 Ladies and gentlemen, colleagues, welcome back to the afternoon session of the 2014 Japan update. I'm Veronica Taylor, I have the privilege to be the Dean of the College of Asia and the Pacific here at ANU. I'm also fortunate enough to have been a former director of our Japan Institute and so for that reason it's a particular pleasure to welcome our keynote speaker for the update, Professor Richard Samuels. Dick is on his first visit to Australia and it's a particular pleasure to welcome him here to ANU. He's the Ford International Professor of Political Science and the Director of the Centre for International Studies at MIT. At MIT he served as the head of the MIT Political Science Department, the Vice-Chair of the Committee of Japan of the National Research Council and also for a significant period of time chair of the Japan-US Friendship Commission. That's the capacity in which I first was fortunate enough to meet Dick and we spent some time working together on US-Japan related issues in the US and I can attest to the very high regard in which he's held by public policy thinkers and government officials both in the US and in Japan. He's been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and he's also the recipient of the Imperial Honor from Japan, the Order of the Rising Sun, Gold and Silver Star. We've invited him to speak with us today at Japan Update in part because his 2013 book 311 Disaster and Change in Japan is one of the most significant works on contemporary Japan to come out in recent years. It's really the definitive work on the combination of natural and man-made disasters that engulfed Japan and continue to affect it after the 311 events. For those of you who are hoping after lunch to settle in for a carbohydrate-induced snooze, I have to disappoint you. Dick's instructions are to be, as he always is, incisive, stimulating and provocative. So you have something to look forward to. It's going to be a stimulating session. We'll follow it with some Q&A. But now let's join in welcoming our keynote speaker, Professor Richard Samuels. Thanks very much, Veronica. This is very frightening. This is my first trip to Canberra, but it is delightful to see so many old friends here from so many different other moments across a long period of work on Japan with you. I was told that you're interested in change in Japan. So for me, that means that I should talk about history. And since I'm a political scientist, that means I should talk about political history. And I would start by just noting the obvious, which is that politicians and activists everywhere do many things with and many things to history. They ignore it. They confront it. They invoke it. They debate it. They erase it. They embrace it. They forget it. They interpret it. And above all, they use it, or they try to. And I've written at some length and over decades, I have to admit, and in several different contexts about the strategic use of the past to fuel change going forward. It's an old idea, very old idea actually. Machiavelli argued that in making real change, leaders reformers should maintain the old forms because people are satisfied with the way things appear to be. And they're more influenced by the things that seem than by the things that are. That was Machiavelli. But George Orwell picked that up in his masterpiece in 1984. You're probably familiar with the takeaway quote that he who controls the present controls the past, and he who controls the past controls the future. And we all know how effectively Japanese modernizers understood this. They just understood this, selectively using the past to revolutionary ends in the 19th century when they restored an emperor, for example, in an imperial line that had never really exercised much in the way of political power. They used the imperial presence to assert the legitimacy of a new ruling elite to replace what had become an illegitimate one. Or later, after the Pacific War, politicians reached back three decades to failed ideas, failed liberal ideas about a small and democratic Japan that given the failure of a large imperial and militarist Japan would now have its day. And the best, you know, it's not specific to Japan. Obviously, I started with Machiavelli, but we can go to Abraham Lincoln who created Thanksgiving. I don't know how well that's known here in Australia. I don't know how well that's known in the United States. But that was just a confection put together by Abraham Lincoln at a moment when he saw the House divided during looking at the at the precipice of a civil war, a House divided that would not stand. So created this myth of Thanksgiving where everyone would come together and so forth. China today provides other examples, even though it's revolutionary and it's post-revolutionary leaders make quite a lot, some would say a fetish, out of rejecting some say smashing the past. There's no more direct connection, seems to me, between the future and the past than in Mao's enormous portrait in front of the Forbidden City. And now Xi Jinping proclaims his China dream, which is the great revival of the Chinese nation by invoking both Mao and the selfless bureaucrats of the 18th and 19th century or leaders, I should say, who put the people ahead of themselves and ahead of the state. So he's fighting corruption now and in the future by invoking a past, even in China. Okay, so we all know that the use of history can be strategic and very selective. And what I want to do this afternoon is call your attention to the ways in which the uses of history or this use, particular use of history, is being used in contemporary Japan and in Northeast Asia more generally. And I want to do it by examining the three most contentious issues of the past several years in Japan. The first being the catastrophe in Tohoku, which we talked about at some length this morning. I'm going to return to again on the panel. But the debate about collective security, I should say collective self-defense and the passage of the recent passage of the designated state secrets law. Then what I want to do is explore all this a bit in the context, not just of Japan, but of Sino-Japanese relations. That's my agenda. I don't know if it'll be provocative. We'll see whether you take out your tortures and you come to burn down my house. But let me start with 311. Thank you, Veronica, for hawking my book. I appreciate that. What that book is about and what I'll talk about in more detail on the panel is that Japan's national discourse splintered after 311 into three separate historically-based narratives. All these political entrepreneurs using 311 to say that their version of history or that their version of 311's history provides prescriptions for how things should go for what the choices should be going forward. Each was competing for control of Japan going forward. Political entrepreneurs have this sense that if they can control the sweet talk that frames public choices, they would use the horrific immediate past of 311 to identify heroes, to identify villains, and shape that in that way national interests, and possibly even national identity in an effort to tilt the balance of history in their own choosing, in their own preference, preferred direction. And there were many choices available. 311 was, as it turned out, quite plastic in that sense. Some use 311 as a warning that Japan had come too far in the wrong direction and needs to put it in gear and go off in a new direction. For them, history with its collusive nuclear villages and centralized politics had taken the nation too far the wrong way and had to be abandoned. That Japan's national interests would be achieved only by moving forward vigorously beyond for some, beyond dependence on the United States, beyond for others dependence on nuclear power, and so forth. For those who had more to lose from institutional change, and there were quite a lot of those folks, this catastrophe was a once in a millennium black swan. So for them, the real lesson of 311 was stay the course. Let's keep doing what we're doing. We can do it better. We can do it more safely, but stay the course. History doesn't repeat itself, at least very frequently. And therefore, it's in Japan's interest to continue doing what it's been doing, but more wisely. And then there were others still who declared that 311 taught the clear lesson that Japan must return to an idealized past. To the way things were before things got lost, before Japan got lost to tradition, to globalization. So Japan's interest could only be realized by returning to basic values and rediscovering an essential national identity. So history for this group was idealized and very ancient in some respects. Now sadly, I think for each group, each group's prescriptions for change were no different than the prescriptions that they had before 311 even happened. There's a lesson here, and that's sort of a central lesson of the book. If the opinion leader or the activist or if the political entrepreneur was anti-alliance before 311, 311 proved he was right. Ditto the opinion leader who advocated reform of the electric power sector who supported enhancing the military. Only one incumbent political leader, by my count, only one incumbent political leader at the time of 311 actually shifted in a consequential way in the midst of the crisis. And that was Prime Minister Khan on nuclear power, as you were all aware. And his enemies succeeded in characterizing him as the villain in chief in the public imagination. Maybe he was, but he was the only guy whose position on a major issue after 311 couldn't be predicted from his position on a major issue before 311. And I think to the surprise of most of us who were willing to imagine the event as potentially transformative, 311 pretty quickly receded into and I think firmly remains in the past. It's not proven to be the transformative event we and I think most Japanese anticipated it would become. Japan was not going to be, as a result of 311 alone, was not going to be reborn, reset, revitalized, regenerated, at least not again as the result of 311. In the wake of 311 then, other concerns and other uses of history by political entrepreneurs have taken center stage. Sometimes to the detriment of Japan's regional and global position, sometimes to the detriment of its national interest in my view. Some on the right. Now I'm not talking about all conservatives, but I'm talking about some on the right, have been using history as if they were navigating the future through the rear view mirror. They're looking through the rear view mirror. They revised history to paint Japan's mid 20th century empire as less aggressive, as less aggressive than its noble. What we call revisionists have extolled Tokyo's intention to liberate Asia from white colonial rule, call for the reintroduction of patriotism in the nation's schools, undercut the Kono statement on comfort women, reject the claim that atrocities were committed on a large and some would say unprecedented scale in Nanjing in 1937, and resist the demands of Japan's neighbors for demonstrations of remorse that go beyond payment and payment of reparations and repeated apologies. And indeed there's one past that they insist on leaving far behind in the rear view mirror and that's the post war. Their intention is in Prime Minister Abe's terms and it's very, it's a very powerful term. It's to escape the post war regime. What does that mean? I mean that's powerful stuff. It means coming to terms with victor's justice that was imposed upon Japan by the allies, basically making up the rules as we went along in his view. It means ending Japan's status as a subaltern state, as a dependency of the United States and it also means revising a constitution that was imposed upon it. Now I'm not a revisionist, but I am actually, some might be surprised to learn, very sympathetic with each of these three concerns. In my view, I think it would be very good for the United States and for Japan to confront openly the terms of that post war settlement. I think it would also be good if Japan could be less dependent upon the United States and especially if the Japanese people could write their own constitution for the first time. All three of these things would really be, I think, would be useful for making Japanese democracy, which as I'll report, I think is already quite robust, more so. And I should say it's not at all clear that a revision of the constitution in the context of a large engage national debate will come out the way the revisionist would like it to come out. In fact, I think it's pretty certain that it wouldn't. But so much now for how part of the right, not all the right again, but part of the right is using history. Not all of it, as I've said, is a bad thing. But driving through the rear view mirror is not strategic. It's not the kind of bricolage that I was talking about when I described the Machiavellian notion. Now, let's look at the Japanese left. As everyone knows, the Japanese left is not driving the national bus. The Japanese left, the joke is left. But in its opposition, it does deploy its own characteristic historical metaphor. What I will refer to as the slippery slope. Invocation of a slippery slope has been ubiquitous in the two most contested issues of this year, 2014. That is collective self-defense and the designated state secrets legislation. So let me take each in turn. Most of the folks on the left vigorously opposed the interpretation, the reinterpretation of the Constitution to allow Japan to engage in collective self-defense, by which is meant simply the authorization of the Japanese military to assist allies, allied nations that come under attack. I think a lot of Americans are surprised to learn that we have an ally that can't come to our defense when we're under attack. I don't know how the feeling is here. Well, you don't have the same kind of alliance as opposed. But it is kind of shocking to a lot of Americans that it is such an unreciprocal or imbalanced relationship. But the fact is that collective self-defense has been in the works and actually has been de facto in practice for a long time, over a decade, in my view, over a decade now. Ever since Prime Minister Koizumi first dispatched the maritime self-defense forces to fuel U.S. and British fighters that were flying sorties in Afghanistan from Diego Garcia. Opponents to collective self-defense, nonetheless, that was without any reinterpretation, of course. But opponents insist that collective self-defense would open the floodgates to a revival of Japanese militarism, to undermine constitutional governance. Despite a long history of prime ministerial directives for the reinterpretation of the Constitution, opponents insisted that collective self-defense was different and it required a fuller, more engaged debate on its constitutionality. And I think a lot of people were sympathetic to that notion. But a more urgent concern was also expressed to collective self-defense among the opponents, which is the impact of that reinterpretation on national security in Japan itself. The headlines in the Tokyo Shimbun blared that Japan was now on the road to war. The Asahi Shimbun editorialized that Prime Minister Abe was in a, quote, headlong rush, unquote, to change Japan's military. Mainichi called it, quote, unquote, reckless, adding that once the self-defense forces launch operations, there will be no limit to what they can do. And what these opponents have in common, the opponents to collective self-defense have in common is, at base, a lack of confidence, I think, in the Japanese military or at least a lack of confidence in the ability of political leaders to control the Japanese military. For them, Japan, as ever, teeters on the edge of a slippery slope toward mid-century militarism. And I think this is simply wrong, and we can talk about that. I hope they'll talk about that at some length. But that's the opposition to the collective self-defense, the slippery slopeers. They also reappear, but with a twist in the debate over the designated state secrets law that will take effect next month, which centered really on the proper balance between the debate did, between secrecy and policy transparency. And it animated, as I say, the same adversaries that I've been talking about, along many of the same battle lines, and has generated many of the same dynamics, including many of the same historical metaphors. The law itself extends the power to classify documents and sort of makes uniform throughout and across 19 agencies and ministries in the Japanese state, the ability to classify documents beyond the Ministry of Defense, and stipulates that the designation of secrets in four specific areas, in defense, there already was a law on secrecy in the defense, but it includes it added diplomacy, espionage, and terrorism. The period of designation of a state secret can be up to 60 years or even longer. That's after renewals and so forth, and actions by the cabinet to extend. And the point here now is that any minister, any of these 19 Chief Executives of any of these agencies or ministries now can designate a state secret, and even refuse to divulge them to the diet, to the Japanese Parliament, if they believe that elite secret might damage national security. Now, again, some opponents to the law and to that legislation resorted immediately to the slippery slope argument. The Mainichi reminded its readers that although the government promised its readers, it promised in the 1940s that the military secrets protection law would not affect the lives of ordinary citizens. Even photography clubs and weather forecasts were violated and rated weather forecasts were suspended for four years. Mainichi editorialists then said that Prime Minister Abe's reassurances, and there were many by the Prime Minister, to protect the freedom of the press and to protect whistleblowers were merely an echo of what we what they heard from the Imperial military again 1930s, suggesting Japan was was right now again on that same same path. Legal scholars declared that the law aims to silence pacifist by returning to the unpleasant wartime society of mutual suspicion and sort of mutual surveillance and intimidation. But and here's the twist. There were a great many other objections to the state secrets of the designated state secrets law beyond the slippery slope, including concerns about press freedom, concerns about arbitrary classification, concerns about privacy, independent mom, the need for an independent monitor and so forth. And each was not pegged. Those those objections were not pegged to Japan's the particularities of Japan's wartime past of the militarism that somehow would be would would somehow return. But in fact, we're pegged to universal principles that were proclaimed earlier in 2013 in South Africa by the open source, I'm sorry, the open society or NGO conference in Schwane, the Schwane principles. So these were, it was a shift from particularism to universalism that I thought was really stunning and not something I expected to discover as I began reviewing the discourse and the debate over state secrets. So here's the change. The slippery slope argument not only failed to win the day. The bad joke is they didn't get any traction. Stick with me guys. As they did in 1985, they are sleeping as they did in 1985 when they just they just crushed a similar initiative by Prime Minister Nakasone at the time. But it was rejected. That is, the slippery slope argument was rejected as excessive even by many opponents of the designated state secrets law. Some of the most prominent opponents of the law were were they dismissed the comparisons to the pre war as irrelevant to contemporary Japan where they said civil society had sunk very, very robust roots, democratic values, and so forth existed and were healthy. And so for their view was that the legislation could be improved. And some of the opponents from the Federation, the bar National Bar Association, so they joined the effort to set the draft that had been written by the government. Right. So the opponents joined. They accepted the idea of state secrets and they rejected the slippery slope argument that I expected to find dominating. Interestingly, the Japanese public accepted the need for a stronger state secret regime, but did not respond well to strong arm tactics in the diet or and runs around the Constitution. Prime Minister Abe's support, you may remember Prime Minister Abe's support dropped sharply after both the designated state secrets law and collective self defense were rammed through diet or through the cabinet in the case of collective self defense. And I believe and this is really where the lessons are to be drawn for domestic politics. I believe it's because there exists in Japan a large and a moderate and an unpoliticized and a persuadable middle in Japan. And because like citizens everywhere, Japanese individuals and groups identify with a shifting range of appeals at different times and to varying extents, they've embraced notions. This is this is really something derived from work that our colleague Patrick Boyd has done in his really magisterial dissertation. They've embraced notions of post war Japan as a peace state, as a democratic state, as a technology based nation, as a modern state, as a small island trading nation, as a divine nation, there are lots of ways to think about Japan and often people do that simultaneously. They're persuadable, they're moderate and they've got ears. My takeaway then is that on this point is that Japanese national identity is itself a matter of change. A construction that under undergoes constant reconstruction therefore takes many forms, as I say, often simultaneously. Now this is I think especially the case with voters today where the numbers and the vigor of independence has never been higher than it is in Japan. So what I'm suggesting is that even with the optimism over the possibilities for rebirth after 311 that have now dissipated, the two backward looking perspectives, the rear view mirror and the slippery slope have each been vulnerable to to amendment by a fairly vigorous, fairly vigilant center in Japan. On my reading and on my listening at least, both are being forced toward the center and have been forced toward the center away from an exclusive focus on all the bad things that history has held. For the left it was militarism and for the right it was to feed. The center listens to both but seems more comfortable slicing the edges and the rough the roughness off of off of each. So now when it comes to policy change, the national debate is vigorous. It's future oriented. It's increasingly being contested on universal grounds by a public that's more independent and I think less ideological than it has been in the past. Now I want to end by suggesting how the use of history in Japan relates to Sino-Japanese relations because I promise you I would and I think I still have a couple more minutes to do this. Because I think this is where change seems most most consequential. At least for this audience and for the audiences I speak to in the United States. China thinking now about rear view mirrors and slippery slopes. China benefits from both narratives. It benefits both from the fear by some Japanese militarism and by the loathing of defeat by other Japanese. Slippery slope arguments coming out of the left are fully consistent with Chinese preferences and revisionism by the right allows China to depict Japan as a wolf in sheep's clothing. In contrast, each also, I mean each alienates the American ally as well. Both these, I mean it's a contrast that for the Chinese it both benefit the Chinese view. The United States both alienate the American side. Revisionism reminds Americans that Japan was their enemy and China was their ally in the good war. The war that the Americans called the good war. And the slippery slope reminds Americans how unequal its alliance is as I said before with Japan and makes some question Japan's commitment to it. I think there are costs if the United States is alienated. I'm not a fan of the United States' global cop that's for sure but I do think it continues to have a positive role to play in the region especially vis-a-vis Sino-Japanese relations. Relations which more than ever are being battered about by competing historical narratives. History is being used by leaders in both countries, now I'm talking in the bilateral context, to royal domestic politics at home which drives I think risky foreign policy choices. The actual dynamic though really is not bilateral, it's triangular. And Washington looms large in both Beijing and Tokyo's strategies. The United States is China's top market, Japan's second largest and the United States has I think it is not unfair to say been a stabilizing force forward deployed in Northeast Asia for decades. It's been other things but it's been that too. But the rise of China per force means the relative decline of the United States. A much diminished 900 pound gorilla with a much diminished desire to beat its chest. And this changes things. The most familiar metaphor, they talk about two metaphors then I'm going to end but the most familiar metaphor here that's currently in play is regarding all of this is known as the pivot aka the rebalance. The United States is cutting its defense budget. It has no choice. Folks here in Asia are understandably eager to know if the United States is going to cut and pivot or the United States is going to cut and run. And accept its relatively diminished capacity to make a difference. And I'm sorry to report that Congress isn't any more sure than anyone else than anyone out here in the region in the region. Multiple hearings you read the reports on these hearings. They don't seem to have clarified exactly what's in motion. Moreover since allies have a tendency to entangle one another. We know that from you know international relations 101. Well everyone is focused on how to deal with the Chinese power. Washington on how to deal with rising Chinese power. Washington may be just as unsure about how to deal with an independent and assertive Japan. Japan's hedging. That was another book I wrote the previous book is all about the Japanese hedge. But Japan's hedging and it's a natural response. It's a perfectly rational, realist response to uncertainty. And as one colleague suggested Japan may be using the alliance to transcend the alliance. That's that's a concern. But I have another metaphor to offer. And that's the metaphor not of the pivot but of the jazz of jazz music. And the jazz player. A few years back my wife and I and a group of Japanese friends attended a concert in the boom Kamura in Shibuya. Some of you know the theater. That featured two really brilliant musicians. One was a Japanese shamisen player. The other was a Chinese air who player. Both are stringed instruments. I'm sure you're all familiar with these instruments and each made wonderful individually. Each made wonderful music. On their on their instrument. But when they tried to play together. Just the two of them. They failed pretty and they felt pretty pretty miserably. The music was harsh. It was discordant. It wasn't my taste. As my wife likes to remind me. It wasn't my taste. But as it turned out. Each of these very talented young musicians had studied jazz. One in New Orleans and one in Chicago. So they had two different kinds of jazz. But they both had studied jazz. And the very the final piece in the concert. A curtain went up in the back of the way in the back of the auditorium. And it revealed a piano. And a piano player you could barely make out in the shadows just came out and started doing jazz riffs on the piano. And the three of them together generated some of the most moving and extraordinary music I have ever heard in my life. It was it was fabulous. But it wasn't just the music. I walked out of there beyond the music. It was the metaphor. It was the following idea that Americans. Can help the Japanese and the Chinese. Engage one another. I know this is cheap but it's true. They can engage each other innovatively. They can engage each other on their own terms and productively without the Americans dominating the discourse. Without the Americans dominating the discourse the result was a was a common. I'd like to say historically grounded widely embraced vernacular. We provided a vernacular but they did the music. I was a public good. And it seems to me the metaphor is that this kind of public good could be created in the region. And the rest of the world might benefit. And I respect I suspect that getting there would require leaders who will find and define and build upon a common ground. That's cemented by a shared shared historical tropes. And we've seen that the non strategic use of history is getting less traction in Japan. That was the first part of my remarks. If you're not going to use you're going to try to do history through the rear view mirror or talk about slippery. It's not you're not going anyway. It's not strategic. But we are looking for leaders who would use history strategically rather than opportunistic leaders leader opportunistically leaders who would craft a productive future. Not just flicking at repeatedly at unpleasant unpleasant pasts. And speaking of that past I think it's worth returning to it. For a moment as it was not as it's constructed has to be constructed. But for a moment let's return to it as it was. I wonder if Washington is going to reprise the role of Great Britain in 1896. If so you'd want to read the diary of Mutsu Mune Mutsu's remarks. I mean his remarks his diary about Britain and Sino Japanese competition. They seem as apt today as they did in the late 19th century. He was Japan's foreign minister in 1895 at the time of the first Sino Japanese war. And describe Great Britain acting out Japan's worst fears for the United States today. In particular the possibility of a US PRC G2. Now I know some in Australia are advocating it some in the United States are advocating this kind of G2. This is the way he was seeing the relationship between Britain and China. And he wrote in his diary that Britain was chiefly concerned so substitute the US for Britain substitute Washington for London for Washington Washington for London that it was concerned about the possible rupture of peace in the far east and was willing to play an active role in attempting to mediate. But did not appear did not appear to have this is a direct quote from Mutsu did not appear to have the resolve that was necessary to intervene with force in case its position was rejected. The British he said quote were resigned to their inability to prevent what had finally become an inevitable war between China and Japan. Britain was carried away by fear about the possible disruption of her commercial interests in the far east. Now I don't want to end with an admittedly lame plus a change. That's not that's not the way to end a speech. But Mutsu's focus on the distant and declining great powers interest and stability and commerce certainly seems to point in the direction of past is prologue. And what's not yet clear is whether or not leaders will have learned from that and will emerge in the region who will find to find build upon a common ground that's cemented by an enduring effort that requires that to to to build upon and to identify a shared common history. Given the millennia of Sino-Japanese interactions, this shouldn't be impossible. If they find a positive history to use and the right sort of improvised music certainly would not hurt those chances. That would be I think the most welcome and positive change of all. So I will stop with that and thank you very much for the chance to share some of these thoughts and look forward to a larger conversation. Professor Samuels, I wonder if I could ask you to live slightly dangerously and tell us what you think you would see in 2020 when you looked in the rear view mirror. Would you see an abbey government that had not achieved as much as you had wanted and not as much as you expected? That's the fabulous question. And I'm not prepared to answer it in a way that convinces myself much less you, but I'll give it a try. 2020, fortunately for me trying to answer it, 2020 is close enough to 2014 that I don't have to imagine high, medium and low scenarios going out 15 or 20 years. So let's imagine then make a couple of assumptions. We have to make some assumptions. So the assumption is that the Chinese economy doesn't collapse. China continues to to grow at least moderately. Their stability, the party consolidates further its power. That Japan comes to a consensus on the relevance, importance, legitimacy of national security at a level beyond what we've seen in the past. I expect that. And I think Prime Minister Abe and his associates get a lot of credit for that, should get a lot of credit for that, but it predates them, as I say. Collective self defense goes back to Mr. Koizumi and maybe even earlier. But we've seen over time an enhancement of the legitimacy of national security in Japan. I think 311 had that effect too. So a more confident Japan with a more legitimate military and the United States that learns its limits. That's the toughest assumption of all to make, because I'm not sure the United States is capable of learning its limits. And that's very trouble. But if the United States learned its limits on those other two things come to be, I think we'll continue to have a balance in the region and stability in the region. It's going to require a more muscular Japan, not necessarily a more independent one. But if the United States cuts and runs, then you're going to have a much more difficult 2020 looking back will be, you'll say, when America cut and run, that was the beginning of a very nasty arms race. And the rise of what the Japanese called Jishu of an independent defense, where the alliance matters little and independent national security matters most. That's an unstable solution in the near term. That would be some of the assumptions and things I'd be looking for. Thanks very much, Professor Samuels. Here I am. My question probably picks up just where you finished. For the lovely metaphor of the jazz players to work with the U.S. playing a non-dominant role in helping those two powers to get along, what would the U.S. have to do in practical terms or do differently in practical terms for that to happen? I think the United States, that's all, these are all wonderful questions. What would it have to do differently? Well, it shouldn't cut and run. It should make good on its promise to rebalance in the region. It should stay, it should reassure its Japanese ally. This is a difficult thing because your reassured Japanese allies, like any alliance, is about reassurance. And the Japanese ally has been on most accounts one of the more needy of reassurance, whether it's because of extended deterrence or for whatever other reason. I think the United States has to continue reassuring its Japanese ally. And in reassuring its Japanese ally, it needs to remind the Chinese that it means it, it has to tell both, that it means it, that it's here to stay because they're wanted in the region. This is where Australia comes in. A lot of the countries in the region come in. We go down from the East China Sea where most of us are paying close attention to the South China Sea and understand how desirous of an American presence the region is. I recall when Secretary Clinton came out here and made that speech when the Chinese went apoplectic in her presence. But it was the beginning of this new balancing game. And I hate to keep invoking sort of these straight up realist balance of power kinds of metaphors but I think they're important and I think they're not just, they're not at all conceptually empty. And you also know that given my talk I also think about things like national identity. But from an American perspective I think it's critical that we say what we mean and mean what we say. Thank you professor for sharing your views. My name is Takka. My question is about Japan China relations that you touched upon in your last part. How do you see or evaluate the recent development both China and Japanese side are trying really hard to improve the relationships. Recently there was a maritime talk held in China between Japan and China. And they talk about how to establish crisis management mechanisms. This dialogue hasn't been helpful long time but at last it was held. And also recently Japanese business delegation went to Beijing and met with Deputy Premier and they had a good discussion. So I can see that there is this positive movement on efforts on both sides of Japan and China. How do you evaluate this. This is my question. Thank you. Well as a card carrying political scientist you won't be surprised to know that I'm kind of cynical about that. In the following sense it wasn't hard to predict. You didn't need a crystal ball to predict that efforts would be made starting in the late summer and into the fall this year to find ways for some level soft softening reconciliation leading to potentially a meeting on the at the it's the APEC meeting in China. China is the host. It's coming up. So China has every incentive to to soften. Not quite go back to its smiley face. You know benign rise. But to sort of close its mouth and sort of hide the snarly the snarly part that it had become or at least it seemed to become to the Japanese. So it's not a surprise and there's history here. The history that I'm most familiar with I put in this book was the way in which China and Japan had a temporary reconciliation in 2008. First of all Mr. Kudai was prime minister in the spring of 2008. He is and has good relations with the Chinese and always has. But beyond that something was happening. And you'll remember in the summer of 2008 which was the Olympics in Beijing. And in in May Chinese leadership comes to Japan. They're welcomed. This is in the wake of a very nasty set of of incidents starting really in 2004 in the Asian football championships when there were riots when the Japanese beat the Chinese team for the championship and so forth. Anyway the point is that they began this reconciliation with an eye toward the summer Olympics. And then something quite extraordinary happened was the Sichuan quake two weeks later. And with this this devastation the Sichuan quake was an opportunity for both the Chinese and the Japanese. The Japanese immediately offered to help the Chinese immediately accepted it in the first foreign country to send relief workers to China came from Japan. This is in the wake of some very nasty nasty relations. Anyway they were treated well. They were treated with respect. They treated the the victims with respect were lauded by the Chinese public which followed every step because the the Chinese television and newspapers follow them every step of the way throughout their rescue and relief mission. So that as it happened in the summer of 2008 when the Chinese when the Japanese team marched onto the pitch in the bird's nest they got a standing ovation from the Chinese fans. This was unbelievable right. Well it didn't take 18 months before it all came apart again. And we're in the Senkaku's the how you dispute in in in a very big way. So these things become cynical knowing the history. Knowing that that this reconciliation this attempted reconciliation that you described was going to happen. Everyone knew it would be efforts. I I I I'm not sure that it's that it's the kind of stuff on which lasting reconciliation deep reconciliation is made. Unfortunate. So political discussion continues in a moment with that panel. But at this point the same what he means. Let's thank Professor.