Speaking before the UN summit in New York this past week, freshly endorsed Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama offered up an impressive series of global pledges to his counterparts. Taken together, his official statements promised a fresh reassertion of Japan’s role as a regional powerhouse.
Hatoyama’s sweeping promises danced across the spectrum of policy, from “peace-building” and “fighting poverty with development” to the lofty aim of reasserting Japan’s role as “a global bridge between the Orient and the Occident.”
Unfortunately, these promises represent little more than foreign policy platitudes. Mr. Hatoyama and the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) have for months now recycled these pledges to the point that his address sounded as if he were reading straight from the DPJ pre-election manifesto. It fell far short of a landmark debut fitting of the historic change that Mr. Hatoyama’s election represents.
There was one promising remark that shed a bit of light on a still opaque DPJ foreign policy: "Japan seeks to normalize relations with North Korea in accordance with the Pyongyang Declaration,” Hatoyama said, but a “comprehensive resolution of the outstanding issues of concern with North Korea, including the abduction, nuclear and missile issues, “ was still necessary.
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