USA-ASIA: JAPAN RESURGENT - October 2, 2006

On September 26, 2006, Shinzo Abe took office as Japan’s new Prime Minister. Abe has vowed to give Japan a more prominent place in the world scene, and is calling for a revision of Article IX of the Japanese Constitution. Article IX, written at the insistence of the Americans during the Occupation after World War II, forbids Japan from having any military other than self defense forces, and permanently renounces “war as a sovereign right of the nation”. Abe has declared the need to change this provision, recognize the status of Japan’s Self Defense Forces (SDF) as its regular armed forces, and allow them to take a more active role outside of Japan. Stressing a return to “traditional values” he has long favored a hard-line stance against North Korea. Under Abe, will Japan rebuild itself into a military colossus? Will a rearmed and resurgent Japan lead to a new outbreak of war in East Asia? And what should the relationship of the United States be with a newly armed Japan?

Abe is following in the footsteps of his mentor and predecessor, Junichiro Koizumi. Koizumi instituted a number of measures to increase Japan’s military reach. Under Koizumi, Japan in 2001 sent a flotilla of ships to the Indian Ocean to provide logistical support for Operation ENDURING FREEDOM, the US invasion of Afghanistan. In 2003 Japan sent a force of 600 troops to southern Iraq in support of US operations there, launched its first spy satellite, and began working with the US to deploy AEGIS and Patriot anti-ballistic missile systems. Koizumi’s government committed Japan to making the Theater Missile Defense (TMD) program its number one defense priority. Koizumi gave such measures a disturbing cast by refusing point blank to revise Japan’s school textbooks, which either ignore or gloss over Japan’s aggression prior to and during World War II, and such atrocities as the Rape of Nanjing, or the enslavement of thousands of Korean ‘comfort women’ by the Japanese military. Koizumi unabashedly visited the Yasukuni Shrine, honoring Japan’s 2.4 million war dead, but which also honors twelve Class A War Criminals. More alarmingly, prominent leaders in Japan’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) have openly called for Japan to develop a nuclear strike capability to deter China and North Korea.

Why has Japan taken the path of rearmament? Since 1993 Japan has been sending troops from its Self Defense Forces overseas as part of UN peace keeping missions; first to Cambodia, and more recently to Mozambique, East Timor and the Golan Heights. The United States has long pressed Japan, which enjoys huge trade surpluses with the US, to take a more active role in its own defense. After the September 11th terror attacks the US has committed itself more and more heavily to operations in the Middle East. As the fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq has drawn in American money and military units, the US has redoubled its appeals to Japan to rearm. In August of 2004, then Secretary of State Colin Powell bluntly told assembled Japanese leaders that Japan could not expect a permanent seat on the UN Security Council as long as Japan clung to its policy of pacifism.

North Korea has also done much to provoke Japan. In 1998 the North Koreans launched a Taepodong missile that flew right over the main Japanese island of Honshu before crashing in the Pacific. In 2002 North Korea, after years of denial, openly admitted that it had kidnapped thirteen Japanese men and women in the 1970s and ‘80s. It has refused to disclose complete details of the fate of eight of them. North Korea has also freely admitted that it has nuclear weapons capability. A ballistic missile fired from North Korea, carrying a nuclear payload, could hit Japan in just ten minutes. Behind North Korea looms Red China. China supplies North Korea with food and energy, trade and investment, to the tune of some $2 billion a year. Thus it is clear that North Korea’s provocative stance has at least the tacit acceptance of Beijing. Far from being a madman, Kim Jong-il provides Beijing with an easy way to indirectly intimidate Japan.

But the most important changes have occurred in Japan itself. A new generation has come to the fore that does not remember the ravages of World War II. It is no coincidence that Shinzo Abe is the first Japanese Prime Minister to be born after World War II. By no means do a majority of Japanese favor a return to the militarism of the past, but historical pride in Japan’s samurai heritage remains deep. As Japan has had to struggle with a sluggish economy in the wake of the excesses of the Bubble Economy of the late Eighties, right wing calls for a return to ‘traditional values’ have grown more strident. In the 2005 elections Koizumi’s LDP-led coalition captured 296 of 480 seats in Japan’s House of Representatives. This gave the LDP the two thirds majority it needed to pass legislation without the consent of the Upper House.

Adding a frightening new sense of urgency to discussion of Japan’s rearmament is the growing competition with China over access to oil and natural gas. Japan, with its heavily urbanized, hi-tech economy is heavily dependent on imported oil and natural gas. In 2003, the same year that North Korea announced its nuclear program, China overtook Japan as the number two petroleum consumer in the world after the United States. Late in 2004 Japan pointedly outbid China on a natural gas pipeline project in Siberia. One of Koizumi’s last acts as prime minister was to visit Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. This marks the first official visit by a Japanese prime minister to Central Asia. Kazakhstan has begun exporting oil on a large scale to China, and the Japanese are interested in acquiring access to a share, along with natural gas, uranium and other rare metals. The Senkaku Islands, known to the Chinese as the Diaoyu Islands, situated almost exactly equidistant between Taiwan and Okinawa, are disputed between Japan and China. The waters of the East China Sea around them also contain unknown, but significant amounts of natural gas.

Could Japan become a nuclear power? It certainly has the technology and resources to do so. As of 2004 Japan is estimated to have over 43 tons of plutonium. A new reactor scheduled to come on line in 2007 will have the capacity to produce eight tons of plutonium annually by 2009. Experts estimate Japan could have a full fledged nuclear strike capability within a year if she chose to.

The question then is, is Japan’s rearmament good for Japan, and good for the world? There is much merit in the claim of advocates of Japanese rearmament that having a military of its own is one of the hallmarks of a fully sovereign state. Moreover it was clear almost from the beginning that Japan needed some form of military. As early as 1950, with the outbreak of the Korean War, Gen. MacArthur himself ordered the establishment of a 75,000 man ‘police reserve’. This is the origin of Japan’s current Self Defense Forces. Given America’s ongoing involvement in the Middle East, the US needs a strong Japan in the Far East. Japan certainly needs to be able to deter North Korea from striking at South Korea, or China from attempting to seize Taiwan in a coup de main. Also let us keep some perspective, Japan is still only spending less than 1% of its GNP on the military. Advocates of an anti-ballistic missile shield can point to the need to get Japan to defray some of the enormous cost for the US of testing and developing such a system. An operational TMD system would at least engender doubts in North Korea as to how effective a first strike against Japan would be, which might make such an attack less likely.

But how does the concept of a rearmed Japan sit with the rest of Asia? Japan has adopted a two-fisted foreign policy before. It led to the Japanese military wreaking havoc from Korea to the borders of India and ultimately brought devastation down upon Japan itself. Japan’s deploying an anti-missile screen could well tempt China and North Korea into building an arsenal large enough to overwhelm it. In short we have a new arms race. It is also worth noting that a major share of the contracts for the TMD system are going to such well entrenched Japanese companies as Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, NEC, Hitachi and Fujitsu. Japan already has a very cozy system that breeds insider connections. Building up the military industrial complex will only feed this habit. And can any missile defense system really work, given a ten minute flight time from North Korea?

The Japanese also need to remember that the rest of Asia also has a very potent weapon - the pocketbook. In April of 2005, anti-Japanese riots swept China. In 2004 China overtook the US as Japan’s number one trading partner, accounting for some 20% of Japan’s total exports. Chinese consumer boycotts hurt the Japanese economy before, in the 1920s. If the Japanese ever become truly belligerent, a Chinese trade boycott could undermine the Japanese economy very quickly, especially if it were backed by the rest of Asia. North Koreans may distrust the South and Taiwan may suspect Red China, but all these countries have felt the heel of the Imperial Japanese military. A ham-fisted Japan could get them to patch up their differences in short order. Interestingly, the Russians chose September 19th, the day before Shinzo Abe was to be elected the new head of the LDP prior to his being installed as Prime Minister, to cancel the $22 billion Sakhalin-2 oil and natural gas project, which Japan has a 45% stake in, for ‘environmental reasons’. Shinzo Abe may want Japan to be more assertive, but its neighbors are not helpless.

Could a nightmare scenario take place and Japan become a militaristic force in the world? Perhaps. But a nation like Japan, with its aging population and its overwhelming dependence on international trade, is not a likely candidate for aggressor status. Two things could cancel all bets. If America gets into an all-out shooting war with Iran, that could drive oil prices through the ceiling, and take America out of the power equation in the Far East, while raising the stakes on places like the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands. Or if the American economy goes into a serious tailspin due to rising deficits and the loss of jobs overseas, this could drive most of East Asia into a depression. The last time the Japanese military got control was during the Great Depression of the 1930s.

Could we have a stronger Japan and a more peaceful Asia? There is a possibility. Japan, China, Taiwan, the Koreas, and the US all have one thing in common – they all are dependent on imported petroleum. What if the United States sat down with these five countries, and offered to create a research consortium to develop alternative energy sources and share the technology? Everyone would win. If these six nations could cut their oil imports by even 25% it would go a long way toward taking the edge off of international competition. By cutting North Korea in for a piece of the action it would have the added incentive of weaning North Korea away from her energy dependence on the Chinese. If we don’t like the way the situation in Asia is headed, we need to do something basic to change the equation.

The bottom line is that Japan is already a force in the world, and will be more so, whether it formally changes its constitution or not. Given that fact the US needs to be proactive in bringing the nations of Asia together and resolving some of the outstanding regional disputes. The US also needs to settle affairs in the Middle East enough for it to have some strength in reserve to provide a credible deterrent on its own to China and North Korea. And the Japanese people need to come to grips with their nation’s past and avoid the mistakes of the Imperial era.

TIMOTHY NEENO

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The Author of the article holds M.A. degree in U.S. history from the University of Wisconsin – Madison. For the last 2 years he taught history at the University of Phoenix. Prior to that, he lectured in numerous countries in Asia, Europe, the Middle East, North Africa and South America. He specializes in American history and U.S. – Asian relations.

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