In Tokyo and Berlin, opposite views on U.S.
The Cold War is Over, Right? Yes, it is in Europe but not quite as completely in Asia.
To grasp the truth, it is intriguing to trace the divergent attitude of Germany and Japan to the United States. Two defeated nations in World War II, they both adhered in the post war years to a line broadly set by America, the power that had vanquished them and then been midwife and custodian to their democracies.
The era ended in 1989 with the fall of the Berlin Wall and the dissolution two years later of the Soviet Union. Europe was whole, the German question that had haunted the Continent resolved at last. With Soviet tanks gone from its doorstep, Germany turned its mind to being “normal”, that is a country freed from American tutelage.
The capital returned to Berlin, many US soldiers left, and over time a deep sense of German gratitude to America for defeating Hitler, birthing the post-war Republic and backing unification gave way to a different emotion: a sense of moral superiority over a country bellicose enough to embark on a war in Iraq that Germany rejected.
In Asia, the story has been rather different. The Cold War thawed but Communism didn’t disappear. North Korea, armed with ballistic missiles that can hit Japan, persisted in its totalitarian folly. China, adopting the market–Leninism of a one party capitalist state, embarked on the steady accumulation of economic and military power.
Instability remained intrinsic in the Asian equation.
Japan responded by deciding to be the un-Germany: the close American ally that would react to the disappearance of the Soviet threat by intensifying its relations with Washington rather than the contrary.
It has hewn so closely to an American line that President George W. Bush scarcely gives a speech these days without mentioning his “buddy” Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi.
Once again this month, Bush told the story of how “my dad fought the Japanese as an 18-year-old kid” but “my friend in keeping the peace is the prime minister of Japan.” It’s his standard yarn about how enemies – read Iraq – can become allies through the creation of democracies. “I say this all the time,” Bush conceded.
But behind the stock line lies a rapprochement that is anything but ordinary. Japan spoke out early in support of the war in Iraq and opted to send about 1000 troops there to illustrate that backing. It has intensified the core of its defense, the Japan-U.S. Security Treaty, through cooperation of missile defense and the adoption of a common line on China, North Korea and Chinese-Taiwanese tensions.
Last year, Japan and the United States called together for China “to improve transparency of its military affairs” and “play a responsible and constructive role regionally as well as globally.” They also insisted on a “peaceful resolution of issues concerning the Taiwan Straight through dialogue.” None of this went down well in Beijing. That does not appear to bother Koizumi’s Japan, whose choice is clear: a reinforced American alliance as the main response to China’s rise, whatever the regional cost of that decision.
“We have stepped towards the United States because together Japan and America must encourage China towards greater democratization and engagement in the world order of which the United States is the leader,” said Jiro Okuyama, the spokesman for the Japanese Consulate in New York.
He continued: “ We are against a shared hegemony of the United States and China. We cannot accept seeing part of the order of East Asia being taken over or taken away by China. Rather China should integrate itself into the existing order.”
Here, the Japanese-German divergence is manifest. Since the end of the Cold War there have been two essential views of how governance of the world should be anchored: in the exercise of American power or in more multilateral system where the laws, norms and moral suasion of institutions like the United Nations or the recently established Criminal Court in The Hague would gain prominence.
Japan, inhabiting a dangerous corner of the world with a Cold War hangover, has opted for American power as the organizing principle and enduring cornerstone of global security. Germany, however, has been ambivalent, adhering formally to its U.S. alliance, but breaking with America over Iraq.
Listen to Germans today on Bush’s America and what you often hear is a withering smugness as they dissect the shortcomings of a bullying, death-penalty-loving, environment-trampling, war-mongering, unilateralist power that has lost its away. This German righteousness, for it often sounds like that, with respect to America amounts to one of the more intriguing moral inversions of the post-Cold War era.
Of course, Germans take this line because they can: no existential threat looms any longer. Germany also benefits from an institution that has no real equivalent in Asia: the European Union. The EU has many reasons for being, but at some level it is a counter weight to the United States.
“Germany is embedded in Europe through the EU, but Japan has never had that relationship with Asia,” said Ian Buruma, an author whose book “The Wages of Guilt” explores postwar Japan and German. “In fact it has gone in the opposite direction. Koizumi really is a nationalist.”
Certainly, through his visit to the Yasukuni Shrine, the memorial to Japan’s war dead which includes a handful of prominent war criminals, Koizumi has made any strengthening of his county’s relations with its Asian neighbors more difficult. But he appears to have read his country’s nationalist mood well. Koizumi knows that not bending to China is popular. Like Bush he has a defiant streak.
The two men’s personalities mesh well. But it is also strategic reality that binds Japan and the United States. Japan, which still has a pacifist Constitution strictly limiting its military operations, wants to maintain and reinforce the strategic architecture drawn by American since 1945. Many Germans think that architecture is obsolete. They see no compelling reason to think otherwise.
Roger Cohen is the globalist for International Herald Tribune, writing from New York in the Saturday-Sunday, April 8-9, 2006 Asia addition of this newspaper. You can contact him at rocohen@nytimes.com
Property in Observatory, Cape Town, South Africa on http://www.hotpropertyincapetown.com
To grasp the truth, it is intriguing to trace the divergent attitude of Germany and Japan to the United States. Two defeated nations in World War II, they both adhered in the post war years to a line broadly set by America, the power that had vanquished them and then been midwife and custodian to their democracies.
The era ended in 1989 with the fall of the Berlin Wall and the dissolution two years later of the Soviet Union. Europe was whole, the German question that had haunted the Continent resolved at last. With Soviet tanks gone from its doorstep, Germany turned its mind to being “normal”, that is a country freed from American tutelage.
The capital returned to Berlin, many US soldiers left, and over time a deep sense of German gratitude to America for defeating Hitler, birthing the post-war Republic and backing unification gave way to a different emotion: a sense of moral superiority over a country bellicose enough to embark on a war in Iraq that Germany rejected.
In Asia, the story has been rather different. The Cold War thawed but Communism didn’t disappear. North Korea, armed with ballistic missiles that can hit Japan, persisted in its totalitarian folly. China, adopting the market–Leninism of a one party capitalist state, embarked on the steady accumulation of economic and military power.
Instability remained intrinsic in the Asian equation.
Japan responded by deciding to be the un-Germany: the close American ally that would react to the disappearance of the Soviet threat by intensifying its relations with Washington rather than the contrary.
It has hewn so closely to an American line that President George W. Bush scarcely gives a speech these days without mentioning his “buddy” Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi.
Once again this month, Bush told the story of how “my dad fought the Japanese as an 18-year-old kid” but “my friend in keeping the peace is the prime minister of Japan.” It’s his standard yarn about how enemies – read Iraq – can become allies through the creation of democracies. “I say this all the time,” Bush conceded.
But behind the stock line lies a rapprochement that is anything but ordinary. Japan spoke out early in support of the war in Iraq and opted to send about 1000 troops there to illustrate that backing. It has intensified the core of its defense, the Japan-U.S. Security Treaty, through cooperation of missile defense and the adoption of a common line on China, North Korea and Chinese-Taiwanese tensions.
Last year, Japan and the United States called together for China “to improve transparency of its military affairs” and “play a responsible and constructive role regionally as well as globally.” They also insisted on a “peaceful resolution of issues concerning the Taiwan Straight through dialogue.” None of this went down well in Beijing. That does not appear to bother Koizumi’s Japan, whose choice is clear: a reinforced American alliance as the main response to China’s rise, whatever the regional cost of that decision.
“We have stepped towards the United States because together Japan and America must encourage China towards greater democratization and engagement in the world order of which the United States is the leader,” said Jiro Okuyama, the spokesman for the Japanese Consulate in New York.
He continued: “ We are against a shared hegemony of the United States and China. We cannot accept seeing part of the order of East Asia being taken over or taken away by China. Rather China should integrate itself into the existing order.”
Here, the Japanese-German divergence is manifest. Since the end of the Cold War there have been two essential views of how governance of the world should be anchored: in the exercise of American power or in more multilateral system where the laws, norms and moral suasion of institutions like the United Nations or the recently established Criminal Court in The Hague would gain prominence.
Japan, inhabiting a dangerous corner of the world with a Cold War hangover, has opted for American power as the organizing principle and enduring cornerstone of global security. Germany, however, has been ambivalent, adhering formally to its U.S. alliance, but breaking with America over Iraq.
Listen to Germans today on Bush’s America and what you often hear is a withering smugness as they dissect the shortcomings of a bullying, death-penalty-loving, environment-trampling, war-mongering, unilateralist power that has lost its away. This German righteousness, for it often sounds like that, with respect to America amounts to one of the more intriguing moral inversions of the post-Cold War era.
Of course, Germans take this line because they can: no existential threat looms any longer. Germany also benefits from an institution that has no real equivalent in Asia: the European Union. The EU has many reasons for being, but at some level it is a counter weight to the United States.
“Germany is embedded in Europe through the EU, but Japan has never had that relationship with Asia,” said Ian Buruma, an author whose book “The Wages of Guilt” explores postwar Japan and German. “In fact it has gone in the opposite direction. Koizumi really is a nationalist.”
Certainly, through his visit to the Yasukuni Shrine, the memorial to Japan’s war dead which includes a handful of prominent war criminals, Koizumi has made any strengthening of his county’s relations with its Asian neighbors more difficult. But he appears to have read his country’s nationalist mood well. Koizumi knows that not bending to China is popular. Like Bush he has a defiant streak.
The two men’s personalities mesh well. But it is also strategic reality that binds Japan and the United States. Japan, which still has a pacifist Constitution strictly limiting its military operations, wants to maintain and reinforce the strategic architecture drawn by American since 1945. Many Germans think that architecture is obsolete. They see no compelling reason to think otherwise.
Roger Cohen is the globalist for International Herald Tribune, writing from New York in the Saturday-Sunday, April 8-9, 2006 Asia addition of this newspaper. You can contact him at rocohen@nytimes.com
Property in Observatory, Cape Town, South Africa on http://www.hotpropertyincapetown.com
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