NEW YORK – One way to look at the growing
military tensions over a few tiny islands in the East China Sea is to see in
recent events a straightforward case of power politics. China is rising, Japan
is in the economic doldrums, and the Korean peninsula remains divided. It is
only natural that China would try to reassert its historical dominance over the
region. And it is just as natural for Japan to feel nervous about the prospect
of becoming a kind of vassal state (the Koreans are more accustomed to this
role, vis-à-vis China).
Being subservient to American power, as Japan
has been since 1945, was the inevitable consequence of a catastrophic war. Most
Japanese can live with that. But submission to China would be intolerable.
And yet, because East Asian politics remains
highly dynastic, a biographical explanation might be just as useful. Shinzo
Abe, the Japanese prime minister, is the grandson of Nobusuke Kishi, once the
top industrial bureaucrat of wartime Japan. Imprisoned by the Americans as a
war criminal in 1945, Kishi was released without trial at the beginning of the
Cold War, and was elected Prime Minister as a conservative in 1957.
Kishi was a nationalist with fascist
tendencies during the 1930’s and 1940’s. After the war, an equally deep
aversion to Communism made him a staunch ally of the United States; Richard
Nixon became a close friend. His lifelong quest was to revise the pacifist
Japanese constitution, written by the Americans just after the war, and turn
Japan into a proud military power once more.
Abe’s greatest wish is to complete the
project that eluded his grandfather: abandon constitutional pacifism and bury
the war crimes of Kishi’s generation, while remaining allied with the US
against China. As a right-wing nationalist, Abe feels compelled to resist the
dominance of China, if only rhetorically for the time being.
One of Kishi’s greatest Cold War allies –
apart from Nixon – was the South Korean strongman President Park Chung-hee, who
came to power in a military coup a year after Kishi resigned as prime minister.
Park, too, had a dubious wartime career. Under the Japanese name of Takagi
Masao, he served as an officer in the Japanese Imperial Army. He graduated from
a military academy in Manchuria, where Kishi had once ruled over an industrial
empire that was built on Chinese slave labor.
Like Kishi, Park was a nationalist. But,
apart from his sentimental wartime connections to Japan, his anti-Communism was
incentive enough to continue warm relations with the imperial power that had
brutally colonized Korea for a half-century. Park Geun-hye, South Korea’s
current president, is his daughter.
Park Geun-hye adored her father at least as
much as Abe loved his grandfather, but the result of her dynastic connection is
the opposite of Abe’s. To be seen as a Korean nationalist today, she must
distance herself from some of her father’s political ties, especially his links
with Japan. Though still admired by many South Koreans for rebuilding the
country from the ruins of war, his legacy, like that of many members of the old
conservative elite, is tainted by wartime collaboration. So his daughter must
confront Japan over territorial disputes, to avoid inheriting the stigma of her
father’s colonial past.
The case of the current Chinese leader, Xi
Jinping, is perhaps the most complicated of the three. His father, Xi Zhongxun,
was one of the top leaders of the Communist revolution. A guerilla leader in
the war against Japan, he helped to defeat Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalists in
China’s civil war, became a member of the Central Committee, and then chief of
propaganda, Vice Premier, and Governor of Guangdong.
An impeccable Communist career, one might
think, giving his son no need to distance himself or to complete a frustrated
ambition. But Xi’s nationalism, too, has a history.
Chairman Mao’s main aim was to consolidate
his revolution at home. His nationalist credentials were so impressive that he
could afford to be relatively easy on former enemies. Territorial disputes over
unimportant islands could be laid to rest. He did not even bother to reclaim
Hong Kong from the British.
It was only when Deng Xiaoping opened the
door to trade with capitalist countries that anti-Japanese sentiments were
deliberately stirred up. Neither Marxism nor Maoism could be used to justify
China’s joining the capitalist world. This left an ideological vacuum, which
old-fashioned nationalism soon filled. The more the leadership opened up the
Chinese economy, the more it stoked popular anger over past wrongs, especially
those committed by Japan.
The man who was most responsible for Deng’s
Open Door policies was none other than Xi’s father, Xi Zhongxun. Always a
pragmatic Communist, the elder Xi had been the target of several purges under
Mao, when relative moderates were frequently denounced as
counterrevolutionaries. His son appears to follow in this pragmatic tradition,
open to business with the world. That is why he, too, like Deng’s reformers,
must burnish his nationalist credentials by standing up to Japan and asserting
Chinese dominance in East Asia.
None of these leaders – Xi, Abe, or Park –
wants a real war. Much of their posturing is for domestic consumption. One
reason why they can engage in this dangerous brinkmanship is the continuing
presence of the US as the regional policeman. America’s armed forces are the
buffer between the two Koreas, and between China and Japan.
The US presence allows East Asia’s rival
powers to act irresponsibly. The only thing that might change their behavior
would be US withdrawal of its military force. In that case, the three countries
would have to come to terms with one another by themselves.
But that is still regarded by the Americans,
Japanese, Koreans, and probably even the Chinese as too much of a risk. As a
result, the status quo is likely to persist, which means that
nationalist grandstanding over conflicting territorial claims is far from over.
Ian Buruma is Professor of Democracy, Human Rights, and Journalism at Bard College. He is the author of numerous books, including Murder in Amsterdam: The Death of Theo Van Gogh and the Limits of Tolerance and Taming the Gods: Religion and Democracy on Three Continents.
