By I-Chung Lai (賴怡忠)

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Three Major Challenges Facing Prime Minister Aso

Aso Taro has assumed the premiership since September 24th . Aso is Japan’s third prime minister in as many years. Aso immediately faces difficult challenges in domestic politics, the economy and the security affairs right after his inauguration. Successfully solving them will not only take Aso to survive the incoming diet election, but also could mark a long lasting political legacy for Aso in Japan’s political history.

On the domestic front, since the problem of the divided congress confronting Fukuda will not disappear due to the arrival of a new prime minister, it remains to be seen what Aso could bring to change the current political gridlock.

In addition to challenges in domestic politics, Aso is also facing a global financial meltdown that has never seen before. The scale of this problem is so huge that dwarfed the economic bubble crisis Japan experienced in the 90’s. How will Aso do about it?

Third, Aso’s primership also inherits a U.S.-Japan alliance that is at the lowest point since 2001. To make things worse, Aso will also soon face a new American leadership whose policy toward Japan has been ambivalent at best, and this American power is declining due to the economic woe. To many people of the Japanese security establishment, the anxiety toward the incoming Obama administration remains high. Will this new leader share the same world view as Aso? What will Japan do when the United States can no longer be confidently relied upon?

Solving anyone of them is already very difficult. Needing to deal with all of them at the same time is everyone’s political nightmare. With a Diet election needing to be held in less than a year, tt seems that Prime Minister Aso will be very much occupied with those issues. The development of Japan-Taiwan relation will not be his top political priority. Particularly with Ma Yong-Jeou taking the presidency of Taiwan, the expectation of any aggressive movement of the Japan-Taiwan relation is low.

The Divided Japanese Congress

One of the reasons for Fukuda’s early resignation is the difficulty to get opposition party (DPJ) to agree on major policy decisions. The continued political gridlock lead Fukuda to seek resignation in order to move policy forward. This reason did not disappear when Aso became the premier on September 24th. Like Fukuda, Aso still faces the divided congress and a opposition party leader (Ozawa Ichiro) ready to turn every negotiation into a political battle. Though Aso is more willing to confront the Democratic Party than his predecessor, by using the 2/3 of majority LDP-Kometo Party alliance enjoyed in the lower house to bulldoze the opposition controlled upper house, he still needs to spend his political capital carefully because if he does so, Aso is also weakening the position of the members of LDP-Komeito Party in the upper house.

Another complication arises due to Ozawa Ichiro’s belief that the situation has never been better for the DPJ. There is no incentive for Ozawa to seek a cooperative relation with LDP, thus the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) shows no intention to back down with Aso taking the helm.

Global Economic Recession

The second challenge needing Prime Minister Aso’s immediate attention is the economic recession in Japan and the world resulting from the global financial meltdown. Aso is a strong believer for big governmental spending to create temporal domestic needs to get through economic problems. This was his view as the solution for Japan’s recession in the 90’s, and he still clings to this belief now.

During Koizumi’s period, the difference in economic philosophy has marginalized Aso’s political standing to a certain degree. Ironically, due to the large scale of this problem, the experience and the solution facing Japan’s economic downturn in the 90’s provide little lessons for today and Aso’s belief does seem to be in rhythm with today’s problem. Japan was one of the first major industrial countries to come up with a giant financial rescue plan and is promising to provide $20 billion for setting up an Asian currency swap regime. In the G-20 summit, Aso promised another 100 billion for emergency aid. The problem is, it does not seem those packages will be able to reverse the trend in a short time, particularly the majority view is that the economic difficulty will continue all the way into 2010. With an election to be held no later than September , 2009, the pressure on Aso will be immense. If the situation continues to worsen for a certain period of time, Aso will find himself in a hot seat due to the perceived inability to deliver the results by the Japanese voters.

The Downward Drift of the U.S.-Japan Alliance

Aso is also inheriting a worsening U.S.-Japan relation at the time when the anxiety about China is high and the trust on the U.S. goes down to rock bottom. The confidence on the U.S. from the Japan side has been severely damaged by the Bush administration’s management of the North Korean nuclear issue. Aso was very outspoken about his unhappiness about the Bush administration’s decision, as well as the handling process, to take North Korea off the “state sponsoring the terrorism list”. One common theme constantly hearing in Nagatacho regarding the Japan-U.S. relation is the sense of been betrayed. The trust among Japanese foreign policy elites toward the United States is at its lowest since 2001.

Aso also needs to prepare for the upcoming change of the American political leadership after this November election. It is a known secret that Japan’s political elites feel more comfortable with John McCain and are much less assured with Barak Obama. Many Aso’s close confidants point to how the memory of “Japan Bashing” resurfaces by seeing all the “Clintonites” clustering around Senator Obama’s foreign policy team. Will the U.S.-Japan alliance enter another period of “alliance adrift” during the Obama Presidency?

How will the U.S.-Japan alliance that is already in a low point affected by the administrative change? Particularly, how will Aso to prepare a perceived “Negligence on Japan and Sino-Centered” Asian policy of the incoming Obama administration? Will Aso continues to rests his foreign policy agenda firmly on the U.S.-Japan relation? Will Aso continues his “arc of freedom and prosperity” foreign policy? If there will be a change, what direction will Aso go? Those are all critical questions going to the core of Aso’s foreign policy belief.

How will Aso’s Choice Shake up the Japan’s Political Outlook

Aso’s immediate task is to determine when to call a diet election. Japan’s current economic woe did not bold well for LDP’s election bid. Although Aso can wait until next summer, his political alliance, the Komeito Party, can not wait indefinitely. They will exercise tremendous pressure on Aso to make an early decision.

In all likelihood, LDP will lose seats in the upcoming Diet election, in which the LDP has performed particularly well due to Koizumi’s successful framing the privatization of the postal office as the motto of “reform”. The question is how many seats will the LDP lose. The estimate ranges from thirty to fifty. If LDP loses no more than thirty seats, the LDP should form government without a doubt.

If LDP loses more than forty seats, it will lose its congressional majority. It might still hold on to be the ruling party should it find partners to form majority coalition. The scenario that DPJ to gain more seats than the LDP might happen, but the possibility is not high.

The most interesting case will be that LDP loses the majority but remains as the biggest party. However, it was not able to form a ruling coalition. This scenario happened once in 1993, when seven smaller parties jointly form a ruling coalition. Ozawa Ichiro, the chairman of main opposition party DPJ, was the person to play that magic trick at that time. Will history repeats itself? If so, will the new coalition implode as it did last time? Those are all interesting developments worth watching.

Aso’s View on Taiwan and the Current Status of Taiwan-Japan Relation

Aso has personally maintained very close relationship with Taiwan. He was the vice chairman of the Nikakon, a congressional organization devoted to improve the Japan-Taiwan relation, and often talked about Taiwan in rather favorable term. Aso also was a regular attendant to Taiwan’s national day ceremony celebration held by Taiwan Representative Office in Japan. One of the Aso’s most famous public statements is his characterization of Taiwan as a country. Taiwan also featuring nicely in Aso’s “democracy based value diplomacy”, and is an unmentioned partner in Aso’s “arc of freedom and prosperity” strategy.. Does this lead to an improvement of the Taiwan-Japan relation after Aso assumed the Primer?

Two factors that Taiwan-Japan relation will be put into a backburner. First, as mentioned earlier, Aso will be fully occupied by the challenges from the domestic political gridlock, the declining economic outlook and the rising uncertainty of the Japan-U.S. relation, thus leaving him little time to touch the Japan-Taiwan relation.

Second, Taiwan-Japan relation also enters a period of uncharted territory since Ma Ying-Jeou elected as the president of Taiwan. This leads to the “wait-and-see” approach of Japan about the issue of Japan-Taiwan bilateral relation. Though Aso welcomes Ma’s non-confrontational approach to the cross-Strait relation, the strategic orientation of the Ma administration raised more questions. Particularly, how Ma approached the relationship with the U.S.-Japan alliance is a matter of Japan’s national security concern. Japan is also alarmed that due to the need for bettering cross-Strait relation, Ma administration could choose to be ally of China if Sino-Japan dispute occurs. The call from KMT legislators to “Unite China to oppose Japan” in the fishing boat accident around the Senkaku Island area this past June has triggered Japan’s uneasiness. It has long been observed that Aso, long considered as more hawkish than his predecessor Fukuda, did not find it amusing in such display.

In the foreseeable future, it is highly likely that the fast improvement of the Taiwan-Japan relation witnessed in last year of the DPP administration will not be seen anytime soon. Effort should be paid to prevent the Taiwan-Japan relation to downgrade due to a prolong period of attention deficit. Ma administration also needs to do something to reassure Japan, even if it is not for improving the bilateral tie between Taiwan and Japan.