Sajakkini

Josh Hong

President Bush has begun a fence-mending trip to Europe this week, in the hope of assuaging the angst of some European nations that have been growing wary of the arbitrary behavior of the United States following the Sept 11 attacks.

However, as the president is all smiling to his European friends (and perhaps some foes too), his administration is burning bridges on another side of the globe.

After the end of World War II, the US sought to tame Japan, the perpetrator of the Pacific War, by first occupying the country and then putting it under US security aegis, resulting in the US-Japan Security Treaty in 1960 that allows for Washington to maintain military presence in Japan for the sake of the latter’s security as well as for the maintenance of international peace and security in the Far East.

JOSH HONG acquired the peculiar habit of reading too much into news as early as when he was a teen. Constantly alarmed by the unofficial divide-and-rule policy of the major dailies in Malaysia, he hopes to bridge the gaps between different ethnic groups the best he can. He appreciates the existence of various races as a most gracious gift of God, and thanks Samuel P Huntington for strengthening his will to fight against hegemony of all kinds.

(Incidentally, this treaty triggered the first massive student movement against the officialdom in Tokyo - what a contrast to the feeble and sporadic protests against the decision of the Koizumi government to send troops to Iraq in recent years.)

This ‘abnormal’, almost dominant-subservient relationship between Washington and Tokyo, has made Japanese sovereignty all but in name; it has nevertheless allayed to some extent the fear of East Asian countries for a return of militarism, and ensured that Japan focus on socio-economic reconstruction for the first few decades after the war.

Now, this is set to change.

Positive signals

If right-wing, ultra-nationalist Japanese politicians such as Ishihara Shintaro, the maverick mayor of Tokyo, are disdainful of the fact that Japan has no independent foreign policy as all roads lead to Washington, they will however be rather pleased to know that the Koizumi government finally approved the newly designed National Defense Program Outline (NDPO) in December 2004, arguably a brainchild of the US.

Months before the UDPO came into being, US Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage had made it clear in an interview with Bungei Shunju, an influential and popular Japanese magazine, that “Article 9 of the (Japanese) Constitution interferes in the Japanese-American Alliance”, in March 2004.

Armitage was backed by his boss Colin Powell, who said a reexamination of the war-renouncing Article 9 would be needed if Japan desired a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council. How very interesting to note that both Armitage and Powell appear to be oblivious to the fact that Japan’s pacifist constitution was drafted by an American called Douglas MacArthur.

(ARTICLE 9: Aspiring sincerely to an international peace based on justice and order, the Japanese people forever renounce war as a sovereign right of the nation and the threat or use of force as means of settling international disputes. In order to accomplish the aim of the preceding paragraph, land, sea, and air forces, as well as other war potential, will never be maintained. The right of belligerency of the state will not be recognised.)

Therefore, the NDPO is an immediate response to the positive signals by the Americans that Japan should shoulder greater responsibilities in helping the US police the world, and nothing is more worrying than this. The Outline mentions North Korea as a destabilising factor in regional security, as well as China’s increased nuclear and missile capabilities as a major concern for Japan. There is already much bad blood between Japan and its two antsy neighbours, and only the foolhardy would desire more.

What is more, the Outlines also states in no uncertain terms that its defence capability will be expanded to cover not only East Asia but also the Middle East, which is nothing but an epitaph on the US-Japan Security Treaty of 1960.

Dangerous region

It is no denying the fact that Japan lives in a dangerous region, with the unpredictable North Korea constantly threatening to upset the peace initiatives in Northeast Asia and mentioning Japan as its possible target of future attack. Moreover, China, finding communism a vacuous ideology, appears more wanton in using nationalism as a diplomatic asset in dealing with Japan, thereby deepening the Japanese sense of insecurity.

But the NDPO is a clear indicator that Japan is slowly but steadfastly moving away from its pacifist constitution, which is no doubt a great cause for concern. The drifting and shifting position of the successive Japanese governments on the Second World War has long complicated Japan’s relations with its neighbouring countries, and Japan’s endeavour to become a ‘normal country’ is hence strewn with potential risks in the region. It is certainly not in Japan’s interests and definitely against regional peace and solidarity for Japan to continue to hang on to US coattail blindly and be caught in an illusory belief in ‘eventual normality’.

The US should be rightly credited for keeping Japan in check in the highly volatile region of East Asia during the Cold War era, but Washington’s acquiescence over the past few decades has also emboldened the right-wing forces within Japan to seek to whitewash the atrocities committed by the Imperial Army during WWII. The current situation cannot be more grave in that Japan’s defence and foreign policy is becoming obsessively US-oriented, nearly to the point of no return. The US-Japan alliance is beneficial only if the interests of other Asian nations are taken into consideration, which appears to not be the case.

Japan has recently shown its folly by rejecting outright the ‘2 + 2′ offer by Russia to resolve the dispute over the Kuril islands, despite Moscow’s agreement to the construction of a pipeline from eastern Siberia to the Pacific to serve the energy-thirsty Japan. In any case, the recent developments cannot but point to a disturbing fact that the increasingly intricate and interdependent relations between Japan and Russia, China, South Korea and Southeast Asia are only secondary when it comes to foreign and defence policy formulation in Tokyo.

There is much that Japan can and must do in order to become a ‘normal’ nation. To start with, Japan can, although least likely under Koizumi, re-establish the statement made by Prime Minister Murayama Tomiichi’s on the 50th anniversary of the end of the war, in which Japan admitted its war responsibility and expressed the feeling of remorse more frankly than any other official statement that had been made public up to that time. It also has to be made absolutely unequivocal that it was a prime ministerial statement, instead of just one issued by ‘Mr Murayama’.

A thorough reflection on its own past will then facilitate an ideal opportunity to build a relationship of trust and reconciliation between Japan and Asia, making regional cooperation genuine and long-lasting.

No country should sit up, listen and give in every time when Washington brandishes its whip of intimidation.

By succumbing to the demands of the US, Japan will never make itself a ‘normal’ country, but only serve to worsen the distrust and mistrust between it and other neighbouring countries that are already deeply suspicious and circumspect of the Bush administration. If a pacifist constitution can be abandoned at whims, who needs an ultimate law of the nation anyway?

Japan’s mirage of normalcy