Left Flank

I'll admit I was wrong about Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. I thought he'd be sent packing in a few months, but the man has skills. And, seemingly he's got a favorable tailwind. After well-received diplomatic trips to Beijing and Seoul in his first month in office, Abe has completed the hat trick with a successful trip to meet US president George W. Bush. Far from dead in the water, Abe seems likely to win a July Upper House election.

So, it's safe to say, Abe has strength behind even his regrettable statements. According to The Economist, Japan has much to gain from setting the historical record on «comfort women» straight.

Unlike some right-wingers in his own party, Mr Abe says he sticks by a 1993 admission from the then chief cabinet secretary, Yohei Kono, that the imperial army “was, directly or indirectly, involved� in setting up and managing wartime brothels. The statement also admitted that “in many cases� women were recruited through deception or coercion and that “administrative/military personnel directly took part in the recruitments.�

Mr Abe, though, has called testimony that soldiers went on a “hunt� for victims a “complete fabrication�※even as some of the women were recounting their experiences. There was “no evidence�, he said, that women were coerced in the narrow and violent sense into sexual servitude.

Yet a report by America's Congressional Research Service lists evidence from other countries that Japanese military personnel not only set up and ran the brothels but also at times forcibly abducted women and girls to work in them. After the war, a Dutch war-crimes tribunal convicted a number of Japanese army officers of such crimes. Meanwhile a 1994 Dutch government report looking into the fate of a limited number of women and girls of European (mostly Dutch) origin in what is now Indonesia found that 65 were “most certainly� forced into prostitution. Japan's government received this report years ago and thus cannot claim ignorance of it.

The worst and most systematic military abuses, the report concludes, took place from mid-1943 to mid-1944. They ended when a colonel from the ministry of war in Tokyo heard of them while visiting internment camps on Java. That's the thing about history: it has its bad and its more honourable parts.

But, that's not necessarily good news for the US. The two areas where America underestimates Tokyo's notorious «double-hedge» foreign policy strategy, in which Japan leverages American security to pursue its own independent foreign policies, is collective security and energy policy. Abe is hardly cautious, even if pragmatic, about Japan's diplomatic interests.

America also promised to bring forward the deployment by Japan of two American-made anti-ballistic missile systems. And with a view as much towards China's military rise as the North Korean threat, America even hinted it might sell Japan the advanced F-22 Raptor stealth fighter (though it later backtracked).

Japan is keen to play a greater part in its own defence, including through increased military co-operation. However, this has been hampered by the Japanese government's interpretation of the constitution. In particular, collective self-defence has been ruled out of bounds. As things stand, for instance, Japan may not shoot down a North Korean missile headed for the United States, or come to the aid of an American ship under attack. However, before his American visit Mr Abe's government announced a review of the interpretation.

A right to collective self-defence underpins Mr Abe's broader ambition, which is to ensure that Japan can play a bigger role in international security. As an example of the constraints, Japan's 600 ground troops deployed in Iraq until last year were unable to use force. On May 3rd, the Japanese constitution's 60th anniversary, Mr Abe proposed rewriting it※including perhaps the clause declaring Japan pacifist.

Japan's great game is dressed up in the values of humanitarianism, democracy and the rule of law. It seeks closer ties with democratic India and recently formalised a security alliance of sorts, only Japan's second, with Australia. Mr Aso speaks of an “arc of freedom and prosperity� from Japan, swinging through India via moderate Middle Eastern states into Europe. China and Russia, unsurprisingly, see this as a bid to contain them.

However, Mr Abe's trip to the Gulf this week illustrated how pragmatism is lurking behind the façade of Japan's talk of spreading democracy. While China is signing energy deals around the world, cosying up to even the nastiest regimes, Japan's attempts to secure its long-term oil supplies have gone awry. Last autumn the Iranians forced it to cut sharply its stake in the Azadegan oilfield in Iran, in which it had invested much time and money. Shortly after, Japanese stakes in the huge Sakhalin-2 gas project were slashed when the Russian state muscled in. Japanese concessions in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait have also been lost.

So this week Mr Abe sought to restore his country's supply lines. A deal was announced that gives Saudi Arabia oil-storage facilities on Japan's southern island of Okinawa in return for preferential Japanese access to them in emergencies. The Japan Bank for International Co-operation announced a $1 billion loan to Abu Dhabi as a downpayment on long-term oil contracts. Mr Abe did not upset his hosts with any unwelcome talk about democracy but he did propose a more active, “multi-layered� relationship with the region, for example offering Japan as an honest broker in the Arab-Israeli conflict. His mixture of idealism and pragmatism, added to a more confident style at home, seems to be doing him some good. For the first time since he came to office, the Nikkei daily reports, the prime minister's hitherto dismal approval ratings have risen.

Abe's strength says something about America's weakness. There's no way for Washington to call Tokyo on its debts to the American military juggernaut and its past misdeeds, and maintain any semblance of a foreign policy in East Asia.