Conflict Prevention

In 2004, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe made a case for Japan to restore its military capabilities, writing in his book, Determination to Protect This Country, that “if Japanese don’t shed blood, we cannot have an equal relationship with America.” Since then, Abe has sought to revive the country’s defensive capabilities, mostly toward fortifying its claim over the disputed Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands, an island chain in the East China Sea that Beijing says belongs to China. He has requested a record five trillion yen ($42 billion) defense budget for fiscal year 2016 (if approved, it will be Tokyo’s largest in 14 years) and reinterpreted the constitution to allow Japan to exercise the right of collective self-defense. The efforts have provoked growing alarm.

A June 2015 survey found that 57 percent of South Koreans believe that Japan is in a “militaristic state,” and 58 percent said that Tokyo poses a military threat. In comparison, only 38 percent surveyed thought that China was the bigger threat. China, too, is worried. It has repeatedly warned that Abe is leading the country “down a more dangerous path toward militarization.”

Whatever Abe’s intentions, however, Japanese militarism was buried for good in August 1945 and will not likely rise again. The reason: the Japanese people.

Defeat Suits 

After the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Emperor Showa, popularly known as Hirohito, gave a radio address explaining to his people that continuing the fight against the Allies would “result in an ultimate collapse and obliteration of the Japanese nation.”

And so Japan surrendered. Unlike the Germans, though, the Japanese people had no Adolf Hitler or Nazi Party to blame for a war that had killed at least 2.7 million Japanese servicemen and civilians and destroyed 66 major cities. Although the Japanese emperor had been accused of overseeing war crimes—mass rapes and killings in China and Southeast Asia—U.S. General Douglas MacArthur thought it politically expedient to keep him in power and successfully ran a campaign to exonerate Hirohito. The Japanese people came to regard Hirohito as innocent and subsequently turned against the military, accusing the services of deceiving them and drawing the country into a perilous war. Japanese police reports immediately after the surrender note the people’s “grave distrust, frustration, and antipathy toward military and civilian leaders” and general “hatred of the military.”

Civilian contempt for the military quickly spread to the rank and file of the 3.5 million-strong Imperial Japanese Army. And so, after the war, Japanese soldiers were both defeated and despised. In a letter from an anonymous former soldier dated May 9, 1946, “Not a single person gave me a kind word. Rather, they cast hostile glances my way.” Military uniforms were nicknamed “defeat suits,” and military boots were called “defeat shoes.”

Even one of the most reverent expressions of gratitude during the war years—“thanks to our fighting men” (heitaisan no okage desu)—turned into an expression of contempt. Thanks to our fighting men, lives and property had been destroyed. Thanks to our fighting men, Japan’s overall economic and political situation was absymal. As the historian John W. Dower outlines in Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II, no one listened to the returning soldiers who spoke out about the differences between the military leadership and common servicemen.

The Tokyo War Crimes Trials, which lasted from 1946 to 1948, revealed the extent of the atrocities committed by the Japanese military during World War II and also the extreme antipathy that the Japanese people felt for the military. For example, during the 1945 Battle of Manila, the Japanese military mutilated and massacred between 100,000 and 500,000 Filipino civilians. Shortly after the news reached Tokyo, a Japanese woman wrote a letter to the Japanese national paper Asahi Shimbunexpressing her revulsion. “Even if such an atrocious soldier were my son,” she wrote, “I could not accept him back home. Let him be shot to death there.” The poet Saeki Jinzaburo also penned a few lines expressing his disgust with the army after the war crimes revelations: “Seizing married women, raping mothers in front of their children—this is the Imperial Army.”

In 1947, a Japanese poetry magazine published the following verse after the end of the Tokyo tribunal: “The crimes of Japanese soldiers, who committed unspeakable atrocities in Nanking [China] and Manila, must be atoned for.” Former Prime Minister Hideki Tojo, an army general, was openly ridiculed for a botched suicide attempt in September 1945. One Japanese novelist and poet, Takami Yoshio (who went by the pen name Jun Takami), wrote at the time, “Cowardly living on, and then using a pistol like a foreigner, failing to die. Japanese cannot help but smile bitterly. . . . Why did General Tojo not use a Japanese sword as Army Minister Anami did?” These postwar sentiments against the military were so strong that even textbooks during that period systematically skipped over any references to past Japanese victories and military heroes. And they remain absent from schoolbooks to this day.

Ashes of Hiroshima

Distrust and ridicule of all things military did not abate in the postwar years. After the war, the Self-Defense Forces (SDF), Japan’s de facto postwar army created at the behest of the United States, were generally accepted. In the 1960s, though, new recruits were occasionally pelted with stones while walking down the street, and when they appeared in public spaces, people would get up and leave. Throughout the Cold War, Japan’s military was seen as serving no real purpose and offering little protection. Then, as now, the public felt that the U.S.-Japanese security treaty offered a better guarantee of security than the SDF. After all, since its founding, the SDF had neither achieved a single military victory nor ever engaged in combat operations.

Although the end of the Cold War brought a new raison d’être to the SDF—UN Peacekeeping operations—the Japanese still regard the force as useful primarily for disaster relief rather than defense. According to a 2015 public opinion poll conducted by Japan’s Cabinet Office, 82 percent of Japanese think that the SDF’s primary role is disaster relief, and 72.3 percent believe that this should remain its main duty in the future. Perhaps that is why, to this day, the SDF refers to its weapons as “equipment” and artillery brigades as “technical brigades” in order to downplay the military aspects of Japan’s armed forces. Tanks even used to be called “special vehicles,” although they are now referred to as tanks again.

In the same poll, 92 percent of those surveyed had a “positive impression” of the SDF, but a positive impression does not mean support or approval. According to Thomas Berger, a professor of international relations at Boston University, “Japan’s best and brightest do not flock to join the armed forces, and the SDF is hardly celebrated in Japanese society.” Indeed, according to the same 2015 public opinion poll, less than half of people questioned thought that being a soldier was a respectable occupation, and only 25.4 percent perceived the job to be a challenging one.

As Berger explained to me, “Internal [SDF] surveys showed that the majority joined the forces because they hoped for material betterment. It is a safe, reliable job, and the legal status is the same as being a post office clerk.”

The SDF also has the reputation of being a holding center for high school and college dropouts. It recruits heavily from Japan’s backwaters, such as southern Kyushu and northern Honshu—and especially from Akita prefecture and Hokaido, where young people face limited job prospects. Most of those enlisted belong to the lower and lower middle classes, although the officer corps is staffed primarily by those from the middle class. Once these young men and women have joined, they tend to serve until quiet retirement in their early 50s. “Japan doesn’t have the sort of ‘hero worship’ of military things that can boost the career of a retired officer,” according to Robert Dujarric, director of the Institute of Contemporary Asian Studies at Temple University in Japan.

That is why the Japanese have resisted Abe’s attempts to revive the military. In August 2015, in one of the largest demonstrations in Tokyo against Abe, tens of thousands hit the street. One protester told the Financial Times, “This is the last chance we have to preserve Japan’s worldwide reputation as a country of peace.” In reality, however, Japanese military radicalization could be triggered only by a fundamental change in the security architecture of East Asia, such as a unilateral U.S. withdrawal from Japan or a North Korean nuclear missile attack. Both are far-fetched scenarios. 

But given the current political climate, it was not surprising that an August 2015 public poll found only 11 percent of the Japanese were supportive of Abe’s policy to reinterpret the power that the constitution gives its military. His personal ratings have also slipped, with some analysts predicting his resignation.

The moral and military defeat of the Japanese army in World War II was so total that it echoes to this day. Despite Abe’s historical revisionism and fearmongering, the Japanese public appears unwilling to trust another military clique. That’s why, for all the talk of Japanese militarism, a relatively pacifist country is here to stay.

Mid-September marks the beginning of the diplomatic season, and this is an unusually active year. The EastWest Institute awaits the first events of the United Nations General Assembly—one of the wonderful advantages of living in New York. Russian President Putin will address the UNGA for the first time in a decade. Chinese President Xi will attend for the first time since he came to office, and in addition to his own UNGA address he will participate in a series of summits, from those on the environment to regional stability, during his time in New York—and he will have a summit with President Obama in Washington as well. Washington will also see its first visit from Pope Francis. All this against the backdrop of uncertainty about Russia and the west, the strength of the Chinese economy, the sustained challenge of the Islamic State, and the American electoral season.

EWI will take advantage of the diplomatic season by hosting Prime Minister Essid of Tunisia, the man whose administration is arguably the lone success story coming out of the Arab Spring of 2011. EWI will also meet with Foreign Minister Zarif of Iran at a time when the P5+1 nuclear deal appears to be on the verge of completion. Why these people, at this particular time?

It’s worth remembering what EWI does. EWI is not a traditional think tank that responds with studies or conferences to the key issues of the day. Rather, EWI prides itself on its network of contacts, friends and associates who assess global policy and anticipate the problems of the future. It does so in China, in Russia, in India; it does so regionally around the world.

In this case, in Tunisia, we see the opportunity to evaluate prospects for tackling future questions in the Maghreb and indeed, throughout the Islamic world. In Iran, we see not only the headlines—a nuclear deal that could end the decades-long isolation of Iran—but the long-term implications of what this new agreement could mean for Iran, for its neighbors, and for interested countries and players around the globe. 

Our regional office in Brussels is constructing projects that try to be unique in their focus and innovative in their content. How indeed shall we look at a post-nuclear-deal with Iran? What about some of the country’s unsettled but crucial questions, like the role of the Kurds in any vision of regional stability and peace? What about the internal dynamics of what is arguably the most important Arab country, Egypt, or the key bridge between Europe and the region, Turkey? EWI links its analysis and actions in bringing together actors to build bridges and find solutions to their problems with its outreach everywhere in the world. Right now, with the focus of global diplomacy in New York, the institute is uniquely situated to take advantage of opportunities to meet with those in power, introduce them to many outside of governments who nonetheless can be significant players in world affairs, and through this contact and knowledge find new and creative ways to prevent conflict. It may not always be the conflict about which you read today. But it will always try to anticipate the conflict that could come tomorrow, and in doing so, be among the first to steer leaders toward solutions that avoid the worst results of crisis and misunderstanding.

With our upcoming meetings in New York, with our investment in programs overseas, EWI will contribute to solutions—in these particular cases, in the Middle East and North Africa—which is just one of its areas of expertise and action.

Russia proposed more than three years ago that Syria’s president, Bashar al-Assad, could step down as part of a peace deal, according to a senior negotiator involved in back-channel discussions at the time.

Former Finnish president and Nobel peace prize laureate Martti Ahtisaari said western powers failed to seize on the proposal. Since it was made, in 2012, tens of thousands of people have been killed and millions uprooted, causing the world’s gravest refugee crisis since the second world war.

Ahtisaari held talks with envoys from the five permanent members of the UN security council in February 2012. He said that during those discussions, the Russian ambassador, Vitaly Churkin, laid out a three-point plan, which included a proposal for Assad to cede power at some point after peace talks had started between the regime and the opposition. 

But he said that the US, Britain and France were so convinced that the Syrian dictator was about to fall, they ignored the proposal.

“It was an opportunity lost in 2012,” Ahtisaari said in an interview. 

Officially, Russia has staunchly backed Assad through the four-and-half-year Syrian war, insisting that his removal cannot be part of any peace settlement. Assad has said that Russia will never abandon him. Moscow has recently begun sending troops, tanks and aircraft in an effort to stabilise the Assad regime and fight Islamic State extremists.

Ahtisaari won the Nobel prize in 2008 “for his efforts on several continents and over more than three decades, to resolve international conflicts”, including in Namibia, Aceh in Indonesia, Kosovo and Iraq. 

On 22 February 2012 he was sent to meet the missions of the permanent five nations (the US, Russia, UK, France and China) at UN headquarters in New York by The Elders, a group of former world leaders advocating peace and human rights that has included Nelson Mandela, Jimmy Carter, and former UN secretary general Kofi Annan.

“The most intriguing was the meeting I had with Vitaly Churkin because I know this guy,” Ahtisaari recalled. “We don’t necessarily agree on many issues but we can talk candidly. I explained what I was doing there and he said: ‘Martti, sit down and I’ll tell you what we should do.’

“He said three things: One – we should not give arms to the opposition. Two – we should get a dialogue going between the opposition and Assad straight away. Three – we should find an elegant way for Assad to step aside.”

Churkin declined to comment on what he said had been a “private conversation” with Ahtisaari. The Finnish former president, however, was adamant about the nature of the discussion.

“There was no question because I went back and asked him a second time,” he said, noting that Churkin had just returned from a trip to Moscow and there seemed little doubt he was raising the proposal on behalf of the Kremlin.

Ahtisaari said he passed on the message to the American, British and French missions at the UN, but he said: “Nothing happened because I think all these, and many others, were convinced that Assad would be thrown out of office in a few weeks so there was no need to do anything.”

While Ahtisaari was still in New York, Kofi Annan was made joint special envoy on Syria for the UN and the Arab League. Ahtisaari said: “Kofi was forced to take up the assignment as special representative. I say forced because I don’t think he was terribly keen. He saw very quickly that no one was supporting anything.”

In June 2012, Annan chaired international talks in Geneva, which agreed a peace plan by which a transitional government would be formed by “mutual consent” of the regime and opposition. However, it soon fell apart over differences on whether Assad should step down. Annan resigned as envoy a little more than a month later, and Assad’s personal fate has been the principal stumbling block to all peace initiatives since then. 

Last week, Britain’s foreign secretary, Philip Hammond, suggested that as part of a peace deal, Assad could remain in office during a six-month “transitional period” but the suggestion was quickly rejected by Damascus.

Western diplomats at the UN refused to speak on the record about Ahtisaari’s claim, but pointed out that after a year of the Syrian conflict, Assad’s forces had already carried out multiple massacres, and the main opposition groups refused to accept any proposal that left him in power. A few days after Ahtisaari’s visit to New York, Hillary Clinton, then US secretary of state, branded the Syrian leader a war criminal.

Sir John Jenkins – a former director of the Middle East department of the UK’s Foreign Office who was preparing to take up the post of ambassador to Saudi Arabia in the first half of 2012 – said that in his experience, Russia resisted any attempt to put Assad’s fate on the negotiating table “and I never saw a reference to any possible flexing of this position”.

Jenkins, now executive director of the Middle East branch of the International Institute for Strategic Studies, said in an email: “I think it is true that the general feeling was Assad wouldn’t be able to hold out. But I don’t see why that should have led to a decision to ignore an offer by the Russians to get him to go quickly, as long as that was a genuine offer.

“The weakest point is Ahtisaari’s claim that Churkin was speaking with Moscow’s authority. I think if he had told me what Churkin had said, I would have replied I wanted to hear it from [President Vladimir] Putin too before I could take it seriously. And even then I’d have wanted to be sure it wasn’t a Putin trick to draw us in to a process that ultimately preserved Assad’s state under a different leader but with the same outcome.”

A European diplomat based in the region in 2012 recalled: “At the time, the west was fixated on Assad leaving. As if that was the beginning and the end of the strategy and then all else would fall into place … Russia continuously maintained it wasn’t about Assad. But if our heart hung on it, they were willing to talk about Assad; mind: usually as part of an overall plan, process, at some point etc. Not here and now.”

However, the diplomat added: “I very much doubt the P3 [the US, UK and France] refused or dismissed any such strategy offer at the time. The questions were more to do with sequencing – the beginning or end of process – and with Russia’s ability to deliver – to get Assad to step down.”

At the time of Ahtisaari’s visit to New York, the death toll from the Syrian conflict was estimated to be about 7,500. The UN believes that toll passed 220,000 at the beginning of this year, and continues to climb. The chaos has led to the rise of Islamic State. Over 11 million Syrians have been forced out of their homes.

“We should have prevented this from happening because this is a self-made disaster, this flow of refugees to our countries in Europe,” Ahtisaari said. “I don’t see any other option but to take good care of these poor people … We are paying the bills we have caused ourselves.”

To read the article at The Guardian, click here

President Cameron Munter spoke at "Passion for Pakistan," the inaugural business breakfast meeting held in Karachi, Pakistan, on August 30. Munter discussed "One Belt, One Road" project and said that the honest implementation of the project is as much a challenge as it is an opportunity for Pakistan to revamp its damaged image. While acknowledging the absence of linkages between the government and civil society, Munter said that there is an enormous untapped potential in Pakistan. Munter also expressed optimism about normalizing relations between Pakistan and India. He added that lots of opportunities have been created in trade relations for both countries. 

To read full story in the Business Recorder, click here. 

Chertoff discussed current challenges such as the crisis in Ukraine and the Islamic State, as well as the international response to these issues. 

To listen to the interview on Radio Poland, click here

President Cameron Munter spoke at “one belt one road,” a seminar held in Karachi, Pakistan, on August 30, where he discussed the potentially prosperous future for Pakistan despite the hesitancy of some of the country’s politicians and business leaders. Munter also talked about the importance of the China-Pakistan corridor and stressed the need for resolving the conflict between Pakistan and Afghanistan. While acknowledging Pakistan’s concerns regarding India as “understandable,” Munter said that the problem can only be solved by joint efforts.

To read full story in The Express Tribune, click here.

To read full story in The News International, click here.

In an op-ed, Austin writes that "US perceptions about China in cyberspace hinge on a few mistaken beliefs. They include the notion that there are unambiguous norms in cyberspace that China is flagrantly violating; a failure to appreciate China's deep insecurity in cyberspace; a lack of knowledge of America's extensive cyberspionage and cyber military operations against China; and an inflation of the threat from China's theft of intellectual property."

To read this article, click on one of the links below:

The Boston Globe

The Diplomat

The Globalist

China Daily

The Jakarta Post

Business Report

Handelsblatt (German)

Despite China’s protestations against discussing the issue, the South China Sea was front and center at this month’s meetings between the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and other regional players in Kuala Lumpur. Amid criticisms of China’s island-reclamation activities, the U.S. and China continued to trade accusations that the other is militarizing the South China Sea. Meanwhile, China maintained its objection, to no avail, to internationalizing the South China Sea issue through the involvement of non-ASEAN members.

The ship has sailed on both fronts. Now, more than ever, the South China Sea has become both a military and international issue. Given how all parties appear to have dug deeper into their positions, the situation looks unlikely to change anytime soon.

While Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi told his ASEAN counterparts that China has halted its reclamation of artificial islands on atolls and reefs in disputed parts of the Spratly Islands, it is proceeding with the construction of military installations on some of those islands.

Alarmed by the unprecedented scale on which China has conducted its reclamation activities (and is seeking to project force from these reclaimed features), the U.S., the Philippines, Vietnam, Indonesia and others have engaged in a flurry of maritime patrols and joint exercises. The Chinese navy itself recently conducted large-scale air and sea drills, although it states that those were routine drills planned far in advance and not aimed at any third parties.

Southeast Asian countries are also building up their maritime military capabilities as part of a broader trend of increased defense spending in the region. According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, defense expenditures in Southeast Asia rose by 45%, in real terms, between 2005 and 2014, reaching $35.9 billion in 2014. Vietnam, whose territorial claims overlap the most with China among all Southeast Asian claimants, increased its defense spending by 128% during this period and by 9.6% in 2014 alone.

Efforts to manage and contain tensions in the South China Sea are also now involving players beyond the territorial claimants—China, Taiwan, Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia and Brunei—and, for that matter, ASEAN, which is still negotiating a code of conduct with China.

The U.S. involved itself several years ago, when then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said at an ASEAN Regional Forum meeting in Hanoi in July 2010 that the United States has a “national interest” in freedom of navigation and would be willing to facilitate multilateral talks on the South China Sea issue.

Japan, which is involved in a territorial dispute with China in the East China Sea, has lent its political support to Vietnam and the Philippines, has proposed to participate in surveillance patrols in the area, has provided a patrol vessel to Vietnam and may do likewise to the Philippines—actions that could threaten Japan’s tenuous rapprochement with China. Australia, India and most recently, Britain, have also voiced concerns about the situation in the South China Sea.

Given the $5 trillion in global trade that passes through the South China Sea, the international attention is unsurprising, especially if the ability to navigate vital shipping routes could be compromised. However, the varying definitions of “freedom of navigation,” particularly as it relates to permitted (especially military) activities in exclusive economic zones (EEZs), have been an ongoing source of contention, prompting China to articulate its position on the limits to freedom of navigation following the ASEAN meetings.

Between the U.S. and China, such differences have already given rise to several dangerous incidents at sea and in the air over the years. These include the deadly collision between a U.S. navy EP-3 surveillance plane and a Chinese J-8 fighter jet in 2001, the 2009 harassment of the USNS Impeccable by Chinese vessels, and more recently, the buzzing of a U.S. navy P-8 plane by a Chinese J-11 fighter jet in 2014. (All these episodes occurred off the coast of Hainan.)

Even as external parties have become more vocal about their concerns, they have made it a point to distinguish between taking an interest in managing the situation and choosing sides on the territorial claims themselves. U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Daniel Russel drew that distinction when he remarked that the U.S. remains neutral about the merits of the sovereignty claims but is “not neutral” when it comes to the resolution of disputes in accordance with international law. Yet he has also shown how delicate that balance is, having previously publicly questioned the legal validity of the nine-dashed line, which forms the basis of China’s territorial claims.

A greater source of potential conflict is what now appears to be an increasing propensity of all parties to turn to military deterrence to defend their interests in the South China Sea. This trend will be difficult to reverse as long as each side perceives others to be raising the stakes—which makes the implementation of maritime confidence-building measures (CBMs) all the more important at this juncture.

The most significant CBM would be a binding code of conduct between ASEAN and China, negotiations on which are proceeding slowly. On the more immediate front, China and ASEAN are reportedly in discussions to establish a hotline to deal with emergencies in the South China Sea. The United States and China are making good on their November 2014 agreements on two sets of military confidence-building measures, regarding the notification of major military activities and rules of behavior for air and maritime encounters. As part of this process, both governments are aiming to agree on an annex on air-to-air encounters by September 2015, to complement the rules on at-sea encounters that have already been agreed upon.

More broadly in the region, the U.S., Chinese and other navies have begun practicing the Code for Unplanned Encounters at Sea during joint exercises or routine maritime operations.

But CBMs alone are not sufficient if the default position is still to undertake risky behavior. Such risky behavior could be in the form of reckless or aggressive actions by vessel crew that lead to inadvertent conflict. Tensions could also escalate when parties act on threat assessments based on suspicion or a lack of clarity regarding the other’s strategic intentions.

In short, CBMs that seek to avoid or mitigate the risk of maritime clashes need to be accompanied by efforts to facilitate an environment that constrains the tendency for conflict. Such efforts could include: toning down inflammatory rhetoric and breaking the vicious cycle of alternately ratcheting such rhetoric up and down; encouraging constructive behavior, or at least discouraging (or refraining from) provocative behavior (the latter is formalized in the ASEAN-China Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea); and maintaining open channels of communication through which all sides are willing to explain their respective positions on the issues and talk to, not past, one another.

As the meetings in Malaysia showed, those are tougher to materialize: Harsh rhetoric abounded, and the countries could not agree on the halting of provocative actions. Yet, an alternative would be a much more dangerous scenario that would allow such differences to play out in a game of military “chicken” in and above increasingly crowded waters.

To read this piece on The Diplomat, click here.