George R. Packard
President, International University of Japan;
Director of the Reischauer Center for East Asian Studies at the School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), Johns Hopkins University, President, U.S.-Japan Foundation
George R. Packard was dean of SAIS from 1979 to 1993 and is now director of the Edwin O. Reischauer Center for East Asian Studies as well as professor of East Asian studies at the school. He is also president of the International University of Japan. From 1965 to 1967, he was chief diplomatic correspondent for Newsweek. Prior to that, he served as special assistant to U.S. Ambassador to Japan Edwin O. Reischauer. In March of 1998, he was appointed president of the U.S.-Japan Foundation.
Packard Report - Apr. 2007
For the first time in a decade, one can feel a rising level of tension between the United States and Japan. Prime Minister Abe has managed to enrage both the right and left wings of the American political spectrum with his remarks about the "comfort women," Yasukuni Shrine and the Six-party talks on North Korea.
Even those well-informed observers who normally defend Japan are mystified by Abe's gratuitous remarks about the comfort women. They understand that Abe came to power by catering to his right wing on the abduction issue, but they wish he would simply endorse the 1993 statement by Lower House Speaker Kono Yohei and be done with the issue.
From 1996 to the present, Presidents Clinton and Bush have leaned over backwards to strengthen the US-Japan alliance and to build close personal ties with successive Japanese Prime Ministers. The obvious reason for this can be simply stated: North Korea's nuclear ambitions.
Once both governments realized that North Korea was moving forward to develop its own nuclear capability, the bitter dispute in 1995 between Mickey Kantor and Ryutaro Hashimoto over quotas on imports of Japanese cars was quickly set aside, never to return. It was Kim Jong-il's move to develop nuclear weapons that pushed Japan and the United Sates into issuing the Nye report of 1996 and into revising the defense guidelines in 1997-98. For the first time, the two nations could agree on a common threat, and could begin to take cooperative measures against that threat.
After the attacks against the US on September 11, 2001, President Bush called on Prime Minister Koizumi to help in the war against terrorism against Afghanistan and the Iraq. Koizumi responded quickly and won many friends in Washington. Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage and National Security Council Advisor Michael Green worked tirelessly to make sure the US and Japan were cooperating on many levels. Bush actually likes Koizumi.
Now we see an entirely new ballgame. Armitage and Green have left the US Government and no one at a high level has the primary task of watching out for Japan's interests.
Prime Minister Abe, in the view of Washington observers, got off to a good start by paying friendly visits to Beijing and Seoul, and refrained from mentioning the possibility of visiting the Yasukuni Shrine. But in recent weeks, all that good will has gone down the drain, and Abe's visit to Washington on April 26 now looks problematic. By insisting on dealing with the abductee issue at the Six-Party talks, Japan risks isolating itself from the coalition of Northeast Asian nations at just the wrong moment.
The current White House view, as expressed by President Bush's close friend, US Ambassador to Tokyo, Tom Schieffer, is that the Japanese Government did coerce "comfort women" to service their troops in the Pacific War, and that Japan owes them more of a formal apology.
The sympathies of all the liberal media outlets in the US are against Japan and for the surviving women. The Washington Post and New York Times have been sharply critical of Abe for his waffling on the issue.
Even the right wing holds no sympathy for Japan. As Francis Fukuyama, a conservative thinker, wrote, "In fact, unlike Germany, Japan has never come to terms with its own responsibility for the Pacific War." Fukuyama questions whether the US should continue to push Japan to revise Article 9 of its Constitution.
"America should be careful about what it wishes for. The legitimacy of the entire American military position in the Far East is built around the U.S. exercising Japan's sovereign function of self-defense. Japan's unilateral revision of Article 9, viewed against the backdrop of its new nationalism, would isolate Japan from virtually the whole of Asia." The writer suggests that Bush may want to caution Abe against promoting this nationalism when Abe comes to Washington on April 26.
This is from a conservative Japanese-American who should be considered a friend of Japan. Mr. Abe should take it seriously.
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