SEOUL - The Japanese may be the most hardline of them all when it comes to a
firm approach toward North Korea. If that seems obvious to anyone who has been
following Japanese-North Korean relations over the years, it becomes a little
more difficult to grasp in the context of the demands of Japan's Prime Minister
Yukio Hatoyama for a revision of a deal on United States military bases on
Okinawa Island.
It's one thing to ride popular protest against American bases in Japan but
quite another to try to buck opinion about North Korea, especially in view of
all those episodes of kidnapping years ago of Japanese citizens on which the
Japanese are certain North Korea has never come clean.
Hatoyama is now calling for his ministers and diplomats to come
up with a revised version of the deal on the bases by the end of this month in
anticipation of a May deadline for a final decision. The Americans want to
stick to the agreement of 2006 under which the base at Futenma, used mainly for
helicopters, would be moved to the island's less populated Nago city, where
it's hoped the citizenry will not be so upset about all that noise and
pollution. Or, the Americans hope, there won't be so many of them to protest.
Could it be that Hatoyama, for all the vows he made before his Democratic Party
of Japan drove the long-ruling, deeply conservative Liberal-Democratic Party
out of power last year, is ready to cave? Two American diplomats, including
James Steinberg, deputy secretary of state, are back in Japan, seeing how to
wrest a deal that will save face for everyone - and keep the Americans where
they've been ever since the battle for Okinawa tore the island prefecture apart
in mid-1945.
As political and diplomatic realities close in on Japan's confrontations with
North Korea, and with the United States, the sense prevails that Hatoyama and
some of his top people are looking for a way out - one that would stave off an
open rift with the US but not show him to be a total opportunist as a
politician.
The Japanese dilemma emerged in remarks by Hitoshi Tanaka of the Japan Center
for International Exchange in a recent talk in Seoul. Tanaka seemed ambivalent
about the future of the US-Japan relationship but absolute in his convictions
about North Korea - an interesting order of concerns.
"It is no secret that the new government in Tokyo has expressed a desire to
develop a more 'equal' relationship with the United States," Tanaka said,
citing controversy over "the realignment of US military bases in Japan",
notably on Okinawa, as the major irritant in the alliance.
Nonetheless, he said, "Japan seeks to strengthen existing security arrangements
in the region as a hedge against uncertainty." Tanaka pinned his hopes on an
unlikely trilateral relationship of Japan, China and the US that he recommended
engage in "strategic dialogue" for the sake of "confidence-building" and
"military and strategic transparency".
The notion of Japan and the US, bound in alliance under the US-Japan Security
Treaty signed half a century ago, working together with China might seem
preposterous considering China's role in saving the North in the Korean War
(1950-1953). Tanaka preferred to ignore that detail in his passion for unity
vis-a-vis North Korea.
"In order to have any hope of success in the six-party talks, the international
community's approach to this issue must henceforth obey five guiding
principles," he added in a remark that may well reflect top-level thinking in
Tokyo.
Firstly, said Tanaka, North Korea must never be recognized as a nuclear state.
Secondly, policy consistence among and within the five nations is essential. He
added that, thirdly, "contingency planning is imperative", while fourthly, "a
comprehensive, negotiated settlement is the only practical way forward".
Finally, he said, the six-party process must continue with informal
negotiations before the talks resumed.
Like the Chinese, Tanaka believes that "North Korea's recent movements have
raised serious doubts about whether its leaders have any intention of
negotiating with the international community in good faith". The real reason
for espousing the five principles, he said, was "to ensure a soft landing" -
that is, to work together to avoid bloodshed and chaos in the event of the
total collapse of the North Korean ruling structure.
Tanaka advanced from that notion to the concept of an "East Asia Security
Forum" - a term that sounded very much like a de facto alliance without
suggesting military cooperation. Rather, he said, "Japan should work with the
United States, China and other partners in the region to establish an East Asia
Security Forum as the core component of a new multilateral security
architecture focused on inclusive, action-oriented and functional cooperation."
In the end, said Tanaka, such a forum would have a primary mandate that "deals
with transnational and non-traditional security issues" and "would serve as a
complement to more traditional security frameworks in the region, in particular
the 'hub and spoke' system of bilateral security arrangements with the United
States".
In other words, an East Asia forum might eventually take precedence over
Washington's bilateral alliances with Japan and South Korea - though Tanaka
avoided suggesting that these alliances might sooner or later seem irrelevant.
The East Asia forum, said Tanaka, "would be most effective" if membership were
limited to the 10-member ASEAN, that is, the Association of Southeast Asian
Nations, plus China, South Korea, Japan, Australia, New Zealand and the US.
The North Koreans would not be far off in perceiving such a not-very-exclusive
grouping as an attempt to gang up on them.
Nobody on either side forgets that Japan was the great rear base area for the
Americans and their allies in the Korean War and that many of the 50,000 US
troops in Japan, from bases on Okinawa, would have to pour into the breech if
hostilities broke out on the Korean Peninsula. For that matter, Japan would
serve as both the conduit and the source of equipment, a link in the supply
chain, as it did in the Korean War.
It's against this background that the Japanese are coming up with one simple
solution that often seems to work when the time comes to shut up the nay-sayers
- the big payoff. Why not compensate the people of Okinawa for all the pain and
suffering they have to endure amid the roar of aircraft constantly flying above
them, not to mention the annoyance of GIs pestering and sometimes abusing their
women?
A second-tier bureaucrat, Vice Defense Minister Akahisa Nagashima, author of a
book on the US-Japan security treaty and a member of the influential Council on
Foreign Relations in New York, has mooted the idea, calling for a "compromise"
in which buying off the Okinawans seemed the logical solution.
Not mentioned is that Okinawa is the poorest Japanese prefecture. Most of the
people there, while Japanese, never forget their heritage as descendants of the
Ryukyu kingdom that once ruled the island - and a few others - before the
Japanese took over in the 19th century. Okinawans might be forgiven for
suspecting some Japanese don't regard them as totally Japanese - and may not be
all that concerned about their gripes when it came to Japanese security.
But what are the chances for China responding with much enthusiasm to the
concept of a broad regional grouping whose primary, maybe only, enemy is North
Korea, the beggar state that China has been defending and aiding all these
years?
Tanaka and Nagashima are actually members of the same Old Boys' Club. Tanaka
was deputy foreign minister in the government of Junichiro Koizumi, who as
prime minister pressed North Korea hard for resolution of the kidnap issue.
Tanaka advised Koizumi on dealings with North Korea and China.
It should come as no surprise that he and Nagashima - and a host of other
bureaucrats - think more or less alike. Tanaka's great idea is for six-party
talks to go on "as a sub-regional forum" beneath the level of the East Asia
Forum. China, presumably, could remain as host, a post the Chinese love as
evidence of Chinese prestige and power, not just over the Korean Peninsula but
the entire region.
Tanaka said the "sub-regional forum" of the six would convene "after the North
Korea nuclear issue is resolved". He did not, to be sure, say how long that
would take. Presumably the diplomats and bureaucrats will be talking for a long
time - while US forces stay on Okinawa where they've been for 65 years.
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