- Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
Douglas H. Paal Web Commentary, November 6, 2009
Next week, President Barack Obama leaves for his first tour of the Asia-Pacific region since he entered the White House in January. Obama will land in Tokyo, the first of stop in a 10-day, four-country tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The principal message of Obama’s trip is that the U.S. has recovered from its preoccupation with terrorism and that it understands the challenges and opportunities of a rising China.
Not long before Obama’s departure, Singapore’s elder statesman Lee Kuan Yew visited Washington and pointedly reminded him at an awards ceremony sponsored by the US-ASEAN Business Council that Asian countries want American engagement, and need it to balance China. Lee cautioned the United States against over-commitment in Afghanistan, reminding his audience that the global center of gravity has shifted to Asia as a whole.
With this trip, in effect, Obama will be answering Lee and others and showing that he and his administration “get it” and that “America is back.” The question is whether he will follow his gestures with actions, or be distracted by the serious challenges America faces at home and elsewhere. An important arena for future accomplishment is rejuvenation of the American economy, an outcome Asians seek, but increasingly doubt.
Ten days is a substantial commitment of the President’s time, and a wise gesture to reassure Asian nations that while China is growing in power and influence, the U.S. will not abandon them to face it alone. At the same time, Obama’s trip will signal that Washington seeks no confrontation with Beijing, and in fact hopes to work with China on problems too great for any one power to manage: the financial crisis, climate change, non-proliferation, counter-terrorism, and regional stability.
JAPAN
Obama’s first stop will naturally be Japan, home to the greatest concentration of the United States’ military forces and its most important bases in East Asia. Normally Japan, a long-reliable ally, proposes few initiatives of its own, and proves a stolid and obliging -- if somewhat boring -- host. This time, the outlook is much less predictable, and will be anything but boring for the officials involved.
On August 31, the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) won a majority in the lower house of the Diet, and the staid image of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), which had dominated Japanese politics for almost the entire post-war period -- 1955-1993 and again from 1994 until August 31 -- gave way to something like our messy presidential transitions when the White House changes party. The DPJ is a coalition of disparate interests that enjoyed the privilege of opposing everything the LDP stood for -- good and bad -- while offering few rationalized policies of its own. The DPJ leadership is now in the process of doing the rationalization “on the job.”
In the last weeks of October, no fewer than four DPJ ministers have taken different positions on the future of a U.S. Marine helicopter base in Okinawa, known as Futenma. The future of the base was negotiated and decided in a formal U.S.-Japan agreement in 2006. Moreover, the agreement is highly contingent on a related set of expensive decisions about how to move the bulk of forward-deployed Marines out of Okinawa to Guam. Beyond that, most of the related disputes are among Japanese interest groups, not between the U.S. and Japan.
Obama’s challenge in Japan will be to guide the alliance through the current awkward transition period, and build up its capabilities to address future security contingencies. He will need to be proactive in preventing nagging issues -- base locations, host nation support costs, and lingering disputes about history and nuclear weapons policy -- from eroding the alliance from within.
In Washington, policymakers have reached one strategic conclusion about working with the DPJ, and created two tactical approaches to that end. The strategic conclusion is that the Japanese people ultimately share overwhelming support for the alliance with the U.S., and do not want their government to compromise it. Thus, there is no reason to assume dramatic outcomes once the transitional period comes to an end and the DPJ is firmly in power.
The U.S. has pursued both tactical options since the DPJ took office. First, immediately after the DPJ victory, Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs Kurt Campbell, who has extensive Japan experience, flew to Tokyo to offer reassurances of patience and willingness to confer with the new government as it sorts out its differences. Implicit in this approach is a 24/7 all-out diplomatic effort to talk Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama and his colleagues through any differences that emerge.
The second tactical approach was made public by Secretary of Defense Robert Gates’ trip to Tokyo for annual talks, during which he urged his Japanese counterparts to commit to maintaining the 2006 agreements on basing and troop redeployments. The underlying assumption of this approach is that the new Japanese government might inadvertently do a great deal of damage to the alliance as it sorts itself out. Therefore, it is necessary to set boundaries for Tokyo early.
Obama’s position between these two alternative approaches is not yet known. As in most things, he would do well to split the difference, offering Hatoyama a warm shoulder to lean on, and firm advice to be careful. Obama is slated to reveal the broad outlines of his Japan and Asia policy in an address during his stay in Tokyo. The administration chose Tokyo, rather than Beijing or, more typically, Washington, to signal the importance of the alliance, and the priority Japan enjoys over China in American policy. By giving the speech in Asia, Obama also reinforces the message that America is back.
Obama’s Tokyo visit will be more important, however, for its quiet and collegial expression of the U.S. bottom line on a host of issues, from aid to Afghanistan to nuclear weapons policy and basing issues. The goal is to lay the groundwork for good, or at least not bad outcomes in 2010.
Next year is the more symbolically important year in the history of the bilateral alliance, marking the 60th anniversary of the San Francisco Treaty ending World War II, and the 50th anniversary of the U.S.-Japan Mutual Defense Treaty. It will also be Japan’s year to host the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation Forum, which will bring leaders from across the extended region to Tokyo.
The mayor of Hiroshima is already lobbying for Obama to stop in his city in 2010, to marry regrets for using the atomic bomb on Japan with Obama’s call in Prague for an end to nuclear weapons. Others argue that he should visit Nagasaki, to mark the last time such a weapon was used in war, symbolizing Obama’s stated intent to abolish them.
If the administration and its hosts can steer clear of significant gaffes during the visit to Tokyo, the stop will likely be little noted in the U.S. Obama’s visit to the region does not portend major shifts in policy, or the appearance of such shifts, as was prominently the case in his new approaches to Russia, the Middle East, Iran, Iraq and Afghanistan.
Rather, Obama should endeavor to build on past successes and restore a sense of American involvement after the neglect of the second George W. Bush term. Americans will want to bask in the new warmth foreign audiences have for the United States since Obama took office.
The following sections deleted for brevity
APEC, Singapore, and the ASEAN Summit
China
South Korea
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