Vice President Joe Biden completed his three-country, eight-day trip to East Asia with a two-day stopover in Japan. For most observers, that was more than enough time to devote to the Japanese. Far more important, in their view, was his five-day tour of China, the first leg of the trip. They’re about as wrong as they could be.
Yes, Japan looks like it’s in decline. Its economy, which has never recovered the dynamism of the late 1980s, has badly stumbled in the wake of March’s 9.0 earthquake and tsunami, and political blunders have aggravated the general sense of despair throughout Japanese society. The multiple meltdowns at its Fukushima nuclear plant created panic that paralyzed parts of the country. In the next few days, surrounding areas will be declared off-limits, perhaps for decades, due to extraordinarily high levels of radiation. On Tuesday, Moody’s downgraded the country’s sovereign debt rating. Next week, Japan will have a new prime minister, the seventh in five years.
At the moment, the front-runner to replace Naoto Kan is Seiji Maehara, the former foreign minister, who resigned in March in the wake of a minor political contribution scandal. He would be a strong friend of the United States, but at this point, no Japanese leader looks like he can become a reliable partner for Washington. Kan and his four immediate predecessors were revolving-door figures. The new leader’s tenure could be short as well.
Japan is often called the “cornerstone” of Washington’s alliances in the region, and Biden this week called it the “anchor” of the United States in Asia, but the itinerary of the vice president revealed that he didn’t really think that. For one thing, he started his travels in China, and he spent much more time there than in Japan. In Beijing, the loquacious vice president actually gave the game away: “There’s no more important relationship that we need to establish on the part of the United States than a close relationship with China,” he said.
If that’s true, we’re in trouble. The problem for Biden is that he appears to have made almost no headway in Beijing despite — or maybe because of — his fawning over Chinese leaders. The vice president’s trip to China was billed as a get-to-know-you effort directed at Xi Jinping, slated to become the Communist Party’s next supremo at the end of next year.
Unfortunately for Biden, Chinese leaders don’t place much stock in personal relationships. Worse, they appear to believe their best interests lie in undermining ours. As Robert Sutter of George Washington University notes, “China is the only large power in the world preparing to shoot Americans.”
Americans — or at least their ever-hopeful leaders — have not been able to confront the implications of this stark fact. Some of Japan’s prime ministers, who live much closer to China, have a sharper strategic vision. Taro Aso, for instance, had proposed “an arc of freedom and prosperity” when he was Shinzo Abe’s foreign minister in late 2006.
The notion that Asia’s democracies should band together, widely seen as an attempt to isolate China, was derided at the time, but the concept is now being resurrected. Free nations in the region — and a few unfree ones as well — are quietly drawing together to protect themselves from an increasingly belligerent Beijing.
Aso, who would go on to become prime minister in 2008, had the right idea, but Japan has not been strong enough to anchor the arc. As a result, the Obama administration has had to look to South Korean President Lee Myung-bak as its partner of choice in East Asia.
So this leaves Japan as Asia’s neglected giant — and China’s target. Last Wednesday, two Chinese patrol boats intruded in waters near the islands and rock outcroppings that the Japanese call the Senkakus and the Chinese the Diaoyus. Tokyo controls this disputed islet chain, but Beijing insists on trying to test the Japanese to see if they will back down. So far, Tokyo has resisted the continual Chinese probing.
It’s no surprise that Beijing chose this moment of turmoil in Japan to see if it would flinch in the face of the direct challenge to its sovereignty. Japan flinched last September when it released a Chinese fishing boat captain who intentionally rammed Japanese coast guard vessels in these same waters. Since then, China has entered Japanese territorial waters near the Senkakus 12 times.
Beijing was undoubtedly also testing the United States, creating the incident just as Biden was leaving Japan. This time, the Chinese intruders left the scene without a fuss when Japanese craft challenged them. Next time, China, thinking that Washington is gradually abandoning Tokyo, might take a tougher line to intimidate the Japanese.
So the United States, to deter Chinese adventurism in Asia, needs to show the world it stands firmly behind Japan, to help Tokyo become the anchor of that arc of freedom and prosperity. We have our priorities in East Asia backward. It is working with democratic Japan, not authoritarian China, that will keep the peace.
Yes, Japan looks like it’s in decline. Its economy, which has never recovered the dynamism of the late 1980s, has badly stumbled in the wake of March’s 9.0 earthquake and tsunami, and political blunders have aggravated the general sense of despair throughout Japanese society. The multiple meltdowns at its Fukushima nuclear plant created panic that paralyzed parts of the country. In the next few days, surrounding areas will be declared off-limits, perhaps for decades, due to extraordinarily high levels of radiation. On Tuesday, Moody’s downgraded the country’s sovereign debt rating. Next week, Japan will have a new prime minister, the seventh in five years.
At the moment, the front-runner to replace Naoto Kan is Seiji Maehara, the former foreign minister, who resigned in March in the wake of a minor political contribution scandal. He would be a strong friend of the United States, but at this point, no Japanese leader looks like he can become a reliable partner for Washington. Kan and his four immediate predecessors were revolving-door figures. The new leader’s tenure could be short as well.
Japan is often called the “cornerstone” of Washington’s alliances in the region, and Biden this week called it the “anchor” of the United States in Asia, but the itinerary of the vice president revealed that he didn’t really think that. For one thing, he started his travels in China, and he spent much more time there than in Japan. In Beijing, the loquacious vice president actually gave the game away: “There’s no more important relationship that we need to establish on the part of the United States than a close relationship with China,” he said.
If that’s true, we’re in trouble. The problem for Biden is that he appears to have made almost no headway in Beijing despite — or maybe because of — his fawning over Chinese leaders. The vice president’s trip to China was billed as a get-to-know-you effort directed at Xi Jinping, slated to become the Communist Party’s next supremo at the end of next year.
Unfortunately for Biden, Chinese leaders don’t place much stock in personal relationships. Worse, they appear to believe their best interests lie in undermining ours. As Robert Sutter of George Washington University notes, “China is the only large power in the world preparing to shoot Americans.”
Americans — or at least their ever-hopeful leaders — have not been able to confront the implications of this stark fact. Some of Japan’s prime ministers, who live much closer to China, have a sharper strategic vision. Taro Aso, for instance, had proposed “an arc of freedom and prosperity” when he was Shinzo Abe’s foreign minister in late 2006.
The notion that Asia’s democracies should band together, widely seen as an attempt to isolate China, was derided at the time, but the concept is now being resurrected. Free nations in the region — and a few unfree ones as well — are quietly drawing together to protect themselves from an increasingly belligerent Beijing.
Aso, who would go on to become prime minister in 2008, had the right idea, but Japan has not been strong enough to anchor the arc. As a result, the Obama administration has had to look to South Korean President Lee Myung-bak as its partner of choice in East Asia.
So this leaves Japan as Asia’s neglected giant — and China’s target. Last Wednesday, two Chinese patrol boats intruded in waters near the islands and rock outcroppings that the Japanese call the Senkakus and the Chinese the Diaoyus. Tokyo controls this disputed islet chain, but Beijing insists on trying to test the Japanese to see if they will back down. So far, Tokyo has resisted the continual Chinese probing.
It’s no surprise that Beijing chose this moment of turmoil in Japan to see if it would flinch in the face of the direct challenge to its sovereignty. Japan flinched last September when it released a Chinese fishing boat captain who intentionally rammed Japanese coast guard vessels in these same waters. Since then, China has entered Japanese territorial waters near the Senkakus 12 times.
Beijing was undoubtedly also testing the United States, creating the incident just as Biden was leaving Japan. This time, the Chinese intruders left the scene without a fuss when Japanese craft challenged them. Next time, China, thinking that Washington is gradually abandoning Tokyo, might take a tougher line to intimidate the Japanese.
So the United States, to deter Chinese adventurism in Asia, needs to show the world it stands firmly behind Japan, to help Tokyo become the anchor of that arc of freedom and prosperity. We have our priorities in East Asia backward. It is working with democratic Japan, not authoritarian China, that will keep the peace.
