PRC Catastrophism Collides with Trump Catastrophism

I don’t share the US FP handwringing over Trump’s retreat from overarching multilateral initiatives in favor of bilateral engagements in Asia.

The point of the complex multi-lateral arrangements—the pivot, rebalance, whatever you want to call it, and TPP—were intended to position the United States as the “indispensable nation” in Asia, the glue that was needed to hold these various rickety structures together.

I considered these regimes to be weak, unsustainable in the long term, and excessively costly in the short term.

As an example, under the pivot it would be necessary to think seriously about some kind of regime modification in the Philippines to neutralize Rodrigo Duterte’s hostility to the US military and sustain the fiction of a military and diplomatic united front against the PRC.

Trump can either accommodate Duterte or overthrow him depending on the bilateral advantages he sees in the relationship.  And Duterte can bargain for the US alliance while keeping a door open to China.

I guess the terms of art are “independent foreign policies” for the Asian countries, “offshore rebalancing” for the US.  Maybe.  Apparently, the rise of Trump, otherwise lamented by respectable FP practitioners, is causing a certain amount of heavy breathing in the Walt-Mearsheimer quadrant.  

The Trump shock helped reveal the mindset and strategies of US globalists who had assigned the United States the role of indispensable nation in the “principled international order”.

In my most recent Asia Times piece, Atlas Stumbled, I wrote about an interesting interview Paul Krugman gave to VOA, in which he opines that one consequence of the deterioration of the globalist financial regime under Trump & Brexit is that “China will be too big to save” once its chickens of massive indebtedness and faltering economic reform come home to roost.

Krugman’s bitter Cassandra-ism offers an interesting perspective on what I think was an important but shaky pillar of the pivot, the assertion that “the United States is 6000 miles away but will always be in Asia; the PRC/CCP regime is near the center of Asia but will vanish within a decade or two.”

The message that the United States discreetly whispered in Asia’s ear was Chinese power is corrupt and fleeting; America’s power is pure and eternal, so place your bets with the pivot-enhanced Uncle Sam as the enduring Asian power, in other words.

Welp, as they say on the Internet. 

I think the theoretical underpinnings of this approach is what I choose to call “Shambaughism”.  

David Shambaugh was an original proponent of the “responsible stakeholder” strategy, by which the PRC would be allowed to enter the international order and in return it would ineluctably liberalize its politics and economics and become a friendly partner of the United States.

Well, that didn’t happen for a number of reasons, one of which I suspect was the geopolitical hollowing out of the US thanks to its orgy of debt finance that nourished the PRC export machine, and the 2008-9 Great Recession.  Anyway, today’s PRC/CCP is not too liberal and not too friendly.

Shambaugh naturally preferred to question the PRC/CCP’s wisdom instead of the wisdom of his own theory, so he began promoting the concept of the coming PRC/CCP crackup.

During the administration of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, China collapsism became intellectually respectable (i.e. more than a Gordon Chang obsession) and was a ready-made and critical theoretical premise for the pivot which, in an environment of declining US relative power, offered a narrow but plausible path to the objective of PRC rollback (and a broad, endless highway to enrichment and influence for pivot-oriented think tanks and the US military).

To raid the metaphor chest, the King Canute in the advancing tide scenario was not the United States confronting the inevitable erosion of its power and influence as its relative strength in Asia declined; the vulnerable monarch on the throne was the CCP, vainly trying to wish away the inexorable advance of globalized liberal values.

My personal conclusion is that everybody’s wrong! nobody knows anything! and Asia will reveal itself as a welter of relatively high-functioning states that will find a way to muddle through without the guiding genius of the United States and without submitting themselves to CCP bondage.

Hope so, anyway.

Kanye West and the Case of the Missing 400,000 Black Male Votes

At a concert in California, Kanye West told the crowd that "he hadn't voted...but if he had he would have voted for Trump."

West is a media provocateur and his utterances are primarily a useful indicator of what is most likely to push people's buttons.  But he's not the only outlier.

The anti-Trump forces have consoled themselves with a post-election SNL monologue ripping Trump by contrarian African-American comic Dave Chapelle.  Chapelle, however, concluded with the statement, anathema to the #NeverTrump #NotMyPresident "don't normalize this monster" forces, “I’m going to give him a chance, and we, the historically disenfranchised, demand that he give us one, too.”

Interestingly, exit polls apparently showed a disconnect--perhaps a decisive disconnect--between black male and black female voters, not just in voting Democratic, but in voting for Hillary Clinton.  Clinton's support among black men and women both sagged, but black males abandoned her in larger numbers.

Disproportionately alienated by the Clinton agenda?  Seduced by Trump's alpha-male gilded swagger?  Acting on misogynistic impulses?  Or, more complexly, expressing their dissatisfaction with the intersectional narrative that placed black women, as the victims of multiple oppressions, at the center of the Democratic moral narrative and consciously sidelined black men?  All of the above?

In any case, it's a major problem because there is limited demographic upside to the African-American vote and black political activists can ill afford to lose the perceived ability to deliver any black votes if they wish to wield serious clout inside the Democratic Party.  Shortcomings in delivering black male as well as white female voters are causing some serious heartache, if not serious reflection, for the female POC activists who were a big part of the Clinton campaign discourse both in the primaries and the general election, as well as concerned chinstroking for the DNC professionals.

By my back of the envelope calculation narrative, the Democrats lost 400,000 black male votes in 2016. 

Not black males who didn't vote.  Not just black males who voted but did not vote for Hillary Clinton (that number is around 550,000 if exit polls are correct).  That's a net defection of black male votes within the bloc after correction for an overall sag in black support for Clinton among men and women.

I crunched some numbers and originally added them to my marathon Hamilton post, but I think they are interesting enough to excerpt here.

Unsurprisingly, black votes for Hillary Clinton dropped off both in absolute and percentage terms from the record-breaking turnout for Barack Obama.  Compared to Obama in 2012, Clinton in 2016 saw a drop of 2% among women and a drop of 7% for black men.  Back of the envelope, if one assumes 16 million African Americans voted and take the 2% drop among women as baseline for a Democratic candidate who was not Obama, black male turnout dropped an additional 5%.  That amounts to roughly 400,000 votes that Secretary Clinton lost among black males, whether to  Trump's superior appeal (among black voters Trump did best among college educated males, winning 16% of their votes), generic misogyny or to more specific dissatisfaction with how the Clinton campaign targeted them.

In the state of Florida, Clinton lost by 20,000 votes; less than the lost black male vote which I roughed out at about 36,000.  The "missing black men" could have been decisive in Michigan and Wisconsin, I think, but not Pennsylvania or Ohio.  The Clinton electoral campaign failed in multiple dimensions but I imagine that within the Democratic Party the shortcomings of the POC activists in delivering their votes did not go unnoticed.

The Trump election may have been the last or next-to-last hurrah for the white conservative male bloc, whose plurality and political clout is slowly being eroded by the burgeoning membership of the “rainbow coalition”.

2016 may have also been the last best chance for the African American bloc to assert its claim to a dominant political role in national political life.  

According to the Census Bureau projection, by 2060 African American share of population will increase from 12.2% to 14.3%.  Big loser: non-Hispanic whites drop from 62.2% to 43.6%.  Big mover: Hispanic share increases from 17.4% to 28.6% of total US population.  That's a 65% increase.

The African American political problem is that its contribution to the Democratic Party is pretty much maxed out.  80% of African Americans already identify as Democrats according to Pew, which now translates into 22% of Democratic affiliation.  Currently,  African Americans are the second largest bloc after non-Hispanic whites (60%) but that looks likely to change.

Hispanics are 3rd in the Democratic Party at 13% and have two potential upsides.  The first is straight demographic growth would lead to Hispanics pulling even with African Americans as the second largest bloc if the current breakdown of Democrats was simply reweighted to take in account national demographic growth.  Secondly, there are a lot of Hispanic independents out there (16% of "independents" are Hispanics, compared to 8% of African Americans) and only 56% of Hispanics currently identify with the Democratic Party.

The sizable bloc of Hispanics outside the Democratic Party once gave hope to GOP strategists, but thanks to Trump it looks like the chances of luring a decisive number of Hispanics into the Republican Party are slim for the time being.  It would seem more likely Hispanics will be more inclined to join the Democratic Party, and this trend could become a self-reinforcing cycle as Hispanics become the second-largest group in the Democratic Party and it becomes identified as the home of Hispanic political clout.

Bottom line is, by 2060 there will be 60 million African Americans and 120 million Hispanics.  Assume that translates into 20 million African American voters and 40 million Hispanic voters.  If, rather unrealistically, the Democrats get 100% of African Americans to vote Democratic, up from 80%, that increases the black vote bank by 4 million votes and that's literally the end of the line.  If, more realistically, it boosts Hispanic affiliation from 56% to 66%, that's 4 million votes right there, with plenty of potential upside remaining.  Every additional % point: another 400,000 votes.

Because of the lure of the growing Hispanic bloc and the inevitable need to cater to it in the matter of policy and appointments, African Americans face the threat of re-assuming the status of "the bloc that the Democrats take for granted", with the aggravating factor of "it's not even going to be the second largest bloc in a few years."  2016 was, if not the last, one of the last chances that the African American bloc had to show it could be a king/queenmaker in the Democratic Party, and it came up short.

Now the DNC is looking at Plan B--reaching out to conservative whites--by which I mean globalization-averse whites with an economic-nationalist tilt-- via Sanders and, I would guess, planning its Hispanic outreach--and this accounts, I think, for the special level of desperate fury I see from POC activists on my Twitter timeline. 

Following the election catastrophe, African American ambitions of “leading the Obama coalition” and acting as gatekeeper/king or queenmaker have taken a sizable knock and is the topic of much furious invective on the Internet right now, especially in terms of rebutting Sandernista claims to superior general election viability and a place at the DNC table.

Identity politics is not DOA, however.

Despite the 2016 meltdown of identity politics, Sandernista socialism-lite, even with its electoral appeal, is apparently still less attractive to the DNC elite than the identity politics coalition that is neoliberal/globalization/free market friendly and a welcoming destination for the Soros/Democratic Alliance billions that are needed to run an effective national campaign nowadays.

The DNC electoral model will probably require $2 billion, much of it from billionaire activist/philanthropists in the George Soros vein, to contest the 2020 presidential election.  A Bernie Sanders soak-the-billionaire small donor political posture will probably be hard-pressed to raise one-tenth of that figure.

Divide-and-rule identity politics that respect and secure billionaire interests will, I think, prevail.

So I suspect intersectional identity politics will survive as the central narrative of the Democratic Party in presidential campaigns.

However, African-American political clout may have reached its high-water mark.

After Hamilton: Soros The Musical?

In my opinion, the most revealing American political event in the last decade was the Democratic Party’s embrace of Hamilton, Not Just The Musical, and in the process doing a 180 away from Jeffersonian populism.

Hamilton: An American Musical 's identity as a liberal touchstone in these troubled times was affirmed when the audience boo’d Trumpveep Mike Pence when he attended the show, and he was addressed by the cast.

Ironically, the Clinton campaign actually recapitulated Hamilton’s political failures (he was never elected to a major office, made his mark as an appointee and factotum to George Washington and, indeed, was shunted into political irrelevance by Jefferson and Madison in the last years of his life) in not having an effective populist strategy.

So you could say Pence was at the scene of the crime, examining the remnants of the elite bubble that popped electorally on November 8--as well as indicating his willingness to serve as Veep of All Americans, a bit of olivebranching that did not make it into the coverage.

Somewhat awkwardly for NeverTrumpers who clothe their opposition in the uncompromising rhetoric of anti-fascism, once Pence was in their clutches the outraged Dems did not tear him limb from limb accompanied by infuriated exhortations from the stage.  

In fact, if political correctness was strictly enforced, the cast speech would have been condemned for “normalizing” the Trump administration i.e. acknowledging its legitimacy and power to rule and beseeching its benevolence:

Vice-president elect Pence, we welcome you and we truly thank you for joining us at Hamilton: An American Musical. We really do. 

We, sir, are the diverse America who are alarmed and anxious that your new administration will not protect us, our planet, our children, our parents — or defend us and uphold our inalienable rights, sir. 

But we truly hope that this show has inspired you to uphold our American values and work on behalf of all of us. All of us. 

We truly thank you for sharing this show — this wonderful American story told by a diverse group of men, women of different colors, creeds, and orientations. 

And buy the cast album!

Nice support for my crack “Liberals don’t fight fascism; they appease it.”

But the true story of Hamilton, in my opinion, is that he established the federal government as a bulwark of elite privilege and a bastion of resistance against populist rule.

Not just because he was an elitist himself and saw the merits of running the country in the interests of and in cooperation with successful rich guys; but because he saw that the best protection against local secessionist sentiment that plagued early America was to give elites a big stake in the federal government and less incentive to collude in local mischief.

I actually went into this issue at enormous length in a previous post (reproduced below and itself excerpted from a "punishingly long" precursor post; you’re welcome!) and patient readers will, I think, find my evidence persuasive.

The Democratic Party is now infatuated with the idea of “woke” i.e. enlightened and politically progressive elite rule a la Hamilton, perhaps because it is in thrall to its billionaire supporters like George Soros, who has not only lots of money but an ideology and global organization committed to perpetuating elite rule by the careful and scientific promotion of liberal principles concerning markets, geopolitics, and immigration.

The most fascinating and fraught element of elite-friendly rule, in my opinion, is the use of defining and redefining what and who is “America”—what forms the moral core and defines the proper trajectory of the nation—to slice and dice the rabble into relatively impotent, rulable ethnic and/or religious and/or national blocs and claim the more dynamic, unified, and useful groups as elite adjuncts.

The ugly word for this is co-option.  And for the first two hundred years of its history, the elite has done its best to be white-friendly.  

This year, noting demographic change and the strong identity of African Americans with Barack Obama, the Democratic Party placed its bets on “the Obama coalition” i.e. the cast of Hamilton.

Hamilton The Musical is a conscious exercise in redefinition, using revisionist casting of people of color, LBGQT etc. to assert the relevance of Hamilton and his exclusively white male milieu to the modern age.

Hillary Clinton placed a losing bet on this coalition.  The dispute raging on the Internet was whether this bet was too early or too one-sided.

I vote for “inept”.  

If the Democrats get it together and find a candidate charismatic enough to appeal to enough of the white constituency while keeping the Obama coalition together, you know somebody like Barack Obama but isn't termed-out, maybe they can nudge a candidate over the finish line next time.

The Trump election may have been the last or next-to-last hurrah for the white conservative male bloc, whose plurality and political clout is slowly being eroded by the burgeoning membership of the “rainbow coalition”.

Ironically, 2016 may have also been the last best chance for the African American bloc to assert its claim to a dominant political role in national political life.  

[According to the Census Bureau projection, by 2060 African American share of population will increase from 12.2% to 14.3%.  Big loser: non-Hispanic whites drop from 62.2% to 43.6%.  Big mover: Hispanic share increases from 17.4% to 28.6% of total US population.  That's a 65% increase.  

The African American political problem is that its contribution to the Democratic Party is pretty much maxed out.  80% of African Americans already identify as Democrats according to Pew, which now translates into 22% of Democratic affiliation.  Currently,  African Americans are the second largest bloc after non-Hispanic whites (60%) but that looks likely to change.  

Hispanics are 3rd in the Democratic Party at 13% and have two potential upsides.  The first is straight demographic growth would lead to Hispanics pulling even with African Americans as the second largest bloc if the current breakdown of Democrats was simply reweighted to take in account national demographic growth.  Secondly, there are a lot of Hispanic independents out there (16% of "independents" are Hispanics, compared to 8% of African Americans) and only 56% of Hispanics currently identify with the Democratic Party.  

The sizable bloc of Hispanics outside the Democratic Party once gave hope to GOP strategists, but thanks to Trump it looks like the chances of luring a decisive number of Hispanics into the Republican Party are slim for the time being.  It would seem more likely Hispanics will be more inclined to join the Democratic Party, and this trend could become a self-reinforcing cycle as Hispanics become the second-largest group in the Democratic Party and it becomes identified as the home of Hispanic political clout.

Bottom line is, by 2060 there will be 60 million African Americans and 120 million Hispanics.  If the Democrats get 100% of African Americans to vote, up from 80%, that increases the vote bank by 12 million votes and that's it.  If it boosts Hispanic affiliation from 56% to 66%, that's 12 million votes right there.  Every additional % point: another 1.2 million votes.

Because of the lure of the growing Hispanic bloc and the inevitable need to cater to it in the matter of policy and appointments, African Americans face the threat of re-assuming the status of "the bloc that the Democrats take for granted", with the aggravating factor of "it's not even going to be the second largest bloc in a few years."  2016 was, if not the last, one of the last chances that the African American bloc had to show it could be a king/queenmaker in the Democratic Party, and it came up short.  

Specifically, the "intersectional" narrative--one in which African American women called on white women and other groups suffering under white male patriarchy to recognize their shared oppression and make common cause (and thereby compensate for the trends marginalizing African American clout)--didn't pan out.

Now the DNC is looking at Plan B--reaching out to conservative whites--by which I mean globalization-averse whites with an economic-nationalist tilt-- via Sanders and, I would guess, planning its Hispanic outreach--and this accounts, I think, for the special level of desperate fury I see from POC activists on my Twitter timeline.  CH 11-20-16]

African American demographics are also eroding and, with John Lewis’ campaign to mobilize African Americans on behalf of Hillary Clinton coming up short—not only electorally, but in terms of turnout of black males, a group that I think was quietly alienated by the more strident “black women are saving the world” rhetoric and what appears to be a  sidelining of black males who, I suspect, the Clinton campaign decided would be regarded as too scary and militant—2016 might mark the highwater mark of African American influence.

 [Unsurprisingly, black votes for Hillary Clinton dropped off both in absolute and percentage terms from the record-breaking turnout for Barack Obama.  Compared to Obama in 2012, Clinton in 2016 saw a drop of 2% among women and a drop of 7% for black men.  Back of the envelope, if one assumes 16 million African Americans voted and take the 2% drop among women as baseline for a Democratic candidate who was not Obama, black male turnout dropped an additional 5%.  That amounts to roughly 400,000 votes that Secretary Clinton lost among black males, whether to  Trump's superior appeal (among black voters Trump did best among college educated males, winning 16% of their votes), generic misogyny or to more specific dissatisfaction with how the Clinton campaign targeted them.  In the state of Florida, Clinton lost by 20,000 votes; less than the lost black male vote which I roughed out at about 36,000.  The "missing black men" could have been decisive in Michigan and Wisconsin, I think, but not Pennsylvania or Ohio.  The Clinton electoral campaign failed in multiple dimensions but I imagine that within the Democratic Party the shortcomings of the POC activists in delivering their votes did not go unnoticed.  CH 11-2-16] 

Following the election catastrophe, African American ambitions of “leading the Obama coalition” and acting as gatekeeper/king or queenmaker have taken a sizable knock and is the topic of much furious invective on the Internet right now, with the fascinating subtext that Sandernista socialism-lite, even with its electoral appeal, is apparently still less attractive to the DNC elite than a shaky identity politics coalition that is, nevertheless neoliberal/globalization/free market friendly and a welcoming destination for the Soros/Democratic Alliance billions that are needed to run an effective national campaign nowadays.

Maybe in a few years, Soros The American Musical will take Broadway and liberal America by storm.  Who will play Soros: Hispanic? Black? Woman? LGBTQ? Muslim? White? will provide an interesting road map of which way the Democratic Party is headed.

Tuesday, August 09, 2016

Hispanic Hamilton…and Mob vs. Snob

To escape the soul-killing political minutiae inhabiting my Twitter timeline, I decided to trawl my own blog archive for diversion…and came across a piece I wrote in September 2013 on Alexander Hamilton!

Yes, Alexander Hamilton, current darling of the Washington set and central figure of an ethnically enhanced hip-hop musical that apparently provides the soundtrack and a sense of deeper meaning to liberal lives.

Reading the Chernow biography and Hamilton’s own writings, it is hard not to have a deep admiration for Hamilton (Chernow, by the way, collects a nice royalty from the musical).  Way back in 2013, I saw Hamilton as the sophisticated urban/internationalist counterpoint to the pastoral/racist/secessionist stylings of Thomas Jefferson.

Today, in 2016, however, Hamilton serves mainly as an avatar of elite rule opposed to Jeffersonian ideas of democracy, and that’s more meh to me.

My 2013 piece was entitled Mob vs. Snob and, since it was punishingly long, I’m going to tease out the good, currently relevant bits here for the amusement and reflection of the 2016 audience.

As readers might gather from the title of the piece, I see a lot of US history as squaring the circle between the economic and political aspirations of the ordinary citizen a.k.a. the Mob vs. the laser focus of the elites a.k.a. Snob on securing the protection of their property, privileges, and power.

I regard Hamilton as an important figure because he recognized that the key issue for the nascent federal system—and indeed most political systems we know today-- was how to attract and retain the loyalty of elites to present a central government/elite united front against disloyalty, sedition, and secessionism.  The US government protected the economic interests of elites and in return, elites protected the federal government against the threat of secession.  Kinda.  Glitched a bit during the Civil War, among other times.

Nowadays the federal government doesn’t worry overmuch about secession, but elites sure worry about the mob i.e. “runaway populism”.  And when it comes to allaying elite anxieties, the federal government and political parties are here to help!

2016 is doing a great job of affirming this dynamic as the Washington establishment and the propertied classes close ranks against Lumpenfuhrer Donald Trump.  So did Brexit, by the way, which provoked open and unironic discussions of why rule by an informed and engaged elite was infinitely preferable to turning over the direction of the nation to an ignorant and easily manipulated rabble.

The most interesting development of the US election, I think, is the formal abandonment of the white conservative voting bloc as the vital adjunct to elite rule.   Demographic change has rendered the male white conservative bloc vulnerable, and the Democrats intentionally ran a racially inflected “intersectional” campaign that identified overcoming oppressive white racism as a key social and political issue confronting the nation.

The Republican elite apparently accepted the proposition that the white bloc was a burned out case, and tried to reframe the GOP as an attractive vehicle for the aspirations of upwardly mobile Hispanics.  However, the Hispano-pander--keyed on profoundly unattractive and incapable campaigners Marco Rubio, Jeb Bush, and Ted Cruz--foundered spectacularly.

White power, as I put it, was left lying in the streets…and Donald Trump picked it up.

I might as well note here, that I do not see Donald Trump as Hitler.  White fascism is coming, in my opinion, but it will draw its dark energy from the defeat of Donald Trump, not his victory.

Trump is a carny barker—the Wizard of Oz was a displaced carny barker, by the way—whose grift happens to run counter to current elite priorities. 

So he’s the target of the full measure of exaggerated spittle in defense of globalized economic and security policies that support the economic interests of the elite, and attacks exhibiting a thoroughgoing disdain for non-expert/non-elite rule.  Remarkable to me, at least, because following the wisdom of elites has been a barely contained disaster for the last two decades…and apparently nobody wants to talk about that.

Meanwhile, “people of color” are replacing whites as the political parties’ and elites’ ostensible raison d’etre i.e. representing “the nation” whose elevated aspirations and virtuous interests they profess to embody and advance.  And, more to the point, elites co-opt the leaders and secure the votes of the POC community, thereby weakening the “mob” and strengthening the “snob”.

Lumpen white impulses, not African-American grievance, is now characterized as the dangerous (i.e. disenfranchised and needy) force that needs to be kept under control, in other words.  Quite the switcheroo.  

Actually, quite the achievement by President Obama, whose disciplined, cerebral demeanor and heroic efforts in keeping the wheels on the neoliberal sh*twagon did a lot to help  claim the mantle of responsible and respectable minority for African Americans, while nudging freaked-out conservative whites out of the "value voter" political sweet spot and into the zone of "bigoted, gun-hugging bitters."

And that is why, I think, you see a Hispanic Hamilton.

Because Hamilton was a snob and people of color are now regarded as a valuable snob accessory.

Below the fold, a taste of Mob vs. Snob!

The Ghost at the Abe-Trump Banquet: Nobusuke Kishi

Understandably, a lot of the coverage analyzing the impact of Trump on Japan has emphasized the negative: Trump is a trade-war guy, he wants Japan to pay more for bases, he’d be happy to stand aside as Japan slugged it out in some military encounter with North Korea, he’s pulled the plug on TPP…

Quite a long list.  And Prime Minister Abe hurried to New York to reaffirm the relationship and hopefully mitigate some of the awful things Donald Trump has promised to do to Japan.

Abe's takeaway from the November 17 meeting with Trump was "as an outcome of today’s discussion I am convinced Mr. Trump is a leader with whom I can have great confidence in."

 

Ooh baby.

In my most recent piece for Asia Times, And the Winner of the US Election is…Shinzo Abe? I take a contrarian view: that Trumpismo--and the virtual demise of the TPP (in its present form, maybe! but never say never! Read the piece!) is a long-expected and, in some fundamental way, welcome development for Japan when it comes to Japan edging aside the United States as the indispensable nation in Asian trade diplomacy.

Here I'll focus on the military dimension of the U.S.-Japan relationship, illustrated by the parallel experiences of Prime Minister Abe and his grandfather, Prime Minister Nobosuke Kishi.

Japan—and Abe—have been preparing for the moment that the United States would kick Japan to the curb since at least 1971-72, when Nixon screwed Japan royally with the Plaza Accord and PRC recognition.

And Abe’s been anticipating that moment, since his stated ambition is to re-establish Japan as a “normal” nation, freed from the shackles of the peace constitution imposed by the United States and one that completely controls its national and global destiny.

Trump's stated disdain for the structures of the post-war US-Japanese alliance gives Abe the space, indeed the imperative to pursue that dream.

Japan isn’t quite “normal” yet, but via the Cabinet’s reinterpretation of the Peace Constitution and the passage of legislation redefining and enabling collective self defense in 2015, the road to Japanese power projection outside its borders and territorial waters, though winding and narrow, has been blazed.

Well, maybe not too winding and narrow.  The very fact that the legislation was a hopeless farrago of amendments (heroic attempt to explain the law here, thanks to the US Naval War College) to existing policies probably created holes big enough for a Komatsu bulldozer to drive through, if the political will exists.

Most of the debate related to “collective self defense” i.e. incrementally enhancing Japan’s ability to join U.S. military operations not directly involved in defense of the Japanese homeland.  Though much lusted for by US pivoteers, this revision carefully avoided permitting Japan’s front line military participation in whatever mischief the US cooked up.  

However, the “Peace and Security Preservation Legislation” also redefined unilateral Japanese use of force through military action outside its borders “when an armed attack against a foreign country that is in a close relationship with Japan occurs and as a result threatens Japan’s survival and poses a clear danger to fundamentally overturn people’s right to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness” according to a ‘splainer provided by Japan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Enabling unilateral Japanese overseas military operations is the permanent takeaway from constitutional re-interpretation, no matter what the US does or doesn’t do in Asia.

For Abe, there’s a personal element in his struggle to redefine Japan’s military role, thanks to his bloodlines in the right wing Japanese elite, specifically his grandfather, Nobosuke Kishi, illustrated by the striking parallels between Abe's quest to push through the security legislation in 2015 and his grandfather's epic struggle to renew the Japan-U.S. Security Treaty in 1960.

There’s even some pop-psych mumbo-jumbo involved, as this fascinating piece on the timing of the votes on the security legislation from Nikkei indicates:

     July 15 [2015; the date the Diet House of Representatives approved Abe’s security bills] was an important date for Nobusuke Kishi, Abe's grandfather and a former Japanese prime minister. Fifty-five years ago to the day, Kishi's cabinet was forced to resign amid mounting public opposition over the renewal of the Japan-U.S. Security Treaty.

There's more than LDP astrology at work.  Kishi's experiences are cited by Abe himself as a shaping influence.  Here's a family snap of the two:

In his autobiography, Abe claims that, despite being only six years old, he remembered the traumatic days of 1960:

Abe, in his book, "Utsukushii Kuni-e" ("Toward a Beautiful Country"), recounts his childhood memory of June 18, 1960, the day before the new security pact was passed. Protesters surrounded the parliament building, and Kishi was trapped inside the prime minister's official residence. According to Abe's recollection, Kishi was drinking wine with Eisaku Sato, Kishi's younger brother who later became a prime minister himself, when he said, "I know I am not wrong. If I am going to be killed over this, so be it."

Renewing the Japan-U.S. Security Treaty over massive popular opposition was a transformative moment in Japanese history and for Kishi himself.  It represented a major step in the restoration of the prestige and power of the pre-war conservative elite after it had been broken and discredited by the war and the occupation.

Similar, in fact, that the breakthrough Abe achieved in 2015.

 Abe now finds himself in the same circumstances as his grandfather did 55 years ago: pushing his vision of Japanese transformation within the context of an overbearing U.S. presence that is at the same time welcomed and resented.


Fortunately for Abe, though beset with demonstrators inside and outside the Diet, he was not driven to the extremity of calling in the police to literally carry incensed opposition lawmakers out of the chamber, four cops per legislator, as his grandfather did to force through the vote, thereby earning Kishi the profound hatred and contempt of a generation of Japanese leftists as a Showa militarist retread.

Indeed in 1960 the outrage in Japan at the treaty was so great and the demonstrations so massive that Eisenhower’s envoy trying to make it into town from Haneda was trapped in his limo and had to be rescued by a Marine helicopter.

Understandably, Ike’s visit to Japan to celebrate ratification of the treaty was canceled.

Also fortunately for Abe, he also did not have to endure a subsequent assassination attempt by a disgruntled right-winger, as Kishi did.  For historical/morbid interest, here is the archival raw Pathe footage of Kishi being rushed to the hospital as his assailant is detained.  Also bloodsplatter.  Pathe camerapeople were really on the ball:



The parallels between Abe and Kishi--their circumstances, their outlooks, and their challenges--are striking and significant and go beyond their shared experiences in enacting unpopular security legislation.  Kishi’s special relationship with the United States—and his pivotal role in shaping the Japan-US military partnership—offer other interesting perspectives on the actions of his grandson.

Kishi was more than the postwar shepherd of the LDP’s alliance with the United States.  He had been a key cog in the Imperial war machine and became a vital pillar of American policy in Japan after the war.

Kishi averted prosecution as a war criminal because…well, I will outsource this part of the discussion to a lengthy quote from Sterling and Peggy Seagraves’ Gold Warriors.

In 1956…the Eisenhower administration labored long and hard to install Kishi as head of the…Liberal-Democratic Party and as Japan’s new prime minister.  This was the same Kishi who had been a member of the hard core ruling clique in Manchuria with General Tojo Hideki…Kishi had also signed Japan’s Declaration of War against America in December 1941…During World War II he was vice minister of munitions and minister of commerce and industry, actively involved in slave labor…Following Japan’s surrender, he was one of the most prominent indicted war criminals…[pg. 122.  Seagraves wrong on a point here: Kishi was accused and detained as a Class A war criminal for “crimes against peace” i.e. plotting war, but never formally indicted]

The Seagraves stipulate that Kishi was sprung from prison thanks to a deal brokered by the Japanese underworld to hand over looted war gold to the U.S. as a massive off-the-books slush fund in return for gentle treatment of Japan’s elite by the occupation.  I’m not going to dismiss that allegation.  Dig up a copy of Gold Warriors and judge for yourself.

Anyway, Kishi somehow did avoid prosecution and became the core of America’s preferred ruling party in Japan, the LDP.  Continuing with the Seagraves’ account (which draws heavily on the writings of Michael Schaller):

For ten years, Kishi was groomed as America’s boy…[The American Council for Japan] worked tirelessly to improve Kishi’s mousy image, tutored him in English, and taught him to love Scotch.  To them, Kishi was America’s ‘only bet left in Japan’ [Schaller attributes this quote to John Foster Dulles].

Kishi’s key attraction to the U.S. was, of course, his pro-U.S. tilt.  In a piece posted on Chalmers Johnson's JPRI website, Schaller writes:

Kishi reasserted his loyalty to America's Cold War strategy, pledging to limit contact with China and, instead, to focus Japanese economic attention on exports to the United States and mutual development of Southeast Asia.

Hmm.  Sounds rather...Abe-esque, doesn't it?  Pivoty, perhaps?

Finally, after much struggle and expense, Kishi became Prime Minister in 1957.  According to the Seagraves, during his term the CIA paid the LDP $10 million a year from the slush fund, known as the M-Fund, to help it secure its political fortunes.

Then, in order to gain Kishi’s support for the U.S.-Japan Security Treaty—the one referred to above, the one that was so unpopular Kishi was eventually forced to resign—the Seagraves allege that the U.S. government transferred control of the M-Fund to Kishi—personally. 

The Seagraves, apparently working off an investigative memorandum by Norbert Schlei (long story) allege Richard Nixon, charged with the task of negotiating the new treaty, gave up the fund in return for unspecified assistance in his unsuccessful presidential run in 1960.  I have a hard time wrapping my head around that, but in any case, for whatever reason, it appears that the M-Fund a) did exist and b) control over it did pass from the CIA and into the hands of Kishi and the LDP, kicking off a spectacular and perhaps ongoing carnival of corruption at the highest level of Japanese politics.

The Seagraves allege that Kishi helped himself to 10% of the fund, a not inconsiderable $3 billion in 1960s dollars, and established himself as the LDP’s kingmaker for the rest of his life. 

Writing in 1991, Schlei further alleged that, thanks primarily to the energetic activities of bag man & subsequent Prime Minister and trafficker in Lockheed peanuts Kakuei Tanaka (who helped himself to $10 billion dollars from the fund, according to Schlei), the M-Fund had grown to $500 billion.

The links between the United States and the LDP--which Abe now, of course, heads--are long, deep, and dark, and designed to survive the vagaries of national elections. Abe is a key custodian of that relationship.

Again, Kishi was rather Abe-esque in ramming through an unpopular security bill that above all else pleased the United States enormously.

As to the geopolitical implications of the 1960 security treaty, it permitted the US a massive and permanent military presence in a state that, along other political axes, was increasingly a “normal” sovereign state i.e. a state that was in danger of wandering off in pursuit of an independent or non-aligned foreign policy.  This was not a trivial concern in the 1950s, when Japanese public opinion was largely pacifist, leaning toward a non-aligned foreign policy, and not particularly interested in signing on as America's Cold War partner in Asia.

Per Schaller, Uncle Sam was pretty pleased with Kishi's work, and his determination to push the massively unpopular treaty through the Diet:

During the next 18 months Kishi collaborated closely with Ambassador MacArthur in revising the security treat. The U.S. agreed to scrap many of the most unpopular elements of the 1951 pact in return for the right to retain air, naval, repair, and logistic facilities in Japan--along with a secret protocol preserving the right to move nuclear weapons "through" Japan.  The importance of these bases, and those in Okinawa, became abundantly clear during the Vietnam war.

Given the current rumpus over media "normalization" of Donald Trump, it is interesting to consider how the U.S. press treated a guy who had literally signed a declaration of war against the United States:

In January 1960, Prime Minister Kishi flew to Washington to sign a revised mutual security treaty.  President Eisenhower welcomed him warmly and the America press lavished effusive praise on the visitor, barely mentioning the demonstrations against him and the treaty when he left Tokyo.  Time magazine graced its January 25, 1960 cover with a portrait of a smiling Kishi against a background of humming industry.  The prime minister's "134 pound body,", Time noted, "packed pride, power and passion--a perfect embodiment of his country's amazing resurgence."  Newsweek trumpeted the arrival of a "Friendly, Savy [sic], Salemsan from Japan."  The revised treaty, along with the ubiquitous Sony transistor radios shipped to America, Newsweek explained, symbolized the U.S. alliance with the "economic powerhouse of Asia." 

Here's that Time cover:

 

America was on hand to encourage Japanese re-militarization even to levels that were then, and have remained for half a century, politically unattainable.  A fascinating webpage at MIT commemorating Hamaya Hiroshi's photojournalism of the “Anpo” opposition movement to the Treaty tells us:

[T]he preamble to the treaty voiced the “expectation” that Japan would assume more responsibility for its own defense, meaning in effect that article nine of the constitution would have to be amended or worked around. At the time of the signing, American officials foresaw Japan creating an army of 325,000 to 350,000 within three years. [emphasis added]

For perspective, 50 years later, the JSF still has not gotten there.  As of 2015, JSF claimed 247,000 active and 56,000 reserve personnel.

Here's another family portrait that's too good to pass up: Kishi in 1957 with his two grandchildren in American rootin' tootin' Injun garb he brought back from his trip to Washington.  Shinzo Abe's on the right.

Abe recapitulated his grandfather's close ties to the United States, specifically to the yippy-ki-yay neo-con anti-China wing of the Republican Party.  It is little remembered except, I suppose, by me, Dick Cheney, and the Hudson Institute (where Cheney major-domo Scooter Libby still holds a sinecure and Abe speaks on occasion) that Abe, in his first, doomed prime ministership,  endorsed Cheney's strategy of  a "Asia Democratic Security Diamond" (Japan, India, Australia, and the United States) a.k.a. China containment structure at the time it (and Vice President Cheney) were very unpopular inside the Bush White House.

Now, of course, Abe's Japan is a mainstay of the U.S. pivot to Asia and, as I discuss in my Asia Times article, the keeper of the TPP flame even though it's been doused for now in the United States and many of the other signatory countries.

It is, however, simplistic to characterize Kishi (or Abe) simply as a collaborator doing America’s bidding in Japan. Understanding, appreciating, and exploiting the undeniable reality of American power after it has crushed his nation doesn’t necessarily imply a repudiation of national dreams, nationalism, or for that matter even anti-American national ideology.

Kishi was a defiant scion of a samurai family and Japanese imperialist who rejected the idea of Japan as a pacifist ward of the United States.  In Kishi’s eyes, the 1960 treaty was a blow against American occupation.  In his own words:  

Under the old security treaty, America was the overwhelmingly dominant party. Since Japan did nothing for its own defense, the US military was essentially occupying the whole of Japan, even though the Allied occupation was officially over. As long as that situation persisted, Japan-US relations could not be said to rest on a rational foundation. That’s why a change was absolutely necessary. 

With this perspective, Kishi's success in winning control over the M-Fund looks like another step in his quest for Japanese national and military self-determination.

Presumably President Eisenhower needed to be told something to explain the alienation of the M-Fund billions and the official reason, interestingly enough, according to Schlei was the need for Japan to have direct and expeditious access to black funding to evade constitutional restrictions “in case of war”:

[T]he ostensible reason for ceding control of the Fund to Japan was Japan's need for an emergency source of funds in the event that war should break out.  In such an eventuality, Japan would be especially vulnerable because its constitutional prohibition on military force would severely hamper financial preparation for defense.  In order to make the Fund and even better source of defense funds in time of need, the Japanese negotiatiors agreed that after the Fund was released to Japanese control, they would add substantially to the amount of the Fund.

In other words, it seems that with Japan not ready to revise the constitution as a reciprocal treaty and become a formal full-fledged security partner, Kishi sold the United States on the idea of obtaining control over a huge pile of black money (which he may have regarded as rightfully Japan's in the first place) so he would be able to develop Japan’s military capabilities “off the books”.

By his lights, then, Kishi was fighting a two-front war against domestic pacifism and American hegemony, and restoring Japanese independence as a nation and, potentially, as a security power in the process.

Abe sees himself as heir to that struggle, according to an article in Japan Times:

Amending the Constitution was Kishi’s long-standing political aim. His grandson, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, now views it as his to complete...Kishi believed that early Allied Occupation policy was aimed at snuffing out the patriotism of the Japanese people...Abe appears to bear similar resentment toward the Constitution, although as prime minister he is unlikely to express this publicly.

In this context, it’s good to understand Abe's core political and personal identity as a historical revisionist, i.e. a member of the robust right-wing contingent in Japanese politics that believes the key precipitating factor in the Pacific War was a US act of aggression, the economic blockade, and that Japan subsequently was unfairly subjected to “victor’s justice” and imposition of the onerous pacifist constitution…and unjust persecution of patriots like his grandfather.

I wrote at length about Japanese historical revisionism concerning World War II over at Japan Focus, particularly in the context of revisionists’ love for Indian jurist Radhabinod Pal, who wrote a massive dissent to the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal decision—the Tribunal that would have tried and sentenced Kishi if he had not been somehow plucked from Sugamo Prison.

The Pal dissent is a cornerstone of the Abe’s narrative of the injustice meted out to Japan’s leaders, as can be seen from this Telegraph report of the aftermath of the LDP’s victory at the polls in 2012:

"The view of that great war was not formed by the Japanese themselves, but rather by the victorious Allies, and it is by their judgment only that [Japanese] were condemned," Mr Abe told a meeting of the House of Representatives Budget Committee on Tuesday. 

In his previous short-lived spell as prime minister, for 12 months from September 2006, Mr Abe said that the 28 Japanese military and political leaders charged with Class-A war crimes are "not war criminals under the laws of Japan." 

Prime Minister Abe made a pilgrimage to Kolkata in 2007 to meet with Pal’s son and receive two pictures of Pal with Kishi.  The photos were taken in 1966, when Pal journeyed to Tokyo to receive Japan’s highest civilian order, ‘The First Order of Sacred Treasure’.

Here’s a picture of Abe’s meeting in Kolkata. 

According to The Hindu:

“The people of Japan love Radhabinod Pal [1886-1967] and still hold him in the highest esteem,” Mr. Abe reportedly told the son of the lone member of the International Military Tribunal for the Far East to have found not guilty all those accused in the famous Tokyo War Crimes Trial (1946-48).

In an interesting sidebar concerning the theme of Abe’s apparent fetish with anniversaries that kicked off this piece, there’s this:

“The Prime Minister told me that the new generation in Japan knew little about my father but they might have got to learn of him after a documentary on him shot by a government agency was telecast in that country on August 14,” Mr. Pal said.

“The day of the telecast marked the 62nd anniversary of the Japanese Army deciding that far too many innocent lives had been lost on the two occasions atom bombs were dropped in Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 6 and 9 [in 1945] to fight on in the Second World War. A day later the Japanese surrendered,” Mr. Pal recalled.

Finally, to understand Abe’s relationship with his American patron, consider this concluding remark by Schaller:

In 1960, as soon as the new treaty became effective, the United States withdrew its support from Kishi--who now seemed like damaged goods.

I would think that Abe has internalized the lessons of how to please the United States through an anti-China tilt and cooperation with the US military.

But he probably also remembers that the United States, though it protected, promoted, and enriched his grandfather, ultimately abandoned him.

When America turns away, Japan has to be ready to stand up.


With the election of Donald Trump, that day has approached with alarming speed.  But Abe has devoted his political life to preparing for it.