POINT OF VIEW / Robert Dujarric / Is Koizumi helping China win hearts, minds?
07/22/2005

Asahi Shimbun, Japan
July 22 2005

Special to The Asahi Shimbun

It is possible China may actually want Prime Minister Junichiro
Koizumi to visit Yasukuni Shrine. His pilgrimages to the shrine are
reinforcing China’s position in Asia and weakening Japan, so President
Hu Jintao may secretly welcome these visits.

How does the Yasukuni issue serve China’s interests?

First, it convinces Koreans that Japan is their enemy, which is
what China wants. Japan needs a South Korea that is pro-Japan rather
than pro-China.

Moreover, it is in Japan’s interest that a unified Korea, which may
keep some of North Korea’s nuclear assets, should not make Japan
its No. 1 enemy. On the other hand, China would like to see Korea on
its side.

The Yasukuni dispute thus helps Beijing advance its interests. China
can posture itself as a fellow victim of Japanese aggression, bringing
Koreans into a partnership against Japan.

Second, the Yasukuni visits and comments by Koizumi hurt Japan’s
standing in other parts of Asia. The statement by Singapore Prime
Minister Lee Hsien Loong was noteworthy. Singapore is closely tied to
the United States and not anti-Japanese. Yet, despite Japan’s value
to the Singaporean economy, Lee was quite critical of Japan. It is
clearly detrimental to Japan, but good for China, to create tension
between Southeast Asia and Japan.

Third, the history issue has reverberated in Hong Kong. Hong Kong is
a society with a free press and uncensored access to the Internet,
thus the anti-Japanese reactions there genuinely reflect the residents’
feelings. Japan’s goal is that Hong Kong should remain as autonomous
from China as possible. Anti-Japanese sentiment pushes Hong Kong
closer to the mainland while depriving Japan of what should be a
conduit for Japanese influence inside China.

Fourth, Chinese propaganda could manipulate the Yasukuni incident to
paint Japan in a negative light in the United States. In addition,
Korean-Americans and Chinese-Americans are very successful American
citizens. Japan should reflect on what happened to Turkey.

Turkey, like Japan, is a U.S. ally. It is poor but its geostrategic
location makes it critical for U.S. strategy. In part because of
Turkey’s failure to deal with the Armenian genocide, it has incurred
the wrath of many Armenian-Americans. Armenian-Americans are neither
as numerous nor as noticeably successful as Chinese-Americans and
Korean-Americans, but the Armenian-Americans have damaged Turkey’s
interests. For example, due to Armenian lobbying, the United States
has been hampered in its policies to help Turkey’s ally, Azerbaijan.

Japan could one day be on the receiving end of Korean-American and
Chinese-American animosity if it develops.

In addition, U.S. policy-makers may soon worry about the
consequences of Japanese policy. The United States wants to moderate
nationalist sentiment in South Korea, which is both anti-American and
anti-Japanese. But Japan’s actions have fanned the flames of Korean
nationalism, hurting U.S. interests.

The United States also desires to move China toward a more cooperative
stance. Though China is not democratic, the government must to some
extent take into account public opinion, which is made more bellicose
by Koizumi’s behavior. Consequently, the history issue may damage
Japan’s U.S. alliance, which is its only real foreign partnership.

It is true that few countries are able to deal with their past. Japan
is by no means the only nation to have difficulties with its past.
For example, the Chinese Communists have never apologized for the
tens of millions of Chinese they killed.

Liberal democracies often do not fare better: The United States and
other New World countries never really atoned for the genocide of
their indigenous peoples. But the key to managing the history issue
is to think strategically about it.

Once this is understood, we can think clearly about how to deal with
it. The goal is not to win or lose arguments about the fairness of the
Tokyo Trials or the content of Japanese and Chinese textbooks. It is
to avoid a major strategic defeat at the hands of China while making
Japan stronger.

In this respect, Germany shows what can be achieved. For over half
a century, it has never stopped apologizing, paying reparations,
and banning any government activity related to the war that could
shock its neighbors.

What have been the results of these gestures? They have made Germany
more powerful. It is a well-regarded nation, even in Poland, whose soil
is full of the bones of Poles murdered by the Nazis, or in Israel,
many of whose citizens’ relatives died in gas chambers. There is now
a multinational German-Polish-Danish army corps with its headquarters
in Poland.

When Israel needed to free a kidnapped Israeli in Lebanon, it asked
Germany to negotiate his release. German soldiers are welcome in
the former Yugoslavia, where many Nazi atrocities were perpetrated.
German diplomats have productive ties with U.S. Jewish organizations
that serve German interests in America.

If Japan follows such a policy based on a rational analysis, it will
be able to strengthen its position in Asia and the world.

* * *

The writer co-authored “America’s Inadvertent Empire” and is a visiting
research fellow in Tokyo at the Japan Institute of International
Affairs.(IHT/Asahi: July 22,2005)

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress