Bridging the trust deficit in Northeast Asia
There
has been a great deal of soul-searching about Prime Minister Shinzo
Abe's statement on the anniversary of the end of the Pacific War. On 15
August 1945, Emperor Hirohito made his 'jewel voice broadcast' of
surrender to the Allied forces, accepting the terms of the Potsdam
Declaration and ending World War II in the Pacific. After 70 years, some
might wonder what's the big deal over recognising wartime history.
Both
the baggage of history and the way in which the current Japanese
leadership has dealt with it bedevils more productive and stable
relations across the East Asian region. It sits like a dead weight upon
progress on most dimensions of relations among Northeast Asia's three
main powers — China, Japan and South Korea — but it especially weighs
heavily on trust in political security relations as the Abe
administration tries to explain its new security bills to
its neighbours and at home. It impacts on America's relations with
these countries and confounds US strategies for security and stability
in the region. It sucks the oxygen out of the vibrant engine that these
three economies collectively have the potential to become through deeper
economic integration, not just for the East Asian region but also for
the global economy.
Of
course it's true that, despite the handicap of the political ups and
downs in relations between China and Japan and between South Korea and
Japan and the weakness in the foundations of trust, a thriving centre of
economic growth and interdependence has been built among the Northeast
Asian economies. This has been possible because each of them has
committed to participation in the global economic and political system, via different pathways, to a global set of rules as well as to regional
arrangements that encourage economic and political engagement despite
their recurring bilateral difficulties and misunderstandings. The China-Japan bilateral economic relationship
is third biggest bilateral relationship in the world despite the
political handicaps under which it has laboured.
That's a remarkable
achievement and testament to its further potential. A hesitance to
embrace closer bilateral or trilateral economic arrangements holds that
potential back.
The
stakes for Japan on getting the message on history right are high, not
just for the justice and dignity of victims of Japanese imperial
aggression, but also for the sake of bridging the trust deficit in
Northeast Asia. It is a bottleneck to progress on a host of critical
issues.
The
expectations surrounding Abe's commemorative speech and exactly how he
will address Japan's wartime history are under more intense scrutiny
than on previous anniversaries. The 70th anniversary is a major
inflection point in the memory of colonial and wartime history. This
anniversary is almost surely the zenith in the quest of Japan's current Emperor
for Japan's atonement during his lifetime, a quest to which high
respect must be extended. Abe has also turned the spotlight on himself
and his government, establishing a committee to advise him on his speech. The committee has reported
on its task to investigate and outline the lessons from Japan's course
through the 20th century; Japan's post-war path and contributions to the
international community over the last 70 years; the state of
reconciliation with former enemies; and a vision for Japan's 21st
century foreign relations including specific measures that would
contribute to peace.
On
the surface this all appears an uncontroversial approach to a difficult
and sensitive task. But given Abe's personal sentiments, his December
2013 Yasukuni Shrine visit, and his proclaimed desire to escape from
'masochistic history' and restore a sense of pride in Japan, there
continues to be anxiety in Japan, in the region and elsewhere about how
well his words will be directed to high purpose.
Abe
is no political novice. In these and other affairs, his track record is
that of a seasoned pragmatist. It's often forgotten that he secured his
first stint as prime minister based on a promise to fix the China
relationship after the freeze of the Koizumi years. More recently, Abe
stepped up to acknowledge Japanese transgressions in Kokoda and Sandakan
in the Pacific during a speech to Australia's parliament in Canberra in
July 2014 offering his 'sincere condolences' and bit the bullet on
Pearl Harbour, offering his 'deep repentance' over Bataan Corregidor and
the Coral Sea in his address to the US Congress
in Washington last April. It now seems certain that his anniversary
statement will be subject to cabinet clearance (including by
pacifist-leaning coalition partner, Komeito).
The
world ushered in by the Allied forces' victory and the atomic bombs
dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945 (the anniversaries of
which were commemorated last week in Japan and around the world) proved
to be a world of incomplete peace. As Tessa Morris-Suzuki observes,
'The new security obsessions of the Cold War order diverted and
forestalled the process of peace making. Because of Cold War tensions,
the 1951 San Francisco Treaty, which supposedly sealed the peace between
Japan and its former enemies, was not signed by the Soviet Union, the
People's Republic of China, the Republic of China (Taiwan), nor by North
or South Korea … In the processes of redrafting, the terms of the
treaty were revised in ways that left key territorial claims undefined.
This served the strategic interests of the moment, but left unresolved a
host of problems that plague international relations to this day'.
In this week's lead essay, Kazuhiko Togo concludes that
Japan needs a roadmap to resolve these issues, as well as the
outstanding issues that plague its regional relations, including the
Yasukuni Shrine controversy, the 'comfort women' issues, other forced
labour during the war, and territorial issues with its neighbours (the
Senkaku/Diaoyu dispute with China, the Dokdo/Takeshima dispute with
South Korea, and the Kuril Islands/Northern Territories dispute with
Russia).
The
first step in setting out such a road map begins with Abe's 70th
anniversary speech. The next steps will need to be high-level dialogues
between Abe and Chinese President Xi Jinping and South Korean President
Park Geun-hye. The door has been left ajar to such meetings occurring,
possibly later this year. Success further down the road requires renewed
efforts at deepening regional economic integration — through engagement
in multilateral financing institutions (AIIB), mega regional trade
agreements (TPP and RCEP) and regional energy and environmental
cooperation — and at utilising US-Japan alliance and US-Japan-ROK trilateral cooperation to engage with China in areas of mutual cooperation.
There
is little doubt that Abe is pragmatic enough to lean on the door left
ajar. The question is whether he has the strategic vision to see a path
beyond that door.
Peter Drysdale
Editor
10 August 2015
Peter Drysdale
Editor
10 August 2015