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The Dynamics of Public Opinion and Military Alliances Japan‟S Role in the Gulf War and Iraq Invasion

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The Dynamics of Public Opinion and Military Alliances Japan‟S Role in the Gulf War and Iraq Invasion The Dynamics of Public Opinion and Military Alliances Japan‟s Role in the Gulf War and Iraq Invasion Photo credit: Peter Rimar, April 2005 Stian Carstens Bendiksen Master‟s Thesis in Political Science Department of Sociology and Political Science Norwegian University of Science and Technology Spring 2012 1 2 Preface When studying Japanese politics, I found much conflicting research on the role of Japanese public opinion and its influence on policy, especially in regards to how much it affects Japanese politicians. One of the contrasted issues that stood out to me were Japan‟s different responses to the Gulf War and Iraq Invasion, where Japan faced pressure from the US to contribute personnel to the war effort, while the Japanese public opposed dispatching the Japanese Self-Defense Forces overseas. The general aim of this thesis is therefore to weigh the influence of conflicting Japanese public opinion and pressure from the US, on Japanese politicians. I would first and foremost like to thank my advisor for this thesis, Professor Paul Midford. It was initially his Japan and East Asia-focused courses at NTNU that sparked my academic interest for Japan and East-Asia. I owe him a lot for his continued encouragement and support throughout my studies. His thesis advice has been invaluable, and he has made sure that I have adhered to proper methodology, reliable data and thorough analysis. I would also like to thank Natsuyo Ishibashi for reading parts of my paper, providing feedback, and helping me with sources. I would also like to extend my gratitude to my professors at Kanazawa University, Masahiro Kashima, Andrew Beaton, Yoshiomi Saito, Toru Kurata, in addition to my classmates there, whose feedback on my thesis proposal was very helpful. I am also indebted to the Sasakawa Foundation, which generously provided me with a scholarship to study at Kanazawa University in 2010/2011, and to Kanazawa University which also provided me with an additional scholarship. My stay there would not have been possible without this generosity. Studying at Kanazawa University gave me many opportunities, such as access to their library on Japanese and East-Asian academic literature and sources, a great study environment, and a chance to improve my Japanese. Last but not least, I am forever thankful to my family and friends, whose support and encouragement throughout writing this thesis has meant a lot to me. Trondheim, May 11, 2012 Stian Carstens Bendiksen 3 Regarding Japanese Transliteration of Names For the ease of readers not familiar with the Japanese language, I have tried to write things as straightforward as possible. While in the Japanese tradition, family names are stated first and given names last, I have used the Western standard of given names first, so as to not confuse readers. I have used a Hepburn style of romanization without macrons or additional vowels to make the readability of the text as straightforward as possible. 4 Table of Contents Preface 3 Regarding the Japanese Transliteration 4 Table of Contents 5 Introduction 7 Theory 11 Public Opinion 11 Pressure from a Military Ally 17 Framework: Putnam‟s Two-Level Games 22 Hypotheses 26 Methodology 27 Why Japan and the Iraq Wars? 27 Research Procedure 28 Japan and the Gulf War 33 Public Opinion and Pressure from the US 34 Japan and the Gulf War as a Two-Level Bargaining Process 52 Findings 58 Japan’s SDF Reconstruction Dispatch to Iraq 61 Public Opinion and Pressure from the US 61 The SDF Dispatch to Iraq as a Two-Level Bargaining Process 80 Findings 90 Thesis Findings 93 Conclusion 97 Bibliography 99 5 6 Introduction Japan had since 1952 been a strategic military ally for the United States in the Pacific, and the two nations grew more interdependent on each other‟s economies throughout the decades that followed. As a nation flush with cash and with a highly advanced military force, Japan was expected to assume a greater international role by the US when the Gulf Crisis broke out in 1990. However, to the US‟s dismay, Japan was not ready to step onto the international scene with manpower when the US called for greater burden-sharing as allies. Their monetary contributions, despite being the large sum of some 13$ billion, was written off as checkbook diplomacy. Japan managed to salvage their strained relationship with the US by dispatching minesweepers to the Persian Gulf after the Gulf War. When an US attack on Iraq loomed in the horizon over a decade later, Japan responded more swiftly. On the eve of the US-led attack on Iraq in 2003, the Japanese Prime Minister Koizumi came out and supported the war. At the end of the year, Japan began dispatching their Self-Defense Forces (SDF) to Iraq for reconstruction, humanitarian and disaster-relief activities. The Japanese public has traditionally held an antimilitarist view of their own military forces, and had been especially critical to sending them overseas (Berger 1993, 2003). The US also pressured Japan to take on a greater international role as allies, in both the Gulf War and the Iraq Invasion. The US was particularly interested in Japanese personnel contributions. What made Japan decide on the two different policies after the Gulf War in 1990-1991 and the Iraq Invasion in 2003? In this thesis I therefore attempt to answer the question: Does public opinion or pressure from a military ally weigh more on politicians, when the two clash? My primary hypothesis is because public opinion only has a vague and negligible influence on policy, pressure from a military ally weighs more on politicians when it conflicts with public opinion. A corollary of this hypothesis is that the elitist view of public opinion dominates in Japan, and politicians are therefore more influenced to act toward security imperatives. My competing hypothesis is because public opinion can exert significant influence on policy, pressure from a military ally weighs less on politicians when it conflicts with public opinion. A corollary of this hypothesis is that politicians must pay heed to public opinion in order to stay in office, and might therefore adapt policies that favor public preferences over their ally‟s preferences. I will argue that investigating which one weighs more is important: Other studies as discussed below have argued that Japanese public opinion can affect policy, but no study has 7 juxtaposed conflicting Japanese public opinion and US pressure to this degree. With this thesis, I hope to contribute to Japanese public opinion studies, the Japan-US alliance studies and also the studies of two-level games theory by Putnam (1988), which will act as the framework for this thesis. This thesis concludes that when politicians are influenced by a strong internalized pressure to support their ally, and have a strong political leader whose preferences are in line with the state‟s ally, the pressure from the military ally weighs more than public opinion. If these two factors are not fulfilled, then public opinion weighs more than pressure from a military ally on politicians. This thesis begins by exploring what public opinion is, its influence, and how it can be measured. This thesis defines public opinion as “opinions held by private persons which governments find it prudent to heed” (Key 1961: 14). It then proceeds to discuss the pluralist and elitist schools of thought on public opinion. Due to space considerations I have selected key works that represent the most common arguments. The pluralist view is that public opinion can affect policy to various degrees (Key 1961, Page and Shaphiro 1992, Watanabe 1977, Sobel 1993, Eldridge & Midford 2008, and Midford 2011). The elitist view is that public opinion does not matter, because it is too volatile and incoherent (Lippman 1925, Almond 1950, 1956). Other elitist researchers also point to the media‟s power to influence public opinion (Shinoda 2007, Hollstein 2008), and the power of interest groups (Scheiner 2006). This part concludes with defining public opinion as a variable that can be measured via polls, and its potential effect through opinion majorities. The next part of this thesis defines what an alliance is, alliance considerations (Walt 1987, Snyder 1997) and forms of pressure from an alliance partner, including its effectiveness (Schoppa 1997). The thesis defines a military alliance as a formal agreement between two or several states that adds legal obligation to further the common security goals of the alliance partners (Snyder 1997: 7-9). It goes on to discuss alliance considerations like moral obligations to support your ally in interests outside of the formal contract, and the alliance security dilemma (Snyder 1997). Based off of the discussion, this part defines the variable of pressure from a military ally with two dimensions: bargaining pressure (a form of pressure applied directly to an alliance partner to gain a form of support), and internalized pressure (the internal pressure in a state to support its ally outside of the contractual arrangements). After this, the thesis introduces the two-level games theory as a framework for this study (Putnam 1988, Evans et.al 1993). Two-level games theory is a way to think about the entanglements of domestic and international politics. It utilizes the role of a chief negotiator (such as the Prime Minister, or President) to find overlapping “win-sets”. Win-sets represent 8 the policy constraints of the domestic level and the international level, and the negotiator must attempt to find overlapping policy constraints that both levels can agree on. The thesis then moves on to discuss the methodology. The first part discusses the case selection of Japan‟s role in the Gulf War and Iraq Invasion, based on Mill‟s Method of Difference (Mill 1843: Ch.
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