Listen, Mr. Cheney
WHEN Shinzo Abe meets Dick Cheney in Japan this week, a special kind of chemistry will be in effect. The hawkish Japanese prime minister and the bellicose U.S. vice president, self-described friends, have more in common than declining poll numbers. They both have war on their minds.
What we have on the one side is Abe, a historical revisionist, glorifying the losers of the last world war to reshape the past. On the other side you have Cheney, a hard-line unilateralist who has been one of the biggest planners and defenders of the American-led war in Iraq.
Cheney is visiting Japan this week, according to the White House, to thank officials there for "their efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan." Japan has sent noncombat troops to Iraq and has supplied logistical support in Afghanistan. But even as backing for the Iraq war continues to slip at home, Cheney will arrive in a Japan roiled by its own debate about rising militarism.
The latest example came when Japanese Defense Minister Fumio Kyuma suggested last month that the war in Iraq was a mistake. He was criticized roundly by Abe's people. Now, apparently as a punishment, the Bush administration asked Japan not to schedule a meeting between Cheney and Kyuma during this week's visit.
Thus, Cheney will snub the defense chief, the very person he would be expected to talk to in a visit focusing on defense and security issues. The message seems to be: Friends don't criticize friends. Japan, historically the bully of Asia, instinctively understands such threatening behavior.
There was no rational reason for Japan to get entangled in Iraq, and there's even less reason to become involved in Iran. However, Cheney appears bent on whipping up support for a reluctant Japan to continue to follow the Bush administration's lead in the war-torn Mideast. In refusing to meet with the defense minister, Cheney seems to be saying, in effect, that a silent nod to the wise is sufficient.
But the Japanese can say no, and why shouldn't they? What does the long-term Japan-U.S. relationship get out of this temporary subservience? Is it really in the interest of the Japanese people to bind their fate to the declining fortunes of the Bush-Cheney team?
Or might this be a good time, as opposition leader Ichiro Ozawa belatedly suggested a few weeks ago, to point out the obvious folly of U.S. ways, as a friend would, helping a friend?
