The derivatives-complex remains a strong anathema to democracy as evidenced by its socializing the costs and risks while privatizing its gains beginning in 2008. This class-stratifying power of this complex should alert the working classes that their prospects for improved economic mobility require their severing their compensation from the performance of securities markets. They should discard the myth that class tensions would be solved by linking everyone into the same incentive system.** This system wherein everyone allegedly benefits from stock prices rising requires cooperation between different classes. This hooking of workers into the alchemy of finance-securities investments and credit-in lieu of wage increases only strengthened the economic elites and their derivatives complex. No viable movement exists whereby we make better efforts to compensate workers commensurate with their productivity gains. No worker militancy is seen in the U.S.*** Meanwhile, we see a resurgence of militarization among China and Japan. So this segue here shows two sides of the same coin. One side shows stratification increasing despite integrating all wage earners and executives into the same incentivized system; then, the other side shows the world's 2nd and 3rd largest national economies whose increasing economic interdependence fails to prevent their escalating military tensions against each other.
The disputes over land and natural resources have motivated both China and Japan to take actions that threaten to return militarization as integral to geopolitical management in that region. Japan and China both claim legal possession of an island group in the East China Sea referred to as Diaoyus and Senkakus, respectively. Their actions taken to advance their claims to these islands-and the other asian nations expressed claims of other islands in the region-threaten to militarize the busiest shipping lanes in the world.
Japan's long standing trade surpluses have vanished, leading to its historically largest trade deficit in 2012. [1]. Their imports to China decreased 15%, contributing to this trade deficit. [2]. The trade deficit portends poorly, but Japan's public debt which currently totals 250% of its gross domestic product should warrant it avoiding any potential conflict with a crucial trading partner.
Economic growth solves many social problems. But the troubling ease with which two superpowers resort to military escalation exposes the limitations of prosperity carrying us to universal peace. An observation stated in such general terms invites an accusation of my using a straw man. One could say: "what policymakers are stating that ONLY economic growth will ease all tensions? After all look at the concerted diplomatic efforts of the U.S. and the Asian countries use to resolve these disputes." Diplomatic efforts receive much media attention. But, if we measure their effectiveness against the objective of easing military tensions, these diplomatic efforts are just theater.
One example of diplomacy's weakness was shown in July 2012 at a meeting of the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN). The nations failed to agree on a "code of conduct" followed to resolve disputes among its members [3]. This was their first failure to agree on a communique in its 46 year history. [4]. Equally important, the U.S. ability to mediate a peaceful resolution appears weakened given China's reaction to Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton's comments on this dispute. China's foreign ministry spokesman Hong Lei stated Clinton's comments were "ignorant of the facts and indiscriminate of rights and wrongs," and that the United States had "undeniable historical responsibility." [5]. Regardless whether the U.S. is responsible for this dispute, its diplomatic corps appears unable to mediate a settlement that entails both sides opting for a military deescalation. The current state of tensions and resultant military escalation show to us a prelude to a region perilously vulnerable to becoming a war theater.
These disputed islands reportedly have oil deposits. Zhou Enlai, then Foreign Minister of China, told Japanese Prime Minister Kakuei Tanaka in July 1972 that these islands had become a problem "due to the presence of oil.....neither Taiwan nor the United States would have made it an issue without oil." [6]. 40 years later this dispute continues. Nations resorting to military escalations to secure access to natural resources preempts our march to a virtual world wherein wealth consists of intellectual capital, real-time information flows exposes dictators' failings to newly informed masses, and scarcity as an economic term was supposedly lost in the post-industrial vernacular. Of course reality reduces the litany of post-isms uttered in much of the futuristic-phile media to fairy tales. Nationalistic rhetoric remain in our contemporary vernacular and nationalistic ambitions remain as cornerstones of foreign policy.
Both nations being highly dependent on natural resources and their interdependence on each other as trade partners creates a need and opportunity for their mutual cooperation. both the dove and the hawk could and should converge here. Shinzo Abe, who was elected to his second stint as Prime Minister in Japan in December 2012, confronts a japanese economy mired in its third recession within the last 5 years. Prime Minister Abe shows an understanding that his election as a mandate to address Japan's flailing economy by appealing to the Bank of Japan to increase its inflation target to 2%, and by instructing the finance minister to propose a fiscal stimulus regardless of set spending limits. [7]. But, other factors show this cabinet clinging to motivations other than managing japan out of its lost decade and serial recessions.
He and his cabinet carry historical baggage and enliven it by their public posturing and statements. prime minister abe's focus on the economy lacks an omnipresence sufficient to overshadow historical ghosts that he and some in the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) are attempting to resurrect through their rhetoric. one example of his cabinet's historical revisionism used to recast Japan into a recrimination-free image is cited thus:
Fourteen in the cabinet belong to the League for Going to Worship Together at Yasukuni, a controversial Tokyo shrine that honours leaders executed for war crimes. Thirteen support Nihon Kaigi, a nationalist think-tank that advocates a return to “traditional values” and rejects Japan’s “apology diplomacy” for its wartime misdeeds. Nine belong to a parliamentary association that wants the teaching of history in schools to give a better gloss to Japan’s militarist era. They deny most of Japan’s wartime atrocities.
The line-up includes Hakubun Shimomura, the new education minister, who wants to rescind not just the landmark 1995 “Murayama statement”, expressing remorse to Asia for Japan’s atrocities, but even annul the verdicts of the war-crimes trials in Tokyo in 1946-48.[8].
These views induce the media to define Abe's cabinet less for the economic challenges facing them and more as a coterie of nationalists seeking retroactive acquittal for war crimes.
Both sides in this dispute can cite historical evidence to buttress their claims. I lack the knowledge to to determine who makes stronger claims as the rightful owner of those islands. In Japan's case the conventional wisdom states that Abe's historical revisions fail to resonate with the voting pubic. Thus, we infer Abe's and his cabinet's focus on this revision is not just rhetoric expressed to placate a public demanding a project of renewed national greatness forged by rewriting its history. Therefore, we should assume that abe and his cabinet sincerely believe their expressed views. consequently, their wielding of power while having such views generates real concerns.
Hopefully, all sides who reassert their historical claims and resort to military escalations will recognize that instead of redeeming their respective historical legacies they will resurrect a term that faded from the lexicon at the close of the cold war: mutually assured destruction.
** The myth of resolving class tensions through linking everyones' compensation and retirement prospects to the the performance of investment securities, termed in the late 20th century as the "investor class" is discussed in two different sources:
-Sanjai Bhagat and Brian Bolton Bank Executive Compensation And Capital Requirements Reform, January 2011 http://leeds-faculty.colorado.edu/bhagat/BankComp-Capital-Jan2011.pdf
-Thomas Frank. One Market Under God:Extreme Capitalism, Market Populism, And The Of Economic Democracy. Doubleday, New York. 2000.
The first source discusses U.S. banks' executive compensation from 2000-2008. This study shows their pattern of selling shares of the banks that employ them during those years. The second source focuses on the media's and the elite's rhetorical strategy to recast the "market" the most effective institution for spreading democracy.
***Worker militancy continues to decline if measured by union membership and strike-induced work stoppages. See Melanie Trottman and Kris Maher. "Organized Labor Loses Members." January 23, 2013. WSJ.COM. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323539804578259693886663764.html. Full access to article limited to subscribers.
[1]. Symonds, Peter. "Japan's currency war." 01/26/2013. World Socialist Web Site. wsws.org/en/articles/2013/01/26/pers-j26.html.
[2]. Ibid
[3]. Klare, Michael T. "Powder keg in the Pacific: Will China-Japan-U.S. Tensions Ignite a Conflict and Sink the Global Economy." 01/22/2013. Global Research Center for Research on Globalization. http://www.globalresearch.ca/powder-keg-in-the-pacific-will-china-japan-u-s-tensions-ignite-a-conflict-and-sink-the-global-economy/5320139.
[4]. Ibid.
[5]. Branigan, Tania and Justin McCurry. "China Rebukes US Over 'Ignorant' Comments On Island Dispute with Japan." The Guardian. 01/21/2013. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jan/21/china-japan-senkaku-islands-hillary-clinton
[6]. Anami, Yusuke. "Japan-China Discord and Cooperation Over East China Sea. no. 12 Senakaku Islands November-December 2012. Japan Foreign Policy Forum. http://www.japanpolicyforum.jp/en/archive/no12/000370.html. accessed 02/22/2013.
[7]. "Japan's New Cabinet: Back to the Future." The Economist. 01/05/2013. http://www.economist.com/news/asia/21569046-shinzo-abes-appointment-scarily-right-wing-cabinet-bodes-ill-region-back-future
[8]. ibid.
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