Shinzo Abe: Bad News For East Asia?
Comment is free: Japan's retreat into nationalism
...over the last decade, Japan has been slowly becoming more nationalist in its sentiments. And the election of Abe as LDP leader and the new prime minister will be by far the most important stage in this process so far. Far from seeking a new kind of relationship with China, it would seem that Japan is being driven by old enmities and new fears. Not surprisingly, there is growing concern in Japan about how China will behave given its new-found power and in the light of how Japan has treated it in the past. A combination of old-style superiority and new-born fear lie behind the revival of a new Japanese nationalism of which Abe is the expression.
The consequences are likely to look something like this. Japan will deepen its military alliance with the United States out of its fear of China, a process that the US will be happy to encourage, as indeed it already has. With similar American encouragement, Japan will continue to play a wider geographical role as its global ally. Meanwhile, Japan will reject the possibility of seeking a different kind of relationship with China and its other neighbours, while at the same time reasserting its own past and seeking to slowly rehabilitate its role and actions during the last war. The result will be growing tensions with its neighbours, above all China. That is bad news for east Asia and indeed the world.
