Who are the new Japanese?

Abe's speech at this year's Shangri-La Dialogue suggesting they will be the stewards of peace in Asia was simply self-serving hypocrisy

Last month, President Barack Obama sought to define a new foreign policy doctrine for the United States. In his much anticipated Commencement Address at the West Point Military Academy, he set a bar for American military intervention abroad that is the highest in recent memory - when the US' interests are directly threatened. Perhaps the lessons of Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya are beginning to sink in and be structurally reflected in US foreign policy. Perhaps the demands of the American people for a "pivot" to Ohio, rather than the far-flung oceans of Asia, are finally being heard.

Many worry that a self-reflective and retrenching US is leaving a void in the world's balance of power. But hold your breath, here is Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to the rescue. In his keynote address at this year's Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore, Abe proposed a groundbreaking new concept: The New Japanese. A new breed of international and peace-loving Japanese that is going to confidently step forward and safeguard the world order, at least in Asia.

There was only one theme to Abe's speech and it can be summarized as follows: China is the enemy (without naming it, of course). Japan is the new steward of peace and stability in Asia on the basis of rule of law. Japan will support whichever countries decide to oppose China. (Here he did name some, Vietnam and the Philippines.) Japan will back them politically, economically, and, yes, militarily. Japanese naval hardware is to be made available to China's adversaries.

Abe rightly pointed out that Asia is synonymous with growth. In the past few decades, perhaps no region has benefited more from the current global order than here. Asia's prosperity is nothing short of a miracle of the modern era.

This amazing achievement has been built on two pillars. First, the global economic and security architecture designed, built, and sustained by the US, which has served as the guarantor of regional peace upon which economic development has depended. And a post-World War II legally pacifist Japan is a key component of that architecture. Second, China, the largest nation in Asia, has been the single most important engine of growth, serving as the locomotive in good times and the growth of last resort in bad times.

At the moment, these twin foundations of the Asian miracle are in trouble. The US is suffering from an acute case of imperial overreach. Its military involvements around the world have drained its resources. Its leadership of the globalization project has caused deep and structural imbalances in its own economy. Its social contract, the bedrock of US success for a century and a half, is seriously threatened. The US has now found that the costs of sustaining the global order far exceed the benefits.

At the same time, China's dramatic ascent in all aspects of its national power has surprised even the most optimistic observers. The World Bank estimates that China will take the helm of the largest economy in the world in purchasing power parity this year. No one can reasonably expect China not to seek to advance and protect its interests in the region.

So we have a situation in which an incumbent hegemon is retrenching and a fast rising new power is making its presence felt. And there are no established rules to manage this process.

Abe's proposal? Outsource it all to us - the New Japanese!

At the moment, perhaps in their desire to reduce their hard commitments to the region but not let China take their place as the new hegemon, the US seems to be enthusiastically entertaining the proposition. US Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel backed Japan unreservedly in his speech the next day.

But it is a bad idea. In seeking to single out China as the enemy and thereby putting one of the twin pillars of Asian success in binary opposition to a regional alliance to be led by Japan, Abe and his US backers are playing with fire.

Japan, with declining demographics and a stagnant economy, is in fear of a powerful China. That fear would be magnified by such an alliance of convenience. China, whose people have endured immeasurable sufferings at the hands of the Japanese through multiple generations, would have its national honor challenged and its reactions would be amplified.

The common narrative presented by many is that China is a challenger of the status quo. That is of course true to some extent, as the status quo cannot go on forever with qualitative changes to the US' interests and China's position. But Japan's revisionist approach to both history and the present poses a real threat to the prospects of an evolution of the status quo that could lead to a peaceful outcome.

In so aggressively seeking to reemerge as a military power Japan is dangerously removing a key legal underpinning of the entire post World War II regional architecture. China, and many other Asian nations, will not consent to that revision.

Abe's claim to want to lead an Asia based on rule of law in resolving any and all disputes is flatly disingenuous. The entire world knows and sees the dangerous territorial dispute that is being played out between China and Japan over the Diaoyu Islands. Yet, Japan vehemently denies even the existence of dispute. When asked by a member of the audience after his speech about the dispute, Abe reaffirmed Japan's position - there is no dispute. And of course, when one refuses to recognize a dispute, rule of law is irrelevant.

Furthermore, Japan's enormous historical baggage and its steadfast refusal to live up to it make it impossible for it to effectively play Foxconn to the US Apple in Asian security. Merely two generations ago, Japan invaded China, Korea, and many South East Asian countries and massacred their peoples. In Nanjing alone, the Japanese Imperial Army slaughtered tens of thousands of men, women, and children in a matter of days.

Before the US signs an outsourcing contract with Tokyo, it would be well advised to listen carefully to Abe's Shangri-La speech. In his concluding remarks, he said that the New Japanese are really no different from their parents and grandparents in seeking to contribute to the world. For every Chinese and every Korean, that begs the question: Just who were those grandfathers Abe was so proudly referring to?

The author is a venture capitalist and political scientist in Shanghai. www.chinausfocus.com

(China Daily 06/09/2014 page10)