Japan, South Korea Wary of Following U.S.
Corporate Scandals, Administration's Unilateral Policies Strain Alliances
By Doug Struck
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, July 22, 2002; Page A12
TOKYO -- Corporate scandals and the Bush administration's go-it-alone decisions have helped make Japan and South Korea, the staunchest U.S. allies in Asia, increasingly uneasy about following the American lead, according to political officials and analysts in both countries.
Neither South Korea nor Japan is about to seek a divorce from its close U.S. alliance. But doubts about U.S. leadership in the world are amplifying voices in both countries calling for more independence from Washington, and complicating domestic politics.
"The U.S. is our one and only military ally, but trust between the two countries has been significantly damaged," said Park Won Hong, an opposition member of the South Korean National Assembly.
"The Japanese government is thinking about becoming stronger and less dependent on America, and that's a good thing," said Sogo Ikeda, a professor at Kokushikan University in Tokyo.
In Japan, the military is unhappy about what it sees as U.S. intelligence failures, including a false alarm from the Pentagon about a Chinese missile launch that startled Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi as he watched a World Cup match on June 30.
A Pentagon report this month on the growing military menace of China struck some Japanese strategists as alarmist. And Washington's call for possible military action against Iraq unsettles Japan, which gets virtually all its oil from the Middle East and fears being dragged into the conflict.
U.S. corporate scandals have caused headaches for Koizumi, inflating the yen, shaking the Japanese stock market and undermining support for his call to reform Japanese economic systems along American lines. And many Japanese still resent the Bush administration's curt rejection of the Kyoto treaty on global warming.</b?
In South Korea, dissatisfaction with the United States fueled demonstrations this month over a traffic accident in which a U.S. armored vehicle killed two teenage girls on June 13.
Poll watchers say anti-Americanism has been fostered by public resentment that President Bush undercut President Kim Dae Jung's "sunshine policy" of reaching out to North Korea, and by the suspicion that the United States unfairly pressured the government to buy Boeing fighter jets in April.
"There's been room for huge frictions in our alliance because of Bush's lopsided foreign policy," said Kim Seong Ho, a South Korean assemblyman and foreign affairs expert in the governing Millennium Democratic Party. "The Korean people won't follow the United States unconditionally, like before."
The debate over U.S. leadership has been voiced with more restraint by political leaders here than in Europe, where American "unilateralism" has come in for severe criticism. Japan and South Korea, both under the shield of the U.S. military and home to a total of nearly 80,000 U.S. troops, have little leeway or appetite for a sharply independent course.
But analysts say subtle adjustments in direction are being debated that could have long-term effects on their relationships with the United States.
"Since last year, there's been a major confrontation going on among conservatives, a significant debate carried on in the monthly magazines," said Tadae Takubo, author of "The New U.S.-Japan Alliance."
Traditional opponents of U.S. influence in Japan, such as the small communist and socialist parties, have found unexpected company among some conservatives. And among conservatives, both pro-American and anti-American camps agree on the need for a stronger Japanese military, Takubo said.
The discussion is reaching the mainstream. Michihiro Matsumoto, an interpreter and debate promoter, has been emboldened by grumbling about the United States to schedule a series of public forums on whether Japan should break the U.S.-Japan security treaty, the centerpiece of Japan's defense posture for half a century.
Not long ago, it might have been difficult to find thoughtful advocates of that course, but "lately we've been watching the United States with a mixture of disillusionment and resentment," said Matsumoto, who describes himself as a centrist.
"Everyone likes America, but we are having second thoughts about whether bigness is goodness," he said. "We have disillusionment over Enron, Arthur Andersen, WorldCom. All these things are coming up in droves."
The economic fallout from U.S. corporate scandals may have the largest impact on Japan, which is struggling to find a model that will take it out of its economic doldrums. For the last decade, the United States has been held out as that model.
"Until now, the U.S. side has criticized the 'lack of transparency' in Japanese corporate accounting and has kept urging Japan to adopt American-style bookkeeping," said financial columnist Yoshikuni Sugiyama in the Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper. Now, "Japan's trust in the U.S. accounting system has been shaken to its foundations."
Such reservations are heard elsewhere in Asia. Noboru Hatakeyama, chairman of the government-run Japan External Trade Organization, urged members at a recent Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation symposium in Jakarta to redefine the economic collaboration APEC promotes.
"Before these scandals, collaboration meant 'to cooperate with each other and learn from the American experience.' Now we have found some defects in the American system," he said last week.
In Japan, he noted, officials are dismayed by the Bush administration's decision to impose anti-dumping measures against Japanese steel. And Kozo Yamamoto, a member of parliament, said Japanese officials are growing more discouraged as U.S. corporate scandals send stocks and the dollar tumbling, threatening to crush fledgling signs of a Japanese recovery.
"The U.S. is letting us fight it alone," he said. (They CREATED IT ALONE, Right?? Hawk)
The Bush administration's militaristic talk has caused alarm in Japan and South Korea, according to analysts. Bush's sweeping denunciation of North Korea as part of an "axis of evil" and his threat to take preemptive action against "evildoers" sit uneasily with policymakers trying to forge a pragmatic coexistence with the North Korean government.
"For the Korean Peninsula, the fact that Bush is even considering a preemptive action escalates the possibility of crisis," said Kim Sung Han, an associate professor at Seoul's Institute of Foreign Affairs and National Security. "It's a mistake for Bush to treat such an important issue as just a part of America's global strategy, without giving deeper thought to the Korean Peninsula."
That threat of preemptive action, and a recent Pentagon report warning of China's growing military strength, also invite problems in the region with China, said Kumao Kaneko, a former Japanese diplomat on nuclear issues.
In U.S. statements, Kaneko discerns an implicit threat of preemptive use of nuclear weapons in the region and calls this "a provocation to the Chinese." It evokes old scenarios about causing a Chinese first strike against U.S. troops in Japan, and questions about whether the United States would risk a wider war to respond.
"This raises very difficult issues for the U.S.-Japan alliance," Kaneko said. "Some people in Japan worry the U.S. nuclear umbrella is not reliable." Top officials of Japan's governing Liberal Democratic Party recently broached the subject of Japan developing nuclear weapons. The idea was publicly squashed by Koizumi in the ensuing uproar, but some analysts here saw the exercise as a trial balloon for future discussion.
The controversy that always follows public mention of forging an independent policy is a sign that Japan should change, said Mitsuru Saito, chief economist at UFJ Tsubasa Securities.
"It's pitiful for Japan" to have followed the United States so faithfully, he said. "Japan has not been able to do even a very basic thing, which is to think for itself. It would probably take a real military crisis to drive home the point."
Special correspondents Joohee Cho in Seoul and Akiko Kashiwagi in Tokyo contributed to this report.
© 2002 The Washington Post Company
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