End Of An Era: Japan’s Abe Quits
Shinzo Abe, Japan’s longest serving Prime Minister, resigned on Friday due to ill health.
At least among facile Western media, he leaves a distinguished but unappreciated legacy: launching "Abenomics" to lift the economy, beefing up Japan's military and recognizing the changing China threat while Western politicians like Joe Biden were still lining their pockets with Beijing’s cash and selling out their countries’ workers.
The two-time PM was also instrumental in winning the 2020 Olympics for Tokyo, which were postponed by a year to 2021 because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Abe’s efforts to reform Japan’s pacifist constitution to deal with the China threat will be his lasting accomplishment: he leaves Japan with a strengthened navy that has 18 diesel electric submarines, four so-called “helicopter destroyers” that look suspiciously like small aircraft carriers, 43 destroyers and destroyer escorts, 25 minesweepers and training ships, fleet oilers, and submarine rescue ships. It is also highly advanced technologically. Among other things, Japan is working on building the world’s fastest hypersonic missile.
He didn’t do as much as he would have liked formally, but he has made it a matter of when and not if that constitutional clause will be modified.
In 2012, Abe spearheaded efforts to build the Quad Alliance to deal with Chinese agression. In an article rich with strategic ideation, he wrote: “I envisage a strategy whereby Australia, India, Japan, and the US state of Hawaii form a diamond to safeguard the maritime commons stretching from the Indian Ocean region to the western Pacific.”
His efforts to reach out to Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi have been particularly crucial, as the Quad becomes the most important military understanding since the Triple Entente left the Kaiser’s Germany surrounded.
Abe also greatly increased the power of the Prime Minister’s office, shifting it away from the once omnipotent civil service. That will serve Japan well in a more turbulent era.
Where does Japan go after Abe?
Mainly in the same direction. After a brief blip out of power after Abe’s first term as PM in 2006, the LDP has rebuilt itself as the natural governing party, and the opposition poses little threat.
That’s because the challenges Japan faces remain the same: a population that will shrink from 120 million to 80 million in the next 30 years and Xi Jinping’s hyper-nationalist China which wants its empire back.
The names in the race:
Front runners
Shigeru Ishiba, the former defence minister. Ishiba, one of the few Liberal Democrat politicians to have criticised Abe publicly, leads the opinion polls. But for that reason is much less popular among his party.
Fumio Kishida, the former foreign minister and LDP’s policy research council chairman. In April, Kishida spearheaded Japan’s response to Covid. He had wanted to give every household ¥100,000 (US$ 921). Politically, if you want to make your poll numbers pop, giving everyone cash is a great way to to it. However, Kishida’s plan pitted him against lawmakers with deep ties to the agricultural industry. They preferred to give households vouchers for meat and fish, sales of which usually fall during slowdowns. Those industries are part of the LDP’s core base in the countryside. They also argued that people would not spend the distributed cash and instead save it.
Taro Aso, Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister: wanted the vouchers meat and fish rather than the cash handout
Toshihiro Nika, LDP Secretary-General
Dark-horse candidates
Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga
Defence Minister Taro Kono
Environment Minister Shinjiro Koizumi, the son of a former prime minister
Health Minister Katsunobu Kato
Whomever succeeds Abe will inherit a country better able to face Japan’s challenges and a strengthened office from which to do it. An impressive legacy regardless of what the simps at The Economist say.