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 (correction: Japan's total EEZ area is about 400,000 kilometers; the Okinotoroshima + Shikoku piece is about 100,000 km of that.  Apologies for the error.  CH, 11/1/2018) 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.