Lessons from Okinawa for nuclear disarmament activists
I have written several articles about the
naivete and misdirection of some nuclear disarmament campaigners, and what
follows here is another attempt to illustrate this point with reference to the
recent history of Okinawa and Japan which shows what actually happens to
a nation when it tries to make one small, idealistic step toward de-nuclearization,
in this case by first trying to reduce the harm done by conventional military
forces.
In July 2017, ICAN (International Campaign
to Abolish Nuclear Weapons) worked with the United Nations and passed the
Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. 135 countries initially supported
the treaty, but so far only 60 have signed it and 14 have ratified it. In order
for the nuclear ban to become international law, 50 countries need to ratify
the treaty. None of the nuclear powers have supported the treaty, and NATO and
East Asian vassals like Japan and South Korea (usually referred to as
“allies”), and other nations enmeshed in American relations (including even the
nuclear-bombed Marshall Islands) have gone along with the nuclear powers,
saying that the treaty is not practical because no nuclear armed nations are
supporting it. The ICAN representative for Japan, Akira Kawasaki, says “Japan
should take the lead in advancing this humanitarian discourse.” By not signing
the treaty, he adds that the government is “undermining the credibility of
Japan as a nation.”[1]
Mr. Kawasaki may be right in this
assessment, but I believe that he and others who expect Japan to change its
policy are being extremely naïve about the level of support Japanese citizens
and institutions (media, academia, political parties, bureaucracies) would
demonstrate in any resistance to American hegemony, which in this case involves
protection under the American nuclear umbrella. In fact, Japan has already been
through such a test in its recent history, but disarmament activists seem unaware
of it. I am referring to what might be called the other half of the olive branch
on the UN flag—the struggle to reduce and eliminate conventional, non-nuclear
armaments. In Japan, this struggle has been fought by the Okinawan people who have
resisted both Japanese and American destruction of their homeland.
In particular, important lessons for
disarmament activists can be drawn from the brief reign of Minshuto (Democratic Party of Japan) between 2009 and 2012.
Although it achieved some modest domestic reforms in education, labor law, and
family support payments, its boldest proposal was a dismal failure precisely
because it aimed to get Japan out of its client state relationship with the
United States. Minshuto was elected
on a policy platform of reducing support for American military operations
overseas, closing US bases in Japan (especially in Okinawa), and forming closer
ties with East Asia. The leader of the party, Yukio Hatoyama, won a stunning majority
in 2009 that, for a while, seemed to put a definitive end to the long rule of Jiminto (Liberal Democratic Party). However, it turned out that this was
only a brief attempt at revolutionary change in US-Japan relations. The
counter-revolution came swiftly, as Hatoyama was thwarted by Japanese mass
media, Japanese bureaucracy, and American officials all the way up to the new
hope-and-change president who had come to power in the same year as Hatoyama.
The process actually started before 2009
when Ichiro Ozawa, general secretary of Minshuto,
had already displeased Japanese bureaucrats and American officials with his
talk of closer ties with China and downsizing of the American military
presence. He was pushed out through the common trick of exposing improprieties
involving staff misuse of funds—the sort of minor infringement that almost every
politician commits. After Ozawa
resigned, Hatoyama led the party and became prime minister. The sorry tale of
his rise and quick fall from power is described in detail by Gavan McCormack
and Satoko Oka Norimatsu in chapter six of their book Okinawa Resistant Islands, which I use for the basis of the
following summary.[2]
In the chapter entitled The Hatoyama Revolt, the authors note
how Hatoyama’s discourse struck Americans as alarming and bizarre and set off a
furious counter-revolt. In conservative Japan, he used the word “revolution” in
a positive sense, calling for Japan to turn away from a unipolar world order
and to have an equal relationship with the United States. The Japanese
government was locked into a deal made by the previous government called the
Guam International Agreement which called for the closure of one troublesome
and dangerous base on Okinawa (Futenma) to be replaced with a new base located
elsewhere in Okinawa, in Henoko. Hatoyama wanted to scrap the plan to build
Henoko and instead have an overall reduction of forces in Okinawa. This policy
was immensely popular in Okinawa and it did much to strengthen the anti-base
movement there, especially when Hatoyama was later unable to deliver on his
promise.
The stonewalling of Hatoyama began
immediately. President Obama refused to meet with him. McCormack and Norimatsu
cite numerous American and Japanese officials’ insults and dismissals of
Hatoyama and his policies. One American official said he could not “continue
slapping around the United States” or to “play with firecrackers.” Another said
Hatoyama was “speaking another language” with his “shocking platform.” Foreign
minister Katsuya Okada had started off saying, “If Japan just follows what the
US says, then I think as a sovereign nation that is very pathetic,” and “I
don’t think we will act simply by accepting what the U.S. tells us,” but soon
he was saying there was no alternative to relocating Futenma within Okinawa. In
this fashion, Hatoyama’s own cabinet, politicians in all parties, the mass
media, Japanese bureaucrats and US officials all worked against the major
policy for which Minshuto had been
elected. He was portrayed as a buffoon, a dreamer and a political amateur. Talk
became condescending, with Americans adopting the attitude of a parent dealing
with a wayward child. American ambassador Roos suggested to the vice foreign
minister that “it would be beneficial for the US to go through the basic
fundamentals of security issues with the Prime Minister,” that is, as McCormack
and Norimatsu described it, “explain to him the (political) facts of life.”
While the Japanese media helped destroy the
government’s credibility, only the news media in Okinawa noted the lack of
democracy, the betrayal, and the pathetic subservience of the Japanese
political and bureaucratic establishment. Okinawan resistance solidified, but
it would soon turn against Hatoyama himself as he caved to the pressure. With
no support from the media or public opinion, there was nothing he could do. Within
nine months his public support went from 73% to 19%. He agreed to pursue the
construction of Henoko, but for several months he kept up a façade that claimed
other solutions were being considered. Meanwhile, the insults against Hatoyama
continued. Richard Lawless, deputy undersecretary of defense for Asian and
Pacific security affairs under George W. Bush (2002–2007), said to the Asahi Shimbun that the Japanese
government was mired in “mindless revenge” toward the previous administration.
Again as if condescending to a child, he added, “… it almost seems we have a
group of boys and girls playing with a box of matches as they sit in a room of
dynamite.” There was no public outrage over these comments. Later, the Washington Post described Hatoyama as
“the biggest loser [among world leaders] . . . , hapless, . . . increasingly
loopy.”
At one point Hatoyama declared that he had
come to understand the importance of the American military in Okinawa for
deterrence purposes, but later he admitted that this was not something he
believed personally. It was just something his advisors had suggested in order
to explain his reversal. Referring to Wikileaks revelations about the US-Japan
relationship at this time, the Ryukyu
Shimpo in Okinawa summed up the sorry tale:
Although
Japan was supposedly a democratic country, its officials, bowing and scraping
before a foreign country and making no effort to carry out the will of the
people, lacked any qualification for diplomatic negotiation… [Japan would] go down in history as in
practice America’s client state.
For most of the public, the Hatoyama period
was just the usual politics that breeds so much apathy and cynicism among
voters, but for Tokyo University political scientist Hajime Shinohara this was
a pivotal event in modern Japanese history. It was a surrender of sovereignty that
he described as “Japan’s second defeat” after 1945.
Hatoyama resigned in June 2010, citing as
the main reason his inability to deliver on the campaign promise to reduce the
US military presence in Okinawa. Naoto Kan became the new party leader and
prime minister. It was his fate to be in charge of the country during the
earthquake-tsunami-nuclear meltdown catastrophe that struck northeast Japan in March
2011. It was perhaps his understanding of both nuclear physics and Japanese
bureaucracy that saved Japan from a complete meltdown of the spent fuel storage
pool in Unit 4 of Fukushima Daiichi, but an ungrateful media and the
bureaucracy chose to treat him as they had treated Hatoyama. The anger he directed
at TEPCO, government ministries and nuclear regulators was decried as
meddlesome and irrational. Few asked what would have happened without the angry
outburst that prodded TEPCO officials to take action in those critical days in
mid-March.
Kan shut down all nuclear power in the
country, pending safety inspections, and floated the idea of a complete exit
from nuclear energy, but US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and other
American officials jumped in to make sure that this would not happen. The
future viability of the US nuclear arsenal depended on the nuclear power
industry, and the US nuclear power industry depended on exports, a viable
nuclear industry in Japan and the ongoing maintenance of its plutonium
stockpiles.[3]
By the summer of 2011, Kan faced a leadership
challenge and was replaced by Yoshihiko Noda. In Noda’s brief time as prime
minister he made vague policy proposals about a reduction in reliance on
nuclear energy, but these were not concrete promises. In December of 2012, Shinzo
Abe, of the traditional ruling party, Jiminto,
was elected prime minister with a majority in the legislature. Full support of
the bureaucracy and the American government returned immediately. During his
official visit to Washington he spoke at the Centre for Strategic and International
Studies declaring that “Japan was back” and that he had saved it from becoming
a “second-tier nation.”[4]
Abe’s simple three-word slogan revealed an implicit belief similar to “l’etat, c’est moi,” which in this case
meant “l’etat, c’est le parti Jiminto.”
Japan had been absent for three years during a strange interlude, ruled by a
strange mob of children, but now it was back from somewhere, apparently.
None of the above is meant to suggest that
foreign policy and the nuclear crisis were the only factors that caused the
collapse of the Minshuto government.
There was a wide range of economic and financial problems, policy disputes over
sales tax and social spending programs, and factional fights and realignments
with small parties. However, it is remarkable how much these issues were
focused on while the public remained largely unaware of the extent to which the
US was interfering in Japan’s domestic politics. The US-Japan relationship may
have been invisible to most people simply because it is so important. It is the
water everyone swims in, so one hardly needs to be conscious of the fact that
Japan lacks true sovereignty and is still under foreign occupation.
It should be clear that there is a lesson
for nuclear disarmament activists in the story of Okinawa’s struggle to rid
itself of military installations and foreign domination. The nuclear energy
crisis also highlights the critical links between Japan’s plutonium stockpiles
and the global nuclear weapons industry. If the closing of one military base and
a few nuclear power plants was met with such opposition in Japan and the United
States, it is almost inconceivable that Japan would ever try to leave the
American nuclear umbrella, but there are two scenarios in which it might.
In one scenario, the political
establishment and much public opinion would be in favor of building a Japanese
nuclear arsenal, which Japan could do in a short time.[5]
In the second scenario, there could be massive public support for ending the
client state relationship with the United States and pursuing Hatoyama’s vision
of a non-aligned, neutral and peaceful country in a multi-polar world, which
would include ratifying the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. But
the experience of the Minshuto years (2009-2012)
illustrated that although a portion of the public once elected a party that had
a “peace” platform, the public wasn’t willing to fight or sacrifice for it. Everyone—voters,
bureaucrats, politicians, intellectuals, journalists—offered no resistance to the pressure.
Ms. Norimatsu once described the encounters
she has had in speaking throughout Japan about Okinawa. She has met somewhat
sympathetic people who hesitate to support the cause because they say, “If some
of those bases in Okinawa were moved to other parts of Japan, then those
soldiers would be raping women here.” Such comments illustrate the lack of
understanding and solidarity that public opinion is based on. Okinawa, previously
known as the Ryukyu Kingdom, was annexed and colonized in the 1879-1940 period,
then it was militarized and sacrificed in the Battle on Okinawa in 1945.
Subsequently, it became a US military-governed territory, lacking any form of
democratic government until its reversion to Japan in 1972. Public opinion in
mainland Japan has still not rallied in support of Okinawa. People on the main
Japanese islands do not want to share equally in the burden of the US military
presence, nor do they want the obvious alternative of eliminating this foreign
interference in their sovereignty. This is a failure which implies that Okinawa
is still expected to make sacrifices for the foreign nation that annexed the
Ryukyu Kingdom in 1879.
In a similar way, it seems many nuclear
disarmament activists ignore urgent problems by paying little attention to issues
outside their area of concern, and this leads to a naïve or oblivious attitude
toward the obstacles that really stand in the way of nuclear disarmament. It
would be better to think strategically about how to get to the goal, and the
obvious place to start is with the US government that started the nuclear age
and proudly claims the right to be a global hegemon.[6]
The US also ignores international law at its convenience, so even if the
nuclear ban treaty became international law, it would make little difference. It
is worth considering too that the detonation of a nuclear bomb, whether for
testing or for use in conflict, can already be construed as a violation of
international law and human rights guaranteed by the United Nations Charter,
but this fact has never caused a nuclear-armed nation to destroy its nuclear
arsenal.
The place to start is with the
demilitarization of Okinawa, and hundreds of places like it around the globe. These
should be the first priority in creating the conditions of global security that
will allow for de-nuclearization to become a reality. The same could be said about this also being a first step in decreasing the massive carbon footprint of the US military. This struggle will not
win a Nobel Peace Prize for anyone, but it is the immediate, necessary step. Nuclear
disarmament is a palatable, lofty and distant goal that everyone can applaud.
No one is bothered by ICAN being awarded a Nobel Peace Prize. Such is not the
case for the people who have stood in the way of bulldozers at the Henoko
construction site in recent years.[7]
Notes
[1]
Patrick Parr, “ICAN
champions grass-roots efforts to persuade Japan and others to support a
nuclear-free world,” The Japan
Times, August 6, 2018.
[2]
Gavan McCormack and Satoko Oka Norimatsu, Okinawa
Resistant Islands: Okinawa Confronts Japan and the United States, Second Edition (Rowman
and Littlefield, 2018)113-136. Sources are not given for the quotations that
follow in the summary of this chapter. The sources can be found in chapter six
of this book, pages 113-136. For an online summary of this subject, see also:
Gavan McCormack, “Japan’s Problematic
Prefecture—Okinawa and the US-Japan Relationship,” Asia Pacific Journal, September 1, 2016.
[3]
Tom Henry, “Government,
military officials in favor of Trump's nuclear bailout plan,” Toledo Blade, July 1, 2018. “A broad
coalition of 75 industry, government, and military dignitaries—a quarter of
whom are retired admirals or vice admirals—has come out in support of President
Trump’s plan to bail out the nation’s struggling nuclear plants, agreeing that
more premature closures pose a national
security threat.” (Emphasis added)
[5]
Robert E. McCoy, “CouldTokyo ever go critical and make nuclear weapons?” Asia Times, August 6, 2018. “Japan has
had an actual nuclear weapons policy since 1969—although that had been secret
until 1994 when it was leaked. The leaked document states in part that ‘for the
time being we will maintain the policy of not possessing nuclear weapons,’ but ‘keep
the economic and technical potential for the production of nuclear weapons,
while seeing to it that Japan will not be interfered with in this regard.’”
[6]
Sergei Latyshev, “The
US State Department Openly Outlined Its Plans to Guarantee America’s Global
Primacy,” Organizing Notes,
September 3, 2018.
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