Rising Sun, Setting Sun: Japan, the United States, and the Security Laws

The passage of the collective self defense bills-- enabling Japanese participation in military activities beyond its home territory under restrictions that appear to be rather elastic--

In case Japan faces “a survival-threatening situation,” in which the United States and other countries that have close ties with the nation come under an armed attack by a third country and that poses a threat to the existence of Japan and the livelihoods of Japanese people, Japan now can use minimum necessary force.

--had a feeling of inevitability to me.

They give more freedom of movement to the Japanese government in its security policy, more leverage in its foreign relations, and more gravy to the corporate sector.  These are opportunities that most modern governments, especially a right-wing government like Abe’s, would be eager to exploit.

And I think it’s accurate to describe them as a “normalization” of Japan’s international status, especially if “the norm” is understood to be a downgrade from the Japan’s previous condition, in other words a decline from the idealistic, pacifist aspirations of Japan’s US-imposed constitution to ordinary government-business-and-media driven war-grubbing.

The Japanese people as a whole appear to be more at home with these aspirations—which they grew up with—than the Abe ambition to restore Japan as a regional security player despite the risk it poses to Japanese lives, treasure, and honor.

Abe had to abandon his plans to revise the constitution to make “collective self defense” legal, and ignore the fact that an overwhelming majority of constitutional lawyers regarded his Plan B—“reinterpretation” of Article 9—as BS.  Then he had to turn his back on massive demonstration against the bills to push them through the legislature.

It was ugly.  And Japan’s somewhat less special now.

The temptation is to blame rising, scary China and the PRC’s messing with the Senkakus.

However, Abe’s been pushing an anti-PRC containment “diamond” ever since his first administration in 2007, when the PRC was not yet officially “scary”.

Abe has always wanted his “normalized” “remilitarized” “no more apologies” Japan and he got it…with an assist from the United States.

The United States under President Obama decided to take the plunge and openly commit to a China containment strategy keystoned on Japanese participation.

Even as many Asian nations—not just the PRC—expressed ambivalence over the re-emergence of Japan as a potential regional military force—US strategists have enthusiastically promoted the process, doing their best to dismiss popular opposition, the violence done to the constitution, and to the grotesquely counterproductive effort to force the Futenma base plan down the throats of the Okinawans.

The feeling, I suppose, is that all this shall pass—or can be managed—and we’ll have a capable, willing ally ready to help us execute our China strategy and toeing the US line thanks to the  restraints imposed by the constitution and the security legislation.

US Asian-natsec strategists are, I believe, delusional. 

I predict we’re not going to get Japan as our “UK in the Pacific” i.e. a slavishly obedient ally that has decided, as a fundamental national principle, to join itself to the hip to the United States in security policy.

We’re going to get something more like our “Israel in the Pacific”, an occasional, contentious, and conditional partner advancing its own agenda, an agenda that may well turn out to be more reckless and confrontational than it would be otherwise thanks to the moral hazard of strong US backing.

A while back I wrote in Asia Times Online:

Japan, the linchpin of the US pivot strategy —  and a source of orgasmic pleasure to US China hawks when it revised its defense guidelines to permit joint military operations in East Asia with the United States — already plays its own hand in Taiwan, South Korea, Vietnam, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Myanmar, as well as the Philippines.

Historically inclined readers might note 1) these are all countries that Japan invaded and/or occupied as a matter of national interest in World War II and 2) Japan is run by the spiritual heirs—or in the case of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, the direct heirs — of people who ran Japan back then and implemented that policy until the United States defeated them.

…

When you anoint Japan as a theater-wide anti-PRC military ally, you’re not getting the same ally you had when Japan’s main job was hosting US bases and poking around in its own territorial waters and airspace.

And the ability of the United States to “manage” Japan and “lead” Asia is on a downward trajectory:

[T]he pivot to Asia is, in my mind, fundamentally flawed because it is built upon the premise of US leadership in Asian security, and ‘US leadership’ looks to be a wasting asset.

It’s not just the PRC.  Everybody’s getting bigger, and the US’s relative share is shrinking.


PricewaterhouseCoopers took the IMF’s 2014 GDP numbers and worked the spreadsheet magic using projected growth rates.

In 2050, here’s how they see the GDP horserace playing out, in trillions: China 61; India 42; USA 41; Indonesia 12; Brazil 9; Mexico 8; Japan 7.9; Russia 7.5; Nigeria 7.3 and Germany 6.3. Poodlicious Euro-allies UK, Italy, and France will be out of the top ten in 2050.  Australia drops from 19^th place to 28^th.

Put it another way, the US will have 14 percent of the world’s GDP and Asia, the region we’re purporting to lead, will have 50 percent.
…
America’s Pacific Century…is not going to be pushing around overmatched, grateful, and anxious allies like the UK, Poland, and Germany while trampling on small borderline failed states in the Middle East.  It’s going to be contending with half a dozen rising Asian nations, all with experiences of empire and aspirations to at least local hegemony…and on top of them, there’s China.

I think Asia is robust enough to accommodate and restrain the ambitions of the PRC…and resist US attempts to “lead” it.

Ditto for Japan.

I wouldn’t be surprised if historians look back at the passage of the Japanese security bills and regard them as a milestone in the decline of American influence in Asia…one that was eagerly and shortsightedly celebrated by US strategists at the time.

Maybe we’ll be saying September 19, 2015 didn't just mark the end of Japanese pacifism. We’ll say that the sun began to set on America’s Pacific Century…before it even had a chance to rise.

South China Sea: How Many Battalions Does the Passive Voice Have?

And...Island Games: Okinotorishima vs. Johnson South Reef

My Twitter feed contained the following ringing statement:

Claims disputes pervade maritime Asia. All parties must be prevented from use force/threat thereof to alter status quo.

To paraphrase Napoleon on the Pope, how many battalions does the frickin’ passive voice have?

“Must be prevented”.  That’s the problem with the pivot.

The "pivot to Asia" is an idea.  It's not a doctrine, like the Monroe Doctrine, the Truman Doctrine, the Eisenhower Doctrine, or the Bush Doctrine, all of which were based on the statement, "If you do X, It's War!"(Or, in the case of the immortal Bush doctrine, If you're thinking of doing X, or I think you're thinking of doing X, or if you're not thinking of doing X but I want to bomb you anyway, It's War!)

The pivot expresses the hope that the PRC will mistake a US preference for an national doctrine, construe the US desire to make mischief for the PRC in its near beyond as a matter of existential resolve, and do the United States the courtesy of dignifying Washington’s expressions of disapproval as a deterrent.

The PRC, on the other hand, has a genuine doctrine: its territorial integrity is an existential issue.  And it has openly applied it to the South China Sea.  

I might point out that the PRC tried to make its South China Sea priorities a matter of engagement with the United States (remember the “core interest” kerfuffle?), but Hillary Clinton instead, oh so cleverly, turned the issue on its head as a matter of Chinese aggression, and made support for the PRC’s South China Sea adversaries into the keystone of the pivot.

So those chickens have come home to roost.  As the United States committed fully to the pivot architecture, the PRC has decided to flout the US deterrent by moving the HYSY 981 into Vietnam’s claimed EEZ and so far the US response has been…extremely muted.

I expect that President Obama is loath to pile a PRC crisis on top of his Russian crisis.

I also suspect that the United States did not have a riposte ready in its well-financed, exhaustively think-tanked China strategy for a PRC provocation like this.

Perhaps the US was lazily assuming that the PRC, its military completely overmatched by the United States’, would never have the gumption to test the US deterrent.

In any case, there it is.  

Undoubtedly, the US foreign policy apparatus is working up a portfolio of appropriately muscular options for President Obama, all the way from blasting the HYSY 981 out of the water to sailing the USSN Ronald Reagan et. al. through the Chinese flotilla, to joint patrols with the Philippine navy/coast guard, to drawing a red line in the waters of the South China Sea…

Anyway, I think the PRC is determined to show that its determination and staying power exceed that of the United States in South China Sea jostling up to the point of military confrontation.

And maybe even including war, if a feisty op-ed in Global Times is taken at face value:

It's a demanding and risky job to let other countries get used to China's rise and treat China as a major power. Vietnam and the Philippines, which haven't updated their knowledge about China, still cherish the illusion that China can simply be forced back by pressure.

China's interests are beyond the South China Sea. It must strike a balance between securing its territorial waters and maintaining a vibrant growth trend.

China faces a dilemma with its growing power. On the one hand, it will be confronted by neighbors like Vietnam, the Philippines and Japan, and other stakeholders like the US if it makes use of its power.

On the other, if China conceals its power, its determination to safeguard territorial integrity will be underestimated, which would further foster the unscrupulousness of countries like Vietnam, the Philippines and Japan.

…

China has taken the first assertive step in securing its territorial integrity in the South China Sea, and in the meantime faces strong protests from Hanoi and Manila, and obvious bias from the US. China's diplomatic risks are rising, but these are the costs that have to be borne as China becomes more powerful.

The South China Sea disputes should be settled in a peaceful manner, but that doesn't mean China can't resort to non-peaceful measures in the face of provocation from Vietnam and the Philippines. Many people believe that a forced war would convince some countries of China's sincerely peaceful intentions, but it is also highly likely that China's strategy would face more uncertainties.

There are some off ramps for the current crisis short of a direct mano-a-mano confrontation between the US and the PRC.

Vietnam, the United States, et. al. might simply suck it up and limit themselves to verbal castigation of the PRC until August 15, when the HYSY 981-zilla is due to lumber off.

Or Vietnam will decide that capitulation is the better part of valor, heed PRC calls for bilateral talks and, in bad news for the Philippines, contribute to the further fracturing of the shaky South China Sea anti-PRC United Front.  

I suspect that the PRC has put an attractive pile of economic carrots on the table together with the HSYS 981 stick, and Vietnam is currently weighing the psychic benefits of partnership in an anti-Chinese alliance with the economic benefits that might accrue from expanded PRC trade and investment.

I think in the medium term, Vietnam will come to the conclusion that existential, war-worthy interests for the United States are not identical with those of any other nation in Asia, including Japan, and the most credible deterrent is one that it is in the control of Vietnam.

I’m sure France would be interested in obliging Vietnam with the sale of a few ship (and platform)-killing missiles that might make the PRC think twice before it engages in tomfoolery in Vietnam’s offshore near beyond.

And that, I think, is how the PRC’s leadership sees the endgame playing out.  Asian powers become richer, stronger, and more independent of the United States.  And the United States, anxious for regional influence, eventually comes back to the PRC…

Anyway, moving from the general to the particular, there’s an apparent PRC building program on Johnson South Reef, a formation that the Philippines considers inside its 200 nm EEZ.

The Philippines released photos that appear to show a dredge pumping up sand to expand the above surface area of the reef.  The Philippine foreign ministry accused the PRC of violating the stand-still agreement negotiated with ASEAN.  According to AFP, the PRC for its part acknowledged work was going on but it was just “renovation” of facilities for Chinese troops stationed on the reef, presumably claiming that its work therefore doesn’t violate the standstill agreement.

Interestingly, the PRC had actually established itself at Johnson South Reef after a skirmish with Vietnam, not the Philippines, in 1988, at a time when both Vietnam and PRC were both racing to occupy the reef.  Vietnam, thanks to its “flying rectangle”—an EEZ claim only slightly less risible than the Chinese “cow tongue”—claims many of the islands that are also subject to PRC-Philippine wrangling.

As a reminder to readers of the folly of turning the South China Sea into an internationalized issue, here is the map of what I call the “salad bowl” of Spratly sovereignty claims, courtesy of Wikipedia.  Remember, EEZs can’t be defined until sovereignty is agreed—and there is no accepted multi-lateral mechanism for determining sovereignty.

As to the motive for the Chinese jiggery-pokery on Johnson Second Reef, the Philippines raised the specter of airfield construction and, by implication, enhancement of the PRC military threat to adjacent Philippine claims.

It is apparently unlikely that an airfield that could contribute significantly to the PRC military presence in the islands could be constructed on the reef.

For a more likely explanation of PRC intentions, let us turn to…Okinotorishima Island!

Long story short, Okoritorishima Island was the occasion for an exercise of EEZ aggrandizement by Japan, abetted for some reason by the complaisant solons of the UNCLOS Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf.

The PRC has cast a stern and disapproving eye on the Okinotorishima exercise.  The information and illustrations below, unless otherwise acknowledged, are from a presentation by Julia Xue of Qingdao Ocean University at a conference in Washington, D.C. in 2010.

The two Okinotorishima islands, 1700 km SSW from Tokyo and a good 700 km from the nearest inhabited Japanese territory, were not impressive in their original form.  One lump was 4.7 meters across, the other 2.6 meters across.  And they were clearly eroding and not long for the above-surface world unless steps were taken:

Through an intensive application of resources i.e. $600 million dollars to build a protective cofferdam around the islands, sheath the islands itself, and construct a platform, the rocks were transformed into this:

Here is Shintaro Ishihara, everybody’s favorite advocate of island restraint, standing on one of the islands of Okinotorishima.

And kneeling on the island to kiss the sacred territory:

Except he’s not standing/kneeling/kissing the rocks themselves.  He’s standing on an erosion-prevention cap over the rocks.

Here’s the rocks, under the cap:

And Japan, over the objections of the PRC and South Korea, proclaimed a radial 200 nm EEZ around Okinotorishima.  The Japanese government leaned on the argument that, although UNCLOS denied an EEZ to “rocks” that could not support “human habitation or economic life on their own”, Okinotorishima was not “rocks”; it was an “island” that could not support “human habitation or economic life on their own,” UNCLOS was talking about a totally different thing, so problem solved.

Anyway, Japan took this less-than-impressive, less-than-natural feature to UNCLOS and was able to get an extension of the Japanese continental shelf to Okinotorishima Island.  (Thanks to the creation of the Okinotorishima EEZ, the “Shikoku Basin Region” was a non-EEZ zone surrounded on all sides by Japanese EEZs, so I imagine that UNCLOS committee was relatively cavalier in assigning it to Japan).

Image from Yomiuri Shimbun. 

Okinotorishima plus “Shikoku Basin Region” add about 400,000 sq km to Japan’s already impressive EEZ endowment.

And Japan further used Okinotorishima to apply to UNCLOS for another southward extension of its continental shelf to the boundaries of Palau (the application is pending).

An article for a Japanese think tank, the Ocean Policy Research Council, by an admiral in the JMSDF declared that Japan’s EEZ grab was related to security: that it wanted to be able to “constrain” Chinese military vessels.   If this was indeed the intent, that dog may no longer hunt.  The United States has strongly asserted its right to send military vessels through the PRC EEZ to track PLAN submarines, and the PRC has apparently grudgingly accepted that point, so it would be difficult to exclude PRC military vessels from the Okinotorishima EEZ.  On the other hand, if PRC decides to get chesty again about US military vessels operating inside its EEZ, Japan’s massive EEZ holdings could be used to bottle up the Chinese inside the oft-invoked “first island chain”.

As to where this all leads, it appears that UNCLOS has been rather feckless in alienating ocean areas on the basis of dubious exercises in “islandisation”.  It is difficult—though of course not impossible—for China’s adversaries to criticize the PRC for adopting the Japanese precedent of jacking up an island and claiming an EEZ.  

Perhaps at Johnson Second Reef, the PRC is cloning the Japanese “lilypad” approach displayed at Okinotorishima, not for military purposes but to assert rights to an EEZ.

As to the motive for doing this in the cluttered confines of the South China Sea, I would speculate that the PRC is looking forward to the day when it finally retreats from the anachronistic and ahistoric “nine dash line” (which has never even been surveyed; it’s literally just lines drawn on a map), turns on a dime, and presents a portfolio of territorial sovereignty and EEZ claims…that pretty much cover the same area.

American Rooster Prepares to Crow Atop Asian Dunghill

[This piece may be reposted if Asia Times Online is credited and a link provided.]

In other words, it’s time for the United States to engage in a full-throated celebration of the pivot to Asia with what I think is going to be President Obama’s America F*ck Yeah tour of Asian democracies in April 2014.

The trip requires more than a little spadework, given the rather fraught situation in Asia. 

It’s not just that the PRC and the Japan are at each other’s throats and the Philippines has declared that the South China Sea is the new Sudetenland, and the PRC must be met with confrontation, not negotiation.  It’s that the United States is less than completely happy with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s sharp elbows and the fractures they create in the pivot’s united front.

There has been a fascinating flurry of op-eds in US prestige media (Bloomberg, NY Times, Washington Post, and Business Week) highly critical of Abe and his provocative visit to the Yasukuni Shrine…

…a visit that took place in December 2013.  Concerned chin-stroking end-February 2014 is a little late, it would seem.

And for that matter, the highly insulting detail that Prime Minister Abe listened to Joe Biden’s importunities for an hour before blowing him off and visiting the shrine…that was leaked end January.

So why, all of a sudden, does the US have its knickers in a knot concerning last year’s display of Abe’s rather unambiguous historical-revisionist inclinations?

Well, reading the exclusive China Matters divinatory entrails (paywalled! Just kidding) I believe this furor has much to do with President Obama’s announced visit to Asia.

As of now, the PR China is not on the itinerary.  But Japan and the Philippines are.  So is South Korea, reportedly after some strenuous lobbying.

The trip looks like a celebration of the pivot, that China-containment strategy that dares not speak its name but is meant to secure America’s leading position in East Asia by pushing China’s relations with its neighbors in a more polarized and confrontational condition that plays into US military superiority.

More than that, it will make up for ground lost by the dismaying cancellation of President Obama’s previous Asia trip (because of the US debt ceiling farce) and demonstrate to a dubious world that, appearances to the contrary, the United States is still brimming with resolve, the master of events, leader of the coalition of Asian democracies, indeed the universally hailed hegemon of Asia.

I look at President Obama’s trip like one of those imperial tours favored by the Roman and Chinese emperors to demonstrate that the empire’s writ still ran in the borderlands.

However, a certain Asian democracy is openly hedging its bets against the day that the United States changes its mind and decides that its true interests lie somewhere more along the dreaded G2 axis (cooperation between the US and the PRC to order affairs in ways not necessarily to the liking of the other nations of the Pacific.)

That nation, of course, is Japan.

Prime Minister Abe, thanks to his lineage and his personal experience, is in a good position to remember the many times when the United States decided that US and Japanese interests did not necessarily coincide.

They include slights as old as the Portsmouth Treaty (when Teddy Roosevelt decided that Japan was too green a member of the imperial club to enjoy the full fruits of its victory over Tsarist Russia) to that whole World War II unpleasantness (which Abe’s revisionist group consider to be entirely the fault of the United States), to the sudden recognition of the PRC, the torpedoing of the Japanese economy by the Plaza Accord imposed by the United States, and the unnerving undertone of G2 chatter that occasionally pervades US diplomacy.

On a personal level, Prime Minister Abe undoubtedly also remembers how he loyally supported George W. Bush’s confrontational North Korea policy in 2005, only to see Japan—and Abe’s signature issue, the abductees—brushed aside in Chris Hill & Condoleezza Rice’s haste to conclude a transitory agreement with the DPRK.

On a happier note, Prime Minister Abe probably also recalls that Secretary Clinton was a staunch opponent of G2 and an avid supporter of the Asia pivot, with the underlying strategy of employing the alliance with Japan as the keystone of US policy in Asia.  The full story perhaps needs an entire book, but it is worth remembering that President Obama was reportedly prepared to drop the affirmation of the Senkakus as falling under the US-Japan security treaty —presumably in response to some Chinese blandishment—until the tag team of Secretary Clinton and Minister Maehara exploited (or, in my view, concocted) the whole 2010 Senkaku Captain Zhan/rare earth imbroglio  that led to the exact opposite outcome—open affirmation that the Senkakus were covered.  

Subsequently, it became clear that Secretary Clinton had decided to ditch engagement and treat the PRC’s maritime issues as a pretext for a confrontainment policy against China, and use the policy as the foundation of the militarized pivot to Asia.

But Secretary Clinton is gone, at least for the time being, and the decidedly less confrontational John Kerry seems to have been able to take the reins of US diplomacy.

Kerry’s focus on the Middle East has occasioned nervous/resentful mumblings from supporters of the Japan relationship in Washington, for the stated reason that his focus on the Far East is insufficient and the pivot is languishing.  An unstated reason may be that the PRC, because of its somewhat important role in Iran and Syria matters, may be inching toward a quasi-G2 relationship with Kerry that might result in some favors being done for the PRC at the expense of the pivot democracies.

One such favor, I previously speculated, might have been the US demand that Japan demonstrate its nuclear non-proliferation sincerity by returning some weapons grade plutonium it had received from the United States a long time ago.

In any case, I felt that it was necessary for Kerry to establish his tough-on-China credentials, and I believe he did that by sendingout Evan Madeiros to make a big noise about how the US would not tolerate a South China Sea ADIZ.  And the PRC, which, I believe, had already disclaimed any current intention for an SCS ADIZ, promptly said they were considering no such move, thereby allowing Kerry to shift, albeit incrementally, out of the despised Chamberlain-appeasement doghouse into the blessed realm of Churchillian resolve.

So President Obama can go to Asia secure in the knowledge that America’s “stick a thumb in China’s eye” credentials are relatively secure.

With this context, what to make of the concerted campaign to rain on Prime Minister Abe’s parade re Yasukuni?

I think it’s because President Obama wants to use his April trip to affirm the pivot and, more importantly, the indispensable US leadership role in it.

That means cracking the whip on Japan and demonstrating that the US will not allowed itself to get tangled up in the Abe administration’s hopes and dreams for a Japan that is able to exploit the US alliance as an element in its own plans to restore Japan’s sovereignty and military and diplomatic clout in Asia.

It would take a special kind of denial to ignore the fact that Prime Minister Abe is abubble with plans to expand Japan’s diplomatic and security footprint in Asia all the way from the Kuriles to Myanmar and India …or to disregard the fact that these ambitions do not fit cleanly within a hierarchical structure with the US pivot on top, with the US-Japan security alliance as the next layer, and Japan’s relationship with the other Asian democracies guided by the pivot, the security alliance, and the power and the glory of American strategic vision. 

This unpleasant state of affairs is demonstrated by the conundrum that seems to underlay the Abe-bashing: the growing rift between South Korea and Japan.  

One of the nagging problems of the pivot has been the rancor between the Abe and Park administrations, and also South Korea’s un-pivoty predilection for sidling over into the PRC economic and diplomatic camp.

Abe, contrary to the ostensible doctrine of pivot solidarity, seems happy to determinedly and systematically exacerbate the bad blood between Japan and South Korea, not just with Yasukuni but with dismissive remarks by his allies on the lessons of World War II and the comfort women.  And, contrary to the idea that the United States coordinates the pivot, Abe has also been most dismissive of US efforts to insert itself in the dispute.

According to Peter Ennis of Japan Dispatch, the Yasukuni kerfuffle played out as part of the U.S. effort to mediate a rapprochement between Japan and South Korea.

Per Ennis, Vice President Biden thought he had an understanding that Abe would not visit Yasukuni and communicated that perception to President Park.  When it transpired that Abe was indeed planning to visit Yasukuni, Biden made the infamous phone call to try to persuade him not to go, and Abe in essence told him to get stuffed.

Not only did he tell Biden to get stuffed, Abe apparently personally leaked the details of this embarrassment to one of his favorite papers, according to Ennis:

On December 12, Biden himself phoned Abe, and in a lengthy, tense conversation pressed the prime minister to not visit Yasukuni. Sankei Shimbun on Janaury 30, citing unnamed “government sources,” provided a detailed account of the conversation – an account the vice president’s office does not dispute.

(Insiders in Tokyo, citing the close ties between Sankei and Abe, believe the account of the conversation comes directly from Abe himself – an assessment shared by key US officials.)
In their conversation, Biden said to Abe: “I told President Park that ‘I don’t think Mr. Abe will visit Yasukuni Shrine.’ If you indicate you will not visit the shrine, I think Ms. Park will agree to meet you.’”

Abe has long been incensed about what he considers American hectoring against his nationalist convictions, and he told Biden that he intended to visit Yasukuni at some point.

Immediately after Prime Minister Abe maliciously leaked the intelligence that he had spurned Vice President Biden’s appeal to give satisfaction to President Park on the Yasukuni issue, a thunderous op-ed delivered by the concentrated firepower of Richard Armitage, Victor Cha, and Michael Green appeared in the Washington Post calling for President Obama to visit Seoul…

… and it was subsequently announced that South Korea had been added to the itinerary and Japan would not be acting as North Asia’s exclusive host for the Obama visit.

Take that!

Now, in addition to Abe’s desire to trample on the feelings of Biden and Park to wave his freak flag high on the issue of his nationalist revisionist beliefs, I think there were a few other forces at work.

First of all, as I’ve argued elsewhere, Abe does not have a comfortable relationship with the Obama administration.  His US avatar is Dick Cheney, with whom Abe tried to coordinate a China-containment policy during his first term, and his natural allies are the US Republican right wing and pro-Japan/anti-China hawks in the US security and defense establishment.

I think the pointed and public humiliation of Biden was a signal from Abe that he was not under the thumb of the White House, and his allies in the United States could take advantage of the Obama administration’s embarrassment to question the efficacy and execution of the administration’s Japan policy (and its effort to steer a middle course between the PRC & Japan), and lobby for the further evolution of US policy in Asia toward openly Japan-centric doctrine of deterrence and confrontation with the PRC.

Second, the ROK and Japan are direct peer competitors in Asia.  When ROK President Lee Myung-bak was in charge, he openly tried to seize the mantle of Asian leadership (and American ally numero uno) from Japan, which was flailing through its non-LDP interregnum.  Abe, with his nationalist inclinations, is distinctly hostile to Korean presumption.

If one wants to play the deep game, Japan no less than the PRC fears Korean reunification and the emergence of an Asian democracy that might dwarf Japan in economic and national vigor.  One of the less reported stories is Abe’s continual game of footsie with North Korea, with clandestine meetings between Japanese and DPRK diplomats and, in addition, the offer of Switzerland (and I suspect, India) to put their good offices at Japan’s disposal for mediation.

The ostensible context for this back and forth is to obtain closure on the miserable issue of the Japanese abductees; but I suspect the real objective is to achieve some sort of direct rapprochement with North Korea that will give Japan the direct inside track, ditch the PRC-led Five Party Talks regime, wrongfoot the US, PRC, and South Korea in the impending dash for North Korea’s under-developed mineral and human resources…and keep the DPRK alive and the peninsula comfortably split.

In other words, South Korea is welcome to explore its options as a continental power within the PRC’s sphere of influence, using Shandong as its cheap labor hinterland instead of northern Korea.  Japan will be happy to eat South Korea’s lunch in maritime, democratic Asia, thank you very much.

Third, as Abe works to recover Japan’s full military, defense, and security sovereignty, he has no interest in the United States arrogating to itself the privilege of setting Japan’s regional diplomatic agenda.  If anything, it looks like Abe wants to have extensive engagement with the United States, but he wants in the context of peer-to-peer bilateral relations negotiated through explicit mechanisms like the security alliance and the TPP.  His vision for the US-Japan relationship certainly does not entail listening to Joe Biden and the Obama administration’s brainstorms about Asia, especially when they are intended to demonstrate America’s honest-broker cred i.e. attempt to show the ROK and the PRC that the US can constrain Japan’s behavior in a meaningful way.

Abe has gone along with the United States on two rather dismal initiatives that the Pentagon adores—collective self defense and Futenma relocation.  Therefore, by his lights, he probably thinks the United States should, as a matter of mutual respect and alliance loyalty to America’s most important partner in Asia, put up with the crap he wants to dish out to the PRC and South Korea (parenthetically, the Obama administration pointedly did not go as far as Abe in instructing civilian carriers to disregard the ECS ADIZ, which was, by one perspective a matter of supreme moderation and common sense but, from Abe’s perspective, left him out on a limb looking a bit stupid—but also gave him a pretext to complain about equivocal US backing as a justification for Japan’s growing independence in security policy).

I believe that, as I’ve predicted for the last year or so, the pivot chickens are now, inevitably coming home to roost.  The decision to hype the PRC maritime threat has encouraged the frontline Asian democracies, especially Japan, to a point that US leadership is on the cusp of overt challenge.

Japan, the ROK, and the PRC may be well aware of US intentions, but are less convinced of US capabilities in delivering on the promise of a unified, carefully managed and modulated pivot strategy that empowers the US through a militarized containment strategy against the PRC, while preserving the honest broker role for the US and stifling the independent-minded initiatives of the frontline pivot allies.

Instead, it appears that Japan, especially, is quietly going rogue and will do its best to exploit the pivot to pursue its own regional agendas while calling on the US for the support at crunch time which, as the pivot advocate, it must perforce deliver.  

So instead of the implacable united front against the PRC that is the raison d’etre of the pivot, we have an alliance in flux, deterrent that is equivocal and ripe for testing by the PRC, and increasingly close and tense encounters in the maritime zone.

In other words, a recipe for…something, not sure what, but certainly not peace, stability, and shared prosperity that Hillary Clinton promised to deliver with the pivot.

Japan is sufficiently invested in the US relationship to support the alliance and even the Obama administration as it begins its long but inevitable descent into lame-duck status.

But meticulously orchestrated American announcements, initiatives, and trips to Asia can only do so much as Japan, and Asian allies that increasingly look to Japan for regional leadership, see the need and benefits of going their own separate ways.

They say the sun doesn’t rise because the rooster crows.  But in this case it did. I think President Obama is learning that the sun did rise because the rooster crowed i.e. that Japanese assertiveness is a direct consequence of the empowerment of the hawkish establishment in Japan by the US pivot doctrine.

Trouble is, now that the sun is rising, it looks like it will keep rising on its own.

And there’s little that the rooster can do about it.