LEARNING HOW TO SWEAT: EXPLAINING THE DISPATCH OF JAPAN’S SELF- DEFENSE FORCES IN THE GULF WAR AND IRAQ WAR By Jeffrey Wayne Hornung A Dissertation Submitted To The Faculty of The Columbian College of Arts and Sciences Of the George Washington University In partial fulfillment of the requirements For the degree of Doctor of Philosophy August 31, 2009 Dissertation directed by Mike Mochizuki Associate Professor of Political Science and International Affairs The Columbian College of Arts and Sciences of The George Washington University certifies that Jeffrey Wayne Hornung has passed the Final Examination for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy as of July 13, 2009. This is the final and approved form of the dissertation. LEARNING HOW TO SWEAT: EXPLAINING THE DISPATCH OF JAPAN’S SELF- DEFENSE FORCES IN THE GULF WAR AND IRAQ WAR Jeffrey Wayne Hornung Dissertation Research Committee: Mike Mochizuki , Associate Professor of Political Science and International Affairs Dissertation Director James Goldgeier , Professor of Political Science and International Affairs Committee Member Deborah Avant , Professor of Political Science, University of California-Irvine Committee Member ii © Copyright 2009 by Jeffrey Wayne Hornung All rights reserved iii To Maki Without your tireless support and understanding, this project would not have happened. iv Acknowledgements This work is the product of four years of research, writing and revisions. Its completion would not have been possible without the intellectual and emotional support of many individuals. There are several groups of people in particular that I would like to mention. First and foremost are two individuals who have had the greatest impact on my intellect regarding Japan: Nat Thayer and Mike Mochizuki. It is rare to have the opportunity to study under an individual who is considered a giant in his/her respective field of expertise. It is virtually unheard of to be fortunate enough to study under two. My knowledge of Japan and my research has benefited from their mentoring and sharp intellect. I am particularly indebted to Mike who, as my committee Chair, read over so many drafts that pages can be counted in thousands. He pushed me harder than I sometimes wanted to be, and my dissertation is stronger for it. My gratitude goes out as well to committee members Jim Goldgeier and Debbi Avant, and reviewers Mike Green and Andy Bennett. Jim’s help on operationalizing schema theory and beliefs will always be appreciated. And I am grateful for Debbie’s decision to stay on my committee despite leaving GWU for University of California- Irvine. My research in Japan was facilitated by a number of individuals who went above and beyond anything they needed to do out of a shared commitment to U.S.-Japan relations. This includes Satoshi Morimoto and Takashi Kawakami of Takushoku University, Representative Akihisa Nagashima of the Democratic Party of Japan, Governor of Iwate Takuya Tasso, Noriyuki Shikata and Osamu Izawa of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Rear Admiral Umio Otsuka of the Maritime Self-Defense Forces, v Satoshi Maeda and Sugio Takashi of the Ministry of Defense, Shigeru Ishiba of the Liberal Democratic Party, Tsuyoshi Sunohara of Nihon Keizai Shimbun, and David Satterwhite of the Fulbright Commission Japan. I would also like to thank Atsushi Ishida for supervising my stay at Tokyo University as a visiting scholar, Ikuo Kabashima of Tokyo University for giving me key research advice, Jinko Brinkman at the Japan-U.S. Educational Commission for constantly making sure things were going well in both my research and personal life, Geri Rypkema of George Washington University for helping with the grant application process, and Ikuko Turner of George Washington University just for being a Superwoman. I received generous assistance in obtaining information about my two cases from a large number of individuals throughout the Japanese government and political parties. While most of these individual are listed in my appendices, many are not either because they requested anonymity or because I did not interview them but they helped me obtain unpublished materials. I offer my collective thanks to them. Additionally, the staff at the National Diet Library and the Japan Newspaper Museum in Yokohama was always helpful and quick to assist me with my research. Although I never learned their names, our light conversations and their gracious hello’s helped make the weeks researching my cases from morning until night easy to bear. This research would not have been possible without generous grants from the Fulbright Foundation, the Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) Program, George Washington University, and the Sigur Center for Asian Studies at George Washington University. I would also like to thank Tokyo University for its institutional support during my research and Nanzan University in Nagoya, Japan for inviting me to attend the July vi 2008 NASSS Graduate Students Seminar but allowing me to conduct research in Tokyo prior to attending. Most important, I would like to thank my friends and family for all the little things that only friends and family can do. This includes my two best friends Jimmy Mathia and Chad Schomburg who shared in my research and supported me both emotionally and intellectually. Also, Logan Sturm and Gary Noguchi who began our study of Japan together at Johns Hopkins-SAIS and later gave me places to stay in Tokyo when I needed them. To my mother Maureen, father William and step-mother Ginger, as well as brothers Jamie and Jon, thank you for all the understanding and support for what must have seemed like a project that never was going to end. You can rest assured, after 34 years, I am finally going to get a job. Likewise, to my in-laws Akio and Nobuko Katayama, thank you for your support and understanding during this process. My special thanks to Maki, my wife and best friend, for her patience, support, understanding, and love. You supported me when I was frustrated, cheered me up when I was down, constantly gave me pointers on how to improve my Japanese for interviews, took notes on books and articles that I did not have the time to read, listened to over 50 hours of Japanese interviews to check my English translations, and married me during this process. This project is yours as much as it is mine. vii Abstract Learning How to Sweat: Explaining the Dispatch of Japan’s Self-Defense Forces in the Gulf War and Iraq War Until the Gulf War, no Japanese politician could seriously hope to dispatch the Self-Defense Forces (SDF) overseas. It was off-limits. But contrary to what is commonly believed, Japanese decision-makers did not feel comfortable providing only money while the economy grew. Knowing they could not ‘bleed’ like other states, a number of decision-makers wanted badly to ‘sweat,’ meaning provide human contributions in some capacity. But ‘sweating’ proved problematic because there was no consensus as to what ‘sweating’ entailed. When the Gulf War occurred, the first serious attempts were made to dispatch the SDF as ‘sweat,’ but the Kaifu Administration encountered innumerable problems in these efforts. Unable to dispatch, the government instead provided over $13 billion and only after the war had finished sent naval minesweepers to the Gulf. Twelve years later, during the Iraq War, the Koizumi Administration had little problem dispatching all three SDF branches to Iraq on a reconstruction mission. My research question is this: Why was Japan unable to dispatch the SDF in the first Gulf War while it successfully did so in the second? Drawing on theories and concepts from the foreign policy literature and political psychology, I argue the answer is to be found in the nature of the opposition parties and the beliefs of decision-makers. Specifically, changes in the nature of the main opposition party from an ideological party to a pragmatic party widened the parameters of viable policy options while a convergence on shared beliefs prioritizing the importance of Japan’s international obligations amongst bureaucrats and lawmakers led to consideration viii of policies that included SDF dispatch. To explain the cognitive shift, I point to the clear feedback from international society criticizing Japan’s efforts to the Gulf War in what became known as the Gulf War Trauma. The research is a comparative analysis of the policy-making process during the 1990-91 Gulf Crisis and War and the 2003 Iraq War. Utilizing data collected from 102 interviews with Japanese bureaucrats and lawmakers active in the decision-making process in both periods, parliamentary records, materials obtained from ministries and political parties, and other primary and secondary sources, I conduct contextual analysis of the policy processes to analyze the beliefs behind policy preferences, why policy preferences succeeded or failed during the process, and how effective opposition parties were in vetoing policies from the government agenda. Although this dissertation demonstrates that a consensus has been reached amongst Japanese decision-makers on the importance of making visible international contributions as a way for Japan to fulfill its international obligations, it calls into question recent scholarship that Japan is ‘normalizing,’ creating a new grand foreign policy strategy, or crossing the Rubicon in the use of its military. In addition, it illustrates how opposition parties, despite numerically inferior to parties holding government, can exercise veto power over policies when their message resonates among government decision-makers and the public. Also, it questions the argument that states cannot control their reputation. Finally, the research confirms that unexpected failures impart lessons, affecting cognitive structures of decision-makers through their inherent trauma. However, the lessons learned do not translate into quick policy changes because the public ix constrains rapid change due to the fact that it learns lessons at a slower pace than those who experienced the trauma first-hand.