Alphen,
The Netherlands. 24 July. Thomas
Jefferson once wrote, “I like the dreams of the future, better than the history
of the past”. To nowhere does this
Jeffersonian aphorism apply more than contemporary Japan. With Sunday’s clear victory of Prime Minister
Shinzo Abe’s Liberal Democratic Party in elections to the Upper House of the
Diet, Japan’s Parliament, Japan maybe about to cross a threshold between a
challenging past and a challenging future.
Japan must be set free to play its full role on the world stage where it
belongs. Why Abe and why now?
More
than any other country Japan is still seen by many through the lens of the
apocalyptic political settlement imposed upon Tokyo by the victorious Americans
in 1945. That must end. World War Two’s other aggressor power Germany
is steadily and rightly emerging as a respected leader on the European
continent. Berlin has earned the right
to play such a role because Germany has transformed itself into a model
democracy and a vital pillar of the liberal international order. Japan is also a long supporter of the same
liberal order and as competition grows between those that justify power via
prosperity and those where the people still get to have a say Japan stands as a
beacon for liberal democracy in the world’s strategic centre of gravity - East
Asia.
History
as ever remains eloquent. In 1902
Britain and Japan signed the Anglo-Japanese Naval Treaty. Britain then worked with Japan to build the
Imperial Japanese Navy. Of course, history
will also recount that in December 1941 Britain’s support for Japan backfired
spectacularly when the self-same Japanese Navy sank HMS Prince of Wales and HMS
Repulse off what was then Ceylon.
However, Britain’s 1902 strategic logic was impeccable. Faced with the rise of the Kaiser’s Imperial
High Seas Fleet the security of the eastern British Empire could no longer be
secured by even the mighty Royal Navy. Modern
day sequestered America looks ever more like over-reaching 1902 Britain as the
sun began to set on the British Empire.
Frankly,
America’s Asia-Pacific-centric grand strategy and the new global balance of
power that is driving change needs a strong but responsible Japan. Japan is already the world’s fifth biggest
defence spender and this year Prime Minister Abe ordered the first increase in Japanese
defence expenditure for a decade. Like
it or not Japan faces a China that has been growing its defence budget by over
ten percent per annum since 1989.
European liberals may hate it but it is power that is driving change in
Asia not ideas. Therefore, whilst the US
plays a key role in Japanese security, Japan plays an ever-more-important role
in American and world security.
Prime
Minister Abe clearly understands the new strategic balance. However, if he is to realise his ambitions
for Japan and finally escape the shackles imposed on Tokyo in 1945 Abe will
need to strike a balance between strength and responsibility. He will also have to tread carefully. Abe has already indicated his desire to scrap
the pacifist elements of the post-1945 constitution imposed upon Japan. He may well be advised to follow Germany’s
step-by-step approach to ‘normalisation’.
Rather than radically alter the German constitution, which is still
based on the 1949 Allied-influenced Basic Law, Berlin chose instead to progressively
re-interpret the constitution against the background of change in
contemporary international relations.
Germany’s Constitutional Court has played a crucial role in the
legitimisation of the use of German force which started in the 1990s in the
former Yugoslavia. Japan has taken
similar but very limited steps in support of humanitarian objectives in
Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere.
However,
the challenge maybe Prime Minister Abe himself.
He is often accused of being a nationalist although that is much
exaggerated by those who would use history to further constrain Japan’s
international role and influence.
However, he is a radical and a patriot and can at time use intemperate
language forgetting that for the powerful there is no such thing as a domestic
audience.
Equally,
with majorities in both the Upper and Lower Houses of the Diet Abe now has an
opportunity to move Japan and its international relations into the twenty-first
century. Critically, at least three
years of stable government is in the offing together with an end to the
ministerial merry-go-round which has helped make Japan an at times mercurial
and unreliable partner.
L.P.
Hartley once wrote, “the past is another country”. Germany has earned the right to lead because
both the country and its people confronted a painful past. Japan has never and will never confront that
past in same way as Germany and Japan’s past may not quite be the foreign land
it is to Germany, but it is today a distance place.
Therefore,
it is finally time to free Japan from the past…and for Japan to free itself.
Julian
Lindley-French
