A Deepening US-Japan Alliance: Be Careful What You Wish For

A deepening U.S.-Japan alliance might actually hurt Japan’s security interests

 

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s visit to the U.S. has achieved one main goal for Japan: a deepening of the U.S.-Japan security alliance. The biggest change is the new joint defense guidelines now allow Japan’s military to fight alongside the U.S. military anywhere in the world, as long as Japan deems it necessary for Japan’s national security interests. On the surface, such a move might strengthen Japan’s security, particularly during China’s rise in Asia. It might also increase the odds of the U.S. coming to aid Japan militarily since now Japan is ready to help the U.S. anywhere. A closer analysis, however, reveals that a deepening U.S.-Japan alliance might actually hurt Japan’s security interests.

To start with, a possible global presence of Japan’s military will involve Japan in unnecessary conflicts in some dangerous quarters of the world. The U.S. is a superpower with security interests in every corner of the world, but Japan is not a superpower and hence does not have security interests globally. Also, in the past 15 years, the U.S. has fought two very costly, yet unnecessary, wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and now is probably entering a new war in the Middle East and even Ukraine. If the United States decides to send ground troops to fight ISIS or help Ukraine fight Russia, how should Japan help? And can Japan really help? Of course, Japan can provide some logistical assistance, but real military assistance involving Japanese soldiers would be highly risky. Already, two Japanese citizens were beheaded by ISIS for Japan’s close relationship with the U.S. in fighting the ISIS. Japanese involvement in the United States’ conflicts could lead to greater suffering for Japanese citizens.

It might be the case that Japan, under the leadership of Abe, wants to use these new guidelines as an opportunity to revise its constitution and make Japan a ‘normal’ state again. Japan becoming a ‘normal’ state is actually a good thing, and other countries should welcome it. But becoming a military machine that closely follow America’ s every step or misstep around the world is not a good thing for Japan. Instead, Japan should aim at an independent foreign policy that centers around its Asian neighbors instead of the whims of U.S. foreign policy. Only through this approach can Japan and other Asian powers build a peaceful and prosperous Asian community.

A more serious problem is Japan’s intended target in Asia. Although unstated, everyone knows that the real target of the U.S.-Japan security alliance is China. A new disturbing development is that Japan and the U.S. may start joint maritime patrols in the South China Sea, with an aim to counterbalance China’s growing presence there. This is a puzzling move on Japan’s part. There is already a high chance of an accidental clash of plans and vessels between China and Japan in the East China Sea—why risk another clash with China in the South China Sea? Plus, Japan is not part of any South China Sea disputes, so why does Japan want to be dragged into the already very complex situation? Perhaps the pressures come from the United States, and perhaps Japan sees a good opportunity in mobilizing smaller Southeast Asian states to balance against China. Whatever the motivation, Japan’s move is a highly risky one and it would only lead to higher levels of tensions between Japan and China.

In the realm of international politics, action begets reaction and a new alliance invites a counter-alliance. So we now have a stronger and firmer U.S.-Japan alliance, what will China do? The most likely case is that China will counteract the U.S.-Japan alliance with its own alliance with Russia (most likely). Already, because of America’s strategic mistakes in Europe, Russia is quickly moving closer to China, both economically and politically. It is no longer unthinkable that we might see a China-Russia alliance in the near future, particularly if the U.S. and Japan increase their pressures on China. If indeed someday that happens, we might enter a ‘new cold war’ in Asia—real bad news for everyone.

In the end, the best strategy for Japan is to come to terms with China’s rise and cooperate with Beijing to build a better regional order. This certainly does not mean that Japan should cave to China on every issue. There are real differences between these two giants in Asia, and China is not necessarily right on every issue. It won’t be easy, but let us hope wise minds in Japan will prevail. By Dingding Chen for The Diplomat

It is not America in decline, but Chimerica, the hybrid phantom state that was to be the acme of market-based integration.

It is not America in decline, but Chimerica, the hybrid phantom state that was to be the acme of market-based integration.

China’s resilient authoritarianism – or at least Beijing’s continued adherence to a distinctively non-Western polity – has for the moment refuted the democratic “end of history.” Still, the first part of Fukuyama’s polarizing thesis, the liberal part in the “liberal democracy” declaration, has been celebrated by political pundits around the world as the irreversible path of humanity.

The term “Chimerica” has been the epitome of the wishful thinking of liberal intellectuals around the world who deterministically infer that U.S. and Chinese economic interdependence ensures a peaceful hegemonic transition. According to this argument, as both Washington and Beijing engage in a positive sum economic relationship and enhance their material position ad infinitum, the Gates of Janus will be sealed by two prosperous societies who prefer commerce to conquest; consumption to cannons; goods to gunboats. Neither American nor China will dominate the 21st century the liberals ardently declare. Instead, Chimerica – a hybrid state – governed by the invisible hand of the market or by the very visible hands of cosmopolitan business elites will create perpetual prosperity and peace.

Realists have long challenged this liberal orthodoxy. China and the U.S. are on a collision course, they argue, and both states engage in comprehensive balancing – economic, military, technological and diplomatic. Chimerica is a phantom that defies reality and fails to observe the unabated securitization trend in Sino-U.S. relations, realists declare.

Testing the validity of the Chimerica thesis demands a thorough investigation of the three liberal indicators, the fertilizers of interdependence between China and the United States; that is, the very forces that annihilate the nation state, turn boundaries obsolete, and dictate policies based on interstate rather than intrastate conditions. What are these indicators? Dependence on the Chinese market, supply chain dependence, and cosmopolitan business elites.

Chinese Market Dependence: End of the Gold Rush and Rising Indigenous Innovation

Capital follows returns. When China opened up its market to foreign capital under Deng Xiaoping, U.S. multinationals followed their animal instincts and invested in the world’s most populous country. Thirty-five years later, the Chinese market shows steady growth, yet for the American companies that have invested in it, returns have underperformed other markets.

According to The Economist’s annual Sinodependency index, for the past three years returns on investments outside China have outperformed returns on investments within China. While this may not be a long-term trend, the significance of opportunity costs in the decision making of large multinationals could lead many of them to change their focus away from the Chinese market.

More importantly, according to the Sinodependency index, the three U.S. companies that are most dependent on the Chinese market are all high-tech companies (Apple, Intel, IBM). Those companies will most probably see their shares in China undermined by the increasing indigenous competition as Chinese companies climb the value ladder. Such value evolution from the assembled-in-China model to the designed-in-China model will certainly erode the big market margins of U.S. tech giants and even inspire global competition for market shares.

In addition to the “natural” evolution of competition, the Chinese government has also enacted policies that limit the capacity of foreign companies to compete with local ones, partly in response to National Security concerns after Snowden’s revelations on the National Security Agency’s de facto partnership with U.S. tech companies. Most importantly, the draconian anti-terror law has terrified American CEOs as it will immediately outlaw foreign companies that do not share important security codes and software backdoors with Chinese authorities. Beijing has already excluded Microsoft from its public procurement activities and has directed multibillion dollar packages of state support to developing an indigenous comprehensive operating system and other technologies where U.S. companies hold a significant lead.

If the preferences of China’s top university graduates is any indicator of China’s trend toward indigenous innovation, the omens for U.S. companies are ominous. While only five years ago Tsinghua and Peking University Science & Engineering graduates looked to U.S. tech firms for graduate jobs in China, now the majority aim for recruitment in one of China’s Big 5: Baidu, Ali Baba, Netease, Huawai and Lenovo.

Supply Chain Dependence: Factor Price Equalization and Regional Trade Agreements

Free trade leads to the eventual convergence of real wages among trade partners. As China enjoys enormous trade surpluses its firms demand more labor, pushing wages higher. Across the Pacific, as the U.S. deals with high trade deficits and low aggregate demand, real wages tend to stagnate. Eventually, the factor price equalization law has it, China and the U.S. will have similar levels of average real wages.

To be sure, the average Chinese wage today is much lower than that of the U.S., but the trend has been one of convergence. This as well as the technology revolution in the U.S. has added to the current “restoration” of U.S. industry and has led CEOs to look for new production networks in less developed Asian economies like Vietnam, Indonesia and India. As the complementarity of the U.S. and Chinese economies declines, more and more companies will be outsourcing their production outside of China, further contributing to Chimerica’s decline.

In addition to the natural evolution of wages and relative prices, the current increasingly complex system of regional trade agreements promoted by both the U.S. and China will distort market signals and further exacerbate competition between China and the U.S. More and more companies will fall victim to new regulatory barriers and will be effectively ostracized from China’s production networks. Trade friction, decreased complementarity, and unprincipled competition spell doom for Chimerica.

Cosmopolitan Elites: CPC Political and Ideological Resilience 

“Proletariats of the world unite!” Marx and Engels declared in their communist manifesto: There are no nation-states nor are there intrinsic cultural and historical forces that classify people other than the ownership of the means of production and the material conditions. Surprisingly, capitalists and liberal intellectuals have adopted the same thinking. A banker in Shanghai overlooking the Putong from his luxurious office on the 100th floor of the World Trade Center is little different from a Wall Street banker overlooking Brooklyn. Both believe in one god: Money.

Money in a liberal democracy buys influence; in the United States it arguably even buys the White House. Had a similar scenario held for China – that is, had business elites been able to pick the general secretary of the CPC – then perhaps liberal and cosmopolitan elites in China and America could manage Chimerica and perpetuate the status quo of globalization.

However, it is now clear that the CPC is an “adaptable” organization and China’s polity gives no weight to business elites when it comes to setting policy. While Jiang Zemin’s reforms ensure that businesspeople can participate in the collective decision making of the CPC, the ultimate “grand strategy” of China is shaped by the powerful standing committee of the Politburo. The operational code of the Chinese communist party remains deeply anti-capitalist. It utilizes the free market to optimize the power of a Leninist state and any businessman that dares to confront the party cadres ends up bankrupt and humiliated.

To be sure China’s leading elites may have their own vision of cosmopolitanism, one that adheres to different norms from those of Wall Street, but this difference and the inability of both China and the U.S. to openly accept a world safe for diversity is tearing Chimerica apart.

A Post-Chimerican Global Order 

The dream of Hegelian unity has been at the core of visionary leaders throughout history. All of them – from Alexander the Great to Augustus, to Darius, to Napoleon, to Liu Bang, to the Tang and Ming emperors – without a single exception chose hegemony and subjugation to pursue that dream. Eventually they built on culture and ideology to keep the system harmoniously united.

Liberalism instead saw in the market a sui-generis non-hegemonic force that melts nations into an ecumene managed by the invisible hand of profit optimization. Chimerica was born out of this belief, enhanced by the hubris of the era of U.S. hyperpower and the end of history mentality. The liberal global order that ensued and the declaration by U.S. presidents since 1991 that the liberal democratic end of human civilization is irreversible now sounds utterly hubristic.

As Chimerica awaits its demise, perhaps a force of real Athenian democracy can ensure that China and the U.S. will not pursue another dangerous cold or cool war that divides humanity into us versus them. Athenian democracy in its modern updated version calls for massive participation where the street does not envy the rich and the rich do not suppress the street. Such a political transformation in the West would end the primacy of neoliberalism and exercise a powerful demonstration effect on the Chinese people, who could then seek more participation and continue a positive sum engagement with the U.S. and the world.

At the same time, the United States and China must strengthen their strategic economic dialogue and resolve high-tech security concerns. They should abandon commercial regionalism, engage with the WTO, and call for global standards on software and hardware. China and the United States must undertake joint initiatives that promote freedom of goods, capital and people and thus renew WTO negotiations on non-trade barriers, regulatory arbitrage, and safe capital heavens. At the same time they must ensure that trade and economic links are sustainable, and so promote green diplomacy and fair trade for the underdeveloped world. An agenda for both free and fair trade along with a sincere discussion of property rights and shared innovation projects on green energy could be a great step towards saving Chimerica and securing peace in our time.

After 20 years of liberal euphoria and the birth of Chimerica, realists seem to be winning the argument. Still, as the great European psychologist-polymath Karl Jaspers once put it: “Anyone who regards an impending war as certain is helping on its occurrence, precisely through his certainty. Anyone who regards peace as certain grows carefree and unintentionally impels us into war. Only he who sees the peril and does not for one instant forget it, is able to behave in a rational fashion and to do what is possible to exorcise it.” The memory of the perils of great wars and the mental pain we experience when we compare them with the marvelous adornments of peace can indeed revitalize a harmonious U.S.-China relationship, even now that the utopian dream of Chimerica stands in shambles.

Vasilis Trigkas is a research fellow at the Center for China-EU relations at Tsinghua University and a non-resident Handa Fellow at the Pacific Forum CSIS. He has been selected as one of the top-15 young European experts on China by the Mercator foundation in Berlin. This article was originally published at  China US Focus.

 

Despite recent signs of modest progress, the fight to save Indonesia’s natural forests is far from being won.

Despite recent signs of modest progress, the fight to save Indonesia’s natural forests is far from being won.

 

The latest figures show that Indonesia’s loss of natural forests has slowed to a decade low – a dramatic change in direction for a country that overtook Brazil as having the world’s highest rate of primary forest loss in 2011, almost doubling the level of Amazon decline (which is four times the size of the archipelago’s rainforests) in 2012. Between 2000 and 2012, Indonesia lost more than 6 million hectares of primary, or old-growth, forest – an area almost the size of Sri Lanka, or roughly comparable to 6 million soccer fields. That is a daily average of about 1370 hectares and an hourly average of 57 hectares.

 

And while it is too soon to say what the 2013 decline means exactly, now seems an ideal time to reflect on the state of Indonesia’s forestry sector, where unlawful logging by unscrupulous companies and the collusion of local authorities in dishing out dodgy permits continues to undermine the fight against deforestation. Meanwhile, it appears that a significant chunk of raw materials consumed by large mills is still sourced from tropical forests, both legally and illegally.

 

A new report by the Anti Forest-Mafia Coalition and Forest Trends estimates that more than 30 percent of wood used by Indonesia’s industrial forest sector “stems from the unreported clear-cutting of natural forests and other illegal sources instead of legal tree plantations and well-managed logging concessions.”

 

It found the material used by large mills (those which process more than 6,000 cubic meters of wood per year) exceeded the legal supply by the equivalent of 20 million cubic meters – enough to fill 1.5 million logging trucks. This figure was found by comparing the supply of wood as recorded by the Ministry of Forestry (MoF) against the amount industry reported using. Statistics on wood passing through smaller mills are not fully recorded, indicating the volume of illegal wood consumed may be higher. Although it should be stated that with uncertainty surrounding official forestry data in Indonesia, all statistics are shaky and should only be viewed as a guide.

 

While the source of this illegal wood is unclear the report notes it likely comes from trees harvested during forest clearance for new palm oil and timber plantations. By Gemima Harvey for The Diplomat

 

 

Thailand’s Self-Absorbed Dictatorship

It has been a bleak year for democracy in Thailand.

A mad man is ruling in the land of smiles. A year after taking power it has become clear that General Prayuth Chan-o-cha is a malign dictator who offers no solution to the problems Thailand is facing. Instead, he makes death threats against journalists, drags those who speak their minds before martial courts, postpones democratic elections time and again, and overlooks the drafting of a constitution that may legally prolong his stint as prime minister, or at least allow for his return when and if elections are eventually held. His aggressive comments before the media are as legendary as they are dangerous in that they reveal his temper, his lack of rationality, and an absence of any even-handedness. The world should have long lost patience with the man who has dragged Thailand into an economic and political no man’s land.

 

Almost twelve months have passed since Prayuth staged a coup on May 22, 2014 against the Phue Thai Party-led caretaker government at that time. The move was an attempt to eliminate once and for all the political influence of the exiled former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, who was ousted in a previous coup in 2006, and of his sister Yingluck, who had been elected prime minister in 2011. Prayuth’s putsch was followed by the passing of an interim constitution and the formation of a rubber-stamp parliament, which dutifully handed him the premiership. Since then he has overseen an anemic economy, with consumer confidence hitting a nine-month low in March and growth forecasts trimmed to 2.8 percent by some estimates. These economic numbers are closely tied to Thailand’s gloomy political outlook, as none of Prayuth’s actions has restored investor or consumer confidence.

 

The international community watches a country that was once – it now seems ages ago – considered a beacon of hope for democracy in Southeast Asia slipping further into the abyss. But opposition has become more vocal in recent months. On his visit to the country in January, the U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, Daniel Russel, voiced the Obama administration’s concerns over “the significant restraints on freedoms since the coup,” over a political process “that doesn’t seem to represent all elements of Thai society,” and over the treatment of Yingluck Shinawatra, who was removed from office shortly before last year’s coup, impeached, and then targeted with criminal charges in a process Russel considered “politically driven.” As was to be expected, his comments did not go down well with Thailand’s dictatorship. It responded by summoning the U.S. charges d’affaires; Prayuth defending himself as a “soldier with a democratic heart.”

By Serhat Ünaldi for The Diplomat

WEST PAPUANS MUST BE LEFT TO THEIR OWN RESOURCES-Mineral Rescources that is!

 

There is a small group of Islands a little to the east and south of PN-G where cannibals live happily shrinking heads and practising voodoo. They love life, respect death and deal with natural catastrophes as they have done for thousands of years.

They eat well, breeding goats, pigs and fowl and grow an array of vegetables to supplement an abundance of seafood, paw paws and coconuts.

I had occasion to spend some time with them while conducting search and rescue missions in the area. Their culinary skills surpass that of any urban restaurateur.

There is no finer example of the human race than an indigenous native unaffected by modern values. Kids flash brilliantly white teeth, women’s back hair glistens in the sun, yet there is no fluoride added to their water, no shampoos or hair conditioners, just coconut soap and charcoal.

These magnificent people will remain part of their pristine environment for a thousand more years, simply because they possess nothing of value to foreigners.

West-Papuan natives lived a similar idyllic lifestyle... that is until men from other lands, as far away as Britain, discovered copper, gold and gas below their gardens and made friends with Indonesia, supplying it with arms to kill hundreds of thousands of those who wanted to keep their land and develop a proud nation from their mineral wealth.

But mere natives could not be afforded such a luxury, so West Papua became a lawless Indonesian killing field without any international penalty or oversight.

Britain and the US could not be seen to be conducting the genocide of a potential nation of people, nor could Australia, who also had a dirty finger in the minerals pie.

Mines have poisoned rivers and moon-scaped vast areas of West Papuans’ homelands. (pictured is West Papua’s Grasberg mine, one of the world’s largest gold mines). No compensation to the natives... only billions in payola going into the Indonesian Government’s coffers. Natives’ complaints are simply silenced with a hail of bullets.

UK PM, David Cameron, when visiting Indonesia in 2012, said, “Indonesia has transformed itself in the past decade into one of the world’s most important democracies, with a free media and elections. The military no longer plays a role in politics, but fulfils its proper role defending the country from external attack.” What a load of British bullshit uttered on behalf of the massive British Petroleum company!

There is no more brutal a military than Indonesia’s when allowed to occupy a region and routinely slaughter natives who have merely demanded a right to self-determination. Yet the West fawns over so-called “progress” made by the world’s “foremost emerging democracy”.

When the Suharto dictatorship fell 17 years ago, Britain’s Labour Party discarded its arms embargo and allowed British-built aircraft to be used to slaughter the people of East Timor from the air.

Other arms companies then began trading with Indonesia for the first time in more than a decade once they realised the extent of the area’s mineral wealth.

With the Timorese invasion eventually having been settled in favour of Timor’s sovereignty, the Indonesian militia kept their guns trained on West Papua. They remain there, raping, torturing and killing hundreds of thousands of innocents with complete impunity.

Australian-supplied helicopters were used to kill 5,000 highland natives with no more than bows and arrows for protection, yet no reports surface because no journalists are permitted entry to West Papua.

According to the World Bank, West Papua’s regional GDP is 50% higher than the national average while the people living there are among the poorest in all Oceania.

The Bali two will be forgotten by week’s end with Australia returning to its craven support of this decadent Islamic nation, gifting it hundreds of millions in unneeded aid... aid that was spent on building the very madrassas that schooled and trained the Bali bombers.

Contrary to what Abbott believes, Indonesia is no threat to Australia, neither in a military nor a trade sense. Indonesia has no middle class economy, only the very corrupt rich and the very indigent poor who have no bridge to improvement.

Indonesia maintains only loose trade alliances with its neighbours via ASEAN and no ability to deploy a meaningful military force from 18,000 disparate islands. The corrupt rich of Islamic nations will never fight and the poor neither know how to nor do they want to.

The bluff continues to Indonesia’s credit and to our shameful discredit.

It’s hard to trust the sincerity of Tony Abbott’s Aboriginal conscience when he openly supports the genocide of another indigenous people who are nearby and equally linked to their lands.

All trust in Labor died with Whitlam and the Balibo five.

Australians with a conscience should be concerned that this genocide of a beautiful people continues.

... but they should be horrified that Australia is openly supporting it. The Pickering Post

A diplomatic mission to abolish the death penalty would be a fitting response to executions

 

Indonesia's executions of Myuran Sukumaran and Andrew Chan, along with six other drug convicts, have thrown light on what George Orwell called "the unspeakable wrongness of cutting a life short when it is in full tide".

Many Australians are heartsick and furious at President Joko Widodo's approach to this case. Significant damage has been done to the relationship between Australia and Indonesia. No doubt there is more to come.

However, the Australian government should channel some of its anger in a constructive direction. Sukumaran and Chan are now lost to their families and friends, but the qualities they discovered in themselves in their years in Kerobokan prison could animate a new Australian initiative of lasting benefit.

Our government should signal that abolition of the death penalty is an Australian diplomatic priority, and devise a strategy to advance the issue. We should aim to become a leader in the international movement against the death penalty.

This initiative should be guided by the principles of effectiveness and prudence. The issuing of condemnations and the raising of sanctions would damage our interests without, in all likelihood, saving a single life. Instead we should look for creative new approaches to nudge the world towards abolition.

We should start with our own region. Asia is where we do most of our diplomatic and commercial business. It also contains the world's worst offenders when it comes to the death penalty. Last year China executed thousands of people, far more than the rest of the world combined. We don't even know exactly how many people the Chinese authorities executed. It is a state secret.

Half a dozen other Asian states, including several ASEAN members, carried out executions in 2014.

However, there is good news to go with the bad. Progress towards abolition is being made: 140 countries have abolished the death penalty in law or practice. In the past 20 years, 40 countries have abolished the death penalty for all crimes. Five Asian states have abolished it in the past quarter of a century: Cambodia, Nepal, Timor-Leste, Bhutan and the Philippines.

If we are to focus on reducing the use of the death penalty in Asia, then we must make common cause with abolitionist Asian states. Australia cannot win this fight alone.

Our government should initiate a regional coalition of Asian states opposed to the death penalty. There are several ways to structure the coalition's work, none of them absolutist in tone. We should avoid slogans and focus on practical, achievable gains. We may decide, for example, to focus our resources on de facto abolitionist countries such as Sri Lanka and try to move them towards formal abolition.

There are other strategies we could employ, all of them more nuanced than simply demanding universal abolition. For example, the regional coalition could encourage retentionist countries to restrict the type of offences for which capital punishment is imposed; announce a moratorium on executions as part of a move towards abolition; abolish mandatory death penalties; release comprehensive official statistics about their use of the death penalty; guarantee that death sentences will not be carried out on children, pregnant women, or the insane; and institute safeguards to protect the rights of those on death row - for example the right not to be executed pending a legal appeal.

Governments should also consider appointing a high-level advisory body composed of eminent citizens of their countries. This group would provide gravitas to the exercise and cover for their governments.

Working harder to close death row - rather than just to get Australians off it - would be the right thing to do. It would also be the smart thing to do. At the moment we are open to accusations of special pleading. It is entirely appropriate that Australia prioritises the welfare of its own citizens. Foreign Minister Julie Bishop has been indefatigable in her efforts on behalf of the Bali two and deserves credit for that. But if we are loud when it comes to Australians and quiet when it comes to everyone else, then we undermine our credibility and effectiveness.

The better position from which to petition foreign governments on behalf of our nationals is one of active, not declaratory, opposition to the death penalty regardless of the nationality of the condemned. Such a stance would enable the government to deal with the issue positively and continually, rather than negatively and sporadically. It would increase the momentum towards universal prohibition and shield us from claims of hypocrisy.

Australia has an activist diplomatic history and some experience in building regional constituencies for particular initiatives. A new push against capital punishment would be hard, grinding work, but it would be in the best traditions of principled Australian diplomacy.

Myuran Sukumaran, Andrew Chan and their fellow inmates died on Nusakambangan island in the middle of the night, in darkness. But perhaps something positive - a tiny ray of light - can escape from "Execution Island" after all.

Dr Michael Fullilove is executive director of the Lowy Institute for International Policy

 

Abe betrays history's conscience

To many who want right-wing Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to clarify his views on history and apologise for the Japanese military's atrocities during World War II, his address to a joint session of the US Congress on Wednesday came as a huge disappointment.

In the first-ever such speech by a visiting Japanese prime minister, Abe only expressed remorse over Japan’s role in WWII. He did not call the war "aggression" on the part of Japan or mention the coercion used by the Japanese military in the comfort women outrage, when Asian women were forced into sexual slavery. These are just two of many issues raised by Abe’s controversial views on historical facts.

The speech clearly shows that Abe has not changed his views on this 70th anniversary of the end of WWII. The Japanese prime minister has caused more pain to people in neighbouring countries in the past years by questioning whether WWII constituted an aggression on the part of Japan and denying that coercion was used by the Japanese military in running the appalling comfort women system.

In his speech, Abe just kept focusing on Japan's post-WWII role in the world. But Japan's positive contribution to the world in the past decades does not grant Japanese leaders and politicians the right to whitewash history. We have not seen German leaders try to rewrite Nazi history or deny the Holocaust on the grounds that post-war Germany has made great contributions to world peace and prosperity.

It is true that people may hold different views, but should we allow differences when people |like Abe try to deny "aggression" and "coercion" on the part of Imperial Japan?

It is hard to believe that Abe's remorse expressed on Wednesday is genuine at all, since he even refused to express an apology to the people who have suffered from Japanese militarism.

If Abe is true to holding the general stance on history of suc?cessive Japanese prime ministers, then why it is so difficult for him to say the word "apology" explicitly, or just repeat words in the 1995 apology issued by then Prime Minister Tommich Murayama on the 50th anniversary of the end of WWII. Demanding an apology from right-wing Abe is certainly not as outrageous a request as some might think.

While Abe's stubborn revisionist views may be nothing new, it is shocking that US leaders, including President Barack Obama, have chosen this time to collaborate with him, without demanding he make an apology and clarify his views on history. In fact, no senior US officials have touched on Abe's controversial views during his eight-day visit so far.

This is sheer appeasement to right-wing Abe and a hugely disrespectful to those who sacrificed their lives fighting Japanese militarism during WWII. Clearly, in seeking Japan's support in achieving the US rebalance to Asia strategy and the US-led Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), many US politicians have chosen to give Abe a pass on history.

Abe knows this all too well, so he skillfully played US politicians by expounding on how loyal Japan is to the US. Yet no matter how loyal some may think Abe is to the US, denial of history is not loyalty but a total betrayal of humanity's collective conscience.

Abe's failure to clarify and correct his troubling historic views on such an important occasion means that he has definitely not got a pass from the people of China and Korea who suffered most at the hands of Japanese militarism, and know the truth.

The author is deputy editor of China Daily US.