnerable core, deflecting threats and advancing interests, all whilst coping with severe limitations placed on mobility, time-to-react and deployable resources.

Not all the commandments of have real world applications. However, enough of them do.

In the case of what to do about a salami-slicing Chinese grid mind, commandments #6 and #7 offer a snapshot of the conundrum:

6) Answer all threats. Try to do so by improving your position and/or posing a counter-threat.

7) Play for the initiative. If you already have it, maintain it. If you don't have it, seize it.

In his now famous essay attacking constitutional reform, Miyazaki Hayao takes one look at potential outcomes arising from a binomial expression of these two principles and ends up waving the white flag. No matter how much one may try to deter aggression by following commandment #6, a Chinese application of commandment #7 means conflict. So if you cannot fend the Chinese off with talk, just let them have the islands already.

But of course, assuming that this blessed land can play but a single round against an expanding power with multiple means of challenging the status quo seems a huge gamble...with horrible odds against being able to hold the line after that one round.


Later -The East Asia Forum has just published an essay on the potential of a strategy's underlying the Sino-Indian pushing and shoving over in the Ladakh/Aksai Chin Line of Actual Control (Link). Inside the essay is a link to a wonderful Srinath Ragavan opinion article explaining the difficulty an unbiased observer would have in trying to separate legitimate actions from illegitimate ones as regards the LAC. (Link)

----------------

* I once read of the idiot manager who at a business meeting asked the assembled, "Why can"t we just focus our energies across-the-board?"

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.

An Acid Aside On East Asian Culture Clashes

I sometimes take part in personal or email conversations where very knowledgeable participants write, "The Korean view is that..." or "The consensus view in China on Japanese attitudes is..."

I find the categorizations irritating. Not, as the usual critical view would have it, because the use of these broad national descriptions masks heterogeneity within the respective societies, with minority views running counter to the main narrative being ignored. That societies are heterogeneous I can live with, for in every society there is a power structure determining which views are important and which ones are important to persons looking for a place to apply French critical theory. In between winners, would-be-winners and perennial losers, one can talk about nation states and attitudes to associate with them.

No, what I find annoying is the whole concept of national identities in East Asia. There is not a single place in the region where anyone can start to say anything definite about national identity without blundering into a word, thought, turn of phrase, religious conception or symbol system borrowed from another country in East Asia. Japanese cannot think about being Japanese without using a language made up of Chinese ideograms expressing concepts received from Korea. No Chinese can write about anything more modern than a waterwheel without falling into universe of technical terms taken from Japanese. As for Korea, aside from hangul (a brilliant innovation) and kimchi, what the heck is there that is not a variation on some Chinese or Japanese theme?

[Lovers of things Korean, feel free to castigate me. I am being unnecessarily provocative out of the purest of intentions. Furthermore, given what my surname means in Korean, what else could be expected?]

It is all right for elites and their apologists to argue over this being that and whose is what, with culture becoming just one more item to be fenced in and exploited (Link). But academics, reporters and everyone else not in power should sit the fight out, keeping an eye on their self-proclaimed betters and their nationalist poses.

A watchful, wary eye, not a sympathetic one.

Every nationality in the region is a concatenation of elements consciously or unconsciously borrowed from other nations in the region...meaning that every nationalism in the region is an inadequately treated fit of delusions.

Plus Ça Change

Looking back through the archives on the politicking that heaved Abe Shinzo into the nation's highest office for the first time, I came across this little Christian Caryl/Akiko Kashiwagi gem from 17 September 2006:

Asia's Mystery Man
Newsweek

When Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi visited the controversial Tokyo war memorial known as Yasukuni Shrine last month, the story made headlines around the world and triggered indignant protests in Seoul and Beijing. But when the news broke a few days later that Koizumi's political confidant Shinzo Abe had made his own surreptitious visit to the shrine earlier in the year, few outside Japan took notice. Even given the fact that Abe had made a point of avoiding the cameras, the reactions still seem disproportionate. The first of the two men, after all, is about to step off the political stage and into the history books. The other is almost certain to step onto it this month and become Japan's next prime minister--a job he could hold for years to come.

On Sept. 20, in all likelihood, Abe will be elected president of Japan's ruling Liberal Democratic Party--a victory that will guarantee his election, a few days later, as prime minister...

[snip]

He's got at least two big goals, and they're both risky. The first is revising the Constitution to eliminate Japan's pacifist postwar military tradition, and the second, which could be a function of the first, is defying China's bid for regional pre-eminence. A generation ago, the first idea would have struck mainstream Japanese voters as irresponsibly radical; the second even now strikes many as fraught with uncertainty.

(Link)

And in 2013, after the end of Japan's special relationship with the George W. Bush Administration, a global financial crisis and China's surpassing of Japan as the world's second largest economy, Abe Shinzo is still enamored of the same two goals.

Read the whole article: Caryl and Kashiwagi's work has withstood the test of time.

Me Talking About India-Japan Nuclear Power Cooperation

Via Voice of America. (Link)

My family name, however, is pronounced "Chew-check." You can find us primarily in Slovenia and Croatia.

More Toys For The Boys

J. Michael Cole's contributions to The Diplomat usually drive me up the wall. However, his report on the People's Liberation Army Navy's latest piece of aquatic hardware fails to infuriate.

Just think of what one can do with a few of these vessels.

There are those who will ask, "Why shouldn't China have a slew of the world's largest Landing Craft Air Cushion vehicles"? More often than I care to contemplate, these are the same folks who ask, "Why shouldn't Japan revise Article 9 of its Constitution"?

The answer "Because the Right to Might is not a right but an excuse" sits poorly with these people.

Later - For those who think I am prejudiced against toys, a photo image from one of the spots I visited this past weekend, the GSDF Public Information Center adjacent to the GSDF Asaka military base.


Click on image for larger view.

The tank sitting behind the "protective" (yes, I am being sarcastic here) fence is a new Type 10, the same tank the Prime Minister mounted last month.

The Information Center's 3-D GSDF promotional movie (no, I do not know why the theater is built into a simulated rock outcrop) is a must-see -- and should be required viewing for all PLA colonels and Chinese government officials.

Nobody does propaganda like this blessed land's filmmakers.

Cadmium and Itai-itai

With the explosion of the story of excess levels of cadmium in the rice of Guangzhou (Link) there is talk, though only in passing, of Japan's experience with food and water-borne cadmium poisoning, which is known in the literature as Itai-itai ("It hurts! It hurts!") disease.

This is peculiar. Japanese researchers have done the lion's share of work on cadmium poisoning. Toyama Prefecture indeed has an entire museum that opened just last year dedicated to keeping alive the memory of the worst outbreak of itai-itai, which occured along the Jinzu River.

Not that many diseases with its own museum.

For afficionados of comparative politics and the functioning at various levels of the courts, regulators and democracy in East Asia, the length of the era of obscene disregard for public health in Japan -- with decades falling between identification of the cause of the disease and the final shutting down of the effluant source -- does not bode well for the future health of the Chinese people, especially in light of the close intertwining or even interchangeability of industrial and political elites in China.

Later - Yes, it would be interesting to see and hear the narratives of responsibility and blame allowed or preserved at the Toyama Prefectural Itai-itai Disease Museum. I am sure that there is a least one paper for an enterprising scholar therein.

Surprise, Surprise

In October of last year I published a post arguing that the government of Japan must never admit a dispute exists over the sovereignty of the Senkakus. Open that door and one will next have to deal with China's claims on Okinawa.

In private conversation and comments, I received much grief for my assertions as regards Chinese aims and arguments.

As of this weekend the domino theory of Chinese tactics and perhaps Chinese strategy seems...not so extreme?

China Refuses to Confirm Okinawa Island Belongs to Japanese
Bloomberg News

China refused to confirm that Okinawa belongs to Japan after two Chinese scholars suggested re-examining the ownership of the archipelago that includes the island, adding to tensions over a separate territorial dispute.

Agreements between allied forces during World War II mean the ownership of the Ryukyu Islands may be in question, the researchers said in a commentary in the People’s Daily, the Communist Party’s main newspaper. Asked if China considers Okinawa part of Japan, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said scholars have long studied the history of the Ryukyus and Okinawa.

“It may be time to revisit the unresolved historical issue of the Ryukyu Islands,” Zhang Haipeng and Li Guoqiang of the China Academy of Social Sciences wrote in the commentary.

A move to reconsider ownership of the Ryukyus would add to strains as China and Japan assert their claims over a group of uninhabited islands in the East China Sea. The Japanese government’s decision last year to purchase those islands, called Diaoyu in Chinese and Senkaku in Japanese, sparked protests across China and harmed a $340 billion annual trade relationship that has yet to recover...

(Link)

For the record, I also take umbrage at being labeled anti-China...as if a person with any degree of sense could be against an entire country...

Catalinac On Increased Security Awareness

Australia National University's Amy Catalinac has posted an interesting essay to the East Asia Forum. In "Not made in China: Japan’s home-grown national security obsession," Catalinac argues that the increasing prominence of security issues as an organizing principle among Japanese politicians is due to the changes in the incentives politicians have had toward accepting or rejecting a party's official line. She finds that the replacement of medium-sized multiple member districts, where different factions of the Liberal Democratic Party slugged it out against each other for the majority of seats, with single member districts, shifted the goal posts for politicians, particularly those of the now once again superdominant LDP. Under the post-electoral reform regime, politicians are rewarded for their adherence to and advocacy of elements of the party’s policy platform, not the rewarding of particular constituents with pork-barrel projects.

Castilanac's assertion contradicts the conventional explanation that an increasing security consciousness is the result of an increasingly threatening local environment. It seems to provide a solution to one of the puzzles of Japanese politics: if security issues so important, and Japan is more and more threatened each day, why are security discussions hijacked by intellectual dead ends like the abductee problem or the history textbooks screening problem? (Link)

I like a lot of what Catalinac is saying. I am particularly heartened that someone shares my conviction that a rightward shift in Japanese public opinion exists mostly in the imaginations of foreign commentators, particularly Chinese and South Korean ones, whose motivations and assumptions are suspect.

I do have concerns regarding the evidence undergirding Catalinac's hypothesis. As outlined in the paper she released last fall in advance of her book-length study (Link) she has been using the texts of the election manifestos of individual candidates as her basic data set.

The biggest problem with relying on the elections manifestos, aside from the obvious one of few voters reading the darn things -- a problem that Catalinac acknowledges -- is that the target audiences for the documents have shifted. Whereas in the past the manifestos were written for party faithful to read in order to confirm whether a given candidate has the interests of his or her sworn supporters in mind, the manifestos are now being written either to 1) for party officials to peruse in order to check on levels of loyalty to the party or 2) for the floating voter read in order to help overcome his/her natural ambivalence and inertia.

My take has been that politicians adopt security stance complete with the irrationality of many of those stances (for example, the pledge to “solve the abductee problem,” without any reference as to what a solution would look like) because of the limits of creativity in political narrative. Politicians seek to tell stories about themselves in comprehensible shorthands and code words, temporarily stimulating visceral reactions among a sufficiently large number of largely disinterested voters. The parties provide a glossary of effective terminology and slogans, which identify the winning issues politicians can address with the least effort for all those involved.

Catalinac's insistence one can find a strong increase of interest in security issues starting only in 1996 will likely rub some writers the wrong way. Indeed, the standard view is that no dramatic shift exists – that

a) Japan has always been a conservative country and

b) there has always been a freewheeling security discussion, with conservatives, reactionaries and revisionists having the loudest voices

I have always felt uncomfortable with (a) as national survey results have not been generally support of the assertion of an inherently conservative mindset.

As for (b), I have always felt there is a difference between the intellectual battles going on in the weeklies and monthlies and the commonly available set of choices most of the public consumes and cogitates upon. For any given point in time, past or present, one is likely to find more variation of intellectual positions inside the pages of Chuo Koron than existed out on the street.