| Published on 06-10-2007 In World |
| Viewed 1302 times |
| Will Fukuda get nervous about the nuke deal? |
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Written by
Kamlendra Kanwar |
Japan-watchers have their eyes transfixed on the new Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda to see whether he would go all out to boost ties with India as his beleaguered predecessor Shinzo Abe was seeking to do, or backtrack, with the Indo-US nuclear deal as the bone of contention, to put relations back in cold storage where they have been since the Pokharan blast in 1998.
In recent years, Indo-Japanese relations have had many a hopeful moment but an undercurrent of hesitation has held the Japanese from going whole hog.
The dilemma before Fukuda is whether to support the Indo-US nuclear deal and thereby seemingly dilute Japan's strong anti-nuclear credentials or to stick to the stand taken by Shinzo Abe on his recent visit to India that nuclear energy is safe and important for sustainable development. That Abe was accompanied by influential industrialists in major nuclear-industry sectors suggests that Japan under Abe intended to expand nuclear cooperation.
Despite Japan's pacifist record in the post-war period, it has a booming nuclear energy programme. Besides, India's record on nuclearization inspires hope that there is no hidden agenda for this country apart from harnessing nuclear energy and tacitly building up its capability to ward off any threat from a China-Pak nuclear axis.
Under Fukuda, the Japanese government has not signalled any changes in its policy toward the US-India nuclear deal. So far, this issue has not been adequately debated between the ruling and opposition parties in Japan. But the odds are in favour of Japan accepting the deal.
Fukuda has to contend with the fact that India is an emerging economic power with a massive middle class that is hungry for symbols of sophistication. When other developed countries are vying with one another to get a piece of the Indian pie, why shouldn't Japan. Interestingly, 2007 has been declared by both as the year of "Japan-India Friendship". In his book Toward a Beautiful Nation, Abe foretold that "it will not be surprising if in 10 years' time, Japan-India relations overtake Japan-US and Japan-China relations".
However, unlike Abe who was not afraid to rub China on the wrong side, Fukuda is more circumspect. He wants to be on the right side of China and is more diplomatic.
Indications of this emerged when, in the run-up to his election, he sounded a critical note towards Abe's proposal for a 'broader Asia' partnership of democracies that would include Japan, India, the United States and Australia -- but not China.
Not for Fukuda the kind of naval exercises the four nations undertook before he assumed office, as an expression of solidarity, which China frowned upon.
But this is not to say that Fukuda is oblivious of the convergence of strategic interests of Japan and India in containing China. The rise of China is clearly a factor in growing cooperation between New Delhi and Tokyo. China's growing emphasis on both its naval power and ballistic missile and space-based weapons capabilities has implications for Japan and India.
Given India's and Japan's shared concerns over China's space programme and naval power capabilities, both states could work towards a joint approach to check China's growing military influence in the region. The Indian Navy, the world's fifth-largest, has set up a Far Eastern Naval Command facility off Port Blair on the Andaman Islands to increase its presence in the Straits of Malacca and possibly monitor Chinese naval activities in the region.
China's naval ambitions have also brought it into confrontation with Japan in the East China Sea where both states are engaged in a maritime territorial dispute over the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands and three oil and gas fields, where Japan regards the median line as the boundary of its Exclusive Economic Zone, while China claims jurisdiction over the entire continental shelf.
The incursion of a Chinese nuclear-powered submarine into Japanese waters off the Okinawa islands in November 2004 and a Chinese naval destroyer taking aim at a Japanese P3-C surveillance aircraft near the disputed waters in September 2005 have demonstrated China's naval posturing in the region.
While India and Japan would predictably forge closer strategic links, India would be interested in a major surge in Japanese investment which is currently a mere one per cent of Japan's investment overseas. India needs a whopping 300 billion dollars of investment in its infrastructure which Japan is capable of meeting substantially.
All in all, the portents are promising. Once the nuclear hurdle is cleared, the prospects of a huge magnitude of trade and investment will open up wide. This time the breakthrough in ties that has been long eluding India and Japan may well be round the corner. |
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