Newsletter No. 1422
News-Analysis
July 29, 2009

 

INDIAN OCEAN MISSION NOW LOOKS SET TO END IN JANUARY

The Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) has been pushed onto the defensive by criticism of its abrupt shift of position on the question of the extension of the MSDF refueling mission in the Indian Ocean. Today a “senior DPJ lawmaker” told Kyodo News that, while the DPJ will not immediately order the MSDF warships home should they take power on August 30th, they will nevertheless make no effort to pass another extension law beyond next January. The unnamed lawmaker stated, “We have been seeking a withdrawal from the start. We are basically not considering extending it.”

This senior DPJ lawmaker’s statement is subtly but significantly different from what DPJ Secretary-General Katsuya Okada said at a press conference on the 17th: “We will make a decision with the mission’s time limit in next January in mind.”

The DPJ has been stung by criticism from both left and right.

From the left, the DPJ’s new policy has been attacked by Social Democratic Party (SDP) leader Mizuho Fukushima, among others. While the SDP is now only a minor force in Japanese politics, the DPJ cannot afford to ignore them because they are likely to be crucial coalition partners for the DPJ after the August 30th elections. Fukushima recently complained, “Since the opposition parties opposed the bill in question altogether, the first step to be taken must be to seek public disclosure of information on the refueling operations. It’s unreasonable for the DPJ to change its stance abruptly.”

From the right, complaints have been lodged by senior ruling party officials such as former Defense Minister Shigeru Ishiba, who said on the 24th: “So what were all those things [the DPJ] had said up until now really all about? Changing one’s behavior at the prospect of gaining power makes a mockery of the meaning of elections.” The Yomiuri Shinbun editorialized:

The DPJ is right to attach importance to the continuity of Japan’s foreign policy and the Japan-U.S. relationship, but its policy shift is too abrupt. Former DPJ President Ichiro Ozawa insisted that the MSDF’s refueling mission—an issue that throws the DPJ’s policy about-face into relief—is “unconstitutional” and waged an all-out battle against the government and ruling parties over the matter, forcing the suspension of the mission for nearly four months. Given this, the DPJ’s new stance on the matter can only be regarded as expedient. The DPJ should fully explain to the public its position—whether it opposes the refueling mission or conditionally approves it. An equivocal attitude regarding such a fundamental foreign policy issue is unacceptable.

I believe that the DPJ fully deserves this kind of criticism. They had consistently argued for several years that the MSDF Indian Ocean mission was not simply a bad government policy, but one that runs in fundamental violation of Japan’s national charter. Ichiro Ozawa explained clearly that his view of the Japanese Constitution is that the Self-Defense Forces may exist and may even be deployed overseas; but that these foreign deployments must be strictly limited to cases in which the United Nations explicitly authorizes the sending of military forces. Anything else is unconstitutional.

Now we have DPJ President Yukio Hatoyama—who strongly backed Ozawa’s legal view—saying things like: “We remain consistent… We can hardly issue an order saying, ‘All the ships must return,’ the day after we come to power.”

If you believe that the mission is unconstitutional, then don’t you have a duty to issue that order the day after you come to power? Or is it acceptable for the government to violate the national charter at its own convenience?

The DPJ should be sticking by the principles that it has argued in favor of—sometimes vociferously—for the last few years. I don’t buy this idea that falling in line with Washington’s demands constitutes “realism.” As the DPJ itself has argued, there are other valid strategic choices that could still preserve the US-Japan alliance, and perhaps even make it more “healthy” in the medium term.

This is where the appointment of Kurt Campbell as the new US Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs is problematic. If there is any difference at all between Kurt Campbell’s view of the US-Japan alliance and that of Richard Armitage, Michael Green, and the former Bush administration, then I am not aware of it. There is a group of conservative men in Washington—both Republicans and Democrats—who fancy themselves the “alliance managers” and who share more-or-less identical views about what are Japan’s “responsibilities” toward the alliance. The shift from Bush to Obama has unfortunately failed to shift the substance of US policy toward Japan, and left the same gang in charge.

For those who harbor doubts about these assertions, go look at the names of signatories of the October 2000 “Armitage Report” or revisit the delightful Asahi Shinbun op-ed co-authored by Campbell and Green entitled “Ozawa’s Bravado May Damage Japan for Years” (available in Shingetsu Newsleter No. 724 of August 2007). There is no reason to believe that Campbell’s views are any different now than before.

Campbell recently visited Tokyo for the first time since assuming his new office in the State Department. We don’t know exactly what he said in private, but it’s a reasonable guess that he has been pressuring the DPJ leadership to fall in line with his view of things and—if the past is any guide—aiming not-so-subtle threats at Hatoyama and the leading opposition party, warning them off the pursuit of the foreign policy course that they have been promising to the public. This quiet dialogue between the Clinton State Department and the leadership of the DPJ is (almost without doubt) what lies behind the DPJ’s recent embrace of so-called “realism.”

In this context, the Yomiuri Shinbun today dropped a little fact that circumstantially confirms this analysis. We are told that, last December, Joseph Nye, former US Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security (and then widely tipped to become US ambassador to Japan) met with Yukio Hatoyama, who was then DPJ secretary general, at a Tokyo hotel. The Yomiuri writes that Nye warned Hatoyama not to pursue his own party’s campaign pledges as they related to the MSDF Indian Ocean mission and the realignment of US forces based in Japan. Nye reportedly stated: “If these policies were pressed abruptly on the Obama administration, the administration would take this as a signal that the DPJ was not interested in maintaining the Japan-U.S. alliance.” The Yomiuri further says that Nye’s threat “sent a shock wave through the DPJ.”

Nye is part of the same clique as Campbell, Armitage, and Green, so it’s a pretty safe bet that senior US officials are saying this month what Nye apparently said in December, and this is why the DPJ has begun to waver on basic principles that they had once said were non-negotiable.

One possible wrench in the works that we will keep an eye on is that President Obama did not select Joseph Nye as ambassador—as the conservative clique was all too obviously hoping for. The man who is coming to Tokyo, John Roos, was an Obama campaign fundraiser and has a background that suggests some liberal tendencies. He is not part of the same Old Boys’ network of US-Japan relations, and so it will be interesting to see if he adds some complexity to US policy in this country.

At any rate, the tug-of-war for the soul of the DPJ is now in earnest. The Clinton State Department led by Kurt Campbell is likely to press strongly for Hatoyama to reject any significant changes to the cozy norms of the current arrangement. In other words, he wants Tokyo to remain as subservient to Washington in the Obama era as it had been in the Bush era. It remains to be seen if Ambassador Roos will play along with this game plan. On the other side, the tiny SDP and probably the Japan Communist Party (JCP) will press to “keep the DPJ honest” in honoring the foreign policy positions that it had staked out until now.

What will be the result? My prediction remains the same: The liberals will win a few innings in the months after August 30th, but eventually the conservatives will reassert their control due to underlying factors.

Update: While I was writing this Newsletter, Kyodo News reported that DPJ leader Yukio Hatoyama has just confirmed that the MSDF mission in the Indian Ocean will be terminated in January should the DPJ gain power.