Debate Within, Challenge Abroad : Tokyo: Economic superpower in search of a role

Pacifism does run deep in Japan, but domestic politics is complicating the country’s foreign policy, too. So when peace returns to the Persian Gulf, Tokyo will need to ask itself what role it wants to assume in the post-war reconstruction. That’s a big policy question for the beleaguered government of Prime Minister Toshiki Kaifu. But Tokyo needs to take some initiative now to begin coming to grips with it.

It may have already begun. Even as domestic bickering continues over its pledge of $9 billion more in aid to the multinational forces in the Gulf, Tokyo has dispatched envoys to Israel and the Arab states to discuss Tokyo’s Persian Gulf policy and post-war economic assistance. Kaifu has said he will study aid requests from Asian countries hit especially hard by the war.

Tokyo is expected to come up with the $9 billion, but the parliamentary and public debate on the funds undoubtedly has been the most acrimonious since the defense treaty with the United States was extended 31 years ago. But after much behind-the-scenes maneuvering, the ruling Liberal Democratic Party is expected to get the necessary votes in Parliament once Kaifu submits his new supplementary budget with the $9 billion included this week. Kaifu had managed to bypass Parliament for the proposed overseas use of self-defense transports to evacuate refugees by revising a government ordinance--but $9 billion is another matter.

While the domestic debate has been said to be about pacifism and the constitution, it has also been about the grittier side of internal Japanese politics. Some of the revelations have been eye-opening. At one point, a maverick LPD member publicly acknowledged what has been widely known but little discussed: a tradition of LDP payoffs to opposition parties. Meanwhile, the LDP apparently is willing to politically sacrifice Tokyo’s governor, Shunichi Suzuki, who is seeking a fourth term, to get the necessary votes from the Komeito “clean government” party to approve the Gulf aid.

And what about Kaifu? He is sometimes perceived as Tokyo’s weakest postwar leader, having gotten the post mainly because he was seen as a squeaky clean alternative to two predecessors, each ousted because of messy and embarrassing scandals that nonetheless resulted in virtually no change in the political system. But with little experience and conviction on the foreign policy front, Kaifu has tended to analyze the Gulf situation through the bilateral lens of its relationship with the United States. Thus the prime minister is viewed as waiting to take his cue from Washington before ever moving, and seeking domestic consensus drop by drop before ever acting.

The net result is a perceived lack of creativity when it comes to having a non-military presence in the Gulf with the allies--and an unseemly reliance on checkbook diplomacy that draws into question its global commitment and leadership abilities. One possible outcome of the Gulf crisis, whatever the battlefield result, is a shake-up of Japanese foreign policy--no doubt long overdue.