The Problem Between Japan and Obama

When Japan’s Prime Minister, Shinzo Abe, visited Yasukuni, the controversial sanctuary in Tokyo last month, Chinese leaders predictably condemned the decision to honor those responsible for the “war of aggression against China.” But Abe’s visit to the sanctuary was also a message directed to the main ally and protector of Japan: the United States. Urged more each time by the reluctance of the U.S. President Barack Obama to question China’s military trials and its territorial ambitions in Asia—which gives testimony to the recent discrepancy between Japan and the United States through the new “aerial identification zone” created by China—Abe considered it necessary to inform both countries that self-defense cannot be one-sided.

For China and South Korea, the fact that the Yasukuni sanctuary includes 14 Class A war criminals executed after the Second World War transformed into an eloquent symbol of pre-war Japanese militarism. For a while, Abe abstained from visiting the sanctuary—he did not go there during his former term as prime minister, either. It is very probable that he would have maintained this decision if China had not created the aerial identification zone, which made clear a new and ominous precedent, by usurping international aerial space over the East China Sea, including areas that China does not control. It appears that Abe did not keep in mind the possibility that his pilgrimage to Yasukuni would become useful to China, by deepening the divisions between South Korea and Japan.

The Obama administration was putting pressure on Abe not to aggravate regional tensions with a Yasukuni visit, and Vice President Joe Biden reiterated this request during a stopover that he made a little while ago in Tokyo during a trip to Beijing. In fact, Biden’s tour deepened Japan’s concerns about its security, because the United States’ interest in balancing its relations in East Asia was made evident, including supposed tolerance of expansionist China as equivalent, in strategic terms, to its ally Japan.

Instead of postponing Biden’s trip to Beijing in protest to the new aerial identification zone imposed by China, the United States advised commercial flight companies to respect China’s requirement to inform them of their flight plans in the zone in advance, while Japan asked theirs to ignore it. After requesting self-containment from the Japanese, the United States encouraged its fears without obtaining any concession from China.

The growing gap between the United States and Japan is already impossible to conceal. Abe felt betrayed by Obama’s lack of firmness regarding the creation of the aerial identification zone—the last in a series of aggressive acts by China intending to alter the status quo of the East China Sea. On the other hand, the United States government openly, and unusually, criticized Abe’s visit to Yasukuni, while its embassy in Japan stated that the United States “is disappointed that Japan’s leadership has taken an action that will exacerbate tensions with Japan’s neighbors.”

These reproaches do not imply that the alliance between the United States and Japan—on which America’s military advance in Asia depends—may be at risk in the immediate future. Japan continues to be a model ally which harbors a great number of United States troops in its territory, and also takes care of the cost of maintaining them. In fact, barely one day after Abe’s visit to Yasukuni, Japan closed an arduous bilateral agreement promoted by the United States to relocate an American aerial base in Okinawa to a less populated area of the island. Furthermore, Abe supports Japan’s admission to the Transpacific Agreement, the new commercial block for the region promoted by the U.S., from which China is excluded.

However, a psychological split has been developing between the Abe and Obama administrations. The United States protests Abe’s nationalistic attitude toward China and South Korea, and Japanese authorities do not hide their anxiety about Obama’s attempts to figure out a balance between America’s compromises with its allies and its desires to strengthen its relationship with China. Biden engaged in conversation with the Chinese President Xi Jinping for more than double the time that he did with Abe.

The paradox is that if concern about China’s growing assertiveness really did help bring the United States to the center of the Asian geopolitical scene again and reinforced its defense agreements in the region, it did not translate in the direct action of restraining China’s expansionist policies. As a result, Japan doubts American willingness to support its military more and more each time, on the assumption that China would launch an attack on the Japanese islands of Senkaku/Diaoyu. Nor does it help that the rhetoric of the Obama administration is contradictory, when it confirms that the defense treaty between Japan and the United States includes the Senkaku Islands, and at the same time refuses to take part in the island’s sovereignty.

Japan drew attention to Obama’s inaction in 2012, when China occupied the Scarborough reef inside the Philippines’ exclusive economic zone. Looking to put an end to the altercation between the countries over control of the zone, the United States favored an agreement for the two to remove their ships from the area. But when the Philippines left, China occupied the reef and the U.S. did nothing, despite the mutual defense agreement that it had with the Philippines. This empowered China, which effectively took control of another reef already claimed by the Philippines in the disputed Spratly Islands’ zone.

Various factors, like geographic distance and economic interdependence, made the United States not want to stay trapped in these Asian territorial disputes. Besides, unlike the countries in that region, the United States could tolerate a Chinese version of the “Monroe Doctrine” by which China would oppose any foreign intervention in Asia. But American neutrality in these sovereignty conflicts threatens to debilitate its bilateral defense alliances—which in practice collaborate with Chinese interests, by countries like Japan not turning to military action.

The balancing act in Asia that the Obama administration has dedicated itself to prevents it from seeing China’s most recent actions as a test of power on the highest scale. What is at play here is not simply a collection of islands in the East and South China Seas, but rather a regional order based on rules, the freedom of navigation of the skies and seas, access to maritime resources and balance between the dynamic of Asian powers.

With its policy making Japan feel insecure, the United States runs the risk of provoking exactly that which it wishes to avoid: Japan’s return to militarism.