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Curzon
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Curzon

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November 15th, 2006

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Curzon right two years early

HT to Joe. Would you believe the post below is two years old? Turns out it’s now finally on the verge of becoming true.

* * *

House Speaker Denny Hastert has been named as a possible successor to Howard Baker John Schieffer as US Ambassador to Japan. But what does Hastert know about Japan? Who cares! It doesn’t matter to the Japanese leadership. They want someone seriously connected in Washington, and who more so than Hastert?

Check out this recent list of US Ambassadors to Japan from the past 30 years and their old jobs:

  • James Hodgson, 1974-1977 : Secretary of Labor
  • Mike Mansfield, 1977-1989 : Senate Majority Leader
  • Mike Armascott, 1989-1993 : Ambassador to the Phillipines
  • Walter Mondale, 1993-1997 : Vice President
  • Tom Foley, 1997-2001 : House Speaker, House Majority Leader
  • Howard Baker, 2001-2005: Senate Majority Leader
  • John Thomas Schieffer, 2005-2006: Ambassador to Australia.

Five of seven were in Washington’s top legislative positions. Why did they go on to become Ambassadors to Japan?

Believe it or not, Japan doesn’t want East Asian experts like Edwin Reischauer, who served in the position during the Kennedy and Johnson presidencies from 1961-1966. Born in Japan in 1910, Reischauer was fluent in Japanese was apparently pretty popular in Japan. But when it came down to real hard politics, he had no political connections in Washington and was never effective at getting clear channels of communication for the Japanese leadership. Starting with Mike Mansfield (who was appointed by Carter but who Reagan kept on), Japan realized that the secret to getting the message through to Washington was having a veteran politico at the helm.

So if you want to be ambassador to Japan (Saru? Adamu?), it’s best to be in a top legislative position, not (just?) an expert on Japan.

Comments to this entry

Mutantfrog
November 15, 2006
11:19 am
You mean you haven't heard about Saru's probably upcoming job?
Curzon
November 15, 2006
11:38 am
No -- pray tell.
carpetblogger
November 15, 2006
2:41 pm
Or, be one step removed from a scandal that contributed to your party's mid-term thumpin'.
MikeS
November 15, 2006
3:55 pm
Curzon, you are an oracle my friend. What else can I say?
Tobias
November 16, 2006
9:09 am
I think your observation is a good one, but it's important to remember that Washington connections are important in a purely symbolic sense, since the US ambassador in Tokyo shares day-to-day management of US-Japan relations with the commander of US Forces, Japan at Yokota, the commander of the Seventh Fleet at Yokosuka, and PACOM in Honolulu. Strategic responsibility, meanwhile, rests of late, in the Pentagon and the White House.

So the US ambassador needs to conduct the obligatory "nemawashi" that makes every other US-Japan policymaker's job easier and then get out of the way. A well-connected ambassador, particularly one with political gravitas AND a close relationship with the president (the problem with Schieffer being that he had the latter and not the former) is useful for reassuring the Japanese that the relationship is important -- and that's pretty much it.

Of the list you provided the only major exception to this mode was Mondale, who was, as Funabashi Yoichi wrote in "Alliance Adrift", "secretary of state for Asia-Pacific affairs"; that was only because Warren Christopher was clueless about Asia, and in any event, Mondale was secondary in the process of alliance revision to Nye and other officials at the Pentagon.
lirelou
November 17, 2006
3:12 am
Until I served with the U.S. Embassy in Mexico City, I always presumed that professional diplomats far outshone their political appointee counterparts. Mexico is traditionally reserved for business heavy hitters, who generally owe their nominations to donations. Surprisingly, an article in the local Mexican press while I was there evaluated the ambassadors of the past 20 years, and ranked the businessmen high. The business of the U.S., they quoted some forgotten President (Warren Harding?) was business, and it was precisely U.S. business that Mexico was interested in. The only ambassador they ranked below par was Ronald Reagan's, who was, I believe, an actor of partial Mexican-American descent. Mexico City was, at that time, the largest U.S. diplomatic mission abroad, and the Ambassador was backed up by a superbly talented Charge d'Affaires. The Mexican peso had just dropped through the floor, but Mexican sales to the U.S. market (of which beer and tequila were important segments) helped the peso to recover. Connections in Washington are important, but so are connections to (or in the alternative, a deep understanding o) fthose sectors of U.S. commerce and industry which most effect the host nation.
Joe
November 17, 2006
3:40 am
He called it!
Mutantfrog Travelogue » Blog Archive » Hastert tipped as next Tokyo ambassador
November 17, 2006
3:41 am
[...] UPDATE: Looks like Da Curzon Code was right. [...]