Japan-US Alliance at Filmsy

I promised to write more about the January Alliance Manager’s conclave. Some of you thought that last time  “ohohhooooh” was overused. So, above, I am letting you see the Alliance Managers sing for themselves.

I believe Mr.Armtiage is saying

I'm a freak bitch, baby
I want your love and
I want your revenge
I want your love
I don't wanna be friends
I want your ugly
I want your disease
I want your everything
As long as it’s free

And free it was, so who should be complaining. All the official participants got free lodging at The Willard, one of Washington's more pricey hotels. For the "young leaders" it must have been the first time to sleep on clean sheets since Mom changed them. Excellent cookies, I should add. But I was very disappointed by the house brands at pre-dinner bar. The Japanese are clearly cutting back.

Never mind. The Pacific Forum had its annual fundraising and ambassadorial sale on February 23rd. Joe Nye again gave the keynote speech. Guess last year didn’t work out so well. So give generously or we will have to suffer cheap liquor and no hors d'oeuvres next year as well. And maybe the rumors the Managers have been spreading that the current Ambassador to Japan Roos is in over is head might get some traction.

The Alliance Mangers main message at the day-long public conference was that they had been deceived. Not once did they expect the DPJ to change Japanese foreign policy or to stick to its campaign promises.  Simply put, they did not believe that any sensible government would forsake their advice. The new American administration hadn't, so why should the Japanese?

The highlight of the day was the tag-team presentation by Richard Armitage and Yukio Okamoto. Although Okamoto seemed a bit pained to have share his space with Armitage, he did not seem to mind sharing the same viewpoints and he laughed at Armitage's jokes.

Armitage confessed that he and others did not see this [a Hatoyama government] coming; he was truly surprised at the extent of the DPJ victory. He said the DPJ (rarely did he get the letters or their order correct) spoke a different language  and that he didn't first pick up on it. They simply had a different view on deturrance (misspelling to match pronunciation); spoke a difference language; and had a different thought process than he and his friends had.

No kidding.

But no worries, Armitage felt that due to the hard work of his friend Yukio, Hatoyama and members of his government were learning.  It will just going to take a bit more time to complete their education on the importance of the Alliance, to instill a sense of threat, and to keep the commitment on realignment of US forces. There was no moment of reflection that their assumptions on regional security and its defenders might be faulty. In fact, they only discussed expectations and their disappointment that these were not met.

To Armitage, Japan, "she," has simply lost her way and is trying to distract the US from its defense with "sweet words." The task ahead was simply one of getting to know what is in the "hearts of the leadership of the DPJ" and explaining the facts of life in terms that they will understand. Speak their language. Armitage concluded that to accomplish this, they [the Alliance Managers] need to "get back on the bicycle and ride."

They really do have the disease.

Hitoshi Tanaka of the JCIE, no liberal and long-tasked with Gaijin-handling, was so exasperated by Armitage that he got up and emotionally declared, that the "US was underestimating the depths of the changes in Japan....you [Armitage] assume that everything will go back to the norm--maybe you are wrong!"

The public programs of the Japan-US Security Seminar were funded by the nationalist conservative Tokyo Foundation. They proudly showed off their ties with to the more conservative DPJ members. The morning program was a discussion of the Challenges Facing the New DPJ Government (the video can be found at the link). Again, the theme was the DPJ was having a hard time shifting from campaign mode to governing. And it was the job of people like them to teach them.

During the Qs and As Larry Niksch of CRS asked the why there was not an effort to educate the Japanese people on what the Marines are there to do on Okinawa.Basically, he wanted to know if the Marines were really still relevant there. No real answer was given.

The filmmaker Annabel Park asked a polite question about the environment and the dugongs and “why was the site selected” while her fiancée filmed everything (see HERE and HERE). Okamoto mumbled it was a logical choice as the runway could be retractable because it was only white sand in the bay (odd, as everyone else says it is a coral reef).

Finally, haunting the room and approaching every senior Japanese speaker and American policy official, as Chris Nelson pointed out (the poor bastard, he said), was Patrick Braden. He is one of the fathers of a child abducted to Japan by her mother. He is trying convince Japan to sign the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction and to prod them to allow him to see his daughter. Japan is the only G7 country not to do so. Okamoto, the foreign policy guru, claimed to have never heard of the issue.

Stuck in a Bad Romance

Lady Gaga must have written this song with the US-Japan Alliance Managers in mind. She certainly caught on to their dialogue and the state of this Pacific relationship.

Oh-oh-oh-oh-oh
Oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh

Caught in a bad romance

Ra Ra-ah-ah-ah
Roma Roma-ma
GaGa
Oh la-la

Want your bad romance

On Friday, January 15th, the public portion of the two-day 16th Annual Japan-US Security Seminar was held. What started as a Japanese initiative to create and cultivate a group of Americans sympathetic to the remilitarization of Japan and who could provide access to the inner workings of U.S. defense policy has evolved into a Japanese government and American defense industry collaboration to maintain, promote, and mythologize this constructed group of  American and Japanese Alliance managers.

This group so often talks about architecture, because it is architecture. They create a fragile structure based on increasingly out of date plans and inadequate codes. The annual seminar simply slaps a coat of historically incorrect paint on a historic home.

This year the conclave was held earlier than usual and in neither Hawaii nor San Francisco. Instead, it was in Washington, DC on the eve of the 50th anniversary of the US-Japan Security Treaty (January 19th). The venue was the very expensive and elegant Willard Hotel. It is in the lobby of this famous hotel during the Grant Administration that the term "lobbying" was coined .

I want your ugly
I want your disease
I want your everything
As long as it’s free
I want your love
Love love love
I want your love

The day prior to the Seminar was the Alliance Manager's  "Young Leaders Program." This is designed to cultivate the next generation of Alliance Managers. It introduces a select group of younger scholars to well-known Asia policy types, to the good life (all got to stay at the Willard), and to that special feeling of being included in private, invitation-only dialogues. It entices like a drug.

In all, it ensures good behavior. If the young public intellectual to-be expresses skepticism or asks where the money is coming from, then those jaunts to the onsens and mountains at Aspen are over. Oh yes, they are looking for more candidates to participate in this program. I say, go for it. You will be fed well and many nice things can be said about free travel to Hawaii.

You know that I want you
And you know that I need you
I want it bad
A bad romance

To a man, and they were all men, the Alliance Managers at the public seminar confessed how unprepared they were for the Hatoyama Administration. None had expected much change in Japanese foreign policy. And some even thought like Yukio Okamoto, Japan's foreign policy shadow shogun, how it was "wonderful" that Hatoyama wanted a "close and equal relationship."  As Okamoto admitted, they had misinterpreted what equal meant. It did not have any relationship to increasing the reach and capabilities of the Japan's military.

Former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage agreed, they had been "too complacent." He too confessed he did not anticipate the changes in Japan. Armitage felt that they (assume the Managers) still needed to have "a real understanding of the real hearts of the leadership of the DPJ."  For right now, he felt that the DPJ is not speaking the same language as those interested in strengthening the Alliance. The new Japanese government just did not understand deterrence.

Armitage a longtime consultant to Japanese interests, is best known for organizing a nine-page election-year vanity paper, written primarily by Dr. James Przytup, that summarizes the discussions of the Japan-US security seminars during the 90s. The Armitage Report served as the basis for Bush Administration's Japan policy. He is also known for having revealed to the press the identity of a covert American operative, Valerie Plame.

President of the Pacific Forum Ralf Cossa introduced Okamoto and Armitage as "two of the superstars" of Alliance management.

Oh-oh-oh-oh-oh
Oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh

[This post will be in two parts. The music just makes me wanna dance...or something.]

New Journal Hopes to Buy a Clue

The National Defense University just launched a new, quarterly foreign policy/defense journal. Called the PRISM, it says it is:

tailored to serve policy-makers, scholars and practitioners working to enhance U.S. Government competency in complex operations by exploring whole-of-community approaches among U.S. Government agencies, academic institutions, international governments and militaries, non-governmental organizations and other participants in the complex operations space. PRISM is chartered by the Center for Complex Operations (CCO) and it welcomes articles on a broad range of complex operations issues, especially those that focus on the nexus of civil-military integration.

Hans Binnendijk and Patrick M. Cronin in the Journal's introductory article, Through the Complex Operations Prism explains the journal's mission:

It has been over 12 years since the Bill Clinton administration released Presidential Decision Directive (PDD) 56, “Managing Complex Contingency Operations.” PDD 56 was issued in May 1997 to direct the institutionalization within the executive branch of lessons learned from such complex operations as Panama, Somalia, Haiti, and Bosnia. Our recent frustrations in Iraq and Afghanistan, not to mention the deaths of over 5,000 American soldiers and civilians, and multiple trillions of dollars in war-related costs have caused us once again to scrutinize the failures of our approach to complex operations and to reapply ourselves to a better understanding of those operations and the environments they are meant to address.

In the spirit of neo-cons admitting that they have failed, which appears to be the real theme of the journal, the first issue features an interview with former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage. It also appears to be the only article that anyone in DC has read.  Tom Ricks gently lists the highlights in his blog.

By "gently,"I mean he simply lists, but does not comment on, some of Armitage's surprising slaps at the Bush Administration including that there did not seem to be any real presidential consultation to invade Iraq. Ricks also does not note that Armitage admitted to failing to understand soon enough that there was a difference between the fight in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Armitage also does not have much use for female leadership and was delighted when folks told him that the "Rice years were terrible." He felt she failed to develop that military espirt de corps that Powell did; and he did not think that Hillary Clinton could either. You know, the girls were not "inculcated" with this.

Maybe someone should tell Armitage that the new president of the National Defense University is Vice Admiral Ann E. Rondeau, USN, who assumed duties as the 13th President of from Lieutenant General Frances C. Wilson, USMC, on July 10, 2009. Probably, those girls know a thing or two about espirt de corps.