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Short on Hope

Japan Wary of an Obama Administration

By Wieland Wagner in Shanghai

Concern has been growing in Tokyo in recent years as the US snuggles up with China. It is a course that Barack Obama will be likely to follow as well. And he could also demand more of Japan when it comes to Afghanistan.

The Japanese have long registered their worry at the way the western superpower has increasingly gone over their heads to reach an understanding with their archrival, the aspiring great power China. This applies not only to the current financial crisis, in which the US and China have already almost been working together as strategic partners. In foreign policy, too, the island nation feels itself increasingly passed over by the US.

Above all Tokyo observes with suspicion the American rapprochement with Stalinist North Korea, which Washington has been promoting with diplomatic assistance from the Chinese. US President George W. Bush recently struck the long maligned "rogue state" from the list of countries sponsoring terrorism. In so doing Bush was rewarding North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il's willingness to open the country's nuclear facilities to inspection.

With regard to Afghanistan, the friction between Tokyo and the new US president is clear: Obama wants to strengthen the War on Terror in Afghanistan and thus will likely also pressure Japanese allies to enlarge their commitment.

The Japanese navy in the Indian Ocean has already been supplying Western warships with fuel, though no actual Japanese soldiers have participated in the war effort in Afghanistan. Recently the Bush administration has been reportedly pressuring Tokyo to at least participate in the war by giving money -- some $20 billion (€15.6 billion) over the next five years is being discussed.

But Japan's ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), which has been in power almost continuously since 1955, is preoccupied at the moment with its own political survival. Its leaders lack a convincing vision for how to strategically reposition their country in the pacific power triangle with the US and China.

In the Japanese Parliament's Upper House, the LDP lacks a majority; the opposition Democrats can block or delay important legislation. In only one year two LDP heads of government have quit their office in frustration.

And neither is Japan's new Prime Minister, Taro Aso, likely to provide Obama with an attractive partner: Aso has just put off already scheduled elections for the parliament's lower house -- where polls promised a devastating loss for the LDP.