Our reluctant ally

Today’s meeting in Washington between President Bush and yet another new Japanese prime minister -- the third in five years, if you’re counting -- is certain to underscore the peculiar tensions now burdening an alliance that once seemed so essential to long-term U.S. strategy in Asia.

Although it is tempting to blame the usual absence of strong Japanese leadership for the friction, another key factor should be recognized: the Bush foreign policy team’s tendency to bully global allies. Finally, a Japan that for years felt it had no choice but to follow Washington’s dictates is now chafing at the demands of a U.S. administration that fails to recognize the constraints facing a country still grappling with the task of becoming a “normal nation.”

We Americans like to believe that Japan remains our closest of friends. The U.S. security treaty with Tokyo is, as former Ambassador to Japan Mike Mansfield said, the United States’ “most important bilateral relationship in the world, bar none.” We depend on Japan not only to buy our Treasury bills and supply us with Toyota hybrids but also to be our land base to contain the potential ambitions of China.

Yet if our alliance is so robust, why did the Japanese military earlier this month end its mission in the Indian Ocean refueling ships in the U.S.-led campaign to stabilize Afghanistan? And if the Japanese government is vital to the efforts to dismantle North Korea’s nuclear production facilities, why do Washington and Tokyo disagree on whether Pyongyang ought to be dropped from the State Department’s list of nations that sponsor terrorism? Finally, if Japan really is our closest ally in the Pacific, why have Tokyo and Washington argued for more than a decade on crucial financial and deployment issues regarding U.S. forces in Okinawa?

The Bush team came to Washington committed to reversing what it saw as the marginalization of Japan’s importance under President Clinton. But just as the gamble in Iraq damaged Washington’s relationship with Paris and Bonn, it has also soured the relationship with Tokyo. Although it’s easy to blame Tokyo for dragging its feet when Washington needs a larger multinational commitment to battle terrorism, it is also clear that the administration bungled things by not investing the energy to understand how its actions would play out in Japan.

The Bush administration seemed to convince itself that Japan was like Tony Blair’s Britain: an island nation with a booming economy, shared values and a defense force that could be easily deployed to help U.S. troops. Bush also seemed to feel that a close personal friendship with former Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi would somehow transform nagging policy differences.

Such faulty analogies obscure the fact that Japan is governed by a constitution written by the U.S. at the end of World War II, a document that forever renounces the right to wage war. And despite Japan’s vast material wealth, its people see themselves as isolated residents of a small island nation nervous about being too deeply engaged in global politics.

For more than 50 years, the Japanese have been content to develop industrial muscle while leaving their defense in U.S. hands. That puts the Japanese woefully out of practice when it comes to strategic thinking about long-term foreign policy interests, and for decades Washington’s geopolitical strategists liked it that way. So when Washington demanded “boots on the ground” by a “coalition of the willing” to support the Iraq invasion, Japan found itself in an uncomfortable spot. A vast majority of Japanese didn’t want to be involved in armed conflict -- even in a limited role. The pacifist constitution was another barrier. And the Bush administration’s failure to win U.N. backing for the war just as Tokyo was seeking a permanent seat on the Security Council mortally damaged that longtime Japanese goal -- Tokyo’s most important foreign policy objective.

Despite its dependency on Middle Eastern oil, Japan never really felt the Iraq war was its fight. Instead, the domestic debate was framed indirectly: If Japan didn’t support its closest ally in a time of war, who would defend Japan if North Korea launched more missiles over its territory?

But this is not exactly the moment for Japan to engage in some dramatic reconsideration of national strategy and purpose. It is snarled in a raft of domestic challenges, including a long-term deflationary spiral, the stalling of its economic engine, a rapidly aging population and uncertainty about how to deal with China’s rise. The Bush team also hasn’t recognized other aspects of Japan’s consensus-bound culture. Strong leaders rarely dominate. Factional politics almost always trumps international policy. And at 71, Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda is unlikely to boldly remake Japanese politics.

Washington ought to recognize the limits to Japan’s support. As long as its trade surplus continues to pile up, Japan prefers its splendid isolation and checkbook diplomacy to the task of genuinely participating in global leadership.