THE JAPAN TIMES SUNDAY, OCTOBER 18, 2009

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opinionGreat acts of conviction

How Japan can regain its vitality
Kiyoshi Kurokawa

WILLIAM
PFAFF

Alessandria Italy---------------------------------------------------------

The world hungers for great men toliberate them from their griefs. They
rarely arrive, and even more rarely are
they appreciated at the time for what they
are, usually being deprecated or opposedor mocked by their contemporaries, andleft to the historians to rediscover.
Gratitude, if it ever comes, ordinarily
comes too late. Or it comes prematurely,
and inauspiciously.
The Nobel Peace Prize given Barack
Obama was a naive expression of thatneed for greatness. The Americanpresident, actively engaged inperpetuating the great war against terror
and the Taliban — Obama has naive
dreams, too — should have had the insightto decline the award politely, as
inappropriate, as did Henry Kissinger’s
North Vietnamese fellow-laureate, Le
Duc Tho, when jointly named for the 1973
Peace Prize.
The Europeans know that they willsoon be badly in need of a great man of
their own. They are at a critical point intheir construction of European Union. It
now seems reasonably sure that the
Lisbon Treaty, reforming the terms of EU
governance, will finally be put in place.
With Irish and Polish agreement to thetreaty during the past few days, anddespite British accord still lacking, andlast-ditch opposition by the Czech
president, confidence is justified that in
the end a way will be found to appease or
brush aside the uncooperative President
Vaclav Klaus, whose public opinion does

not follow him in his opposition to thetreaty, and to save both the treaty andDavid Cameron, prospective prime
minister if the Conservative Party wins
the next election in Britain, from the Tory
Europhobes.
When, and if, the treaty is ratified,
Europe will be in need of its George
Washington. It was Valery Giscard
d’Estaing, the former French president(and head draftsman of the European
constitution that France and Holland
voted down) who said that. (One may
think that he had a certain candidate —
himself — in mind.)
Europe will have a very hard time
finding their George Washington — oreven his female counterpart. The reason
is that Europe will then incorporate not
the present 27 presidents of the member
states, but at least 28 — so as to include its
George Washington.
Europe’s president will like to seehimself, and be seen elsewhere, as theleader of Europe. But he will be seen by
the European national presidents as theircreature, elected to do their bidding.
Nor will the chancellor of Germany,
nor the leaders of Europe’s two nuclear
powers and U.N. Security Council
permanent members, France andBritain, regard their national interests
adequately represented by a European
president, unless he or she should indeed
be that great man or woman who today
remains unrecognized.
The great are hard to discern because
the greatest of them do not act fromambition but from moral conviction, an
infrequently encountered quality inpolitical circles.
My remarks in this column are
inspired by where I am, which is aconference on the problems presented to
the world in the 20th anniversary year of
the fall of the Berlin Wall.
The sponsor is the World Political
Forum, an organization founded by theman who caused the Berlin Wall to fall,
Mikhail Gorbachev. President
Gorbachev was not present, having beendetained by the need to be in Moscow.
The group’s attention was on what may
follow in our world, in which communism
has collapsed and the Cold War is only
embers (although some do blow on them).
Capitalism is in distress, and now
widely distrusted in the form that it has
assumed in recent years in the UnitedStates — and internationally as well, tothe extent that the American form has
been exported by means ofAmerican-promoted globalism. Many of
the European participants seemedalmost to assume U.S. capitalism as deadas communism. The Americans present
cautioned them.
Aside from the organizers, the one who
did speak of President Gorbachev was,appropriately, a Russian academic andpolitical figure, Grigory Yavlinsky,
founder of the liberal Yabloko party and aformer presidential candidate in Russia.
What he said was simple and eloquent.
It was that both we and history must notforget that this one man, on his own
initiative, asking no one’s permission orapproval, freed some 400 million people
from a system of oppression that had casta shadow over the lives lived within thispolitical system, and under its influence,for some 70 years.
No one made him do this. Many
opposed him, fearing the consequences ofwhat he was doing. He did it because of his— and one would think, his wife’s —conviction that to do so was an urgent
moral necessity and a moral obligationthat rested upon himself as the individualin possession of the power to do so.
He was thus a great man.
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Visit William Pfaff’s Web site atwww.williampfaff.com.
© 2009 Tribune Media Services------------------------------------------------------

Reviving the old approach to arms control
Michael D. Gordin
Princeton N.J.
LOS ANGELES TIMES---------------------------------------------------------

Attempts to control or reverse nuclear
proliferation come in two flavors: Either
one tries to control nuclear material(uranium, centrifuges, superfast
switches), or one tries to control nuclear
information (blueprints, schematics,
scientific expertise).
For most of the last half a century, theworld has shunned the material approachin favor of controlling information. But
information is extremely difficult tocontain, as is made clear by the growing
number of countries that have acquired
nuclear weapons in the decades since theUnited States made the first atomic bomb
— from the Soviet Union in 1949 to North
Korea in 2006.
The United Nations started out with amaterials-centric approach. Almost
exactly a year after the San Francisco
Charter established the United Nations inJune 1945, President Harry S. Truman
sent a special envoy there with a proposal
to stop the spread of nuclear weapons. At
the time — because the only nation withsuch devices was the U.S. — the move waspatently directed at the Soviet Union in aneffort to curb it from taking the steps
toward nuclear proliferation.
Instead of relying on the standing
representative to the fledgling body,
Warren Austin, Truman sent Bernard
Baruch, a financier and longtime adviser
to Democratic presidents since Woodrow
Wilson. On June 14, 1946, Baruch unveiled
his plan to control nuclear energy, thecenterpiece of which was the control ofuranium ore.
The goal of the proposal, modeled on
the ideas of physicist J. Robert
Oppenheimer, as expressed in the
Acheson-Lilienthal Report released
earlier that year, was to stop proliferation
at the source. Global uranium reserves
would be internationalized, and scientists
worldwide would be required to reportclandestine nuclear activities to aninternational atomic energy authority.
No uranium, no bombs. Period.
Global politics, in the end, prevented theBaruch plan from being implemented. But
now, after decades of trying instead tocontrol information, the United Nations
has once again embraced the idea ofcontrolling materials. Resolution 1887,
passed unanimously by the Security
Council last month, aims to secure nuclear
materials around the world.
The Baruch plan has not fared wellwith historians and proliferation experts,
mostly because it did not fare well with
the Soviets. Baruch preserved the key
insight of the Acheson-Lilienthal Reportabout the need to contain uranium ore,but he modified the original proposal in
two very significant ways.
First, violators would automatically besubject to sanctions — ‘‘an internationallaw with teeth in it,’’ as he put it. Second,veto power in the Security Council — aprivilege of the victors in World War II(the U.S., the Soviet Union, France,
Britain and Republican China) that had
been essential to persuade the Soviets tojoin the world body in the first place —SPECIAL TO THE JAPAN TIMES---------------------------------------------------------

Last November, two months after theinauguration of the Cabinet of Prime
Minister Taro Aso, I predicted, in an
opinion piece for the American magazine
Science, that a sweeping change inJapanese government was imminent.
I wrote, ‘‘Perhaps the
public, sensing the need forchange, is pessimistic
about the possibilities (ofchange under theconservative
government), given thatJapan has been so
resistant to change overthe past decade.’’Like it or not, my prediction proved
right. On Aug. 30, the Japanese public
voted to give birth to the new government
led by the opposition Democratic Party ofJapan by casting off the Aso government
and putting an end to more than ahalf-century of the de facto monopoly of
government by the conservative Liberal
Democratic Party.
Indeed, the election result has
far-reaching implications for the future.
For one thing, it has paved the way forJapan’s opportunities to change. The
election results may not mean that theJapanese public at large tried to penalize
the LDP for the economic downturn, rising
unemployment and widening income
disparity — a view popularly hyped by the
media here and there.
Instead, the result may indicate arising awareness of the Japanese public’s
thirst for change and the realization that
the LDP is unable to resort to necessarychange due to its heavy ties with‘‘establishments’’ and ‘‘stakeholders’’built during ‘‘Regime 55,’’ which
generally refers to the half-century-longsystem of governance, started in 1955
upon the merger of two major
conservative parties in rivalry with theunified socialist party.
Japan change must change because
the world today is witnessing the mostsweeping change since the Industrial
Revolution in the paradigms of economic
growth and social reform, triggered bytechnological revolutions and progress inscience and technology.
We have taken the 20th-century
paradigm for granted in our daily living
and business. This paradigm was formed
in 1908 by the invention of Ford Motor’sModel T — the hallmark of motorization,

mass production, standardization andconsumerism. It has been supported bycheap oil and combustion engine, withexpanding network of roads andhighways, accompanied with various
technological advances in informationand finances.
In my observation, this paradigm of the20th century clearly reached its limit after
the 1973 ‘‘oil shock.’’ And exactly 20 years
ago, in 1989, three major incidents in theworld presaged a sweeping change in theparadigm: the fall of the Berlin Wall, theTiananmen Square military crackdown on
prodemocracy protests, and the surge of
the Nikkei stock average to an all-time highof 38,915, which, in retrospect, marked theend of the era of ‘‘Japan as No. 1.’’
In 1991, the collapse of the Soviet Union
ended the Cold War and ushered in the
global market economy. What we
recognize today as the Worldwide Web
began in 1992. Yahoo, Amazon andNetscape were all founded in 1994, andGoogle was founded in 1997. In just over a
decade, the world has changed
dramatically.
While the world is becoming
increasingly flat, connected andnetworked, Japan categorically adheresto the conventional business model
marked by mass production ofstandardized products and vertical
integration. No doubt, Japan excels in
manufacturing, but this is becoming
Japan’s weakness.
For instance, about 3 million mobile
phones are sold each day in the world. Yet,
Nokia of Finland has the largest (40percent) market share, followed byMotorola of the United States and Samsungof South Korea (15 percent each) and Sony
Ericsson (9 percent). Recently, LG
Electronics of South Korea overtook Sony
Ericsson. This is the reality, despite thefact that some 65 percent of the components
used in mobile phones are made in Japan.
Is Japan content with being sidelined as amere parts maker?
If we want to be more than that, wemust create a new business model ofhorizontal integration and open
innovation, and provide new values to therest of the world. To this end, Japan musthave a vision of the future and a global
perspective, which is lacking now.
To be frank, I am pessimistic about any
momentum for dramatic change comingfrom Japan’s high-ranking senior people in
the establishments — political,
bureaucratic, business and academic. I am
pinning high hopes on younger Japanese tostart nation-building anew. This is why I
advocate sweeping university reforms.
For instance, schools should encourage
students to get experience staying, if notstudying, abroad for a certain period
before entering the workforce. By the same
token, business corporations should be
encouraged to hire graduates with such
experience, which would familiarize themwith different cultures and ideas.
Japanese society has to become more
conducive to innovation and provide
opportunities for risk-taking,adventurous people. It is the oddball andthinking-out-of-the-box people with theentrepreneurial spirit who will trigger
change. We should welcome those whose
nails stick up.
In this context, I point to the necessityof Japan’s embracing diversity,
heterogeneity and adaptability,
especially with regard to promoting
women to higher posts at businesscorporations and academic institutions.
According to the U.N. Development
Program’s just-released 2009 Human
Development Report, Japan ranks 10thamong the 182 countries/areas surveyedon the Human Development Index, ameasurement of the nation’s general
well-being.
When it comes to the Gender
Empowerment Index, Japan drops to57th. This gap shows that Japanesewomen are losing the opportunity to play
an active role in society, which is an
obvious waste of human resources.
Consider the poor representation of
women in the boardrooms of major
Japanese corporations and the executive
offices of higher education. Four of theeight U.S. Ivy League universities(Harvard, Princeton, Pennsylvania and
Brown) have female presidents,
compared with only one of the 87
Japanese national universities. That
exceptional school, Ochanomizu
University, is a women’s school.
Japan’s regaining of its vitality
depends largely on whether we can fully
utilize women’s power and ability. This isno small issue.
-------------------------------------------

Kiyoshi Kurokawa, a former president of the
Science Council of Japan, is a professor at the
National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies
in Tokyo. He served as special science adviser
to the Cabinet from 2006 to 2008. This article isa compilation of Kurokawa’s remarks during a
recent dialogue with Yukiko Ogasawara,president of The Japan Times.
------------------------------------------------------

India shifts stand on carbon emission cuts
after China announces a national program
Harsh V. Pant
LondonSPECIAL TO THE JAPAN TIMES---------------------------------------------------------

would be suspended only for matterspertaining to atomic energy. This lastprovision made sense to Baruch andTruman: The Soviets were the most likely
to violate the agreement, so allowing
them to veto sanctions against
themselves would surely be a case of
moral hazard.
That change doomed the plan. The
Soviet ambassador to the United Nations,
Andrei Gromyko, earned the nickname‘‘Mr. Nyet’’ for his forceful denunciationof the Baruch plan. Correctly sensing thatthe purpose of the plan was to stymie
Soviet proliferation, Gromyko issued acounterproposal a few days later that
inverted the order of the American plan:
First, nuclear weapons would be
abolished and any nuclear nation (that is,
the U.S.) would have to destroy its
stockpile, and then all uranium reserves
could be internationalized.
As a nonproliferation strategy, theGromyko plan made no sense. There wasno political or military logic for the U.S. tovoluntarily disarm without guarantees
that other powers would be prevented
from covertly arming. There was no way
the Americans would agree to his
proposal, but Gromyko argued skillfully
that the suspension of the veto would

violate the U.N. Charter and tied theBaruch plan down in procedural debates
until November 1949.
By that point, the Soviets had the bomb,
the issue was moot, and arms control
went back to the drawing board.
An unintended casualty of the failure of
the Baruch plan was to marginalize theidea of controlling proliferation throughcontrolling nuclear materials. Uranium
ore was no longer at center stage. Bothsuperpowers had nuclear weapons, andarms control shifted to controlling thenumber of weapons and keeping a lid on
the ‘‘knowhow’’ of making bombs. But
information tends to slip through cracks,
and the rest, sadly, is now history.
The new U.N. resolution, and theapproach it embodies, is tremendously
encouraging. The most crucial issue now
is not to replay the procedural quagmireof 1946-49, and bring the attention
squarely and permanently back onmaterials.
-------------------------------------------

Michael D. Gordin is an associate professor of
history at Princeton University and the authorof the just-released ‘‘Red Cloud at Dawn:
Truman, Stalin and the End of the Atomic
Monopoly.’’------------------------------------------------------The Japan Times PUBDATE: 10/18/2009

With a new U.N. climate treaty to beconsidered in Copenhagen in December,the developed world and the emerging
economies are trying to bridge theirdifferences on how to curb greenhouse-gas
emissions that cause global warming. The
United States wants developing countries
like India and China to agree to specificreduction targets on the emissions
produced by their galloping economies.
India argues that this would hurt its
economic growth and wants theindustrialized world to curb its pollution
as well as fund new technologies in thedeveloping world. Even as most countries
see the need for an agreement at
Copenhagen, India has made it clear thatit cannot accept legally binding limits on
carbon emissions.
Although around 80 percent of world
growth in carbon emissions is comingfrom fast-growing economies like India
and China, India has argued that even if
India’s economy continues to grow atcurrent levels for the next decade or two,its per capita emissions will still be below
those of developed countries.
A recent bill passed by the U.S. Houseof Representatives, which would impose
carbon tariffs on products from countries
that do not undertake emission-cut
targets, has elicited a strong negative
reaction in India. Such tactics are viewed
as protectionist in nature to shieldbusinesses from the costs of its own
national emission targets.
One of the major stumbling blocks inglobal negotiations on climate change has
been the reluctance of the developed
world to adequately finance and transfer
enabling technology to the developingworld, to help the developing world
reduce emissions without incurring
heavy out-of-pocket development costs.
India is seeking a bilateral arrangementwith the U.S. on this issue.
The current U.S. administration has
committed to cutting U.S. greenhouse-gas
emissions by 80 percent by 2050 from 1990
levels. Japan’s new prime minister, Yukio
Hatoyama, has outlined his country’s
intentions of reducing emissions by 25
percent by 2020.
As a consequence, the emerging
economies are now under increasingpressure to demonstrate theircommitments to tackle climate changeeven as they continue their efforts to
reduce poverty. It is thus significant that

China and India conveyed positive signals
at the recent summit on climate change at
the United Nations in New York.
An iconic image of India’s defiance on
the issue of climate change came during
U.S. Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton’svisit to India in July, when India’s
environment minister, Jairam Ramesh,publicly asserted that ‘‘India’s position isclear and categorical that we are simply
not in a position to take any legallybinding emissions reduction.’’Ahead of the global climate change
negotiations in Copenhagen, there has
been growing pressure from theWhile the acceptance of binding
international targets to cut
greenhouse-gas emissions is stillout of the question, India isunderlining the importance oftaking on national
commitments to enhance its
credibility ahead of December’s
summit at Copenhagen. Thischange of heart is partly the
result of the evolving Chinese
response to climate change.
developed world on states like China andIndia to accept quantifiable targets to
reduce greenhouse-gas emissions.
Although India has expressed strong
disapproval of the West’s threat to impose
carbon tariffs on India’s exports, India
now appears to be gradually changing its
position as exemplified by the remarks ofRamesh at the climate change summit in
New York. He suggested that India‘‘cannot hide behind any excuses and we[Indians] have to be aggressively taking
on voluntary mitigation outcomes.’’
While the acceptance of binding
international targets remains out ofquestion, India is now underlining theimportance of taking on national
commitments to enhance its global
credibility.
This change of heart is a result of two
interrelated factors. One is the evolving
Chinese response to climate change.
China has declared that it is pursuing a
National Climate Change Program,which includes mandatory targets for
reducing energy intensity and thedischarge of major pollutants as well as
increasing forest coverage and share of
renewable energy for the 2005-2010

PAGE: 15 C M Y K OUTPUT TIME: 19:15:40

period. India was caught unaware by
specific measures that China recently
announced at the U.N. General Assembly
and is now planning to follow suit.
Toward this end, India plans to haveregular dialogue with China to exchange
views on their respective action plans.
The other factor driving India’s new
approach to climate change negotiations
is a sense among Indian strategic elites
that a rising India should engage theworld on its own terms and with a degreeof confidence that befits its stature as arising power in the international system.
In tune with this assessment, India
agreed at the Major Economies Forummeeting in Italy about two months backthat all countries would work to reduce
emissions to try to prevent global
temperatures from rising more than 2
degrees Celsius above preindustrialization levels.
Critics argue that the agreement will
restrict India’s diplomatic space at the
Copenhagen summit. Yet, India hopesthat such steps will help it overcome its
traditional image as a deal-breaker whenit comes to global negotiations. India hascommitted itself to a mandatory fuelefficiency cap beginning in 2011, a change
in its energy matrix whereby renewablesources will account for 20 percent ofIndia’s power usage by 2020, and an
ambitious solar energy plan.
Still, it is far from clear whether the
climate change negotiations will succeed,as the developing countries seek financial
and technological support. Without suchassistance, states like India will not be
willing to open their efforts at greenhouseemission reductions to internationalverification.
Climate change talks not only involve
competing economic interests but also
raise matters of broad principle for theWest’s relationship with developing
nations. India has shown itself ready tolead coalitions of developing nations in
the past, vetoing those global agreements
they see as discriminatory.
Given the issue of the West’s ‘‘historicalresponsibility’’ for atmospheric pollution,
Indian agreement will be hard to secure.
Still, the fact that India has started togradually change its approach toward
one of the biggest challenges facing theinternational community portends wellfor the future.
-------------------------------------------

Harsh V. Pant teaches at King’s College
London and is currently a Visiting Professor at
IIM Bangalore.
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