Most Americans are familiar with Vice President Joseph
Biden's tendency to stumble in public with gaffes and misstatements that induce
either embarrassment or hilarity, depending upon one's attitude towards the man
and his party. Whether he is insulting
Indian-Americans with awkward 7-Eleven jokes, inviting wheelchair-bound people
to stand for a bow, blurting obscenities into an open microphone (. . . this is
a big f****** deal"), or losing track of what state he is speaking in,
Biden continues to provide proof that even a loopy third-rate political hack
can reach the heights of power in this confused and ill-informed country.
Fortunately,
much of Biden's verbal buffoonery is relatively harmless, so that the joke is
generally on him rather than on the appalled or amused public. But one recent example of Biden's verbal and
mental ineptitude was far from an innocuous gaffe. On the contrary, it was a reckless insult of
one of America's most important allies and its people. Moreover, it did not arise from mere
geriatric forgetfulness or confusion, but rather from profound historical and
legal ignorance, exacerbated by political malice.
The
pernicious remarks arose from Biden's attempt to mock Republican Presidential
Candidate Donald Trump's observations regarding aspects of U.S. policy towards
Japan. A bit of background is necessary
to appreciate the episode in question.
Ever
since the U.S. occupation of Japan following World War II, the U.S. has
effectively guaranteed Japan's national security with the presence of American
military forces and bases and with the so-called "nuclear umbrella"
that serves as a formidable deterrent against aggression by truculent neighbors
like China and North Korea. At the same
time, the pacifist provisions of Article 9 of Japan's constitution -- which the
U.S. Occupation authorities largely drafted --
prevented the country from establishing a conventional national military
force.
With
half a century having passed since the end of the Occupation, Japan has
gradually developed a so-called Self Defense Force (JSDF) that actually
compares quite favorably with the regular armed forces of most world powers. Even so, because the JSDF is constitutionally
confined to only defensive
capabilities, and because even now extensive U.S. forces remain stationed in
and around Japan (mostly on the southern island of Okinawa), it is fair to say
that Japan enjoys what approximates a "free ride" from the U.S. in
terms of its national and nuclear security.
In short, the U.S. continues to bear a disproportionate share of Japan's
defense burden.
Japan's Prime Minister Abe's (here with F-35) Views on Art. 9 Differ from Biden's
In
light of Japan's enormous financial and technological capacities, Donald Trump
has joined many national security experts in suggesting that the time
has come for Japan to relieve the U.S. of at least part of this inordinate strain on its limited
and overtaxed capacities. Indeed, Trump
has argued that both Japan and the Republic of Korea (ROK) could both expand
their military strength and expenditures, allowing the U.S. to reduce both its financial and
military burdens and contract the sphere of its vastly over-extended global
responsibilities.
It
was in this context that Mr. Trump has observed that both Japan and Korea at
some point may need to consider obtaining nuclear weapons. Trump has further noted that Pakistan, China,
and most ominously North Korea all possess nuclear weapons in the East Asian
theater. Consequently, the prospect that
Japan and South Korea may feel compelled to develop their own nuclear programs
for self-defense and deterrence hardly seems ridiculous. Japan may well consider that perpetual
reliance upon nuclear protection from a country led by the likes of Obama or
Hillary Clinton is a bad bet, especially in an environment that is bristling
with hostile and unpredictable nuclear powers.
Indeed, irrational North Korea's looming potential to hit Japan with nuclear-warhead
missiles is being reported in the Japanese press even as we write.
In
short, Mr. Trump has merely suggested the obvious.
Since the U.S. cannot and should not disproportionately bear Japan's
national security burdens indefinitely, Japan must either underwrite a much
greater portion of U.S. costs for its defense, or get ready to assume its own
defense by expanding its own military power and capacities. And in today's world, that would include
nuclear capability.
It
was in response to these entirely plausible suggestions that Mr. Biden felt
compelled to blunder into the discussion with his usual boorish ineptitude.
With
the galling arrogance of the ill-informed, Biden waxed indignant at Mr. Trump's
reasonable consideration of the prospects for Japanese military expansion. Biden sputtered that “he [Trump] talks
cavalierly about encouraging other nations … to develop nuclear weapons.” Then the man who famously lied in a failed
presidential campaign to conceal his ineptitude as a law student (he graduated
near the bottom of his law school class at Syracuse, a woeful No. 76 out of 85) had the
audacity to lash out at Mr. Trump of the elite Wharton School as follows:
“Where
was he when in school? . . . . Someone who lacks this judgment cannot be
trusted . . . . He’s not qualified to know the [nuclear] codes. . . . Does he not understand we wrote Japan’s
constitution to say they couldn’t be a nuclear power?” [emphasis added]
Biden's
remarks were ignorant, inept, and diplomatically offensive on many levels.
First,
there is the sneering contempt for the Japanese in the statement "we wrote
Japan's constitution to say they couldn't be a nuclear power." Biden's implication is that, because the U.S.
played a dominant role in drafting Japan's constitution -- of which Trump is well aware -- the provisions of that
constitution are somehow forever binding on the Japanese people.
His
offensively blunt statement ignores the fact that, while Occupation lawyers
were the primary drafters, Japanese lawyers and politicians contributed to the
drafting as well. Moreover, the draft
document ultimately had to be approved and adopted by the Japanese Diet, which
amended it in some respects before final adoption.
But more
importantly, Art. 96 of Japan's constitution provides that amendments can be
made if approved by a vote of two-thirds of both houses of the Japanese Diet,
and then by simple majority of the Japanese people in a referendum. Biden's claim that the U.S. role in the
creation of the Japanese constitution entails some form of permanent restraint
on Japan's sovereignty is not only a gross violation of diplomatic protocol,
but is insulting to the Japanese people and their leaders.
Thus, it
was Biden, not Trump, who demonstrated historical, political, and legal
ignorance in this public discussion of the Japanese rearmament issue.
To
borrow Biden's own rhetoric, "Does he not understand" that Japan's
leaders and voters are currently in the process of considering whether, and to
what extent, modifications of Art. 9's restrictions on Japanese military
capabilities and missions may be needed in today's world? Does he not know that Japanese Prime Minister
Shinzo Abe strongly supports reinterpretation, revision or repeal of Art. 9 and that his Party's
(the LDP) success in recent Upper House elections significantly enhances the
prospects for some form of Art. 9 reform?
Or that the vastly expanding strength and mission of the JSDF (now with a
defense budget of about $41.6 billion annually) shows that Art. 9 can be
circumvented without repeal in any
event? See http://dailycaller.com/2016/07/16/will-japan-become-the-next-big-military-superpower/. Apparently not.
Biden's
intemperate statements reveal his archaic and jingoistic view that the U.S.
role in drafting Art. 9 forecloses consideration, let alone action, that would
allow Japan to develop nuclear capacity under any future circumstances. Although Japanese political sentiment remains
deeply reluctant to take the "game-changing" move
towards developing nuclear weapons (which Japan's technology could likely accomplish
in a New York minute), that is a matter for the Japanese people and their
leaders to decide; it is not foreclosed, as Biden seems to think, by
constitutional restrictions that the U.S. helped draft sixty years ago.
Biden's
crass and patronizing assertion that the U.S. had effectively dictated perpetual non-nuclear
status for Japan triggered an understandably appalled response in the Japanese
press (the LDP government was too diplomatic to respond in kind to Biden's undiplomatic
blunder). For example, the Asahi Shimbun declared that Biden's
statement on this issue "was unprecedented in its insensitivity."
Indeed,
the Asahi Shimbun was too kind and
diplomatic in its comment. Biden's
remarks went beyond insensitivity, and reflected not only ignorance and
misunderstanding of the constitutional restraints on Japan's ability to expand
its military missions and capacities, but a chauvinistic disdain for the
Japanese nation's sovereign right to provide for its survival in an
increasingly dangerous region and world.