OPINION US shunts Japan at its own
peril By Masahiro
Matsumura
With the work to denuclearize
North Korea seemingly getting off the ground at
last, the United States is walking a tightrope in
its attempt to accelerate the six-party talks.
Washington's recent negotiation tactics have
increasingly tilted toward appeasement, now to the
extent that it is about to remove North Korea from
the list of state sponsors of terrorism despite
the unresolved issue of the abduction of Japanese
and other countries' nationals.
Such a
move, if made without close consultation with
Japan, will considerably offend the Japanese
public and encroach upon their
support for their country's
alliance with the United States. This in turn will
inescapably debilitate the strong bilateral
alliance that is essential for a hedging strategy
of engagement and balancing vis-a-vis a rising
China, with a possible consequence of
destabilizing the peace and security of the
Asia-Pacific region.
Denuclearizing North
Korea requires not only the temporary disablement
of the three nuclear facilities at Yongbyon but
also the complete and correct declaration of other
nuclear facilities and programs, particularly
highly enriched uranium (HEU) programs, followed
by the complete, verifiable, and irreversible
dismantlement (CVID) of all these elements.
According to the mainstream Japanese
perspective, both the nuclear and abduction issues
are firmly embedded in the tyrannical nature of
Pyongyang's dictatorship, that is, the regime is
struggling to survive the international isolation
caused by its grave human rights violations on the
strength of nuclear weapons. It may be possible to
separate the two issues in analysis but not in any
meaningful manner as a policy matter. Given the
established record of Pyongyang's cheating and
betrayal, complete denuclearization cannot be
expected to be realized in the near future, a goal
that can only be approached in a prolonged
process.
The Six Party Talks are no longer
an institutional mechanism to terminate the Cold
War structure that persists on the Korean
Peninsula. It has now metamorphosed into a detente
approach predicated on continuous confrontation
and coexistence with Pyongyang's die-hard
dictatorship. The aim of this approach is to
defuse politico-military tensions created by
Pyongyang's confidence in the efficacy of the
threat and use of nuclear weapons. Yet any
transformation of the tensions is expected to
occur only in the form of a series of concessions
made by North Korea in response to large-scale
international economic assistance given to it.
Such economic assistance would be provided
synchronous with the creation of a post-Korean War
peace regime and the eventual formation of a
regional multilateral security framework in
Northeast Asia. This means the resolution of the
North Korean nuclear and abduction issues will
have to wait until Korean unification takes place.
Japan is practically the only country
capable of providing such a massive amount of aid.
However, Pyongyang's impending nuclear threats and
indisputable offenses against sovereignty in the
form of repeated abductions of Japanese nationals
have convinced the Japanese government not to
provide aid until Pyongyang has achieved complete
denuclearization, scrapped its ballistic missiles,
and settled the abduction issue. Since this
government policy is rooted in a solid national
consensus, Tokyo has little room for making
compromises, at least in principle. Furthermore,
the Japanese public is now fully aware that
Washington has ceased to speak of CVID, the HEU
programs and, most crucially, the dozen or more
rudimentary nuclear warheads that North Korea is
believed to possess. It will not take long before
the Japanese public realizes that Washington is
extending a de facto, if not de jure, recognition
of Pyongyang's nuclear power status.
Consequentially, Washington's detente
approach will sooner or later cause a backlash in
Japanese public opinion, which will force the
Japanese government to rethink its strategic
calculations and alliance policy. Now that the
opposition Democratic Party of Japan has seized
control of the upper house of the Diet, Washington
can no longer take Japan's followership in
diplomacy for granted. Tokyo has become
increasingly less pliable to US security
interests, as demonstrated by the recent failure
to renew the legislative measure authorizing
Japan's participation in the US-led Operation
Enduring Freedom - Maritime Interdiction
Operation.
Should Tokyo perceive that
Washington is moving toward normalization with a
nuclear North Korea, Tokyo would see itself being
forced to coexist with a rogue state. This might
lead to a worst case scenario where Japan,
surrounded by a nuclear unified Korea, China and
Russia, concludes that it can no longer trust and
rely on the US nuclear umbrella and turns onto the
path of going nuclear itself. In December 2006,
Tokyo leaked some findings of an internal study:
it would require only several years to develop
effective nuclear weapon systems.
In order
to avoid such a disaster, Washington should
refrain from isolating Tokyo in the Six Party
Talks process by lifting the pressure on Tokyo to
provide aid, including heavy oil, to Pyongyang
unless there is significant progress in the
abduction issue. Rather, what Washington could do
at most is to nudge Tokyo to cover a fair share of
the costs necessary to denuclearize Pyongyang.
In the long run, it would be wise for
Washington to give a high priority to the
abduction issue, for this would encourage Tokyo to
provide economic assistance indispensable to
carrying forward the long transformation process
of the Korean Peninsula. Last but not least, in
the case of the process being further prolonged,
Washington should take measures to divert Tokyo's
existentialistic imperative to go nuclear by
offering minimal but effective deterrence
vis-a-vis Pyongyang that would placate the fears
of the Japanese public: several hundred Tomahawk
cruise missiles without nuclear warheads, for
instance. Otherwise, Japan would become a wild
card.
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Office: Unit B, 16/F, Li Dong Building, No. 9 Li Yuen Street East,
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