Six-party talks were Japan’s idea, says former Assistant Secretary of State James A. Kelly

From Asahi:

Former Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs for the US Dept. of State James A. Kelly, who acted as head representative of the US for the 6-Party talks dealing with the North Korean nuclear issue, revealed that the creation of the 6-Party Talks was Japan’s idea. When then-Secretary of State Colin Powell visited Japan, China, and Korea in 2003, the Japanese government presented the structure of the talks to him. He then proceeded to China, where he persuaded then-Premier Jiang Zemin to go along, succeeding in forcing North Korea, who had wanted a bilateral solution between NK and the US, to deal with the issue multilaterally.

According to an interview with Kelly from his residence in Hawaii, in 2003, the year in which North Korea worsened the nuclear problem by restarting the nuclear facility at Yong Byong, the US was considering multilateral talks that included the 5 permanent members of the UN Security Council, Japan, South Korea, the EU, Australia and others using multiple combinations.

The Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) presented the idea of either 5-party talks including North and South Korea as well as the US, Japan, and China, or 6-party talks including Russia as well, when Powell visited Japan, South Korea, and China on the event of South Korean President Roh Mu Hyun’s inauguration in February of the same year. The proposal was based on the frustrating experience of being left out of the “4-party talks” between the US, China, and North and South Korea.

“Powell presented the idea as coming from the US, since he thought it would be easier for the Chinese to agree than if he said it was Japan’s idea,” Kelly explained. China was initially hesitant, saying, “The nuclear problem is between the US and North Korea,” but America was insistent. After a three-party talk in April, the first six-party talks started in Beijing in August 2003.

Kelly said, “The six-party talks are the best framework to induce North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons. North Korea isn’t responding because it doesn’t like to feel ganged up on 5 to 1.” Expressing his desire to see the talks reopened, Kelly added, “The six-party talks aren’t dead.”

This one is for Curzon

Maybe my posts suck because I’m too close to the center to say anything controversial. I’ll be the first to admit that I don’t get a lot of comments on what I blog. And I know the reason. It’s just that I just can’t change my personality or the fact that maybe I’m not cut out for this.

But even I know Panglossian rubbish when I see it.

I found a link to this via my daily check of NewsonJapan.com. The story, “US Asks Japan For Half A Billion Dollars For Missile Defense,” originally appeared in the Daily Yomiuri, and was later posted on this site.

Let’s have a look at some of the comments in response to this article:

While the real problems on Earth like poverty remain unresolved.

Great, why don’t you fire up another doobie, and maybe things will all work out in the end. Of course poverty remains a problem! But don’t you see that the world isn’t that simple a place? It’s terrible that problems like poverty remain unsolved, but bemoaning TMD ain’t going to make things any better. Do you honestly think that the sole reason poverty continues is because no one in the system cares about them?

The US has formed alliances with a corrupt Japanese administration in order to counter their paranoia with regard to China since ww2

Sure, that was a huge mistake we made to ally ourselves with the LDP rather than the socialists and communists back in the early 1950s. Maybe if we had only changed our minds Japan could be like North Korea is today, where paranoia towards China is the last thing on anyone’s mind.

The US’ strong reaction to the European near-decision last March to lift their arms embargo against China shows how little the US wants its military position undermined. An armed to the teeth China might lead to a situation it no doubt considers among the worst of worse case scenarios in any future Far East developments.

You’re damned right the US reacted strongly. And why do you think that’s the case? Why is it that you seem to have no problem with arming China, or with Europe’s arms peddling, but cannot stomach the thought of a defensive missile system (yeah, that’s what the D stands for) for Japan and the United States?

The US is relentless however in working on Japan for it to become its Britain of the Far East with their joint research on the theater missile defense (TMD) system. This is intended to be in a developmental stage next year. The TMD is to target North Korea’s Nodong and Daepodong missiles and will also have a capability of reaching China’s Dong Feng nuclear base.

Say what you will about TMD, but trust me, “Nodong” and “Deapodong” aren’t Korean for “love thy neighbor” and “come here and give me a hug you big galoot!”

And what do you think a Dong Feng is? Have a look at this.
The I in ICBM stands for “Intercontinental.” As in, from one continent to another. As in, they can _attack_ other countries. But that’s okay, because they’re not the hegemon, right? They just need them to protect themselves from the US. Maybe so, but does that make the US any worse? Balderdash. Maybe if you actually read the pages of your history book rather than roll joints from them, you’d agree with me.

You know, now that I think about it, I’ll bet the Chinese could have fed, clothed, and housed a lot of people for the cost of those. Maybe if we set an example, they’d follow suit. Whadda ya think?

US hegemony continues -but does it make the world a safer place?

Safer than what? Sure the U.S. makes mistakes. Sure the U.S. pursues misguided policies. But what makes you think that any other hegemon would act differently? No, what makes you think they would act any better?

Don’t get me wrong. I normally don’t like to ruffle feathers. But the point of this is not to argue in defense of TMD, or US foreign policy, or anything else. And anyone who has a problem with the strength or character of my argument — which admittedly is not based on fact and is somewhat polemical — might want to reread those arguments against which it is directed.

It’s fine to criticize the United States and fine to criticize U.S. policy. I won’t call you anti-patriotic for that. But for the love of Zeus please consider the other side of things before doing it!

Failing that, just stay out of the fray and keep your mouth shut. In spite of however well meaning you are, or how correct the underlying direction of your argument is, you are making it really difficult for those of us here in reality to defend our own sensible arguments from the far right.

UPDATE:

More insanity…

What would it cost Japan if the US decided to pack up and go home?

Having lived in Japan for 12 years (including time in the Army), let me say 90% of the Japanese would love to see the US PACK UP AND GO HOME. They don’t want our bases there. They don’t want our GIs running around raping. They don’t want our arrogance.

The real reason we are still there is that Japan’s Prime Minister is just as big a dumbfuck as our President.If the people voted on it tomorrow, our ass would be out the door.

It isn’t a question of whether they want our bases there or not. It’s a question of what they will do if we leave. They may not like US bases in Japan, but something tells me they will like the alternative of having to pay for their own military expenditures as well as remilitarization even less. Not to mention the fact that they are then going to have to deal with an even more wary China and South Korea. And at some point they would have to face the question of nukes…

If the people cared about this issue as much as you say, and actually did vote (on anything), the LDP would have been out the door a long time ago. So I’m not really buying that.

Japan’s whaling diplomacy: Connections to ODA

Whaling is in the news again, thanks to the annual IWC meeting in Ulsan, South Korea. Some interesting articles have come out of the hype:

  • Washington Post describes Japan’s efforts to rebuild domestic demand for whale meat.
  • BBC covers the situation pretty well.
  • Japan is accused of applying pressure on countries to support its seemingly arbitrary pro-whaling policy. I mean, no one in Japan CARES about eating whale except people who miss seeing it in school lunches, it just seems like the bozos in government who are really interested in making people into it. Curzon thinks it’s a good source of meat. I agree, with some reservations.

    Anyway, people say that Japan’s tactics in the IWC meetings is “sleazy” at best, “illegal” or at least “in violation of the spirit of ODA” at worst. Sure, asking for a secret vote EVERY YEAR might get a little tiring, and the several astroturf organizations created and soulless PR gurus employed to show support for whaling get shriller and more transparent all the time. But what I’m interested in is perhaps the most serious allegation: that Japan uses its ODA to pressure countries to support whaling.

    My original idea for this post was to analyze the data myself, comparing aid that IWC members get from Japan and their voting patterns. Thankfully, however, Wikipedia has done my work for me already:

    Allegations of “vote-buying”

    Each year the IWC meets to discuss arising from the convention. Member countries may propose a resolution for the Commission to adopt. It is usual for Japan to propose a motion to allow it a commercial hunt in the Pacific Ocean. Over the moratorium years the balance of support on this issue has changed from a majority in favour of keeping the ban to a 50-50 split. IWC rules say that such a change could only be brought about with a 75% majority in favour.

    Campaign groups and some governments claim that the Japanese Fisheries Agency has carried out a programme of “vote-buying” – i.e. offering aid to poorer countries in return for them joining the IWC and supporting Japanese positions on whaling.

    Specifically, Japan has given $320m in overseas aid to Antigua and Barbuda, Dominica, Grenada, Guinea, Morocco, Panama, St. Lucia, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, St Kitts and Nevis and the Solomon Islands. Each of these countries has also sided with Japan in each IWC vote since 2001. Greenpeace says that the two events are correlated.

    When these allegations were aired at the London IWC meeting in 2001 by New Zealand delegate to the commission, Sandra Lee, the Japanese delegate comprehensively denied the allegations. Masayuki Komatsu said “Japan gives foreign aid to more than 150 nations around the world and that includes strong anti-whaling nations such as Chile, Argentina, Brazil, Mexico and others who receive far more aid than the Caribbean nations [..] If Japan was buying votes, you would see 150 nations in the IWC and as a consequence the unnecessary moratorium would have been lifted years ago.”

    Komatsu also said that Caribbean countries naturally supported pro-whaling resolutions as they are whaling countries themselves (mostly of smaller cetaceans) and that the New Zealand commissioner was inventing “fairy stories”.

    In response to this rebuttal, anti-whaling groups point to several statements that apparently conflict with the official Japanese position. In an interview reported in The Observer newspaper in May 2001, Atherton Martin, Dominica’s former Environment and Fisheries Minister said “They [Japan] make it clear, that if you don’t vote for them, they will have to reconsider the aid. They use money crudely to buy influence.” Martin resigned because of the issue. Greenpeace also quotes Tongan parliamentarian Samiu K Vaipulu as saying that Japan had linked whale votes to aid.

    Indeed in a famous interview with Australian ABC television in July 2001, in which he described Minke Whales as “cockroaches of the sea”, Japanese Fisheries Agency official Maseyuku Komatsu said that offering aid was “a major tool” in obtaining backing for a return to commercial whaling. The previous week Lester Bird, prime minister of Antigua and Barbuda, had said “Quite frankly I make no bones about it…if we are able to support the Japanese, and the quid pro quo is that they are going to give us some assistance, I am not going to be a hypocrite; that is part of why we do so”.

    Japan notes that major anti-whaling nations such as Australia and New Zealand also donate aid to poor countries on the IWC and thus it could easily accuse the anti-whaling lobby of the same tactics.

    But is it against the spirit of the ODA regime? Here is what Japan’s “ODA Charter” has to say:

    (2) Any use of ODA for military purposes or for aggravation of international conflicts should be avoided.

    It looks like Japan reserves the right to use its ODA to pressure other countries if it wants to.

    There is clearly a strong taboo in America against eating intelligent mammals. We love Shamu, go to Sea World, go whale watching, and think it’s brutal for the Japanese to insist on killing an endangered species. I don’t think I need to prove that, but here’s a link anyway.

    Personally, I am for the whaling moratorium. Though whale meat could be a potential food source if it’s well-managed, there needs to be a balance between demand and supply in order to ensure the survival of any species, not just whales. For Japan to push for an end to it simply to satisfy fishing lobbies and politicians with a case of nostalgia is irresponsible in the extreme.

    In the area of fisheries, we as a species are just not at a point where we can trust ourselves to manage our fish populations responsibly. Among some species in danger of depletion due to excess demand (mostly from Japan, the US, and other sushi-eating countries) are southern bluefin tuna and salmon. There are some controls on overfishing but in general the international community is failing when it comes to fishery control.

    University seeks protection after students dry up

    The From the Japan Times has just reported the first case of something that a lot of people have been expecting for a long time.

    Hagi International University in Yamaguchi Prefecture was expected to file for protection from creditors with the Tokyo District Court as early as Tuesday due to a shortage of students, city officials said.

    The institution will be the first university to apply for court-led rehabilitation in Japan due to a student shortage, the Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology Ministry said Monday.

    Similar cases may follow due to Japan’s declining child population.

    Most readers already know that low birth rates in a number of industrialized countries, in particular Japan and South Korea, have fallen below the death rate, meaning that the total population will soon start declining. The most obvious sympton of a declining population of young people is the closure of schools. With less young people, there is obviously less of a need for schools to educate them. Is this the first school closure of many? What’s the real story behind Hagi International University?

    The private university with four-year international studies courses, the institute’s single department, was founded in 1999 with 4 billion yen in subsidies from the Yamaguchi prefectural and Hagi municipal governments.

    This sentence should be a massive red flag. Haji International University was a complete and utter joke. Aside from the utter arrogance of giving the prestigious label of ‘university’ to a tiny school with only a single department and a handful of students, Hagi International University never had any reason to exist in the first place. Japan’s coming population decline has been a widely known issue for years now, and nobody with even the slightest bit of common sense would have ever come up with a plan to actually build a NEW one in 1999!

    The university has tried to recruit 300 students a year, but enrollment has fallen considerably short of expectations from the first year, with only 22 students enrolling in 2004 and 42 in 2005.

    To deal with the shortage, the university increased admissions of foreign students in 2001. But immigration authorities became increasingly reluctant to issue visas to students from China after many foreign students disappeared after entering the country.

    What stupidity. I suppose this school was nothing but another of the utterly superfluous public works projects that Japanese local government is famous for. If any of the officials involved in the establishment of this school still have their jobs, they absolutely deserve to lose them now. In fact, they probably could also stand to be investigated for corruption or illegal profitering. Four billion yen in government subsidies went into the construction of this abomination of a ‘university’ which has now filed for bankruptcy protection, and I would be willing to bet that some fraction of that money ended up in the wrong pockets.

    Japan’s population decline is a serious issue, and there may very well be consequent school closures in the future, but this particular case is no such thing. Hagi International University only ever had a total student body of 194 students, out of a planned capacity of 1200. Clearly even if Japan’s population were holding steady, or even growing at a moderate rate, this school was built far, far too large to ever be sustainable.

    Why I Write

    Last night in making my regular check of my apartment building’s laundry room, which also serves as an occasional repository for tenant’s used and unwanted books, I picked up an aging copy of The Orwell Reader. In thumbing through it this morning, I happened across a short essay written in 1947 and titled, “Why I Write.”

    As many of our readers host their own web-based literary enterprises, I felt sharing Mr. Blair’s motives for writing, and his insights in the mind of a writer to be an appropriate impetus for reflection upon our own efforts. (My comments follow.)

    Putting aside the need to earn a living, think that there are four great motives for writing prose. They exist in different degrees in every writer, and in any one writer the proportions will vary from time to time, according to the atmosphere in which he is living. They are:

    (1) Sheer egoism. Desire to seem clever, to be talked about, to be remembered after death, to get your own back on grown-ups who snubbed you in childhood, etc., etc. It is humbug to pretend that this is not a motive, and a strong one. Writers share this characteristic with scientists, artists, politicians, lawyers, soldiers, successful businessmen – in short, with the whole top crust of humanity. The great mass of human beings are not acutely selfish. After the age of about thirty they abandon individual ambition – in many cases, indeed, they almost abandon the sense of being individuals at all – and live chiefly for others, or are simply smothered under drudgery. But there is also the minority of gifted, willful people who are determined to live their own lives to end, and writers belong in this class. Serious writers, I should say, are on the whole more vain and self-centered than journalists, though less interested in money.

    (2) Aesthetic enthusiasm. Perception of beauty in the external world, or, on the other hand, in words and their right arrangement. Pleasure in the impact of one sound on another, in the firmness of good prose or the rhythm of a good story. Desire to share an experience which one feels is valuable and ought not to be missed. The aesthetic motive is very feeble in a lot of writers, but even a pamphleteer or a writer of textbooks will have pet words and phrases which appeal to him for non-utilitarian reasons; or he may feel strongly about typography, width of margins, etc. Above the level of a railway guide, no book is quite free from aesthetic considerations.

    (3) Historical impulse. Desire to see things as they are, to find out true facts and store them up for the use of posterity.

    (4) Political purpose – using the word “political” in the widest possible sense. Desire to push the world in a certain direction, to alter other people’s ideas of the kind of society that they should strive after. Once again, no book is genuinely free from political bias. The opinion that art should have nothing to do with politics is a political attitude.

    Now, about those motives.

    I don’t imagine there is a soul among us in the blogosphere who does not deeply feel a desire to be perceived as clever. Mr. Blair is correct in perceiving it to be humbug to say otherwise. Even those of us who blog anonymously cannot escape it.

    As for aesthetic enthusiasm, I must agree with Mr. Blair that this is at best a feeble motive, and doubly so for most bloggers. The very nature of the blog – short, timely, and regularly posted – necessitates for all but the most skillful wordsmiths among us that corners be cut. And where better to cut them than here. Our medium is such that we cannot expect readers, save for the occasional Ulysses fan, to stick around for more than a page or so. No, the focus must be on making the point, and making it quickly.

    Certainly, each of us has our own style, even if our writings are posted after only a single draft. But I most often find myself sacrificing, “pleasure in the impact of one sound on another, [and] in the firmness of good prose or the rhythm of a good story,” for something that I can bang out during my lunch hour or between returning home for the evening and falling asleep.

    Of course, I am rarely satisfied with the outcome, and more often than not feel as though I have left some vital part of myself exposed every time I click on the “publish” button. But the gift of the information age is that most is soon forgotten, and I move on to yet another half-assed attempt at prose. I am not a good writer, so I suppose it is just as well that I can reassure myself by labeling these efforts half-assed and be done with it.

    I recall once reading in the introduction to Brave New World Revisited how displeased Aldous Huxley became in rereading the manuscript of BNW several decades after publication. And at the very least I can take comfort in knowing that much greater writers than myself struggle with the same.

    I won’t deny, at least in the authors of the blogs I regularly read, a strong historical impulse. Whether or not any of our ones and zeros will be around for posterity’s sake, I cannot say. But I admire their desire to see things as they are and to find out true facts, even if I disagree with those facts.

    Finally, little needs to be said about political motives I think. While some may not admit to a “desire to push the world in a certain direction,” few can deny a desire, “to alter other people’s ideas of the kind of society that they should strive after.”

    I have left much unsaid, about how one’s childhood experiences shape one’s writing for example, so I encourage anyone interested to go read the entire essay before commenting.

    10% of civil servants leave their jobs after returning from study abroad, 700 million yen “wasted” on tuition etc

    I have met a good number of Japanese government workers who are here in DC studying for their Master’s on fat scholarships. It’s a great opportunity for them, but the taxpayers might want to take a look at what their money’s getting them.

    Yahoo:

    It was found in a report by the National Personnel Agency released June 21 that of the 576 young career bureaucrats of the central government who studied abroad between 1997 and 2002, 56 of them, or about 10% of the total, quit their jobs within 5 years after returning.

    The 56 were attached to 12 Ministries and Agencies, including the Board of Audit of Japan and the Cabinet Office. Among them, some even quit within 2 or 3 months after returning, taking offers from private firms that they received while studying abroad. Apart from their salaries, each person cost the government an average of 13 million yen, or a total of 730 million yen, for tuition, sojourn expenses and other costs. Only a few have returned the money. They have wasted taxpayers’ money while barely using the experiences for their jobs as public servants.

    MOFAODAPR Appeal

    Japan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) offers a regular e-mail notification service for their “what’s new?” section of the website. One of the items in today’s mail was an overview of Japanese Official Development Assistance to China since 1979.

    I haven’t the time or the strength right not to get into the politics of this, so if you haven’t been following Sino-Japanese relations lately, just skip this post.

    If not, here are the numbers:

    3.1331 trillion yen in loan aid (yen loans)
    145.7 billion yen in grant aid
    144.6 billion yen in technical cooperation

    See the page for a detailed breakdown of where the yen loans have gone.

    Interestingly, around 21 billion yen in loans has gone towards projects for “promotion of mutual understanding,” including funding for Japanese language study and a public broadcasting infrastructure improvement project.

    That sure was money put to good use.

    Given the timing of this it seems like MOFA is building a case for turning off the aid spigot.

    World Heritage Site Ninnaji Temple in Kyoto smolders for 2 days

    From Asahi:

    On June 19 at around 12:20am, a fire burned stored linens at the dormitory for monks in training at the Ninna Mikkyo Institute, which is on the grounds of UN World Heritage Site Ninnaji Temple in Kyoto’s Ouchi, Omuro, Ukyoku. No one was injured. There had just been a fire in the same building the previous night which burned rags. The Ukyo Police are considering the possibility of this being a suspicious fire due to the fact that there was nothing flammable around in both cases.

    Comment: Lest you think this is even less relevant than the Hankyu story, this temple is right near where both MF and I used to stay when we lived in Japan. [Ed note from MF: Saru lived just as close to Ninnaji as we did!]

    New PLA missile `a warning’ for the US, experts say

    Does anyone else finds the rhetoric about China’s “peaceful rise” a little bit unconvincing?

    From the Taipei Times:

    China’s newly-developed submarine-launched Ju Lang-2 missile serves as a warning to the US not to underestimate Beijing’s military power, Taiwanese military experts said yesterday.

    “The Ju Lang-2 poses a great threat to the US because it has better precision and guidance and is harder to detect,” said Weng Ming-hsien (翁明賢), a professor from the Institute of Strategic Studies at the Tamkang University.

    “China wants to tell the US that it has never stopped developing nuclear arms. China also wants to warn Russia not to get too close to the US,” he said.

    Weng said China probably would deploy the Ju Lang-2, which carries nuclear warheads, on its Han-class nuclear submarines.

    Lee Shih-ping, a military expert specializing in warplanes and warships, said Ju Lang-2 posed a new security threat to the US because it could be fired from the sea and reach the US interior.