Shinzo Abe: Japan Is America’s Willing Ally

By any measure, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s visit to the United States has been a resounding success. Having just wrapped up three full days in Washington, D.C., Abe is now in California, visiting both San Francisco and Los Angeles. Before Washington, he stopped in Boston and New York, making this the longest visit by a Japanese leader in decades.

The first Japanese premier since Elvis-loving Junichiro Koizumi to show a more populist face to the American public, Abe has made public diplomacy a prominent part of his activities on this trip. Just as interestingly, Akie Abe, the prime minister’s wife, has continued her public outreach, visiting an elementary school in Virginia with Michelle Obama, and serving as a goodwill ambassador. I attended a State Department luncheon and a Japanese embassy–sponsored dinner with Abe, and at both events, he was relaxed and comfortable enough to poke fun at himself and crack a few jokes in front of America’s vice president and secretary of state, Supreme Court justices, former secretaries of state, top business leaders, and Asia scholars.

For a leader often vilified as a dangerous right-wing revisionist, Abe is doing his best to charm America’s political class and citizens alike. He may not have Koizumi’s idiosyncratic flair, which resulted in a classic photo op at Graceland with Elvis’s wife Priscilla and daughter Lisa Marie, but Abe, a man that many believe eager to rewrite history and rebuild a fearsome Japanese military, is nonetheless showing his human side.

For all his smile diplomacy, though, the real work of Abe’s visit was political. In New York, his ministers of defense and foreign affairs finalized and released with their U.S. counterparts a set of revised guidelines for the U.S.–Japan alliance. This new document impressively increases the scope of Japan’s activities, or at least promises to do so, and includes new areas of cooperation, dealing with such issues as cyber security and threats to satellites and communications networks. It also pledges to expand the scope of joint activities in Asia, a move that may help maintain stability in the face of increasing Chinese coercion over territorial disputes in the East and South China Seas.

The guidelines will have to be implemented with legislation in Tokyo to allow the various activities to be undertaken by Japan’s Self-Defense Forces, but they provide a roadmap for steadily expanding Japan’s role in cooperative security endeavors in Asia, and perhaps globally.

Unlike many countries that are hedging their bets over China, Japan is eager to step up and play a leadership role in Asia.

In Washington, Abe and President Obama released a “vision statement” full of impressive commitments to cooperate on everything from harnessing science and innovation to working on energy security, women’s rights, and global health. Each of these needs to have specific goals, targets, and funding attached to it. Taken together, they represent what a real global alliance looks like, not one built solely on unrealistic ideas and often divergent interests, as in the case of China and the United States.

The centerpiece of Abe’s visit to Washington, of course, was his address to a joint session of Congress, the first by a Japanese prime minister. He began on a dynastic note, recounting the speech of his grandfather, also a prime minister of Japan, to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1957. Eagerly awaited were Abe’s comments on World War II. He was, as far as I can tell, the first Japanese prime minister to use the word “repentance,” certainly in an official speech. This is something even his predecessor Tomiichi Murayama did not do in his lauded apology on the 50th anniversary of the war’s end.

Moreover, Abe explicitly stated that he upheld all previous Japanese-government apologies. He also discussed in a highly personal way his feelings on the loss of life of tens of thousands of young Americans killed in the war, and offered his personal and “eternal condolences.” These expressions did not satisfy his more vocal critics, including the Chinese and South Koreans, but according to one member of Congress who was present in the chamber, Abe’s words in person conveyed a message of apology that was unmistakable.

Abe then pivoted to a discussion of the global reach of the U.S.–Japan relationship, beginning with the yet-to-be-completed Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). The TPP is the only major free-trade agreement close to being completed, though major sticking points remain. Following on Obama’s recent remarks supporting TPP, Abe’s call in front of Congress for completing the agreement is about as high-profile a commitment as can be made. Whether it will break the logjam facing the negotiators and then overcome congressional opposition remains to be seen, but Abe has now very publicly staked some of his political capital on conclusion of the pact.

The bottom line from Abe’s trip is that Japan is America’s willing ally. Unlike many countries that are hedging their bets over China, or waffling on living up to their security commitments in places like Europe, Japan is eager to step up and play a leadership role in Asia. It offers a democratic alternative to China’s influence, and it wants to act increasingly as the leader of a liberal bloc of nations in the Indo-Pacific region that help maintain stability. Abe has a lot of work to do at home to convince his skeptical countrymen that a globally active Japan is in their country’s best interests, but he is putting together a coherent and comprehensive policy that realistically faces Japan’s challenges.

In a world of increasing disorder and instability, Japan’s offer is something that America should embrace. It provides the basis of a partnership that will be ever more valued in coming decades, as rising revisionist states seek to undermine the liberal order that has shaped global interactions since 1945. An Asia with a more committed and energetic Japan will almost certainly be a more stable Asia. Not all of Abe’s ambitious goals will be achieved, but he has broken Japan out of its post-war passivity, and that is something to applaud him for.