In international politics, as in rugby, ignore and underestimate the Japanese at your peril. South Africans — at the receiving end of the greatest sporting upset in history when the Cherry Blossoms trounced the Springboks at the 2015 World Cup — should know this. We should also know that this famous victory was no fluke. It was the result of years of preparation, flawless execution on the day, and a bit of luck.
As in rugby, the Japanese have been working tirelessly for years to understand and work with SA on trade, human security and development. Yet we have ignored Japan’s sincerity and underestimated its economic clout, to our detriment.
Abe Shinzo, the longest-serving Japanese prime minister, has announced he will step down after eight years at the helm. His loyal lieutenant, Yoshihide Suga, has thrown his hat in the ring to contest for leader of the governing Liberal Democratic Party. Only time will tell whether Suga is more than just a “safe pair of hands” to maintain the status quo — like Kgalema Motlanthe after the recall of Thabo Mbeki.
As commentators worldwide rush to write their assessments of Abenomics, my view is that Abe’s greatest achievement is to have planned and executed Japan’s foreign policy right. He has been able pull off Kotaro Matsushima-like sidesteps as he navigates the argy-bargy between Xi Jinping’s China and Donald Trump’s US.
Abe visited Xi in China in December 2019 to affirm the two countries’ relations were at “a new level” — with a return state visit by Xi in April this year postponed due to Covid-19.
Abe was able to placate the ever-impatient China while cultivating a bromance with Trump and building an Indo-Pacific alliance with Narendra Modi in India. Moreover, Abe spearheaded the negotiations on the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership, despite Trump pulling out the US. This free trade agreement, which includes 11 countries around the Pacific Ocean rim — from Australia to Canada, Chile, Mexico and Vietnam — was signed in 2018.
The lesson from Japan’s playbook is that size is not everything, but thorough preparation and an honest understanding of your own and the opponent’s weaknesses are key
The free trade zone, the world’s third largest after that of the EU and the North American Free Trade Agreement, can be interpreted as a countermeasure against growing Chinese economic clout in the Pacific region, with provisions designed to check the expansion of state-owned enterprises.
Yet despite proven foreign policy deftness, the Abe administration has failed to charm SA. This is not for lack of planning and execution by the Japanese. My Japanese friends tell me the ministries of foreign affairs and economic trade & industry, the Japan International Co-operation Agency and the Japan External Trade Organisation have worked hard to build and improve Japan-SA relations bilaterally and multilaterally through the Tokyo International Conference on African Development (Ticad).
The latest Ticad conference, held in Yokohama and co-hosted by the UN Development Programme, AU Commission and World Bank, was attended by 42 African leaders, including Cyril Ramaphosa.
The lesson from Japan’s playbook is that size is not everything, but thorough preparation and an honest understanding of your own and the opponent’s weaknesses are key.
In SA’s context, regional security is of utmost importance, and we need to get the relationship with our neighbours right. However, we neglect relationships with great powers such as Japan at our peril. Being chained to an outdated Cold War ideological framework does not help.
As SA looks to pull itself out of the economic depression by attracting foreign direct investment and trade deals, it should remember that foreign policy should serve the interests of the country, and there are no perpetual enemies and no eternal friends — only interests are eternal.
• Kuo, a former a lecturer at the Shanghai International Studies University in China, is a research associate at the University of Pretoria’s Gordon Institute of Business Science.
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