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Koizumi: US ties beat out public
opinion
By Axel Berkofsky
On
Tuesday, Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi
stepped in front of the cameras to advise Iraqi
President Saddam Hussein to "flee" Iraq and announce
Japan's support for a US attack on Iraq without the
United Nations' go-ahead if he didn't.
Two days
after the US, Britain and Spain set a deadline for
diplomacy to disarm Saddam peacefully, the prime
minister also endorsed US President George W Bush's most
recent ultimatum giving Saddam and his sons 48 hours to
leave Iraq before bombs start raining on Baghdad.
Already on Monday, Koizumi fell in line with
belligerent US rhetoric claiming that past UN Security
Council (UNSC) resolutions already legitimize Iraq's
disarmament by force. "It is appropriate to support
America's use of force now that Iraq has no intention to
disarm," he claimed.
This is music in the ears
of the hawks in the Pentagon and, like Bush and British
Prime Minister Tony Blair, Koizumi now seems to be
putting the blame for war on the UN Security Council.
"It is regrettable to see the UNSC failing to
unite in dealing with the Iraq crisis," Koizumi said,
adding that the "maintenance of the US-Japan alliance
will now be given priority".
Translation:
Snubbing the UN is bad, but offending a trigger-happy US
is even worse.
Things, however, aren't that
simple for Japan, claims the Yomiuri Shimbun, Japan's
biggest daily newspaper and self-declared defender of
Japan's national interests. Koizumi faces a dilemma
giving him "virtually no choice" but to support a US-led
strike against Iraq, so reasoned the paper.
"It
would be completely unreasonable for Japan to refuse to
support US-led military action against Iraq and then ask
for US help shooting down North Korean missiles," writes
the paper, fearing that the US might decide to leave
Japan "defenseless" if it refused to endorse a US attack
on Iraq.
Without a shot being fired, the prime
minister's aides are already making sure that Koizumi
will have the right words at the right time when bullets
start flying. Speechwriters are reportedly working on
the prime minister's television speech when war breaks
out although Koizumi still promises to keep up Japan's
efforts finding a diplomatic solution "until the very
last minute".
Despite Japan's support for a
unilateral military strike against Iraq, however, Tokyo
will reportedly neither provide logistical support for
the US military nor pay the bill for the US war ousting
Saddam. After the first attempt to disarm Saddam by
force back in 1991, the US pressured Japan to pay almost
US$13 billion to finance the multinational coalition
liberating Kuwait, although nobody really thanked Japan
back then. Instead, Japan was accused of conducting
"checkbook diplomacy" and not even the liberated Kuwait
invited Japan to an official party in Kuwait City
celebrating the victory over Iraq.
No Japanese
cash, however, is in offing this time, the government
points out.
"We will not bear the burden of the
military expenses this time and have not been asked to
do so," said a high-ranking official of the ruling
Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), apparently hoping that
Koizumi's televised declaration of sympathy for a US
military attack on Iraq will do the job of keeping the
Pentagon off Japan's back for a while.
The US
military campaign, however, could easily cost up to $100
billion and political observers in Japan fear that
Washington will sooner or later pressure Japan to
co-finance the war regardless of Japan's ongoing
economic woes and financial mess.
In yet another
political U-turn that is likely to cause long faces in
the Pentagon, Koizumi announced that, at least for time
being, active Japanese logistical support for US and
British military during a strike against Iraq is off the
agenda. Although Koizumi over the past few months
indicated that his navy stationed in the Indian Ocean
might contribute to the US-led military campaign
refueling US and British warships, he now insists that
Japan's anti-terrorism law does not authorize Japanese
engagement in a preemptive strike against Iraq.
The country's anti-terrorism law created the
legal basis to dispatch Japanese vessels to the Indian
Ocean in November 2001 supporting the US-led war in
Afghanistan, but sailing on to the Persian Gulf is not
an option as far as Japan's navy is concerned.
"We will not enter the Persian Gulf and will
never become involved in the operations against Iraq,"
said a high-ranking naval officer, supporting his
government's official line that Japan must not be
associated with an attack on Iraq.
Japan's navy
seems indeed eager to take Japan off the list of
full-fledged US military allies and has reportedly
agreed with its US colleagues not to refuel US warships
"directly participating" in an attack on Iraq. The
government, unlike military analysts in and outside
Japan, thinks this sounds plausible, although Tokyo
seems already much more interested in elaborating on
what Japan will do in a post-Saddam Iraq.
After
the war, the government announced, Japan will provide
refugees with medicine, blankets and tents, conducting
its operation under Japan's peacekeeping law. The
government furthermore signaled its willingness to
deploy the country's armed forces to repair roads and
bridges in Iraq and promised to provide humanitarian aid
to countries such as Syria, Turkey and Egypt worth
several hundreds of millions of dollars once the
fighting is over.
And the Japanese public? Even
though more than 80 percent of Japanese are, according
to the polls, opposed to removing Saddam without the
UN's blessing, Koizumi seems to think that public
opinion is not relevant when relations with Uncle Sam
are at stake.
The mediagenic and smooth-talking
prime minister, usually preoccupied with his public
approval rate when formulating the country's foreign
policy, brushed aside the public's opposition, claiming:
"There are times when we make mistakes following the
public opinion."
Dismissing public opposition
against unilateral US military action as irrelevant did
not go down too well with the public, and the prime
minister's approval rates fell below 50 percent for the
first time since he took office in April 2001.
Yasuo Fukuda, the chief cabinet secretary and
usually in charge of explaining his boss's verbal
blunders to the public, stepped in, blaming the media
for asking the "wrong questions".
"What's bad is
the way the media ask questions. If you ask whether a
war is good or bad, everybody says a war is bad," he
explained when it turned out that the public, unlike the
government, is unwilling to applaud US belligerency.
The public's concern over Iraq, however, only
goes so far, believes Kiichi Fujiwara, professor of
international politics at the University of Tokyo. "In
Japan, I hardly hear any argument to the effect that war
is unnecessary because the last dozen years of
deterrence and UN weapon inspections have produced some
results. The absence of this sort of reasoning in Japan
is an acute reminder that people just don't care if the
world goes to war, so long as they themselves aren't
going to get killed."
A senior member of the
ruling LDP asking for anonymity (for obvious reasons)
when speaking to the Japanese press, on the other hand,
thinks the public will give up its opposition before too
long anyway.
"Criticism will disappear the
minute military action [begins] against Iraq, as the
issue concerns national security," he maintained.
Whether this is true remains to be seen, and the
public is very likely to be back on Koizumi's case if he
decides to follow the example of one of his predecessors
a decade ago raising taxes to pay the US bill for
fighting Iraq.
(©2003 Asia Times Online Co, Ltd.
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