All about that base: Japan’s security policy

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Hello, and welcome to the Intelligence from the Economist. I'm your host, Jason Palmer. Every weekday we provide a fresh perspective on the events shaping your world. Daniel Smith may be the last living offspring of an American slave. Our correspondent hears of his father's horrifying stories, the civil rights leaders he met and how he felt about a Confederate flag parading through America's capital in January. And things have very much changed in Thailand when it comes to cannabis policy. The best way to see the shift, it turns out, is to take a look at restaurant menus across the country. First up, though.

Earlier this year, I was traveling in the southwest of Japan along an island chain called the Nansei.

Noah Snyder is the Economist's Tokyo bureau chief.

I went, in fact, all the way out to the edge of this island chain, to an island called Yonaguni. It's a tiny little rocky speck of an island at the edge of the East China Sea. So we took a flight initially to Naha, which is the airport on the main island of Okinawa, spent a night in a cozy little airport hotel and woke up early the next morning to catch the one flight a day on a small propeller plane that takes us out to Yonaguni. And as you fly, you get this really sweeping view of the islands. I mean, obviously gorgeous open seas and a Gorgeous view onto the edge of the pacific ocean. And really, as we flew, hit me just how vast a territory this is. We're talking about dozens of islands, some of them inhabited, others not. And that has big implications for Japan's defense. And that's ostensibly what took us out to yonaguni in the first place.

But why Yonaguni in particular? And what is it in general that got you thinking about Japan's defense?

So it's in fact closer to Taiwan than it is to the Japanese mainland. And yonaguni was the site of the first of a number of military bases and installations that Japan's self defense forces, as its military is called, have opened across the nansei islands in recent years. So what's gotten people worried recently is two things. Number one is China's aggression and China's intentions, especially with regards to Taiwan. And the other force that's got people a bit worried is questions about America's reliability. You know, Japan is in many ways dependent on America for its security. The u. S. Japan alliance is the bedrock of its defense strategy. But people are starting to wonder about America's commitment. And those dual forces have really prompted a big transformation in Japan's own security posture in recent years.

And what do you mean by changing a military posture, though? Like building outposts like the ones you saw?

Well, this new posture really means two things. It means strengthening Japan's own defenses, so building up bases, as we've discussed, and investing more in defense. And it also means building up ties with security partners other than america. To understand why those two developments are so significant for Japan, we need a little bit of history and a little bit of context. So think back to the end of the second world war.

Captured Japanese films show the emperor hirohito.

Surveying the ruins of his capital on the eve of surrender.

Japan is defeated. America essentially rewrites Japan's constitution to bar it from maintaining military forces of its own. Japan's foreign policy was linked mostly to economics. Japan's security was dependent mostly on America alone. But a big turning point really came into.

They are some of the most hotly contested pieces of property in the world. Disputed islands called the senkakus by Japan and the daiyu by china.

At the southern tip of the Japanese archipelago, a cluster of uninhabited islands now on the frontline of what may be a new flashpoint.

China and Japan clashed over a set of disputed but uninhabited islands not too far from yonaguni itself. And policymakers really woke up to the fact that for many decades, Japan had lived In a context where it didn't really need to think too much or invest too much in its own defense, it was in a warm, sheltered environment where it could focus on other priorities. In today's context, it no longer has that luxury.

And so with all that in mind, then, what do the kinds of changes in posture mean on the ground?

Well, the biggest and most visible thing is the appearance of these new bases. So we visited one new base on Amami Oshima, which is another small island in the Nanse island chain. And Japan has a small sort of missile defense base that's opened up there, which has a bunch of surface to ship missiles and surface to air missiles that are meant to help defend the waters around the Nanse Islands. The commander at the base took us out to watch a small drill where the soldiers rolled out their surface to ship missiles. There are these huge trucks with missile batteries on the back. And of course, there are many challenges to this ongoing shift, and one of them that it remains really difficult for legal reasons and political reasons, for Japan's Self Defense Forces to train and exercise and operate within Japan. So on this base in particular, they roll out the missile launchers, get them into position to launch and stop the drills before any of the actual firing begins. If they want to practice firing the missiles, they in fact have to go all the way to America to do that.

And so a lot of this training then is just basically dealing with big military hardware.

For Japan's Self Defense Forces, it really means thinking about a new theater and a new mode of operations. So a lot of what they're doing is working to develop better interoperability, better sort of joint operations between the different branches of their service and training their soldiers to operate in an environment that they hadn't really been training for up until now. So I went and visited another base which is really sort of the crux of these efforts. The base of a unit called the Amphibious Rapid Deployment Brigade, which is kind of modeled essentially on the American Marine Corps. But basically they've taken a few thousand elite soldiers and started to train them for recapturing islands for amphibious based operations. They've got a big pool set up where they do all kinds of drills to practice what would happen if their troop carriers capsized in the middle of the ocean and they had to escape. They've got scout swimmers out there practicing, learning how to swim in the ocean with 45 kilogram packs in order to infiltrate behind enemy lines on island territories. So it's in many ways a shift not just in geographic posture, but a shift in the kinds of operations that the SDF is having to think about.

So given all this training and the historical context that it comes in, where would you place Japan in terms of its preparedness for the kind of world that it's now worried about?

I think Japan is clearly a lot more up for the rough and tumble geopolitics it finds itself faced with now than it was a decade or two ago. At the same time, this shift is clearly a work in progress, and the SDF would be the first to admit that what they have is not enough for them to feel comfortable. And there's really not a consensus yet about where Japan's red lines lie and how Japan ought to respond. So Japanese leaders now have the tools to act, have the ability to do quite a lot more than they used to be able to, but it will still be a political decision to use those tools.

Thanks very much for joining us.

Noah.

Thank you very much for having me.

For more analysis like this from our international network of correspondence, take out a subscription to the Economist. Get a great introductory deal@Equality.com IntelligenceOffer the link is in the show.

Notes. Answer telling My father did not have much, but he loved America. He loved America.

I met an 89 year old gentleman called Daniel Smith who lives in Northeast Washington. He may be the last living offspring of an American slave.

James Astle is the Economist's Washington bureau chief and writes Lexington, our column on American politics.

Mr. Smith's father was born in 1863, so two years before the end of the Civil War, to an enslaved family in southern Virginia.

He was a very strict, gentle person, very dignified, always wore on Sunday a suit chain in it. He would never scream and holler at you.

He had a long Life. He was 70 by the time Daniel was born, and that was in Connecticut, where Daniel was the second youngest of six children. He had quite vivid memories of as a child on, on Saturday nights he would be put to bed. He was considered too young to be up.

You know, I would crawl out of bed and on the floor and make my way out into their room and my father would be telling the stories and I would listen and, and hear. I remember those things very well.

He would sneak out of bed and go listen to his father telling his older siblings the stories that he had in turn been told by his parents about slavery. Horrifying, horrifying stories of slavery in the South. The story that Daniel remembers, I think with the most awful dread still is one about an enslaved man who was accused of lying to his Owner denied it and was summoned out into the snow with his family and then made to kneel before a wagon wheel and put his tongue on this icy wheel until it froze onto the iron treads and damaged his tongue terribly as he then pulled it off.

I mean, you don't know what to think at 6 years old. At 5 years, you don't know what to think but to hear and to see him, tears come in his eye as if it happened to him. But it didn't happen to him, I'm pretty certain. But it could have been his brother or father or someone they knew.

Certainly he took from his father a great hunger for advancement. His father was a very proper man, insisted that his children do things the right way and strive and work and take every opportunity that that came their way. Was still incredibly conscious of, mad as it may sound, the opportunity that the end of slavery had given him personally.

And we always said in our family, if you want to beat the white men, you gotta outwork them, you gotta outsmart them, you gotta stay up longer at night and make your plans, but you gotta work hard.

And all of the children appear to have learned that lesson, given their extraordinarily humble origins. Four of them, of six of them went to college, which is pretty extraordinary and I guess is a sort of reflection of his own drive and success, his success in graduating from high school and then college and then going on to postgraduate studies. He went to veterinary school, in fact, and then became, through his experiences in college, quite a prominent member of the civil rights struggle. He has an extraordinary witness to some of the most dramatic and formative moments in African American history of recent decades. He had run ins with the Black Panthers. He was chased through rural Alabama by, he calls them the kkk, anyway, white supremacists of some ghastly form. So he is, on the one hand, this extraordinary link, direct link, maybe last direct link to the history of slavery. And through his witness of these great events also his biography stands for so much of the subsequent progress and indeed frustrations of black Americans. So back in the day, in the 1960s, he was a committed devotee of Martin Luther King. He admired his moderation, his pragmatism. He himself is a very pragmatic guy. He left veterinary school in Alabama to set up anti poverty programs there and at that time had some disputes with the Black Panthers, Malcolm X's followers, including a charismatic Panther called Stokely Carmichael. I think subsequently, as he certainly says, so he has more sympathy for that more radical movement.

They were both needed at the, at the same time, sort of a pull push where you make some whites feel happy that Stokely's not on your side and you make some whites happy because King is non violent. Right. So I think there's a pull push there.

I think that that's true in and of itself if you look at the events of the 60s, but it's also an expression of his frustration that the advances of the 60s were not carried forward through the subsequent decades in the way that was promised at the time. He acknowledges, almost reluctantly in our conversation, but nonetheless that socially, black Americans live in a different world today than they did before the Civil Rights Act. There has been a great relaxation in race relations in America on that social, person to person, person level. But institutionally he was much, much more despondent. He looks politically with deep, deep despond at the attitude of the Republican Party to race relations. He, you know, wonderful as the election of Barack Obama was, and he was in, in the crowd for Obama's first.

Inauguration, when he came out on stage, just tears like Quincy, people next to me were crying. It was a wonderful experience, wonderful experience.

He sees, I think very reasonably, the rise of Donald Trump as a direct white American response to the election of Obama. And he sees everything that has followed from Trump's rise, the increased radicalization of the Republican Party on race to an ever more intolerant position. He sees that as a bleak development leading he knows not where. I found it very instructive listening to his thoughts on the insurrection of last January. I think many of us think about this as an assault on the Constitution, on the institution of Congress. But for a man like Daniel Smith, with his history to have seen images of the Confederate flag paraded through the Capitol building, he cannot but see this very much through the lens of race, of intolerant white nationalist politics.

That January 6th was just so revolting, so revolting, because in my judge, what they were showing were going to take back this country. And I tell you, when we take it back, you guys pack your bags. We're going to get rid of your Jew, get rid of your blacks, Hispanic. It's going to be.

And through those eyes, the insurrection itself and the subsequent refusal of Republicans to even investigate that violence is extraordinarily depressing.

There's been a lot of positive changes in this country, but you can't dismiss the fact that people don't want to hear the truth. They don't want to believe the truth. Well, just like January 6th, you know, maybe I'm a peasant, but I, I don't see the growth and the development that should have taken place at this point.

I took two things in particular from this fascinating conversation. One, I think it underlined for me just how recent this most violent, formative, bleak history in the American story is slavery. And for that matter, the last theft of Native American land in this country is just two lifetimes away. And for Daniel Smith, that's living history. And secondly, and I guess, you know, a little bit more optimistically hopefully, I found it sort of inspiring to be reminded of the extraordinary drive and accomplishments of those early post slavery generations of African Americans. They emerged from the most intolerable privation to really seize the limited opportunities that they had in America. So much of the telling of American black history, understandably is about privation and poverty and miserablism. But actually it's also a story of great grit and drive and talent and determination in very difficult circumstances.

For decades, Thailand, like other Asian countries, harshly punished anyone caught with cannabis. But the government has recently turned over a new leaf. Now what was once an illicit substance has become a delicious ingredient.

I recently went to a restaurant about a two hour drive from Bangkok called Ban La Run. And the menu at this restaurant is a little unusual. So it serves Thai classics like tom yum soup, gad ra cow, which is Thai basil chicken. And a lot of these dishes are infused with cannabis. Ben Lorung became the first restaurant in Thailand to begin cooking with cannabis in November last year.

Charlie McCann is the Economist's Southeast Asia correspondent.

I asked the manager whether she had ever tried weed before. The laws in Thailand were relaxed last year. Even my grandmother, grandfather, they didn't cook the because that time is illegal. And she said no. She'd always been too scared. Now that cooking with cannabis and eating cannabis in food is legal, she was happy to try it.

So why that change of heart then last year from it being quite illicit to being quite okay?

So there's a growing awareness in Thailand's government that the country's really quite punitive drug control regime isn't effective. Despite the harsh punishments for using drugs like weed, people carry on using those drugs. And then when it comes to cannabis specifically after the election of 2019, the ruling party needed to form a coalition government. And to do so, it needed the support of a political party called Bum Jai Tai. Now this party had campaigned on one issue. That issue was marijuana decriminalization. So the following year, the country's weed laws were relaxed.

And how has this landed with everyday Ties?

They responded really positively. So a survey conducted last year by Global Data, which is a market research firm, found that about 3/4 of Thais surveyed thought that the idea of food and drink containing cbt, which is a non psychoactive cannabis compound, was somewhat or very appealing. And that might be because there's just a long tradition in Thailand of cooking with cannabis. Centuries ago, Thais began incorporating the plant into herbal remedies, then into food. And even after weed was criminalized in 1934, many Thais just carried on cooking with it. I spoke to Chakri Lap Boon Rong. He owns this restaurant in Bangkok which is called Kyukai Ka, who told me about his father.

Our father and our grandfather have to use weed for a long time.

He grew weed in his kitchen garden and would often toss a few leaves into his paga prow that he cooked for the family.

When you have something, okay, very delicious and it makes it better, and he.

Said that it really enhanced the flavor of the meal.

So now it's legal. A lot of people will continue doing, I guess, what they did before, but lots of businesses can now get in on it.

Yeah, definitely. They're already starting to pile in. So, for example, a few months ago, Thailand's biggest tea maker, Ichitan, launched two drinks infused with something called terpene, which is the compound in cannabis that's responsible for its very distinctive smell. And the pizza company, a Thai fast food chain, recently introduced a pizza that is topped with one deep fried cannabis leaf. And it calls that pizza the crazy happy pizza. And there's going to be a lot of money to be made. One Thai consultancy, Elevated Estate, thinks that the Thai market for cannabis could be worth $660 million by 2024.

So it's kind of good news all around for business and for some suddenly slightly happier eaters, drinkers, diners.

It's good times all round, Jason. At least that's what Mr. Chakri told me when his customers eat at his restaurant, when they eat from the cannabis menu and they get hungrier and they order more than they would otherwise, getting the munchies has ever been so virtuous or good for the bottom line.

Charlie, thanks very much for joining us and, and bon appetit.

Thank you, Jason.

That's all for this episode of the Intelligence. If you like us, leave us a rating and a review and see you back here tomorrow.