Bush's policy shifts threaten Asian stability


	March 19, 2002	atimes.com

Japan

Bush's policy shifts threaten Asian stability
By Tim Shorrock

WASHINGTON - US President George W Bush's recent visit to Northeast Asia, his administration's new, more flexible policies on using nuclear weapons, and the possibility of a US war with Iraq have intensified Asian concerns about a unilateralist American foreign policy that could plunge the region into crisis.

Among the possibilities, Asian analysts say, are a political showdown in Japan if Bush seeks the support of Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi for US military action against Iraq, and military confrontation in Korea if the Bush administration fails to engage in negotiations with North Korea over missiles and other weapons. Either possibility could worsen US relations with China.

These scenarios have emerged in the wake of Bush's trip to Tokyo, Seoul and Beijing in late February to consult with Koizumi, South Korean President Kim Dae-jung and Chinese President Jiang Zemin.

The trip gained added significance after Bush widened the war against terrorism by verbally attacking North Korea, Iran and Iraq as an "axis of evil" in late January and making clear that the United States was prepared to go to war if necessary to keep those countries from using weapons of mass destruction.

Although Bush tempered his remarks during his trip to Asia - saying in a speech in Seoul, for example, that the United States had no intention of invading North Korea - his posturing cast a pall over the region, as did his failure to inform allies beforehand of the shift in US policy.

Then, last week, word leaked of the Bush administration's latest "Nuclear Posture Review". The classified document, according to press reports, expands the scenarios for using nuclear weapons to preventing unfriendly countries from developing weapons of mass destruction, a North Korean invasion of the South, or a Chinese attempt to take over Taiwan.

On Wednesday, Bush defended the policies, saying that "all options are on the table", including the use of nuclear weapons, to confront states threatening to use weapons of mass destruction, and warning Iraq's Saddam Hussein that a confrontation is inevitable. "He is a problem and we're going to deal with him," Bush said.

To protest being named a potential nuclear target, North Korea said on Thursday that it would review all of its agreements with the United States, including the 1994 Agreed Framework that ended its nuclear program.

"Should the US plan be true, it is a prime example of how the US President George Bush's group, which has already alarmed the international community with its fanatic and reckless ambition to control the world, is now casting away its earlier promise not to use nuclear weapons," the North Korean Foreign Ministry said.

In South Korea, many people fear that Bush's characterizations of North Korea have destroyed Kim Dae-jung's "Sunshine" policy of engagement with Pyongyang. Although most Koreans understand the bleak reality of the authoritarian state in North Korea, "we were greatly shocked to hear the AOE remarks", said Shin Kyoung-min, a correspondent for the Munwha Broadcasting Corp, using what has become a common abbreviation for Bush's "axis of evil".

To engage the North, Shin told a Washington seminar organized by the Sasakawa Peace Foundation here this week that South Korea "very seriously" needs the help of the United States. "But suddenly Mr Bush [has] reversed all the logic and all the history and all the background. So we are watching now the demise of the 'Sunshine' policy and we are very confused about that."

Shin noted that the key elements of the Agreed Framework, including the delivery of components for the light-water reactors being built in North Korea by a US-South Korean consortium, are scheduled for 2003 and 2004. Compounded by the latest tensions between Pyongyang and Washington, "the next year will be a much more dangerous year, and Korea will remain an unstable situation", he said.

Miura Toshiaki, a political correspondent for Japan's Asahi Shimbun newspaper, said Bush's latest policies have raised serious doubts in Japan about Japanese support for the next phase of the war against terrorism. Many Japanese, he said, felt that the war in Afghanistan against the al-Qaeda network and the Taliban - and Tokyo's unprecedented support for the US efforts - were justified by the horror of the September 11 attacks on New York and the Pentagon.

But Koizumi's popularity, which once soared in the 80 percent range, has dropped steadily because of his failure to push through with economic and financial reforms opposed by Japan's business elite and their conservative supporters in the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP).

Meanwhile, Bush's "axis" speech and his threats to use military force against Iraq are rapidly eroding public support for the war, Toshiaki said.

"The phrase AOE reminded the people of Bush's unilateralist approach in the pre-September 11 period," he said. "To Japanese eyes it sounded a little simplistic, too black and white. We thought we were seeing the same old Bush that rejected the Kyoto Protocol and retreated from the Comprehensive Test Ban treaty." For that reason, "I think its getting a bit harder for the Japanese people to support a large-scale military operation in Iraq."

With even some LDP members questioning the expansion of the war to Iraq, the gap between the government and the Japanese people "could be fatal for Koizumi", Toshiaki continued. With his popularity steadily eroding, "Koizumi might face a political crisis if the United States goes to war with Iraq and asks for Japanese support - and Koizumi agrees without strong public support and support from the Diet [parliament]," he said.

With an escalation of the war, Bush should not take for granted continued Japanese support, he said. At the same time, the new policy on nuclear weapons "worries many Japanese" and brings up the extremely sensitive issue of nuclear arms.

Jim Mann, senior writer-in-residence at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and a former diplomatic correspondent for the Los Angeles Times, said Bush's policies are reminders that this president is taking a much tougher approach to international affairs and the Asia region than his father, former president George H W Bush. "The trip should disabuse people of the smug assumption that this administration is like the last Bush administration," he said. Mann noted Bush Sr's advice to his son a year ago was to engage with North Korea.

Although the president, in his recent visit to Seoul, played down differences between the United States and South Korea over the North, "Bush didn't retreat from the policies, or the hint of policies, in his State of the Union speech" in January, he said.

In its approach to China and Korea, this administration "thinks in terms of leverage, thinks in terms of realpolitik, thinks of its bargaining power", said Mann.

But he was more sanguine than his Asian colleagues about the outcome. "Much as Ronald Reagan used the term 'evil empire' and three to four years later was engaged in intense arms talks with the Soviet Union, Bush's policies may be creating the negotiating context for later talks with China and North Korea." He predicted that serious negotiations over North Korea's missile program and China's policies toward Taiwan could begin after this year's congressional elections and the South Korean presidential election in December.

(Inter Press Service)