Prime Minister Abe’s visit

This week’s visit to Washington, DC by Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe ushers in a new era in U.S. Japan relations.  Despite many on the American political left who would prefer to overshadow the visit with another round of apologies for World War actions 70 years ago, the majority of Americans and Japanese citizens have moved on to a productive relationship that focuses on new avenues in defense strategy, trade and containment of an ever menacing and threatening China.

Abe’s visit to the White House and historic address to a joint session of Congress are the follow-up to Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter’s recent visit to Tokyo and the next high level contacts in an Asian pivot for the Obama administration. The president recognizes that with multiple conflicts in the Middle East brewing, Russia strong-arming the Ukraine and a divided U.S. reaction to the an Iranian nuclear deal, accomplishment and a foreign policy legacy for this administration in the next two years will rest heavily on the alliance between the first and third largest economies. China’s actions creating the new AIIB bank have accelerated the need for the United States and Japan to formalize and reassert political, defense, economic and social partnerships.

{mosads}In Japan, Abe has fashioned himself as the new type of Japanese prime minister who would like to play a role in diplomacy in the world’s ever growing list of hot spots. While the Japanese people are split on the prime minister’s ever increasing international platform, Abe has set out to burnish a legacy highlighted by a Japan that will contribute to international stability both in humanitarian and defense interests.  His proposal domestically to update Article 9 of the Japanese Constitution and ease restrictions on defense involvement throughout the world are a window for Americans into the Japan of the next decade. To some in Japan, the prime minister is focusing on the world to overshadow a Japanese economy that has remained sluggish for 20 years and once again has been labeled in recession, but more realistically he understands the linkage between the domestic economic atmosphere and Japan acting as a responsible and active member on the world stage. The tragic murder of two of our citizens by ISIS following the dedication by Japan of $200 million in humanitarian aide to was a sober reminder that no one in the world community is safe from Islamic fanaticism and all of us need to be partners and vigilant in recasting the war torn Mid East region.

Highlighting this week’s visit will be finalization of a new U.S.-Japan defense agreement that will define a new set of bilateral defense rules to protect against missile threats from North Korea and China’s moves to assert control off its coast. But for the Obama Administration the show piece for U.S. Japan relations rests with six years of work by the U.S. Trade Representative on the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade agreement being negotiated with 11 Pacific countries. Focusing on an estimated 100 different trade categories, TPP mixes necessary 21st century updates on agriculture, intellectual property and investments with a strong warning to China that its paternalistic AIIB Investment bank will not be at the center of an ever-growing and influential Asia. Despite warnings by the president’s party on how TPP will attack labor, farmers, food safety, and public health, it is expected to pass now that President Obama has been granted “fast-track” authority by the U.S. Congress.

Unfortunately, while the executive leadership of our two nations is focused on enhancing our strategic alliances, some in the president’s party in the Congress refuse to let historians examine the accuracy of World War II and instead are intent on writing their own conclusion by threatening economic advancement and world safety until Abe reasserts and further rephrases and enhances a 1990s acknowledgment and apology for war actions.

In Japan, we are left to wonder how the American left can herald a new relationship with Cuba without demanding acknowledgement of Kennedy era threats and more recently allow an Iranian Nuclear Agreement without first demanding an apology from the theocracy for the kidnapping of American citizens in 1979, the destruction of sovereign property and the support for their proxies in Lebanon and Syria who have committed human rights abuses and crimes against US citizens.  This is the same Iran who is ally with North Korea, today holds a Christian U.S. pastor as well as countless other westerners illegally and against this wills and to this day advocates through their secular and religious leadership the destruction of Israel, the sole true democracy in the region.

Historians looking at the World War II era acknowledge Japanese research that indicates inaccuracies regarding the so-called Nanking Massacre and the use of women known as “Comfort Women” as sex slaves. For its part, the Japanese government dating back decades has acknowledged the accusations which in large part are increasingly being fueled by the Beijing government to counteract the Chinese regimes own deplorable Human Rights record.

In the end, Abe will make some statement this week to the U.S. Congress acknowledging the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II this August and again as this date approaches. World War II for our two great nations — including our actions and the tragedies at Hiroshima and Nagasaki — should never be forgotten. It will be forever recorded in our history books and debated but in no way should it stand in the way of progress and a relationship that can only benefit our people and the rest of the world.

Oikawais executive director of the Institute for Research in Human History (IRH)  and director of Foreign Affairs at the Happiness Realization Party of Japan (HRP).