Dispatch Japan

Tension over Korea: A joint Trump-Kim production

The annual joint US-South Korea 10-day military exercise known as Ulchi Freedom Guardian commenced on Monday, with tensions on the Korean Peninsula considerably reduced from just two weeks ago.

US diplomats, military leaders, and private specialists have all been working overtime to tamp down on escalating fears of an imminent military conflict with North Korea.

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson went out of this way to speak about North Korea in a televised briefing in Washington yesterday. "We have had no missile launches or provocative acts on the part of North Korea since the  unanimous adoption (on August 5) of the UN security council resolution (imposing sanctions),” Tillerson said. "[P]erhaps we are seeing our pathway to sometime in the near future having some dialogue."

President Donald Trump echoed Tillerson’s comments hours later in an otherwise ominously rambling, campaign-style speech in Phoenix, Arizona.

The efforts have worked, for now, though the worrisome war of words with Pyongyang eagerly engaged in by President Donald Trump, is just one White House “tweet” away from starting up again. The danger of nuclear miscalculation on the Korean Peninsula has merely receded, not gone away.

North Korea’s burgeoning nuclear weapons capability, and constant propagandistic threats to use it, is the root of the problem of course, but that is nothing new. Militaristic misinformation has been a staple in the North Korean arsenal for decades.

The more immediate concern is that Trump’s impulsive decision to engage in a schoolyard bullying match with North Korea’s dictator Kim Jong-un has blurred the critical distinction between what strategists refer to as “preventive strike,” “preemptive strike,” and “retaliatory strike.” In turn, many strategists warn, this has made it more difficult for Pyongyang to read actual US military intentions, raising the specter that a blustery but otherwise cautious North Korea could act out of overblown fears that the US will strike first.

Trump’s bombastic rhetoric has ominously filtered into a North Korea policy vacuum in Washington steeped in widespread frustration that past efforts to block Pyongyang’s nuclear ambitions have failed.  Efforts are well-underway, in and out of government, to forge a long-term, effective strategy toward a nuclear-armed North Korea, but a consensus has yet to gel. Until then, containing Trump has oddly become an important component of avoiding a disastrous military conflagration on the Korean Peninsula.

     TRUMP’S IMPULSE: Tensions with North Korea have been running sky-high for the past month, starting with the country’s test launching of two intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) in July. The launches surprised the US intelligence community, as they indicated that North Korea had advanced technologically more quickly than many expected in its stated quest to master the capability to strike the continental United States.

The launches coincided with an assessment by the Pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), first reported by the Washington Post in late July, that North Korea would have a reliable ICBM capability as early as next year. The Post later reported that the DIA had concluded that North Korea had successfully developed a miniaturized nuclear warhead capable of fitting atop an ICBM.

The DIA reports met with some skepticism, as none of the other agencies that make up the sprawling US intelligence community seemed eager to endorse the assessment. The DIA has something of a spotty record on North Korea’s nuclear program, having incorrectly reported in 2013 that Pyongyang had successfully miniaturized a nuclear warhead. James Clapper, the then-director of the Office of National Intelligence, summarily dismissed the DIA report. The agency was then directed by General Michael Flynn, who was later fired by President Barack Obama for reasons apparently unrelated to North Korea. Flynn went on to become national security advisor for President Trump, only to be dismissed after less than one month in office.

For many analysts the DIA assessments were surprising, but not game-changers, as its long been assumed that North Korea would eventually achieve both an ICBM and miniaturized warhead capability. The assessments changed nothing fundamental of a military nature on the Korean Peninsula. Pyongyang still has its immense conventional artillery system arrayed all along the border with South Korea, held in check by the US treaty commitment to defend the South against aggression. And whatever nuclear capability Pyongyang has developed is similarly held in check by awareness among the country’s leaders that use of nuclear weapons would almost surely result in US counterstrikes that would obliterate the Kim dynasty.

But for an embarrassed Trump, who had boasted in January that North Korea would never be allowed to develop an ICBM capability on his watch, the DIA assessment was too much to take. On August 8, he told reporters gathered at his golf course in New Jersey that "North Korea best not make any more threats to the United States. They will be met with fire and the fury like the world has never seen.” Two days later, Trump doubled-down on his warnings to Pyongyang, saying that his earlier statement had perhaps not been strong enough. “The North Koreans have been doing this to our country for a long time, for many years, and its about time somebody stuck up for the people of this country and for the people of other countries,” Trump said. Speaking of Kim Jong-un, Trump said that “he’s not going to threaten the United States, and he’s not going to threaten Japan, and he’s not going to threaten South Korea.”

But that is exactly what Kim proceeded to do, using a staged television event to broadcast supposed North Korean plans to launch four medium range ballistic missiles in the vicinity of Guam, a strategic US territory. Kim later backed away, announcing a “postponement” of the Guam launches pending further developments. But the damage had already been done. Trump and Kim were caught up in a game of nuclear-armed chicken.

     CONTAINING THE DAMAGE: Trump seemed to indicate that mere threats from North Korea, however empty previous threats proved to be, could be enough for him to order a first-strike, and risk igniting a full-fledged war on the Korean Peninsula. In nuclear strategy parlance, this would be a “preventive strike,” designed to eliminate any North Korean capacity to use nuclear weapons, even before Pyongyang had demonstrated a clear intention to do so. Never before had an American leader, civilian or military, threatened a “preventive strike” against North Korea.

The Pentagon, the State Department, and many nongovernmental specialists went into full damage control, emphasizing that diplomacy and deterrence remained at the center of US policy. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Defense Secretary James Mattis published a commentary in the Wall Street Journal stressing the  priority the US places on diplomacy aimed at a peaceful resolution of the nuclear weapons dispute with Pyongyang.

Separately, Tillerson went so far as to tell reporters that war with North Korea was not imminent, and that Americans could sleep easily in that knowledge.

While careful to not openly contradict Trump, both Tillerson and Mattis, along with General Joseph Dunford, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, have all made clear that US military action would come in retaliation to North Korean aggression, while awkwardly steering clear of any hint of a “preventive” first strike. Even a “preemptive” strike against what is deemed to be an imminent North Korean launch seems far-fetched, as Pyongyang has mobile and submarine-based launch capabilities that are hard to detect, and a massive North Korean retaliation would almost surely ensue.

It’s the promise of a massive “retaliatory strike”, in response to North Korean aggression,that the US has retained, and loudly reiterated.

General Dunford just completed a round of visits to China, South Korea, and Japan, designed to ensure that “our allies have no confusion at all about where we are in our overall policy and in the military dimension of that policy.”

One of President Trump’s more radical advisors, Sebastian Gorka of the  National Security Council, tried hard at first to rebuke Tillerson’s moderating comments, telling the BBC that “the idea that Secretary Tillerson is going to discuss military matters is simply nonsensical.” That drew a sharp rebuke from the State Department spokesman Heather Nauert, who pointed out that Tillerson “is fourth in line to the presidency. He carries a big stick.”

The White House has been quiet ever since.

That has not forestalled breathtaking accounts in the broadcast and print media of supposedly-imminent military confrontation on the Korean Peninsula. The reality on the ground, however, is that the US has taken none of the steps that would almost-certainly precede a preventive strike against North Korea, such as evacuation of the thousands of private US citizens who live and work in South Korea‘s capital city, Seoul.

By all accounts, a military conflagration on the Korean Peninsula would almost-certainly result in the deaths of millions of people who live in and around Seoul, which lies well-within striking range of North Korea’s conventional artillery, just 25 miles south of the demilitarized zone that separates North from South.

Even Steve Bannon, President Trump’s top strategist before his dismissal from the White House last week, warned before his departure that preemptive strikes against North  Korea are out of the question. “There’s no military solution, forget it,” he told a surprised Robert Kuttner, editor of the liberal American Prospect magazine on August 15. “Until somebody solves the part of the equation that shows me that 10 million people in Seoul don’t die in the first 30 minutes from conventional weapons, I don’t know what you’re talking about, there’s no military solution here, they got us.” Notice that Bannon did not rule out a retaliatory strike against North Korean aggression, only a hopeless preventive strike designed to eliminate a nuclear threat before Pyongyang can use it.

     THE DAMAGE DONE: Despite the concerted efforts to counter Trump, two  nuclear warfare specialists – Ankit Panda of The Diplomat magazine, and Vipin Narang of MIT – warned recently that the president’s rhetoric has already done enormous damage.

“Words matter, especially when nuclear weapons use is on the line,” they wrote recently. “In a matter of 30 seconds, Trump negotiated himself into a disastrous strategic corner.”

Specifically, using vocabulary usually confined to nuclear specialists, they warned that Trump, however inadvertently, had enormously raised the possibility of miscalculation, due to “first strike instability.”

Throughout the Cold War, the US, the Soviet Union, and China embraced the notion of “nuclear stability,” meaning that all knew that a first strike against another would be suicidal. The targeted country would retain a retaliatory strike capability sufficient to eviscerate the aggressor.

Defense Secretary Mattis, however, has pointed out that the US has the most accurate missile targeting capability in the world. North Korea would likely not have much of an arsenal left with which to retaliate against an American first strike. Thus, North Korea would have an incentive to use its fledgling nuclear arsenal early in a conflict, or risk losing it to what it fears might be a fulfillment of Trump’s apparent first strike threats. Hence the term “first strike instability.”

As an example of how “first strike instability” could lead to miscalculation, the two specialists pointed out that the US Pacific Command has been flying B1-B bombers over the Korean Peninsula as a show of force. In the wake of Trump’s bombastic rhetoric, Pyongyang might be unable, or have little time to, distinguish between B1-B flights designed as a mere show of force, versus  what might be the opening salvo of a US preventive first strike.

     FUTURE US POLICY: All of this begs the question of what the US will eventually settle upon as its long-term strategy toward North Korea.

The key elements of future policy seem clear, though the details are far from settled.

The starting point might be a halt to exaggerating the threat posed by North Korea, since deterrence continues to work. Siegfried Hecker, the director emeritus of the Los Alamos  National  Laboratory and a nuclear weapons specialist emphatically makes this point, based on his many visits to North Korea, including inspections of the country’s nuclear facilities. “Some like to depict Kim Jong-un as being crazy – a madman – and that makes the public believe that the guy is undeterrable,” Hecker says. “He’s not crazy, and he’s not suicidal. And he’s not even unpredictable.” Hecker recently told the Washington Post  that “the real threat is we’re going to stumble into a nuclear war on the Korean Peninsula.”

Jeffrey Lewis, director of the East Asia nonproliferation program at the Middlebury Center of International Studies, argues that the US has to pragmatically, if not officially, accept that North Korea is a nuclear power. “The reality is that the US is now vulnerable to North Korea’s nuclear-armed missiles, and has no choice but to live with that reality,” Lewis said recently. “To try to disarm a nuclear-armed North Korea would be madness, even if some politicians find that fact too emasculating to acknowledge.”

Jon Wolfsthal, a nonproliferation specialist in the Obama White House, argues that deterrence should remain the cornerstone of US policy. North Korea’s improving nuclear capability, however  uncomfortable, “does not change the nature of the threat we have faced for some time,” he says. “We have to deter North Korea from ever using any nuclear weapons and make clear that any move to use these weapons is suicide.”

The Washington Post argued in a recent editorial that stepped-up economic sanctions should be combined with deterrence to try to bring Pyongyang to the negotiating table.

Meanwhile, Tom Malinowski, a former assistant secretary of state for human rights in the Obama administration, argues that subtle efforts to undermine the Kim regime should be a key part of the policy mix. The US can use deterrence to buy time, he says, and use methods to undermine the Kim regime that are more  effective than sanctions and less dangerous than a first strike.

“We worry about the miniaturization of North Korea’s nukes; what threatens the Kim regime is the miniaturization of information technology,” Malinowski says.

This includes USB devices and SD cards that can store huge amounts of data, including movies and TV shows that depict the outside world as it really is. At least 3 million North Koreans have cell phones. Cheap Chinese-produced DVD players are easily smuggled into North Korea over the border with China that now sees a vibrant bilateral trade flow. Black markets are now ubiquitous in North Korea, making it possible to give North Koreans access to all sorts of viewing that work to slowly undermine the Kim dynasty’s legitimacy.

Malinowski says that  the political effects of information  flow into North Korea are not yet evident; more obvious thus far are the influence on fashion  styles in hair, clothing, and even manners of speech picked up from foreign media.

“The political effects are not yet visible, but I think the Kim regime is right to fear them,” he says. “More than any other modern dictatorship, its legitimacy depends on myths – about the Korean War, the infallibility of its leaders, and how much better it is to live in North than in  South Korea – that are shattered once people know the truth.”

Malinowski’s strategy depends on patience and diplomacy, both of which are in short supply in the Trump White House.

But his argument is catching on, as evident by a recent commentary by two specialists from the influential Rand Corporation. Michael Mazarr and Michael Johnson, writing in The Hill magazine, coined the phrase “contain, deter, transform” with respect to North Korea, advocating that the  US facilitate a transformation in North Korea that evidence indicates is  already underway. “North Korean society is changing,” they argued. “A host of nongovernmental organizations are working to smuggle information into North Korea, from leaflets to USB drives filled with Western and South Korean televisions shows.”

The patience required for diplomacy, sanctions, and subtle subversion to take effect may not sit well with Donald Trump. But it may be the best of  uncomfortable options available to a frustrated US foreign and security policy community.

Mixed signals on trade by Trump White House leaves Tokyo with a policy dilemma

Is President Donald Trump “more bark than bite” when it comes to challenging alleged unfair practices by America’s international trade partners?

That’s the growing sense in Washington, in the wake of recent economic talks with China, and plans for an upcoming dialogue with Mexico and Canada regarding the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). China and the NAFTA agreement were prime targets of Trump’s boisterous rebukes during the 2016 presidential campaign.

Trump’s nationalist, “America First” approach to international trade, a cornerstone of his “make American great again” surprise victory last year, has become mired in intense White House policy disputes, and overshadowed politically by intensifying investigations into potential illicit connections between the Russian government and Trump personnel in attempts to influence the outcome of the presidential race.

The net result thus far is an alternating mixture of softer and continued hard line oratory, but few concrete steps to enforce Trump’s bombastic campaign rhetoric.

Chief White House economic advisor Gary Cohn, a former top Goldman Sachs executive, and others, have managed to hold in check the more radical ideas promoted by Trump’s nominal top advisor on trade, Peter Navarro. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, a seasoned billionaire banker who is sympathetic to, but not zealously devoted to Trump’s populist arguments about unfair trade practices, lies rather ineffectively between the two camps. Trump has been inconsistent, at best, in putting his political capital on the line to forward an aggressive trade agenda that he promised to deliver to his beleaguered blue collar working class supporters.

     DILEMMA FOR JAPAN: The mixed signals on trade from the White House have left officials in Japan with a dilemma. Trump’s most significant step on trade thus far, the withdrawal from the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) regional trade deal, has left a political vacuum in East Asia that China is rushing to fill. Some officials in Tokyo, particularly in the Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry (METI), argue that Japan cannot afford to sit by and just watch China expanded its influence unfettered. METI and others favor an aggressive proposal to the US to negotiate a high-standard bilateral free trade agreement, to which other Asia nations could then be invited to join. It amounts to a backdoor approach to reviving TPP.

Others in Japan, especially the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, favor a more cautious, wait-and-see approach, hoping the Trump Administration will be further compelled to moderate its stances, making for an environment more conducive to progress on trade talks.

     TRUMP’S MIXED SIGNALS: The latest mixed signal from President Trump came July 25, in brief remarks to the Wall Street Journal. Trump said that any action to limit steel imports into the US would have to await getting “everything finished up between healthcare, taxes, and maybe even infrastructure.” Trump still called imported steel “a very unfair situation” for the US, but indicated it was relatively low on a White House policy agenda that is already aimless, and heavily bogged down by political turmoil in Washington and White House political unrest.

Reuters characterized Trump’s decision as “again punting on a decision that has divided US industries and his own administration, as well as strained ties with some of the country’s closest allies and trading partners.”

As recently as June 7, Trump had reiterated his campaign promise to protect the US steel industry. “Wait till you see what I’m going to do for steel and your steel companies,” he told a crowd in Cincinnati, Ohio. The White House has until January 2018 to make a final decision, and Trump could reverse himself yet again. But the US agricultural industries opposed any import restrictions on steel, fearing retaliation by other countries against their exports, and the auto industry argued that the import restrictions would hurt auto production more than it would help the steel industry. They heavily pressured Commerce Secretary Ross. During internal administration debates, imposition of steel import restriction met with heavy opposition from the Treasury Department, the  Pentagon, and Cohn’s National Economic  Council.

 On the other hand, unions representing US steel workers were bitterly angry at Trump’s waffling. The Alliance for American Manufacturing, which represents steel workers and companies, said: “President Trump made a promise to America’s steelworkers, and there is certainly going to be disappointment with this delay.”

     THE TRUMP APPROACH: Trump took office promising to change the long-standing bipartisan consensus in Washington that expansion of international trade is good for the United States both in economic terms, and through the promotion of global stability. The consensus has surely been tested through the years, particularly as the decline of manufacturing jobs in industries in the Mid West states have hit the steel, auto, and other heavy industry sectors very hard, leaving behind millions of workers full of despair. Trump capitalized on that unrest to help him win the White House, despite well-documented arguments from many experts that lost manufacturing jobs will not return in droves to the United States.

On March 1, the US Trade Representative’s office (USTR) released Trump’s 2017 Trade Policy Agenda. The report listed four priorities in US trade policy: promotion of US sovereignty (meaning a defense of the US against unfair trade practices); enforcing US trade laws; expansion of US manufacturing and services exports, and protection of US intellectual property.

Trump seemed to move early on his promises by announcing America’s withdrawal from the 12-nation TPP, and signaling his intent to withdraw from NAFTA, which includes Canada and Mexico, as well.

The strong rhetoric continued later in March, when Trump signed two executive orders that the cable business news network CNBC characterized as laying the “groundwork for fulfilling key campaign promises to make trade fairer.” The first order commissioned a report on unfair foreign trade practices that contribute to the huge US trade deficit. The second seeks to better enforce anti-dumping and countervailing duties, which are fees imposed on foreign firms deemed to be engaged in unfair trade practices.

Trump, in his usual belligerent tone, said at the time that “thousands of factories have been stolen from our country, but these voiceless Americans now have a voice in the White House.”

Commerce Secretary Ross, speaking from the Oval Office, added that the executive orders mark “the beginning of a totally new campaign in the American trade relationship with our partners overseas.” He said the report, scheduled to be completed soon, would detail every “trade abuse and non-reciprocal practice” that contributes to the US trade deficit.

But Ross undercut the Administration’s tough message by adding that the trade deficit is complicated, and is not always the result of unfair practices by trading partners.

CNBC was quick to add: “For all of Trump’s passionate rhetoric, the two executive orders are small steps in an ambitious trade agenda that seeks to revitalize American manufacturing.”

The mixed signals from the White House have led many analysts to question whether the Administration is merely bluffing about imposing higher import tariffs and other protective measures, so as to gain concessions in subsequent negotiations, or if Trump will actually move toward protectionism, even over the objections of many in his Cabinet, and other advisors.

The result thus far is not so much a more aggressive US stance, as much as a leadership vacuum, with the US no longer in the lead pushing for regional and global trade initiatives. China is  moving quickly to fill the vacuum, while Europe and other nations are moving ahead with trade deals on their own, working around the United States.

     NAFTA AND CHINA PRIORITIES: The Trump administration has made clear that trade with China and Mexico are priorities, because of the huge trade deficits the US runs with those two countries.

Trump has repeatedly called NAFTA, adopted in 1994 after an epic political battle in Washington, “the worst trade deal maybe ever signed anywhere.” But the campaign rhetoric failed to carry over once Trump took office.

In March, the Administration began circulating a draft proposal for talks with Canada and Mexico concerning changes to NAFTA. The US would agree to keep some of the pact’s more controversial elements, including arbitration panels that circumvent local jurisdictions, which critics say undermines national sovereignty. The proposal also did not include the use of numerical targets for bilateral trade deficits.

Many of the suggestions outlined in the draft document echo provisions of the TPP, which Trump pulled the US away from on his first day in office. For example, the US would seek better protection for digital trade (allowing US producers of digital content to receive fair compensation from overseas users), tougher enforcement of intellectual property rights, and elimination of subsidies for state-owned firms. (The latter is really aimed at China, not Mexico or Canada.)

On July 17, USTR released a 17 page document expanding on the points made in the March draft, outlining its objectives for negotiations with Canada and Mexico to update NAFTA. Those talks will begin on August 16. A key demand from the US is greater tools to defend against import surges that hit particular industries and groups of workers quite hard. Mexico and Canada are very leery.

The three sides anticipate 7 rounds of talks, at three-week intervals, designed to end early next year, before Mexico’s presidential election, scheduled for July 2018.

US grain and dairy producers are anxious for a quick conclusion to the talks, as uncertainly has already led to export declines to Mexico, which is a lucrative market for US agricultural products.

The Administration has encountered strong opposition from Republican members of  Congress to any demands that might endanger NAFTA. Thirty-two freshman House Republicans, 27 of whom are from industrial states where Trump’s support among working class voters  was strong, recently wrote to US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer, warning against measures that could prove harmful to trade with Canada and Mexico, the US’s largest trading  partners.

But Lighthizer, who rarely gives interviews, told reporters recently that the US, (contrary to Trump’s campaign pledge), does not seek to scrap NAFTA. “Scrapping is too strong,” he said. “But the president wants very, very substantial changes.”

Long-time opponents of NAFTA are furious with Trump’s pulling back from his campaign commitment. The AFL-CIO labor federation promises to mobilize its membership in ways that contributed to the US pullout from TPP.

Rep. Rosa DeLauro, a Democrat who has vehemently opposed NAFTA for years, said the 17-page USTR document amounted to “tweaking around the edges,” and said instead that NAFTA must be “fundamentally redone.” She said that “the objectives released on July 17 are vague on critical policies that are central to reducing the trade deficit and keep good paying jobs here in America.”

     BACKPEDALING ON CHINA: Meanwhile, the Administration has backed away, at least for now, from actively pursuing a tougher stance toward China. Trump’s decision to delay imposition of restrictions on steel imports received the most attention.

Earlier this year, the Administration invoked an obscure provision in US trade law, dating back to 1962, which authorizes the president to impose restrictions on imports that pose a threat to US national security. The Section 232 investigation of imported steel could still pose a big threat to China, and other foreign steel producers, as a finding that the steel imports undermine the US defense industrial base could give Trump broad authority to impose tariffs.

The Section 232 law has been used only twice in the past, in 1999 regarding imported oil, and in 2001 regarding steel. Section 232 requires the Commerce Department to produce a study confirming the danger to US security. By law, the study must be completed within 270 days of the provision being invoked, which gives the Administration a deadline of January 2018.

China produces 10 times as much steel as the US, but very little foreign steel is utilized by US defense contractors, so it is questionable whether the Administration will even be able to make the case that imports threaten US national security.

Trump earlier this year broke another campaign promise by not labeling China a currency manipulator, which also could have led to punitive action. Trump had pledged to name China on his first day in office.

The US and China last week concluded the first bilateral Comprehensive Economic Dialogue (CED), a framework established by  Trump and China’s president Xi Jinping last  April, when Xi met with Trump for three days at Trump’s Florida estate.

The US went into the talks with some strong, specific demands, including that China fulfill its promise to drastically reduce excess steel capacity that has led to a flood of government-subsidized Chinese steel exports around the world.

Bill Reinsch, a former US trade official now with the Stimson Center in Washington, says simply that “the talks failed to achieve anything concrete.”

With China’s ruling Communist Party preparing for its congress in the Fall, the government was in no position to make concessions to the  US, or to engage in a fight. Xi Jinping has to show that he is tough, while able to effectively manage relations with the US.

Trump has nothing to show in making his promised dent in the $502 billion trade deficit in 2016, which included a $347 billion trade deficit with China.

The influential Politico internet journal reported that China’s excess steel production capacity dominated the CED proceedings with China, blocking discussion on other critical issues. China “balked at US pressure to agree to specific cuts in production capacity, and the US was unwilling to move onto other concerns,” the journal reported. Tensions resulted in cancellation of planned press conferences.

“We are disappointed the Comprehensive Economic Dialogue ended at an apparent impasse,” said John Frisbie, chairman of the US-China Business Council. “It is important for governments to take tangible steps to address long-standing issues and ensure the commercial relationship remains a source of stability in the overall relationship.”

The two governments issued a broad, general statement about continuing the bilateral dialogue, but it remains unclear when talks will resume, and what the agenda will be.

     US-JAPAN FREE TRADE DEAL: The mixed signals from Washington only complicate Tokyo’s dilemma. Many in Tokyo feel the urgency to counter China’s growing influence in East Asia, and this can only be accomplished with the active participation of the US in the region.

The Abe administration favors a US-Japan free trade agreement with the highest standards, which other nations could then join. In essence, this would amount to recreating TPP, one nation at a time.

Caution comes into play on two fronts. Thus far, Japan has been far off the White House’s trade radar screen. Vice President Mike Pence  and Finance Minister Taro Aso are engaged in a bilateral economic dialogue  designed to  look at trade barriers, and this has taken the spotlight off the issue, and put it behind politically closed doors.

An aggressive push by Japan for the start of talks for a bilateral FTA could backfire, with an unpredictable Trump capable to putting Tokyo in his trade crosshairs.

The other concern for many in Tokyo is the agenda for FTA talks. Many in Congress argue that the concessions made by Japan in the TPP agreement regarding market access for auto and agricultural products would merely be the starting point, with further concessions expected. Tokyo counters, quite forcefully, that the concessions made in the TPP negotiations are final, and any insistence by Congress on further concessions is a non-starter.

For all the campaign rhetoric by Trump, and the mixed signals sent by his White House, the president himself indicated July 25 comments on steel that trade is not a high priority right now.

That could change should Trump, as expected, encounter more and more political and potentially legal trouble at home, leading him to rely even more on his populist base, which has always enjoyed his tough talk on trade.

Pentagon confirms North Korea launched an ICBM

The Pentagon and other US agencies confirmed on Tuesday that North Korea had launched an intercontinental ballistic missile on Tuesday morning, Pacific time, demonstrating the speed with which Pyongyang is advancing toward its goal of a nuclear weapons capability to strike the US, and greatly escalating military tensions on the Korean Peninsula.

The US and South Korea responded with quickly-organized joint military exercises, including the test-firing of missiles into the waters off the coast of South Korea – a major show of force.

At the United Nations today, Ambassador Nikki Haley told the Security Council that the US would soon introduce a resolution strongly urging all nations to increase and enforce sanctions against North Korea, warning that the US was prepared to use all of its tools, including trade, to facilitate full cooperation with UN sanctions. Haley’s remarks were an unmistakable message to China, which is Pyongyang’s indispensable connection to the outside world.

     ICBM CONFIRMATION: The US Pacific Command in Hawaii initially said the launched missile was only of intermediate range, not intercontinental. An ICBM is defined as a missile with a range exceeding 3,400 miles. But closer analysis by experts in Washington and Seoul, using data gathered from US satellites, ship-based radar, and aircraft patrolling the area, show that the missile flew 1,700 miles above the earth’s surface, traveled almost 580 miles horizontally, and was in flight for 37 minutes, longer than any previous North Korean launch. The sharp upward trajectory, North Korea says, was deliberate, so as to ensure that the rocket would fall harmlessly into the Sea of Japan. With a more normal trajectory, experts say, the missile could have traveled 4,100 miles, which is more than enough to reach any point in Alaska, though not the lower 48 US states.

In addition, US officials pointed out in briefings to reporters, the missile launched Tuesday was aided by a second, “booster” phase that greatly extends the ICBM range. The North Koreans also demonstrated unusual speed in loading liquid fuel into the missile, a process that is usually time-consuming, allowing the US, South Korea, and Japan to pick up a possible launch days in advance. The faster the fuel can be loaded, the less time available to detect a possible launch. North Korea is working on a solid fuel capability, which is much more difficult for intelligence agencies to detect.

Indeed, US officials pointed out on  Tuesday, the North Koreans have made significant advances in solid-fuel rocket engines, and mobile launch capabilities, including from submarines. The mobile capabilities greatly complicate efforts to detect impending launches. The Washington Post reported that the missile launched on Tuesday, known as the Hwasong-14, “uses a new kind of indigenously built ballistic missile engine, one that North Korea unveiled with great fanfare on March 18.”

Still, Pyongyang faces two technical hurdles before it will have the ability to deliver a nuclear weapon against the continental United States. There remains no evidence that North Korea has yet been able to miniaturize a nuclear warhead to fit on the tip of an ICBM. And, as demonstrated by Tuesday’s launch, North Korean missiles do  not yet have to range to reach the US.

The trend is clear, however. US officials emphasize that North Korea’s capabilities are growing quickly, and they are operating on the assumption that it is not “if,” but “when” North Korea will successfully overcome these obstacles. “Think of it as two streams – the missile, and the miniaturized warhead – coming together,” says retired Admiral James Stavridis, “I think we have about 18 months before they reach that capability.”

Indeed, Admiral Harry Harris, commander of US forces in the Pacific, told a conference in Australia recently that “I know there’s some debate about the miniaturization advancements made by Pyongyang. But Pacific Command must be prepared to fight tonight, so I take him [Kim Jong-un] at his word. I must assume his claims are true – I know his aspirations certainly are.”

     PREPARING FOR THE G-20: On Monday, US officials told reporters they expected a North Korean launch sometime soon, but were paying most attention to a different launch facility than the one used Tuesday.

For hours after the launch, which came late Monday in Washington, the only White House response was a Tweet posted by President Donald Trump, broken into two parts. “North Korea has just launched another missile” Trump wrote. “Does this guy [Kim Jong-un] have anything better to do with his life? Hard to believe that South Korea….and Japan will put up with this much longer. Perhaps China will put a heavy move on North Korea and end this nonsense once and for all.”

Throughout Tuesday, top national security and military officials met at the White House throughout the day, forced to skip the Independence Day celebrations.

The gatherings culminated in a statement issued late Tuesday afternoon by Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, warning nations around the world to cut off contact with North Korea, including hosting guest workers, who become a source of revenue for the Kim regime.

This indicates that North Korea will be a much bigger subject of discussion than expected during the official Group of 20 proceedings in Hamburg, Germany, this weekend. The US plans to step up pressure for total enforcement of UN Security Council sanctions. Even before the launch, the US had been moving in that direction, including urging allies and friends to cut-off or downgrade diplomatic ties with Pyongyang.

     MEETING PUTIN AND XI: Trump is scheduled to with both Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping.

Most eyes have been focused on the Putin-Trump meeting, Moscow and Washington have decided to conduct as a full-fledged bilateral meeting, rather than a more casual “pull-aside”.

In the wake of the North Korea action, attention will expand to the Xi-Trump meeting.

Trump called Xi Jinping on Sunday, to talk mostly about North Korea. Trump is upset that his “friend,” Xi, with whom he supposedly bonded during a recent visit to Trump’s exclusive Florida golf resort, has not sufficiently put pressure on Pyongyang to end its nuclear program.

     BEIJING, MOSCOW COORDINATE: Beijing is furious that the US imposed sanctions on a Chinese bank thought to be engaged in money laundering for Pyongyang. And Trump has moved ahead with a $1 billion arms sale to Taiwan, which China interference in its internal affairs.

After the Xi-Trump talk on Sunday, the White House said that “both leaders reaffirmed their commitment to a denuclearized Korean Peninsula.” But the White House added, as a clear warning that trade is linked to Beijing’s cooperation on North Korea. “President Trump reiterated his determination to seek more balanced trade relations with America’s trading partners.”

In a clear attempt to counter Trump, Xi traveled to Moscow after his Sunday talk with Trump, for a meeting with Putin. The two presidents proclaimed their great friendship. Subsequently, Moscow and Beijing issued a proposal for stability on the Korean Peninsula, with North Korea urged to “freeze” missile testing, and the US and South Korea to end joint military exercises. Moscow and Beijing know that Washington will never accept this, but that is the point. Moscow and Beijing are now closely aligned against the US, for different reasons, but with overlapping interests.

In addition to meeting Putin, Trump will also see Xi Jinping. This will be a very tense meeting. The “friendship” promoted by Trump after having hosted Xi at his Florida estate in April has come to a screeching halt. Trump is openly complaining about China’s not doing enough to pressure Pyongyang.

It remains unclear if the erratic US president understands the enormous diplomatic challenges he faces at the G-20 meeting this weekend.

     US POLICY OPTIONS: Meanwhile, level-headed thinkers in Washington know that there is no preemptive US military actions possible to resolve the nuclear standoff without the enormous risk of triggering a calamitous war on the Korean Peninsula. Before any US military action, the US would have to evacuate the nearly100,000 Americans who live and work in South Korea. And, the US would have to win the backing of the new government in Seoul, something that is very unlikely.

The options are limited, including additional troops, aircraft, and naval capabilities in the region. The Pentagon could order a US bomber to fly over the peninsula, which President Obama once did (to little effect).

Congressman Adam Smith, a top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, told reporters today that “the only” US option is to further build up a credible deterrent, such that North Korea knows that any use of nuclear weapons would result in “the obliteration of the regime.”

There would also be grave dangers in attempts at “regime change,” via some kinds of covert actions. “The Kim regime above all wants to survive, and sees nuclear weapons as important to that effort,” says foreign policy specialist Kori Schake of the Hoover Institute at Stanford University. “If the regime feels itself crumbling, or in threat of an overthrow,” Schake says, “we might wind up with the very nuclear attack from the North that we wanted to avoid.”

The danger is that the unruly rhetoric from Trump could result in self-imposed pressure to produce results through dangerous military action.

US-Japan alliance poised to dodge a bullet, but Abe-Trump talks unlikely to bridge big differences

The US-Japan alliance seemed poised to dodge a major bullet as the countdown began for the start of the first official summit between President Donald Trump and Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe since last November’s US presidential election. Abe and Trump will talk in Washington on Friday, and then fly together on Air Force One down to Trump’s private Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida for a round or two of golf.

The two sides have more or less reached agreement to emphasize the positive in the alliance, while steering clear – for now, at least --  of some of the more controversial aspects of Trump’s “America First” strategy that could cause friction between Washington and Tokyo.

Japanese officials seem relieved, but remain wary that the mercurial Trump’s core view of Japan, rooted in the seemingly bygone years of 1980s bilateral trade friction, could emerge during the “relaxing” country club moments between the two leaders, sparking a downward spiral in the relationship. Japanese officials remain concerned that Abe, who has no shortage of high-regard for his own diplomatic prowess, could stumble in his pursuit of a “personal relationship” with Trump, and unwittingly provoke the US president. The recent telephone dust-up between Trump and Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull provided Tokyo with all the warnings needed.

 “This is no way to run an alliance,” said one Japanese official involved in the summit preparations.

     THE MATTIS EFFECT: Several factors account for the relatively rosy assessment of the summit’s prospect coming from both Japanese and American officials.  First and foremost is what’s become known as the “Mattis factor,” – the influence of the new US defense secretary, retired Marine Corps General James Mattis. Unlike the national security advisor, retired Army General Michael Flynn, Mattis does not have a close personal relationship with Trump. He was not a presence around Trump during the presidential campaign, and a mere 40-minute interview led to his hiring.  But the president took a liking to Mattis’s “mad dog” image, and has somewhat grudgingly come to accept that he needs Mattis’s knowledge and gravitas with the US foreign policy community, to effectively stabilize and direct US security policy.

Mattis has taken it upon himself to preemptively set the tone of the US-Japan (and US-South Korea) alliance, before nationalist trade hawks can set up shop in the White House and effectively undercut ongoing efforts to deepen the US-Japan security alliance in the face of serious challenges posed by the behavior of China and North Korea.

Mattis chose South Korea and Japan as his first foreign destinations as defense secretary in large part because of deep concerns in the US about the potential for provocative actions by North Korea, an effective response to which would inevitably necessitate close coordination between Washington, Tokyo, and Seoul. In that context, Mattis, in his talks in Tokyo and Seoul last week, reaffirmed the US commitment to the defense of both countries, and to an active US role promoting peace and stability in the region.

Mattis pointedly praised Japan’s contributions to financing of the alliance, effectively shelving Trump’s repeated campaign rhetoric that Japan (and other allies) should be paying more for their own defense. The issue of increased “host nation support” by Japan is not on the formal Trump-Abe agenda.

To the opposite, Mattis emphasized diplomacy over military actions to thwart Chinese aggressive actions in the South China Sea. He also reiterated the US view that the disputed Senkaku Islands fall under the terms of the US-Japan security treaty, which Secretary of State Rex Tillerson later repeated in a telephone call with Japan’s foreign minister, Fumio Kishida.

The net result is that, for now, Mattis has effectively insulated the US-Japan security alliance from critiques by US nationalists (including Trump) that the structure of the alliance in effect subsidizes Japan’s economic competitiveness vis a vis the United States.

     TRADE SHOP NOT YET OPEN: Meanwhile, the White House’s trade policy operation is not fully up-and-running, and appointments at the State Department and Pentagon to key Asia-related policy posts continue to lag.

Trump’s choice to head his trade policy team, former investment banker Wilbur Ross, has yet to be confirmed as commerce secretary by the Senate, and his choice to head the US trade agency, Robert Lighthizer, remains even deeper in political limbo. As a fellow billionaire and successful businessman, Ross will likely emerge as Trump’s top confidante on trade policy. Until then, the administration is unprepared to discuss what US trade policy in East Asia will look like in the wake of Trump’s decision to scuttle US participation in the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) regional trade deal, which much of the region was looking to as a de facto barrier to China’s overbearing presence.

China is likely to be the focus of Trump’s trade hawks, but Japan could easily be ensnarled in related disputes over currency manipulation and other alleged unfair trade practices sparked by concerns about Beijing.

The Administration is also woefully unprepared to discuss with Japanese officials the specifics of an enhanced defense posture the US might expect from Tokyo in the context of a more hard line US stance toward China. For example, the possibility of expanded Japanese naval patrols in the South China Sea and in the vicinity of Taiwan did not even come up during the Mattis visit to Tokyo, and his not likely to come up in the Trump-Abe talks.

At the White House, Asia policy remains largely in the hands of Steve Bannon, President Trump’s chief political advisor, and Peter Narvarro, an economics professor who gained Trump’s ear with his relentless criticisms of China’s trade policies and overall expansionist tendencies in East Asia. Bannon is on record forecasting as inevitable a US-China military clash in the South China Sea. Both Bannon and Navarro are playing a big role in vetting names for potential Asia policy appointments, though Navarro’s role seems destined to diminish somewhat once Ross is on the job.

National Security Advisor Flynn has a deep interest in Asia, but remains largely confined to political-military issues, as does Matt Pottinger, Flynn’s hand-picked choice to head the National Security Council’s Asia unit. Pottinger, who is well-regarded in Washington’s Asia policy community, is a former Wall Street Journal reporter based in China, but came to know Flynn during his stint as a US Marine intelligence officer in Afghanistan.

It is notable, therefore, that the Trump Administration’s point person for the Abe trip is Kenneth Juster, newly-appointed deputy assistant to the president for international economic affairs. Juster, who has extensive experience as both an investment banker and US government official, inherited the assignment from Trump’s son-in-law and advisor Jared Kushner, who coordinated Abe’s first meeting with Trump last November, shortly after the presidential election. For this trip, Japan’s embassy in Washington again turned to Kushner, but he urged Flynn to get the NSC more involved, leading to Juster’s role.

The heavy role of the Administration’s trade shop in the Abe visit could foretell some future tensions. For now, the potential flash points will not be front-and-center on the Trump-Abe agenda.

     YET ANOTHER ‘ECONOMIC FRAMEWORK’; Given Trump’s nationalist economic policy proclivities, as reflected in the US withdrawal from TPP, Abe and his advisors have concluded Japan needs to come across as an ally of Trump’s “make America great again” mantra.

Thus, Abe will arrive in Washington with the outlines of a new (yet another) bilateral US-Japan economic framework, which would focus on various steps to assist in US infrastructure and advanced technologies, all designed to generate upwards of 700,000 American jobs. (Some in Japan have pointed out that Abe’s proposal could easily be turned into a Tweet by Trump, if the president is so inclined.)

But Abe and his team will be walking on thin ice, as the merits of their argument about the benefits of Japanese investment in the US may not coincide with Trump’s political imperative to highlight “American” success. Japanese investments in the US auto sector create jobs, the nationalist argument goes, but at the expense of US market share formerly held by General Motors and Ford, and with no reciprocal expansion of market share for US automakers trying to sell in Japan.

The same suspect nationalist logic could trip-up Abe in any efforts made to promote the benefits of Japanese investment in US infrastructure, such as high-speed railways.

Japanese official emphasize that Abe will not even mention TPP, out of concern to not incite Trump’s ire. But Abe will likely emphasize the importance of the US and Japan standing up for the principle of trade agreements setting a gold standard for openness, transparency, and fairness. To that the end, Japanese officials say, Abe is prepared to argue that progress on bilateral trade issues can then be extended multilaterally.

The two sides are still considering announcement of preliminary exploration of a bilateral free trade agreement.

Abe is likely to suggest that the envisioned US-Japan economic framework be co-chaired by Vice President Mike Pence and Deputy Prime Minister Taro Aso, which might serve to remove the issue somewhat from the emerging nationalist chain of command on trade policy within the Trump administration.

Meanwhile, Japan’s minister trade and industry, Hiroshige Seko, a key aide to Abe and a major player on economic policy, will not accompany the prime minister to Washington. Instead, he will wait until Ross wins Senate confirmation.

On security issues, Tokyo would be thrilled if Trump were to personally restate the US commitment to defense of the Senkaku Islands, but Japanese officials are reluctant to push the issue too far. Trump, with his “transactional” nature, could conceivably withhold his personal comment until Tokyo provided something the US wants, a kind of zero-sum give-and-take that allies would probably do best to avoid.

The limits of “reassurance”: Mattis visits rattled Korea and Japan

The new US defense secretary James Mattis arrived today at Osan Air Base, just south of capital city Seoul, on the first leg of a 3-day trip that will also take him to Tokyo.

Mattis deliberately chose Japan and Korea as his first overseas destinations as defense secretary to send a strong message of reassurance to the two key US allies in the critical but volatile Asia-Pacific region. Both Seoul and Tokyo were rattled by some of the campaign rhetoric and postelection musings of President Donald Trump, and are looking for Mattis to confirm the continuing US commitment to the defense of Korea and Japan, and for a vibrant US role in ensuring peace and stability in the region.

In his recent Senate confirmation hearings, Mattis carefully but unmistakably distanced himself from past Trump comments that seemed to question the continued importance of the US alliance relationships with Japan and Korea. Some on the White House staff favor long-standing but largely ignored proposals for reductions in the US troop presence in South Korea. Trump even seemed to question the US commitment to nonproliferation of nuclear weapons by openly speculating that it might be beneficial for Seoul and Tokyo to have their own nuclear defenses.

“I think Mattis is trying to get ahead of Trump, and starting to define alliances,” says Michael Green, Japan specialist at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “He wants to begin to frame for the president and the White House what it means to be an ally, how allied contributions area evaluated and valued, and make clearer that the proper definition of an ally’s contribution is not simply the amount spent, but the output and effectiveness of the money spent.”

In that context, Green says, Mattis will emphasize reassurance, and continuity in the alliances with Japan and Korea, while also sending a message to the White House, which, Green says, “right now does not have a coherent idea of what alliances mean.”

First and foremost, that means a reiteration of the US stance against North Korea’s nuclear weapons program, and a commitment to deter any North Korean aggression. President Trump paved the way for Mattis a bit in a recent phone call with South Korean president Hwang Kyo-ahn.

Patrick Cronin, Asia security specialist at the Center for a New American Security, says that Mattis’s reassurances are “particularly important because of the shock waves created during the 2016 presidential election, the turbulence surrounding some of President Trump’s rapid-fire executive orders to include withdrawing from the TPP, and the lack of clarity about the new administration’s policies as it slowly assembles a complete administration.”

 

     OPERATIONAL DISADVANTAGE: Still, there are limitations to what the widely-respected Mattis can accomplish without clarification from the White House about President Trump’s plans for the Asia-Pacific region. “Reassurances” only go so far, especially if it remains unclear to what extent the messenger speaks for the president.

In the context of his “American First,” agenda, Trump has already announced the US withdrawal from the Transpacific Partnership (TPP), which had been framed by the Obama administration as a trade deal with both economic and strategic ramifications. Strategically, the TPP was to have loosely linked most of the region in a community that would set the terms for acceptable regional behavior to which China would have to conform. Absent the TPP, what will be the overarching theme of the US presence in East Asia?

Specifically, how will the administration approach China’s aggressive actions in the South China Sea, with Tokyo favorable to a hard line US stance, but not so hard line as to unnecessarily raise tensions and potentially pull Japan into an unwarranted confrontation with Beijing? The administration has had a hard time “explaining” away Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s testimony during his confirmation hearings that the US would bar China’s access to facilities it constructed in the South China Sea. Blocking China’s access would surely risk a confrontation, and might even violate the very freedom of navigation laws the US is insisting be respected.

The Trump White House seems anxious to win the active help of China to rein-in its unruly client in Pyongyang, with some arguing that forceful actions to deter China’s actions in the South China Sea could be the message needed to coerce Chinese cooperation on North Korea.

Others argue that consolidation of alliances is the best way for the US to influence Beijing.

And what specific plans does the new Trump administration have for upping pressure on North Korea, such as increased sanctions?

Any hint at answers to these basic policy questions will probably have to wait until February 10 at least, when Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is scheduled to meet in Washington with Trump.

In the meantime, Mattis will have to stay within the policy parameters of reassuring Korea and Japan, while looking to energize programs and plans already on the agenda.

Indeed, the Pentagon downplayed expectations for the trip in briefings prior to Mattis’s departure, saying that Mattis was not traveling with any agenda or list of US expectations, but rather than reassert long-standing US polices. Mattis himself reinforced this point in a talk with reporters during the plane trip to the region. “I’m coming out to listen,” he said. “And then we’re going to work together and strengthen our alliances.”

 

     THE TRUMP-MATTIS RELATIONSHIP: One factor also weighing on Mattis is the extent of his personal relationship with President Trump. Mattis was furious last week that Trump took the occasion of Mattis’s swearing-in ceremony at the Pentagon to release before the assembled press his controversial executive order on immigration and refugees. With Mattis, who knew little of the executive order, standing right behind him and thus appearing to be giving his approval, Trump overshadowed Mattis’s big day, by promoting a policy that has sparked negative reactions in the US, and around the world, including inside the Pentagon.

The Trump White House is now the stage for several battles for turf and control of policy, and Mattis has reason for concern that his voice may be muffled by those in the White House, especially Trump Counselor Steve Bannon, who have policy agendas well-outside the traditional US mainstream. Bannon, to the surprise of many, has shown a particularly strong interest in Asia, and is exercising considerable influence over the filling of Asia-related policy jobs in the administration. Bannon was largely responsible for the drafting of Trump’s dark inaugural address, and for the executive order on immigration.

Homeland security secretary John Kelly, secretary of state Tillerson, and Mattis share a common interest in not being marginalized by Trump’s White House ‘Palace Guard,’ which includes Bannon, Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner, and national security advisor Michael Flynn, though the latter is said to defer to Mattis’s higher military ranking and superior standing in Washington’s policy circles. Mattis, Kelly, and Tillerson met together, absent Flynn, in the days following the harsh reception to Trump’s immigration and refugee executive order.

 

     EYES ON NORTH KOREA: The Trump administration shares the view that North Korea poses perhaps the most immediate military threat to the US, and to regional and global peace. The North-South divide remains the most militarized border in the world, with an unpredictable regime in Pyongyang looking to establish itself as a permanent nuclear weapons state.

Mattis is likely to reiterate the long-standing US support for deployment in South Korea of a THADD (Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense) system against ballistic missiles. China, which argues that the THADD system is aimed against Beijing, not Pyongyang, has applied enormous pressure on Seoul to drop the project. Seoul seems intent on moving ahead, though political turmoil inside South Korea could complicate the matter.

Pyongyang has a long history of provocative actions that coincide with the inauguration of a new US president. The young leader Kim Jong-un has reportedly ordered the restart of the Yongbyon plutonium reactor that has been at the center of countless hours of US and allied negotiations with North Korean officials for over two decades. Another ballistic missile test could also be in the works, perhaps to coincide with the national holidays celebrating the February 16 birthday of Kim’s father, Kim Jong-il, and the April 15 birthday of North Korea founder, his grandfather Kim Il-sung.

Mattis will want to ensure that the “US-ROK alliance is robust and ready for all contingencies,” says Cronin.

    

     ABE AND TRUMP: In Japan, Mattis is likely to repeat the US eagerness for increased “jointness” in the alliance, touching on everything from interoperability of weapons systems to joint US-Japan command structures that would steam line decision-making and operations in a crisis. Prior to the recent reinterpretation of the Article Nine ‘peace clause’ of Japan’s constitution, the US and Japan meticulously avoided any organizational arrangements that could have implied an illegal integration of US and Japanese military forces.

That obstacle is now greatly reduced, though the two sides have been slow to put new command structures, joint exercises, and planning in place to reflect the newly-expanded range of potential alliance cooperation.

Perhaps Tokyo’s the most specific desire from Mattis during this visit will be a reiteration that the US recognizes that the disputed Senkaku Islands, south of Okinawa, which China also claims, fall under the provisions of Article 5 of the US-Japan security treaty. For Japan, this is a vital piece of assurance of US backing in the event of a China-initiated conflict in the region. Every US administration since Bill Clinton has provided this assurance to Japan.

Trump’s argument that Japan ought to contribute more to its defense is not likely to be discussed until, at earliest, the February 10 Trump-Abe meeting.

Less likely to receive new attention is the ongoing conflict in Okinawa over plans to build a new US Marine Corps heliport in the Henoko Bay area, to replace the US Marine Air Station Futenma, now dangerously located in the center of Ginowan City.

Okinawa, led by current governor Takeshi Onaga, has voiced overwhelming opposition to the new facility, but few in Washington have been listening. Successive US governments have proclaimed the Henoko plan to be the only viable alternative to the existing Futenma base.

Governor Onaga arrived in Washington on January 31, in the hope of meeting White House and Congressional officials to make the case for an alternative to Henoko.

Onaga’s difficult plight was captured by the unfortunate timing of his DC visit: he arrived just as Mattis was preparing to leave Washington for his Asia trip. Okinawa issues remain far down the list of priorities in Washington.

 

 

 

Abe-Trump meeting: Will first impressions matter?

First impressions may be important, but when Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and US President-elect Donald Trump meet in New York on Thursday, details about the US-Japan relationship will likely be in short supply.

That’s assuming the two leaders manage to actually meet.

One  day before the meeting, “Japanese officials said they  had not finalized when  or where in New York it would take place, who  would be invited, or in some cases whom to call for answers,” according to  Reuters.

 

The meeting will almost surely take place, of course, but the  disorganization Japanese officials have encountered is just a reflection of the intense infighting and overall chaotic mood that has overtaken Trump’s transition process, supposedly designed to facilitate a smooth takeover of the reins of the US government on January 20.

Efforts to find out who within the Trump camp is in charge of the meeting have been fruitless, with repeated phone calls left unreturned.

Within the Trump transition team, there is no official Asia advisory team. The main figure formally in charge of national security issues, former Congressman Mike Rogers, was ousted earlier this week in a brutal internal power struggle involving Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner and New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, whom Trump summarily dumped as chairman of the transition late last week. Rogers was close to Christie.

Trump has yet to nominate a secretary of state, and he has not named a national security advisor. (Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, whose name has been bandied about for the Foggy Bottom job, has apparently dropped down on the favored list, having angered Trump by openly campaigning for the job.)

And State Department officials confirmed yesterday that no one in the Trump camp has been in contact with the department’s Asia experts about the Abe meeting. Indeed, State officials report that no one from the Trump camp has been in official contact with any of the specialists designated by the White House and Secretary of State John Kerry to facilitate a smooth transition from Barack Obama to a Trump administration.

The betting among veteran Asia Hands in Washington is that retired Lt. General Michael Flynn will sit in on Trump’s meeting with Abe. The controversial Flynn, who was ousted as director of the Defense Intelligence Agency in 2014, is unusually outspoken among intelligence specialists usually known for quiet discretion. He has been Trump’s closest foreign policy and national security advisor for the past year, and is widely thought to have the inside lane to be named Trump’s White House national security advisor.

Flynn has a fairly large network of acquaintances in Japan. During a visit to Tokyo in October, he met with Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga and Democratic Party defense specialist Akihisa Nagashima, among others, and let it be known that Trump  would  likely urge increased defense spending by Japan.

But Flynn himself has been the target of unflattering attention in Washington in recent days, with reports that the biggest client for his private consulting company is the government of Turkish President Tayyip Erdoğan. On Election Day, Flynn published an opinion editorial in the Washington daily The Hill, urging the US to meet one of Erdogan’s biggest demands and extradite to Turkey a controversial cleric living in the US who Turkish officials claim was a facilitator of a failed coup attempt last July.

Trump has no known Japan or Korea specialists in his orbit, Flynn included. His views of Japan have been shaped by nationalist trade hawks who used to criticize Japan for “freeloading” on the US defense budget, while repeatedly outsmarting US officials in trade negotiations. Now, those same trade nationalists aim more of their rage at China, both on trade issues and out of concern about China’s aggressive military buildup.

On the campaign stump, Trump often included Japan in his denunciations of nations that have managed to rig trade ties with the US in ways that have devastated the country’s manufacturing industries and harmed American workers. Trump has also faulted Japan, and South Korea, for failing to boost defense spending commensurate with their economic capabilities.

Two people often cited as Trump advisors on China are University of California economist Peter Navarro and Capitol Hill staffer Alexander Gray. But Navarro is more of an “idea entrepreneur” than a China specialist, and has not even met Trump, and Gray is not a candidate for a top position.

Also cited as a Trump China advisor is Washington veteran Michael Pillsbury, an enigmatic hawk on China who has maneuvered throughout the US foreign policy and intelligence community for decades, managing to remain somewhat influential.

There is no evidence that Trump has any working plans on how to turn his campaign rhetoric into actual policy toward Japan.

The hope among Japan specialists in Washington is that Trump will quickly grasp that the US cannot realistically adopt harder stances toward China and North Korea, if Trump determines that to be warranted, without the close cooperation of Tokyo and Seoul.

The harsh reality is that none of the “advance work” normally done between staff specialists prior to a leadership summit has been conducted between Trump and Abe.

No one knows for sure how Trump, well-known for his limited attention span, will manage to effectively converse with Abe in any depth, when the pressures to make personnel and other big decisions are hitting him from so many directions.

Abe apparently hopes to impress Trump as a bold decision-maker, and a steadfast US ally, with whom the incoming US president can work. Before departing Japan, Abe a told private audience in Tokyo that he plans to defend the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade agreement, and present the Japan he governs as a strong supporter of free trade and the rule of law. Abe’s bet is that Trump, while likely to stick to his anti-TPP stance, will see Abe as a strategic partner.

 

Okinawa: No end in sight to stalemate over heavy US Marine presence

The hotly contested race for mayor of Ginowan on January 24 did little to ease the intense stalemate over restructuring the heavy presence of US Marines in Okinawa, Japan’s southern-most prefecture.

With strong backing from the government of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, incumbent mayor Atsushi Sakima garnered 56 percent of the vote, handily beating challenger Keiichiro Shimura in what analysts expected to be a tighter race.

The election amounted to a proxy war between Tokyo (and Washington) on the one side, and the Okinawa prefectural government on the other. The US and Japan almost 20 years ago acquiesced to the inevitable closure of the US Marine Air Station Futenma, which is dangerously located in the center of Ginowan, and settled on moving the Futenma operations to a new air station to be built in the less-populated Henoko Bay area, a district of Nago, which is north of Ginowan.

The Henoko plan has met with fierce opposition among a large majority of Okinawans, striking a discordant note in what is supposed to be a deepening US-Japan security alliance in the face of growing assertiveness by China throughout East Asia.

Prime Minister Abe and Governor Onaga

Abe greeted the Sakima victory with a reaffirmation of his intention to push ahead with construction of the Henoko facility. But Okinawa governor Takeshi Onaga, who was swept into office in late 2014 with his insistence that any Futenma replacement facility be located outside of Okinawa, has not changed his position, leaving obstacles in place to hinder smooth implementation of the Henoko plan.

    

      HIGH STAKES STANDOFF: The stakes were high for both Abe and Onaga in the Ginowan race. Abe, who has promised an irritated Washington that he will get the Henoko project built, was anxious to end the recent string of electoral victories for anti-Henoko candidates in Okinawa, including Susumu Inamine as mayor of Nago, Onaga as governor, and all four members of the Lower House from Okinawa, all in 2014. A victory in Ginowan for the anti-Henoko Shimura would have boosted Onaga’s “All Okinawa” claim that public opinion at the local level in Okinawa is united against the Henoko plan, and further complicated implementation.

For Onaga, on the other hand, it is critical to maintain the pressure on Abe that a united Okinawa generates, as part of what Onaga and his aides describe as a strategy to “shame” Washington and Tokyo into changing course. For Tokyo to proceed with Henoko in the face of intense local opposition, Onaga says, would be fundamentally anti-democratic.

Abe pulled out all the stops to get Sakima reelected, including putting his closest confidante, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, in charge of the effort. Suga dispatched influential Diet members to Okinawa to quietly lobby business associations and other interest groups to back Sakima, being careful to keep a low profile so that Tokyo did not appear to be wielding a heavy hand. The ruling Liberal Democratic Party dispatched three staff members from party headquarters to assist the Sakima campaign. Suga backed up Sakima’s idea of bringing a Disney Land resort to the property to be vacated by the Marines at Futenma, personally lobbying executives from the Oriental Land Co. that operates Tokyo Disney Land.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Suga and Governor Onaga

During the campaign, Sakima tactfully avoided taking a stand on the Henoko facility, insisting instead that Futenma be closed and that Ginowan focus on economic development. Tokyo warned that construction delays in the Henoko project would only result in the hazardous Futenma base remaining open for an indeterminate period of time.

Onaga, for his part, made the quick trip from his office in capital city Naha to central Ginowan to deliver impassioned speeches in support of Shimura and in opposition to the Henoko project.

 

     WHO WON THE PROXY WAR?: Prime Minister Abe and the LDP machinery were quick to claim victory, arguing in essence that the result in Ginowan exposed a myth that public opinion in Okinawa is uniformly opposed to the Henoko project. Abe, and Defense Minister Gen Nakatani, both asserted that construction of the Henoko facility would proceed. Aiko Shimajiri, an LDP Upper House member from Okinawa and Abe’s state minister for Okinawa issues, argued that a “silent majority” had spoken in Ginowan.

But exit polls conducted by Asahi Shimbun and Mainichi Shimbun tell a very different story. Asahi found that 57 percent of voters said they oppose the Henoko project. Mainichi found that 57 percent were opposed, while only 33 percent favored the new facility. Mainichi also found that 55 percent of voters were critical of the central government’s approach to the Futenma-Henoko issue. Two weeks before the election, Abe told the Diet that “matters related to national security will be decided by the nation as a whole,” effectively dismissing public opinion in Okinawa.

The citizens of Ginowan understandably have mixed feelings about the Futenma-Henoko issue. On the one hand, they favor quick closure of the Futenma base, which occupies a quarter of the city’s entire land mass, and poses a constant danger to surrounding populated neighborhoods. The US and Tokyo have insisted that Futenma will remain open as long as the Henoko replacement facility remains largely stuck on the drawing boards. With the economy of Ginowan weak, citizens also hope to gain from economic development projects that might blossom with the return of land now used by the US Marines at Futenma.

But the evidence is strong that voters in Ginowan, and throughout Okinawa, while desirous of a quick closure of Futenma, also opposed replacing the Futenma base with a new facility in Henoko Bay.

 

     THE NEXT STEPS: The next battles over the US Marine presence in Okinawa will be in the courts, the June elections for the Okinawa Prefectural Assembly, and the Upper House elections to follow.

The Okinawa Prefectural Government has sued Tokyo, arguing that the central government illegally overturned Onaga’s decision to revoke permission granted by his predecessor for the central government to conduct land reclamation in Henoko Bay necessary for the new facility.

Onaga has little confidence that the courts will rule in Okinawa’s favor, but the process of legal maneuvering will buy him some valuable time to continue to organize political opposition.

June elections for the Prefectural Assembly, which has 48 members, should provide an accurate reading of the mood in Okinawa. The governing coalition, which came to power in 2012, strongly backs Onaga’s fierce opposition to the Henoko facility.

The Upper House elections will have national significance far beyond Okinawa, as they will amount to a referendum on the Abe government, especially new defense and security policies, trade policies, and the prime minister’s personal drive to change the postwar ‘pacifist’ Constitution, for which he needs, among other things, a two-thirds majority in the Upper House.

Aiko Shimajiri

In that context, the seats from Okinawa are important, especially that held by Aiko Shimajiri, who took over the Okinawa portfolio for Abe’s cabinet last October. Shimajiri was first elected to the Upper House from Okinawa in 2007, and is the most prominent politician from Okinawa who sides with the central government in favor of the Henoko facility. Staff close to Onaga say the governor has set his sights on defeating Shimajiri in her upcoming reelection bid.

 

It’s Tokyo/Washington vs. Okinawa in the mayoral race in Ginowan City

It will be back to the future for the citizens of Okinawa’s Ginowan City today, when they cast ballots in the hot race for mayor. The outcome could have a major impact on the controversy over the large US military presence on Okinawa, Japan’s southern-most and poorest prefecture.

Twenty years ago, Ginowan was briefly thrust on the world’s center stage, as the rape of a young woman by three US servicemen led to large demonstrations, reflecting long-simmering anger that Okinawa bears a disproportionate share of the burden for hosting US military facilities in Japan. Washington and Tokyo briefly quelled the high-strung mood on Okinawa by agreeing to close the US Marine Air Station Futenma, dangerously located in the center of Ginowan.

US Marine Air Station Futenma

There was a catch: closure of Futenma was tied to the creation of a replacement facility from which the Futenma operations would carry on.

A large majority of Okinawans favor locating a replacement facility outside of the prefecture. Okinawa comprises just 0.6 percent of Japan’s total land mass, but the US military facilities in the prefecture utilize a full 75 percent of the land used by the US military in all of Japan.

Tokyo and Washington think otherwise, and several years ago settled on construction on a new facility in the Henoko district of Nago. AV-shaped double runway would start from US Marine Camp Schwab, and extend with the help of landfill into Henoko Bay.

Planned Henoko facility

The Henoko plan has sparked a political backlash on Okinawa, sending shivers down the spine of the US-Japan security alliance. An unusual coalition of conservative forces long-associated with the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) has joined with more left-leaning organizations in opposition. Governor Takeshi Onaga, an LDP stalwart of yesteryear, was swept into office in November 2014 on the basis of his promise to do everything in his power to halt implementation of the Henoko plan. Lower House elections for the national Diet held the following month saw all LDP candidates lose in the races for Okinawa’s four seats.

Governor Onaga has since reversed the decision of his predecessor to approve permits for the landfill projects necessary for construction of the new runways. The government of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe decided to proceed anyway, prompting Onaga to sue the central government.

     BACK TO GINOWAN: Eyes have shifted back to Ginowan because the mayoralty contest has become a proxy for the battle between Tokyo and Washington on the one side, and political forces backing Onaga on the other.

American and Japanese officials argue that closing the Futenma air station will reduce the base-hosting burden on Okinawa, and that the new facility is critical to maintaining the US deterrent in East Asia against an increasingly assertive China. The Abe government is supporting incumbent mayor Atsushi Sakima, who has not shied away from promoting his ties with the central government. Sakima has refused to align with Governor Onaga in opposition to the Henoko facility, and has received incentives from Tokyo in the form of backing for a Disney resort and additional economic aid. Sakima is a talented speaker.

By contrast, challenger Keiichiro Shimura is a low-key former official of the prefectural government, and lacks Sakima’s charisma. But his father was once chairman of the LDP’s Okinawa chapter, and he has made opposition to the Henoko plan the center of his campaign.

At election time, there were roughly 73,600 registered voters in Ginowan. Mayoralty races in the city are usually decided by 2,000 votes or less, and the outcome was too close to call when balloting began.

A win by Shimura would be a huge setback for Abe, and greatly disappoint the US, as Washington and Tokyo would have a harder time arguing that coordinated closure of the Futenma facility and construction of the Henoko facility would reduce the burden on Okinawa.

Onaga would gain political momentum by being able to work with Shimura for four years. The mayor of Nago, Susumu Inamine, was elected in 2014 on a platform of opposition to the Henoko plan. Henoko falls under Nago’s municipal jurisdiction. In the last two years, every major election in Okinawa has been won by opponents of the Henoko project.

Abe hopes a Sakima reelection will knock the wind out of the opposition’s political sails. The prime minister’s office has been careful to not dispatch to Okinawa high-profile Cabinet ministers, such as Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, Defense Minister Gen Nakatani, or Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida, out of concern that their support for Sakima would not be well-received. A few well-known LDP Diet members, such as Toshihiro Nikai (chairman of the LDP’s General Council) and Toshimitsu Motegi (who ran the LDP’s election campaign in late 2014) have visited, but dared not campaign in public for Sakima. They opted instead for small private meetings with business leaders, whom they hope will influence their employees to vote for Sakima.

The election result should be available later this evening.

Yukio Okamoto: ‘POWs, Chinese laborers subjected to inhuman conditions’

On July 19, Mitsubishi Materials Corp. took the landmark step of issuing a formal apology to American ex-Prisoners of War (POWs) forced to work under “inhumane” conditions in copper mines run by the company’s predecessor – Mitsubishi Mining – during World War II. The apology was a first by a major Japanese firm. An estimated 12,000 US POWs were forced to work by Japanese government and private companies during the war. The apology was delivered by Hikaru Kimura, a senior executive of Mitsubishi Materials, at a ceremony held at the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles. Kimura expressed a “most remorseful apology” to the estimated 900 POWs who were forced to work in conditions of “harsh, severe hardships.”

Also present was Yukio Okamoto, a Mitsubishi outside director, and former POW James Murphy of California, who accepted the apology.

Okamoto said he “entered the room with a heavy heart, seeking forgiveness,” adding that “we also have to apologize for not apologizing earlier.” (See interview, below.) Okamoto, a former diplomat and advisor to then-prime ministers Ryutaro Hashimoto, Junichiro  Koizumi, and Yasuo Fukuda, is also a member of the 16-member Advisory Panel on the History of the 20^th Century and on Japan’s Role and World Order in the 21^st Century,” which Prime Minister Shinzo Abe established to counsel him on a statement to be issued around August 15 to commemorate the 70^th anniversary of the end of World War II.

It’s unclear if Mitsubishi’s actions, or the advisory panel, will have any influence  on the content of Abe’s statement, but the prime minister may be bending to considerable pressure to emulate his predecessors Tomiichi Murayama and Junichiro Koizumi and acknowledge Japan’s “aggression” and “colonial rule” in the first half of the 20^th century.

The Japanese government has officially apologized to ex-American POWs on several occasions, but long stood firm against providing any compensation on the grounds that the San Francisco Peace Treaty of 1951 had settled all claims stemming from World War II. In recent times, the ex-POWs have dropped their demand for compensation, but have continued their anguished search for an apology from Japanese firms that exploited them as forced labor in what Okamoto termed “inhumane conditions.”

In the past, some prominent Japanese firms have quietly considered issuing apologies, and perhaps even compensation, to ex-POWs, only to encounter deep resistance from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA), which cited the San Francisco Treaty. But Okamoto says the MOFA has inaudibly shifted its stance. “The MOFA is no longer saying that the issue was settled by the Peace Treaty, and that we have to be mindful of legal stability. They are no longer holding on to that position.” Mitsubishi Materials’s actions could now spur other Japanese firms to follow suit.

The most poignant aspect of Mitsubishi’s action was not the apology itself, but the genuineness conveyed by words used to reinforce the apology. In a talk before the Foreign Correspondent’s Club (FCCJ) in Tokyo on July 22, just days after the Los Angeles event, Okamoto said that Mitsubishi is prepared to extend the same apology to former British, Dutch, and Australian POWs. “Ours is one of the companies who tortured POWs most, so we have to apologize,” he said.

 

    COMPENSATION FOR FORCED CHINESE LABORERS: Meanwhile, in what could have widespread repercussions in Northeast Asia, Mitsubishi Materials officials have privately revealed that they are close to announcing an agreement with close to 4,000 Chinese citizens (or bereaved family of) who were used as forced labor during World War II. The company will acknowledge “a historical fact that the company violated human rights during World War II,” and will express its “heartfelt regret” and “deep apology,” for its actions.

From 1944-1945, upwards of 37,000 Chinese were brought to Japan due to severe labor shortages in the war-ravaged country. An estimated 6,830 died while working under harsh conditions. Mitsubishi Mining exploited close to 4,000, of whom about 1,500 have been found and identified.

Each of the roughly 4,000 victims (or their respective families) will receive about $16,140 in compensation.

Mitsubishi acted even though Japan’s Supreme Court had previously dismissed in 1997 a lawsuit filed on behalf of the Chinese laborers. The Court ruled that all claims had been settled by the 1972 communique announcing the establishment of diplomatic relations between China and Japan.  The Supreme Court ruling was in line with the stance of the Japanese government.

Much as former forced laborers from Korea had done in Seoul, the Chinese victims had begun to file suit in Chinese courts. In Korea, the high court ruled in 2013 that former Korean forced laborers were entitled to compensation, even though the Korean government at the time agreed with Tokyo that the 1965 Treaty between Japan and Korea had settled all claims stemming from World War II.

China has never officially demanded compensation from Japanese companies, arguing that Japan’s political leadership was responsible for war crimes, not the Japanese people, thereby absolving private Japanese firms of responsibility.

Negotiations between Mitsubishi and representatives of Chinese forced laborers began in early 2014. Mitsubishi officials were anxious to have the issue resolved by this year, prior to the 70^th anniversary of the end of World War II. Mitsubishi, which is looking to expand business in China, also did not want the forced labor issue tarnishing its image.

 

     KOREA NOT INCLUDED: Thousands of Koreans were also forced to work in Japan during the war, but thus far Mitsubishi has not reached out to the 6,489 who toiled for its various group companies, including 4,150 for Mitsubishi Mining.

Okamoto says the legal circumstances differ between Chinese and Korea laborers exploited in Japan. Korea came under Japanese colonial rule in 1910, so Koreans were technically Japanese citizens ordered to work, as were all Japanese, under the 1938 mobilization law. Korean laborers were paid the same amount as Japanese nationals, though the currency in which they were paid became useless at the end of the war. The 2013 Korean court ruling says that the Korean workers were, for all practical purposes, never paid for their labor.

But Okamoto is quick to add that, legality aside, “the fundamental sin was the annexation of Korea, obliterating their national identities. We did not allow Koreans to use their own name, use their language. We even forced Shintoism on them to create second-class Japanese citizens.”

 

     THE ABE STATEMENT: Coincidentally or not, the actions by Mitsubishi came just as the panel appointed by Abe to advise him on his 70^th anniversary statement was about to make public its report.

For weeks, authoritative “leaks” circulated that indicated the panel was trying to corner a reluctant Abe into using the words “aggression” and “colonial rule,” while softening the explicit apology issued by former Prime Minister Tomiichi Murayama in 1995, and Prime Minister Juniichi Koizumi in 2005.

Prime Minister Abe is known to harbor a strict ideological aversion to use of those words.

Sure enough, on August 6, the advisory committee issued a report that criticized Japan’s “aggression” and “colonial rule” in the first half of the 20^th century in what amounted to a “reckless war.” The report also thoroughly repudiated the notion popular among “revisionists” that Japan’s intention in the 1930s-1945 was to “liberate” the rest of Asia from Western colonial rule.

At this point, the proverbial diplomatic ball is in Shinzo Abe’s court. What will he say in his upcoming statement marking the 70^th anniversary of the close of World War II? Abe deeply clings to the romantic illusion that annexation of Korea in 1910 was “legal,” and that the militarist rampage through China and Southeast Asia during the 1931-1945 period was somehow guided by noble intentions. It’s not surprising that Abe’s hero is his grandfather, the late Nobusuke Kishi, who was a key architect of Japan’s wartime policies.

Until recently, Abe seemed very unlikely to use the words “aggression” or “colonial rule,” terms he has never come close to uttering with respect to Japan’s calamitous wartime actions. Moreover, he seemed unlikely to communicate the genuineness of  Yukio Okamoto’s apologies to ex-POWs, to exploited Chinese laborers, and for the annexation of Korea, or to capture to earnestness of his own advisory committee’s rejection of the revisionist notion that Japan was out to “liberate” the rest of Asia.

A lot is riding on Abe’s upcoming statement. Failure to heed the advice of his own advisory committee would likely lead to another round of icy diplomatic relations in Northeast Asia. And the United States, after having rolled out a red carpet for Abe during his late-April visit to Washington, would be in a weak position to disentangle itself from the regional political damage Abe could very well cause.

 

 

Okamoto: ‘Annexation of Korea Japan’s fundamental sin’

 

 Yukio Okamoto is president of Okamoto Associates, Inc., providing strategic political and economic advice to major corporations. From 1968 to 1991 he was a career diplomat in Japan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, including postings in Paris and Washington, and responsibility for helping manage the day-to-day operations of the US-Japan security relationship.

Mr. Okamoto serves as a board member for several Japanese multinational firms, including Mitsubishi Materials. Well-versed in economic and government policy debates, he is a familiar figure both in Japan and within the United States government. He is currently the Robert E. Wilhelm Fellow at the Center for International Studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Mr. Okamoto has also served as a special advisor to Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto, Special Advisor on Iraq to Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, and chairman of Koizumi’s task force on foreign relations. In addition, he was a member of Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda’s Study Group on Diplomacy.

Mr. Okamoto also served on the 16-person committee appointed by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to advise him on the statement he will issue in August commemorating the 70^th anniversary of the end of the Pacific War.

 

DISPATCH JAPAN: How did Mitsubishi Materials come to the decision to apologize to US POWs, and to compensate Chinese forced laborers? What were the discussions inside the company like?

OKAMOTO: Mitsubishi Materials was sued by American POWs some years back [1999]. We had to take up the issue quite seriously. Within the company, we conducted an extensive examination. We were sympathetic to the cause of the POWs, and we decided that we had to be very sincere, and not hide behind the official government position that all claims against the Japanese government or private companies had been settled by San Francisco Peace Treaty of 1951.

We tried to communicate with the POWs, working through American intermediaries, in the hope of reaching an amicable settlement, including an apology.

But there were many elements to be considered. Many outsiders said many things, so our goal did not materialize. I can’t say much more about this, except that we consulted outsiders. The time was simply not mature enough for us to go ahead. These were not, of course, formal consultations, but they advised us.

Then, early last year, there was another approach, by a volunteer -- who was apparently working with the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles. She is Kinue Tokudome, director of the US-Japan Dialogue on POWs. We knew from our previous consideration and examination of the issue that we had to face it with sincerity. So this time, we decided to comply with the request to express an apology.

It took a while to arrange the meeting that occurred recently in Los Angeles.

 

DISPATCH JAPAN: When did Mitsubishi make the decision to extend this approach to Chinese laborers who were forced to work for Japanese companies?

OKAMOTO: There has been an ongoing lawsuit with Chinese forced laborers. The issue is not the same as that with the American POWs. But there was a prevailing feeling that Mitsubishi as a private company used these laborers, and therefore had to apologize in the same manner. The difference is that the American POWs were no longer demanding financial compensation; they just wanted an apology. By contrast, the Chinese argue that our response is  in essence an extension of the law suit, so we have been talking about the amount of reparation as well.

 

DISPATCH JAPAN: What was the response from the big business federation Keidanren, or individual Japanese companies? Have you received criticism? Or is there sentiment in favor of the actions you are taking?

OKAMOTO: We have not contacted Keidanren, or other companies. We have been doing this on our own. There is no official contact. All I know is through my friends, who work for a wide variety of companies, and they have been supportive.

 

DISPATCH JAPAN: But this could have major implications for other companies, right?

OKAMOTO: I don’t know. I have not spoken with executives from other companies that actually used POWs as forced laborers. The people to whom I have spoken represent a kind of Japanese common sense. But I do not know what the other firms who used POWs as laborers are going to decide. We should remember that Mitsubishi Materials succeeded Mitsubishi Mining, and is a different corporate entity. Nonetheless, we assumed what we thought was our responsibility. We remain a big company. On the other hand, a good number of the coal mining companies that used forced laborers are now quite small, as a result of the virtual death of coal mining in Japan. I don’t know what those firms will decide.

 

DISPATCH JAPAN: Is there any thought about creating a compensation fund for forced laborers involving the business community as a whole?

OKAMOTO: Not that I know of. I have not spoken with Keidanren. And we are not in a position to preach to other companies about steps they might take.

 

DISPATCH JAPAN: How has the Ministry of Foreign Affairs responded? As you indicated, providing compensation to forced laborers is contrary to the longstanding government position that all claims against Japanese public and private entities were settled by the San Francisco Peace Treaty.

OKAMOTO: I think officials in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs are sympathetic to us as a private firm having made the decision to apologize to American POWs. The MOFA is no longer saying that the issue was settled by the Peace Treaty, and that we have to be mindful of legal stability. They are no longer holding on to that position. They used to say that if a private company apologizes and pays compensation, it might rock the legal settlement reached at the official level. This was the position as of the Foreign Ministry until several years ago.

 

DISPATCH JAPAN: Is this your perception through informal communication with Foreign Ministry officials, or do you regard this as a change in the official position?

OKAMOTO: I’ll have to check about the actual official MOFA stance. But I have many friends there,  and I have informally been telling them about our plans. They perfectly understood, and they said that the government, of course, would not stand in our way.

 

DISPATCH JAPAN: What about the Chinese government? Have you been communicating with officials in Beijing? Does this have broader diplomatic implications for Japan-China relations?

OKAMOTO: The company has been communicating with the Japanese foreign ministry. I would be surprised if they are not doing anything. I think they are at least consulting with their Chinese counterparts. But I do not know the content of the discussions at the government level.

 

DISPATCH JAPAN: What about Korea? Are there discussions with Korean forced laborers, or is that more complicated because of their legal status as Japanese ‘citizens’ during the colonial period?

OKAMOTO: There are not any talks with Koreans. The Korean case is quite different. Koreans were mobilized as laborers, just as Japanese were mobilized. This was, of course, a very wrong policy on the part of the Japanese government of that time. It is Japan’s historical sin to have annexed Korea in 1910. But in a formal sense, they were technically ‘Japanese,’ so when the national mobilization law took effect in 1938, they were mobilized along with Japanese nationals, and put to work. They were given a choice: be conscripted into the armed forces to fight as a soldier, or, to work at a factory. There were many Koreans taken to factories. They were placed under the same labor conditions as Japanese. I do not assume the working conditions were not as harsh and cruel as those to which Chinese and POWS were subjected. But Korean workers were paid.  Of course, whether they were paid in cash, or in the form of military money, it all amounted to trash after the war.

It amounted, in effect, to zero compensation. But all of the Japanese mobilized in a similar fashion had to accept that fate. But Korean nationals, of course, were not satisfied. This is essentially an issue of unpaid labor and abuse. Japan has to deal with this issue sincerely of course, but the legal nature is different.

 

DISPATCH JAPAN: Do you foresee any scenario for getting around that problem?

OKAMOTO: In the case of Korea, in addition to the substantial difference in the labor issue, the legal status is also completely different. Japan concluded with Korea the renunciation of the right-to-compensation treaty in 1965. The Koreans clearly and unambiguously settled the issue. So there is resentment within the Japanese government. The treaty binds the entire nation of Korea – not only the administrative branch, but the judicial branch as well – yet the Korean Supreme Court has ruled against the treaty. The Korean case is quite difficult, and at this point I certainly do not see how this will evolve.

 

DISPATCH JAPAN: You don’t have any ideas about how deadlock might be broken?

OKAMOTO: I don’t even know personally if we [Mitsubishi Materials] used Korean laborers. If they were used, it means they were placed under the same conditions as Japanese nationals. I feel sympathetic to POWs and Chinese laborers, since we have ample evidence that these people were subjected to inhuman conditions. But in the Korean case, I do not know to what extent, if any, we shoulder some blame.

 

DISPATCH JAPAN: The Mitsubishi Materials announcement comes shortly before Prime Minister Abe’s expected statement commemorating the August 15 end of the Pacific War 70 years ago. I don’t know if this is just coincidental. Does Mitsubishi’s decision concerning POWs and Chinese laborers have any implications for the prime minister’s statement?

OKAMOTO: I don’t know. You would have to ask Prime Minister Abe himself. The committee appointed by the prime minister to advise him on the statement has released its report. But the prime minister’s statement will be issued separate from our report. It is the 70^th  anniversary, and I do not deny that the sequence of events leading to a new reconciliation has been influencing Japanese society. Mr. Abe spoke to the US Congress, and referred to Bataan and Corregidor in the Philippines [where Japanese forces terribly mistreated American POWs], expressing deep repentance.

In other words, Prime Minister Abe officially apologized to American nationals. Of course, that made our decision as a private company much easier. American POWs used by Mitsubishi were virtually all seized at Bataan and Corregidor. So, I think our apology and the prime minister’s statement are related.

 

DISPATCH JAPAN: Perhaps I am asking for your personal opinion. You referred to the annexation of Korea in 1910 as Japan’s “historical sin.” I am not sure Prime Minister Abe agrees with that.

OKAMOTO: I don’t think the prime minister defends the annexation of Korea. There is a national consensus that the annexation was wrong.

 

DISPATCH JAPAN: Really? A national consensus? I hear some politicians, writers, and even some historians regularly defend the annexation as “legal.”

OKAMOTO: You are not listening to honest people.

 

DISPATCH JAPAN: If there is a national consensus that annexation of Korea was wrong, why has Abe always avoided the word “colonization” with respect to Japan’s actions in Korea?

OKAMOTO: The prime minister has no specific resentment to using the four “key words” that journalists are calling for: colonialism, aggression, apology, and repentance. But he thinks we have done enough, in the past, using those words, having issued apologies more than 10 times via written statements by prime ministers. Rather than continue to be shackled by those terminologies, we will, by substance, aim for a new vision that will serve the interests of the nation. The tone will be forward-looking.

Whether or not those ‘key words’ are used is not the result of historical interpretation as to the rightness or wrongness of Japan’s past actions.

I teach at a university, and students often ask me for just how long Japan will have to keep apologizing. Certainly, for my generation, Japan’s mistaken policies were decisions made by our fathers and grandfathers, so we still are besieged by the sense of guilt. But my students are two generations younger, and the wartime policies were carried out by their great, or great-great grandfathers. These students bear no responsibility for our dark past. We have a moral obligation to keep apologizing to the victims of our past. But we also have a responsibility not to make these students immersed in pessimism.

 

DISPATCH JAPAN: Will you be comfortable with a 70^th anniversary statement from Prime Minister Abe that does not include the words “aggression” and “colonialism”?

OKAMOTO: I will simply say that those are not crucial points. I will make my judgment based on the overall tone of the prime minister’s statement.

 

 

Governor Onaga to Prime Minster Abe: ‘Stop abusing Okinawa’

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe continues to struggle with widespread public opposition to his push to overhaul Japan’s pacifist, “self-defense only” security policy. But that is not Abe’s only headache on defense issues.

Okinawa governor Takeshi Onaga is escalating his fierce resistance to a US-Japan plan to build a new US Marine facility in Japan’s southern-most, and poorest, prefecture. (See interview, below.)

A stalemate causing long construction delays would be a severe embarrassment for Abe, who has pledged to swiftly implement the plan. Abe was warmly welcomed in Washington in late April in part because of the widespread belief that he can deliver on that promise.

But Washington is sufficiently concerned that, following an early-June visit to the US capital by Onaga, US officials inquired as to whether there would be significant constructions delays on the new facility, planned for the coastal district of Henoko, part of Nago city. Japanese officials reassured their American counterparts that the project would proceed as scheduled. But the reassurances had a hollow ring.

Onaga was swept into office last November on a wave of anger over the 2013 decision by his predecessor, Hirokazu Nakaima, to approve a massive landfill project necessary for construction of the new base. The Henoko facility is supposed to replace the existing Marine Air Station Futenma, which the US and Japan agreed to close almost twenty years ago – contingent upon construction of an alternative base. Futenma is dangerously located in the center of the city of Ginowan, and has long been seen as a disaster waiting to happen.

Onaga insists that a prospective ‘Futenma Replacement Facility’ (FRF) be located outside of Okinawa, as the prefecture already makes available over 70 percent of the land in Japan utilized by US military facilities. Okinawa prefecture makes up less than one percent of all of Japan’s territory. Tokyo and Washington over the years have outwardly acknowledged the huge imbalance in the burden of hosting of US bases in Japan, but little has changed on the ground. US and Japanese officials insist there is “no viable alternative” to placing the FRF in Henoko, but Onaga says this is just a continuation of long-standing exploitation of Okinawa.

Onaga is a conservative at heart, and a strong supporter of the US-Japan security alliance. He used to head up the Okinawa chapter of Abe’s Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), and was the campaign manager for Nakaima’s successful 2010 reelection campaign, during which Nakaima pledged to keep the FRF out of Okinawa. Onaga was furious when Nakaima broke his pledge, and has been campaigning against the Henoko project ever since.

Shortly after taking office in December of last year, Onaga pledged to look for legal flaws in Nakaima’s approval of the landfill project, as a means to cancel the permit, as part of his commitment to use every means available to stop the project. He subsequently established a 6-person panel to investigate Nakaima’s decision-making process. The panel initially said it would issue its report at the end of June, but the release will likely not take place until the end of this month.

Numerous media reports indicate the 6-person panel has already decided to state in its review that Nakaima failed to sufficiently consider, and put into to place to counter, likely environmental problems associated with the Henoko project. The framework of the decision is reportedly already in place, and the panel is now working on the final language. At the time of his decision, Nakaima said that concerns about the environment were fully taken into account, but officials from the Okinawa environment and life department say that Onaga’s predecessor ignored their remaining concerns.

Based on the panel’s likely finding, Onaga could withdraw the landfill permit, putting a major obstacle in front of Abe’s commitment to Washington. Indeed, numerous Japanese media organs report that Onaga has already decided to withdraw the permit, but his office will not confirm that.

Legal specialists say that Onaga has  authority over at least 10 areas related to the Henoko project, including: rescinding of the landfill decision; cancel permits to crush coral reefs that now lie below areas where an envisioned V-shaped runway will jut out into Henoko Bay; rescind permits to alter roads leading to the construction site.

By contrast, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, whom Abe has put in charge of pushing the Henoko project forward, insists that Nakaima’s decision-making process was “flawless.”

 

     ONAGA TO WASHINGTON: Onaga, along with a large delegation of Okinawa Prefectural Assembly members, brought their case to Washington, hoping to meet influential Americans who might press the Obama administration and Congress for a change in policy. The Obama administration only made available two mid-level officials from the State and Defense departments. The State Department issued a statement reiterating US policy that there was “no viable alternative” to the Henoko project. Senator John McCain, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee was the most senior member of Congress to agree to meet Onaga. His office issued a statement echoing that of the State Department. In the past, McCain had seemed to be a skeptic of the Henoko project, but that was largely motivated by his concerns about the costs of related  US plans to relocate upwards of 8,000 Marines to Guam.

Former Senator Jim Webb, a decorated former Marine and former secretary of the Navy, told Dispatch Japan that he reluctantly turned down a request from Onaga for a meeting. Webb has declared his candidacy for the Democratic presidential nomination. While in the Senate, Webb worked hard to stop the Henoko project, and devise a new deployment strategy for the Marines in East Asia.

Subsequent to the visit, the Okinawa Prefectural Assembly adopted an ordinance that would virtually block the importation of soil from outside of Okinawa for use in the landfill project that must precede construction of the facility itself.

Overall, Onaga demonstrated an unusually pugnacious, if polite, willingness to speak directly to US officials. He denied at a June 3 press conference that the trip had been a failure, saying he never expected the US government to easily change its view. Onaga has established an official prefectural office in Washington to continue lobbying Congress and the administration.

 

     ONAGA-SUGA TALKS: Meanwhile, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, whom Abe has charged with resolving the Henoko stalemate, met with Onaga for two hours over dinner at the Okura Hotel on July 4th.  Onaga deeply dislikes Suga, whom he humorously derides in talks with reporters.

Onaga told reporters upon leaving the meeting that Suga had agreed to engage in “serious” talks on the Hekono issue. Suga is scheduled to visit Okinawa at the end of this month. The dinner did include talk of the national budget for FY2016, which starts next April, with an eye on the amount of aid to be provided to Okinawa.

At least part of the dinner was taken up with Suga apologizing for the June 25^th proceedings of an LDP Diet member study group consisting mostly of young, haughty nationalists who rode Abe’s coattails into office. The study group hosted ultra-nationalist novelist Naoki Hyakuta, a friend of Abe, who urged that Okinawa’s two leading newspapers – both oppose the Henoko project – be punished for their respective stances, and ultimately shut down. Hyakuta is one of Japan’s most vitriolic deniers of the Nanjing Massacre. Several Diet members echoed views on Okinawa, with one saying that public opinion in Okinawa is “contorted.”

In questioning before the Diet, Abe initially declined to apologize to Okinawans, but recanted and issued an apology, saying the  remarks were “thoughtless.”

Suga has reminded Abe that it works against the Abe administration to unnecessarily antagonize Okinawans, and let the Henoko issue fester, with no sign of any effort to accommodate Okinawan concerns. Abe and Suga both felt that danger on June 23, at an annual solemn commemoration marking the end of the 3-month Battle of Okinawa in 1945. It’s customary for the prime minister to attend. Abe was met with heckles and jeers, in a public display of disdain that is highly unusual in Japan.

Abe desperately wants to avoid a showdown that would require the use of force to dislodge protesters to enable construction to proceed. Onaga knows this, and is using it to his advantage.

At the same time, Onaga knows that in the long-run, he cannot win a legal or violent showdown with a Tokyo determined to proceed. Onaga’s plan is to demonstrate so much opposition among Okinawans to the Henoko project that Washington and Tokyo will be shamed into devising a new plan.

 

INTERVIEW

Okinawa Governor Takeshi Onaga

'Henoko project would damage US-Japan relations'

 

 

DISPATCH JAPAN: The conflict between Okinawa and the central government has become so intense that it raises the question: do you think of yourself primarily as Okinawan or Japanese?

ONAGA: Fundamentally, I believe I am Japanese. However, sometimes, when I consider our historical development and the status quo, I have some doubts about this. But, fundamentally, I am Japanese.

 

DISPATCH JAPAN: Do you harbor any desire for Okinawa to break away from Japan?

ONAGA: I have no intention of trying to achieve independence of Okinawa from Japan. However, looking at the status quo, it is clear that Okinawa bears an excessive burden of the US military base presence in Japan. Okinawa accounts for only 0.6 percent of Japan’s national territory, but US facilities in Okinawa are located on land that amounts to 73.8 percent of all land in Japan utilized by US facilities in all of Japan. Seventy years ago, at the time of the grand battle in Okinawa, more than 200,000 people died, including at least 100,000 Okinawan people. At the San Francisco peace treaty conference, Okinawa was separated from Japan. That means that when I was growing up, I was neither a Japanese citizen nor an American citizen. This fact remains in the back of my mind. But I feel responsible to play my role as a Japanese person.

Meanwhile, the issue of US military bases in Okinawa remains. The central government continues to impose the heavy burden on Okinawa to host such a big portion of US military facilities. It is unfair. The dignity and human rights of Okinawans have not been defended.

In last year’s elections, all four candidates for the national Diet endorsed by the Liberal Democrats (LDP) were defeated. And the LDP candidates for mayor of Nago City, for the Nago assembly, and for the governor of Okinawa prefecture were all rejected by voters. Candidates who opposed the Henoko base construction plan were elected. But the central government ignored these results. It is not Okinawa that tries to distinguish itself from the rest of Japan. It is the central government that treats Okinawa as if it were not part of Japan.

 

DISPATCH JAPAN: From the Okinawa point of view, which is more complicated: relations with Tokyo, or relations with the US Marines?

ONAGA: Both are difficult. But if I have to identify the bigger problem, I would say it is the central government in Tokyo. It is the responsibility of the central government to protect the Japanese people. I understand that the US military suffered many casualties on Okinawa toward the end of the Pacific War, and established bases on Okinawa in preparation of possible future conflicts. And I understand that both Japan and the US are democratic nations working together to deal with common concerns, such as the rise of China. But I think the US military has to pay more attention to the burden imposed on Okinawa by the heavy US base presence. To not do so could pose a risk to the whole bilateral security arrangement.

 

DISPATCH JAPAN: Despite the conflict over the Henoko project, do you remain a supporter of the US-Japan alliance?

ONAGA: I have served as a politician for over 30 years, and I have consistently supported the US-Japan security arrangement. However, the burden of hosting so much of the US military presence is simply excessive. With regard to the Futenma air station, our land was expropriated by the US forces, and our people were forced into concentration camp conditions. With regard to other US bases, the US used bulldozers to destroy our houses, expropriate our land, and build new bases. The people of Okinawa have never voluntarily offered our land for base construction. And now, the US acknowledges that the Futenma air station is the most dangerous airport in the world. But the US says that if Okinawans oppose construction of the new Henoko facility, it is Okinawa that must come up with an alternative plan.

The Japanese government often makes similar comments, and asks us: “Are you Okinawans really thinking about the security of Japan?” This is remarkable. Okinawa was separated from Japan by the San Francisco Treaty, and hosted most of the US bases, which in turn allowed Japan proper to focus on high-level economic development. Okinawa has suffered a lot, which is a situation that cannot endure.

I fully accept the US-Japan security arrangement, assuming it is fair. The US-Japan security arrangement has to be dignified, and protect freedom, democracy, and human rights. This is very helpful to Asia, and the rest of the world. But, at this point, the security arrangement does not extend these values to the Okinawan people. Under these circumstances, the alliance is groundless.

 

DISPATCH JAPAN: Privately, some US officials say that the Yokosuka naval facility, and the Kadena air base are the top strategic priorities, and that everything else should be negotiable. Do you agree with the idea that Yokosuka and Kadena are crucial?

ONAGA: In the past, many reformists in Okinawa were opposed to all US bases in the prefecture. But I have spoken extensively with the reformists, and the consensus now is that if the Henoko plan is abandoned, the rest of the bases would be tolerable. I understand your question, but I can’t really comment on whether other individual bases are critical or not.

 

DISPATCH JAPAN: The fuel tankers that used to be based at Futenma have already moved to Iwakuni. So the issue is: where to base the 24 Osprey the Marines want to place in Okinawa. Couldn’t the Osprey be placed inside Camp Schwab, or inside the Kadena air base? In other words, why do the Marines need a new runway at Henoko? Top officials from the Ministry of Defense have told me that they have asked the same question, and have not heard a good answer from the US about the need for a new runway.

ONAGA: It is not clear to me why the Marines want a new runway at Henoko. But my suspicion is that in 30-40 years, Japan’s Self-Defense Forces will utilize the new facility. The former defense minister, Satoshi Morimoto, has written that the Henoko facility is designed to eventually host more than 100 Osprey. Morimoto wrote in his last book that 12 Osprey would be deployed to Okinawa in 2012, and another 12 in 2013. At the time, the MOD denied any knowledge of such a plan. But it turned out to be true. So the real question is: how many Osprey do the Marines plan to deploy in Okinawa? We don’t know.

 

DISPATCH JAPAN: How is your personal relationship with Prime Minister Abe and Chief Cabinet Secretary Suga?

ONAGA: Looking back over his personal history, Suga has tried to cozy up with people in power so as to promote himself. That is at the root of Suga’s relationship with Abe.

 

DISPATCH JAPAN: What do you expect from Prime Minister Abe’s upcoming statement commemorating the end of World War II 70 years ago?

ONAGA: I would like to hear Abe repeat the words of former prime ministers Murayama and Koizumi.

 

DISPATCH JAPAN: Prime Minister Abe on occasion has questioned the validity of the San Francisco Peace Treaty.

ONAGA: Two years ago, Prime Minister Abe sponsored a ceremony celebrating the signing of the treaty, as it marked the return of sovereignty to Japan. But Okinawans were shocked, because Okinawa was separated from the rest of Japan, and kept under US occupation. Abe was not thinking about Okinawa.  This indicated to me that Japan’s sense of responsibility to other countries is weak. In this sense, I think Abe has inherited the ideas of his grandfather, Kishi Nobusuke. Abe has often said that he wants Japan to emerge from under the postwar regime, and restore pride in Japan. But I wonder whether Abe includes Okinawa in his thinking, because with regards to Okinawa, Abe is desperately defending the postwar regime.

 

DISPATCH JAPAN: With regards to Henoko, have you already made your decision to reverse the landfill approval of former governor Nakaima that allows construction at Henoko to proceed?

ONAGA: Several years ago I served as campaign manager for then-governor Nakaima. I spent many hours with him, and we agreed on the campaign pledge to move a Futenma replacement facility outside of Okinawa. But later, without any consultation with me, he approved the landfill application, which was very damaging to the pride of Okinawans. People on the mainland said that Nakaima made his decision in exchange for economic aid from Tokyo. This was very hurtful. I decided to run for governor to help restore the damaged pride of Okinawans. I have a very strong determination to oppose the Henoko project, perhaps by reversing Nakaima’s decision.

But I am also aware of the US-Japan security situation, so my administration is trying to engage in talks with the US and Tokyo to find a solution.

If Japan and the US try to push ahead with the Henoko project, which they justify in part as a response to the rise of China, then the image of the US will be very damaged. That is why I think the new facility will actually not be built.