Reared for politics, Shinzo Abe lived in the fast lane

By: TARA KARTHAJ

Shinzo Abe remained, till his death, the most influential politician in the country, and a power to reckon with.

Great leaders and visionaries tend to have violent ends. And both tend to take controversial decisions as well. The assassination of Shinzo Abe, Japan’s longest serving prime minister, is the most recent example of that unfortunate truth that claimed others like the Mahatma Gandhi. Though Gandhiji was in a class of his own, Abe can be counted among the great, because he turned Japan around in terms of how it viewed the world and itself. He remained, till his death, the most influential politician in the country, and a power to reckon with. For India, he was special in ways that are yet to be fully realised. 

Coming from a strongly political family, Abe was reared for politics, which explains his longevity in a country that has usually had prime ministers shift around under two years. His first stint, however, had a quick ending, when his Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) was voted out in a stinging defeat, but not before he had made his mark on foreign policy, always his strongest point. In August 2007, he was addressing a joint session of Indian parliament, itself a notable achievement, and quoting Mughal prince Dara Shikoh, calling for a “confluence of the two seas’ , the Indian and Pacific Oceans, and proposing that the two countries look for ways to jointly increase security. A roadmap was signed, and military exercises followed with the US, Australia and Japan taking part in the Malabar exercises. But Delhi, while greatly appreciating Japanese Overseas Development Aid (ODA), had little expectations of Japan in the area of security, given strong constitutional restrictions on Japanese ‘self-defence forces’. Besides, Abe’s government was no more. 

A Sharp Diamond 

But Abe was far from done. In 2012, he published a call for a Democratic Security Diamond observing “Peace, stability, and freedom of navigation in the Pacific Ocean are inseparable from ….the Indian Ocean”. This was the Indo-Pacific Mark 1; his warning that “the South China Sea seems set to become a Lake Beijing” not just annoyed China but also his own party who accused him of being a warmonger. This was not entirely untrue since the first thing the new prime minister did was to pay a hugely controversial visit to the Yasukuni shrine that commemorates World War II; and actual Chinese aggressive behaviour in the seas along Japan was minimal, accelerating by 2015 by which time Abe was playing golf with President Trump, and US destroyers had begun sailing provocatively close to China. 

But then the visionary Abe was firming up the India leg. During prime minister Narendra Modi’s 2014 visit, agreements signed included one of ‘Exchange of Classified Military Information’. New Delhi took another five years to sign a similar agreement with the US, testifying to close bilateral ties. A week later, Abe was in Australia, meeting with prime minister Malcolm Turnbull, with the joint statement explicitly referring to security cooperation in the context of Abe’s policy of “proactive contribution to peace”. By the end of 2015, a trilateral dialogue had begun between Japan, India and Australia. With the US-Australia-Japan trilateral already in place, Abe had his ‘diamond’ eight years after first proposing it.  

None of this could happen without the prime minister using his political clout to sometimes bulldoze changes through parliament, his own party, and the people, long used to a pacifist world view. He began by steadily increasing prime ministerial powers, created the National Security Council (NSC) in 2013, and in 2015 took the bull by the horns via reinterpretation of ‘self-defence’ to allow Japanese forces to take part in conflicts outside in defence of an ally. A storm of local protests followed this announcement, but the prime minister was clear that this was the only way forward. The 2013 National Security Strategy echoed Abe’s earlier views, noting “India is …geopolitically important for Japan, as it is positioned in the centre of sea lanes of communication”. While mentioning China 25 times, it however also reprised the 2006 mantra of “Mutually Beneficial Relationship Based on Common Strategic Interests”. This was Abe’s vision. That China was likely to be a threat, and that India counted as did Australia. A rise in the defence budget followed, setting a trend that was followed in successive years, as Abe committed to the $4.1 billion Aegis shores-based ballistic missile defence to mollify a Trump administration intent on ‘burden sharing’. By 2020, the speed of transformation was apparent as Japan began to plan for land attack capabilities. By the time of his assassination, the ‘Indo-Pacific’ terminology was in full flow, and last month Abe was calling for a defence budget at two percent of GDP as against the government’s general language of a ‘drastic strengthening’. 

With his demise, there is a question whether Japan will maintain the heady speed that he maintained for it in facing up to regional realties. Not that the present prime minister Fumio Kishida is at all indifferent to the threat. It’s just that he hasn’t lived in the fast lane that Abe naturally took. That’s the difference.