Sunday, February 24, 2013

The Smiling Mr.Abe

     Japan's PM, Mr.Abe Shinzo, currently of Abenomics fame, has just gone through a meeting with Mr.Obama at the White House, their first ever meeting.  This writer was amused, as well as unhappy, to see a couple of photos which appeared in today's morning paper.  In both of them Abe is together with Obama, and in both of them Abe is smiling(whether Obama is also smiling or not does not matter here).  It is the peculiar way he is smiling that has caught my attention.  I have never seen him smiling this way while he is in Japan, his own country, and is facing his own people.  It is difficult to characterize this smile.  Naive?  Yes, but here is more than that, and in that sense it is different from the proverbial 'Japanese smile'.  Disarmed?  Well, near.  Without armour?  Better, because he is not showing any tension on his face at all.  Of course there are people who usually appear to be at home, showing little tension on the face or on the body.  But this is different.  This smile shows that it is as if Abe has unburdened all his worries.  We say "Look for a big tree if you need a shelter", and Obama is that shelter here.  Abe is not only politically and diplomatically but psychologically leaning on him.  As if Obama is his boss.
     I am not at all happy to write this way.  But this is not something new, and that is the point.  I have seen at least several former Japanese PMs smiling this way when they were with US Presidents.  It shows the unfortunate tradition, built up over the decades between the two countries, more under the American initiative, that Japan has become a US satellite.  The past PMs have tended to promise, or inform, the US Presidents of, things they have not seriously consulted their own people.  They have tended to be more at ease with the Presidents than at their home offices.  They must have felt more secure with the Presidents.  Does it mean our PMs are not in the habit of conversing with their own people?  And more keen on talking to the others?  Yes, that is so.  The honest photographs have again brought out these facts.  It is also a warning to the Presidents, his Secretaries, and his Ambassadors that it can be dangerous to take what our PMs tell them, and only that, at their face value.
     What are the results of the summit?  The TPP issue was supposed to be the bone of the contention.  But we are not sure if Abe has really contended against Obama.  The joint statement says briefly that with some exceptions all the tariffs will be lifted for the member countries.  Japan's business community is wholeheartedly in support of Japan's joining it.  The question is if we would still have the core of our agriculture in tact, which has already been damaged so much that we are self-supporting in agricultural products only to the extent of 39%.          

Tuesday, February 19, 2013

North Korea's Nuclear Test

     A week ago, on 12 February, DPRK(North Korea) conducted her third nuclear test, in clear violation of the joint declaration with South Korea in 1992 to denuclearize the whole of the Korean Peninsula, her own commitment at the six-power conference in 2005 to denuclearize herself, and several UN Security Council resolutions.
     The act was, presumably, to invite closer attention by the Western countries, particularly the US, to her position as a state to reckon with, including the recognition of the present regime based on the hereditary dictatorship of one family.  They would also like to be recognized as a nuclear power on a par with countries like India and Pakistan whose nuclear power status came to be accepted in the course of time since their nuclear explosion in 1998 without any international agreement.
     President Obama, in his State of the Union speech the next day-was the NK test intentionally conducted on the previous day?-did not say much about it.  It came up briefly after the Afghan question.  It was basically a domestic speech, although he said, to assure the American people, "We will maintain the best military the world has ever known".  But apparently there is a strong feeling of distrust and anxiety the world over as the result of the test.  The Security Council will come up with stronger sanctions sooner rather than later.
     This writer, however, has said more than once in these columns that it is wrong to apply stronger sanctions, and a Peace Treaty should be put in place as quickly as possible between Japan and DPRK, no matter what the US may choose to do.  That may go against the public opinion here, more so after the test.  Many would look at such a move as a surrender.  But what is the alternative?  The US forces are being reinforced under the name of keeping greater presence in East Asia.  China is beginning to behave as a military power.  Japan has increased the military budget for the new year 2013(April to March) by more than $ one billion.  The test comes on top of it all.
     We may easily condemn NK, but the matter does not end there.  China and NK should know that their behaviour in East Asia is actually strengthening the political Right in Japan who are, if anything, anti-Chinese and anti-Korean.  The two countries are supplying them with the best excuse possible.
     I have been astonished when both India and Pakistan have denounced the NK test.  How can they do this when their own nuclear arsenal is expanding?  The British PM is now in India and one of his aims is to sell weapons, if not nuclear ones, but nonetheless sophisticated and expensive ones.  He has been preceded by the French President.  May I, humbly, request India and Pakistan to put restraint on their armament?  I know, of course, that it will inevitably lead to the reexamination of the unequal character of the NPT.