Japan has no Korea policy, and it needs one desperately.

By Michael J. Green

Japanese Prime Minister Taro Aso will visit Seoul this weekend for a summit meeting with South Korean President Lee Myung-bak. The incoming Obama administration would do well to pay attention, because the United States' own influence in Northeast Asia rests in large measure on how well its two principal allies get along. And all is not well between these two U.S. allies.

When the left-leaning Roh Moo-hyun was president of South Korea and the right-leaning Junichiro Koizumi was prime minister of Japan, the two did not get along terribly well at all. They clashed over just about everything -- Koizumi's controversial visits to the Yasukuni war shrine in Tokyo, Roh's political attacks on pro-Japan politicians in Seoul, contested claims over the Liancourt Rocks, and Japanese revisionist history textbooks. When the conservative Lee Myung-bak was elected last year, the Japanese hoped relations would improve, but most of the same problems continue to plague the relationship. And Japan isn't helping itself much.

The Japanese political leadership continues hitting the most sensitive buttons in domestic Korean politics, undercutting Japan's larger strategic position in East Asia. Part of the problem is the weakness of coalition governments in Japan and Korea's own polarized and hypersensitive domestic political scene. The difficulties with Korea also reflect the collateral damage of Japan's more assertive stance vis-à-vis a rising China, because all issues related to sovereignty and national pride are now punctuated in Japan -- this even despite the fact that they could have the perverse effect of increasing China's influence on the Korean Peninsula.

Japan's current Korea policy also stands in contrast to a much more proactive effort to balance a rising China elsewhere in the region. During the past decade, Japan has tightened its security alliance with the United States, extending defense planning to "situations in the area around Japan." In March 2007, Japan signed a bilateral security cooperation agreement with Australia, and last October with India. Prime Minister Aso has also been a champion of "values diplomacy" aimed at implicitly contrasting Japan's strong commitment to universal norms with China's own dubious record on human rights and relations with unsavory regimes such as Sudan.

So it's doubly strange -- and deeply troublesome -- that Japan is so adrift in its Korea policy. For most of its modern history, Japan has been extremely sensitive to maintaining its strategic influence on the peninsula vis-à-vis potential adversaries. That extended into the postwar period when Japanese leaders quietly but effectively lobbied the Carter administration to stop a withdrawal of U.S. forces from South Korea in 1977. Japan's clumsy handling of its relations with South Korea today would have perplexed the great Meiji leader Yamagata Aritomo, who famously declared more than a century ago that the Korean Peninsula is a "dagger aimed at the heart of Japan."

There are some bright spots, though. Polls show that the Japanese people themselves have far greater respect and admiration for Koreans than was true of previous generations. Japan has also agreed to a $30 billion debt swap to help Korea out of its current financial crisis, and there is some talk of a joint Japan-Korea reconstruction proposal for Afghanistan coming out of the Aso-Lee summit.

These are good developments that suggest the rich possibility for greater bilateral cooperation and a stronger Japanese strategic position in Asia. But this will be lost if Japanese leaders continue to let petty nationalism get in the way of national interest.

Michael J. Green is senior advisor and Japan chair at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and is associate professor at Georgetown University.

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