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Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga speaks during a news conference announcing to extend a state of emergency on COVID-19 pandemic at prime minister's official residence in Tokyo, Japan, August 17, 2021.
What We’re Watching: Japan's ruling party leadership battle
At least three members of Japan's ruling Liberal Democratic Party — which has governed the country almost continuously since 1955 — will face off against embattled Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga in a leadership vote scheduled for September 29. Since taking office a year ago after the health-related retirement of his old boss Shinzo Abe, Suga's approval rating has plunged due to his haphazard pandemic response, a series of LDP political scandals, and his unpopular decision to host the Tokyo Olympics amid COVID. Now, the PM will face tough challenges from Fumio Kishida, a party heavyweight who lost the LDP presidency to Suga last year; former LDP policy chief Hakuban Shimomura; and Sanae Takaichi, a hawkish former interior minister who wants to become the first woman PM of Japan, a country that has a dismal record of women's participation in politics. Suga has one thing going for him, though: he reportedly still has the support of Abe, who carries enormous sway within the party.
What We're Watching: Suga's post-Olympics approval, Taliban take capitals, Mozambique and Rwanda vs jihadists, US offers Brazil NATO partnership
Suga's collapsing popularity: For the past 18 months, debate within Japan and around the world has raged over whether Japan could and should stage the Olympic Games amid a pandemic. For better and for worse, the Games were held and are now closed. So, what's the political fallout for Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga, who has governed in a state of near-constant crisis, and for his government? The good news for them is that a new poll from Asahi Shimbun, released last weekend, found that 56 percent said it was a good idea to hold the Games, and just 32 percent said it was a mistake. The bad news is that approval for Suga's government has fallen to just 28 percent, the lowest of his time in office. A slow vaccination rollout continues to cost him.This fall, Suga's Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) will decide when to hold both its party leadership race and the next national general election. The LDP will likely remain in power, but Suga's future is now very much in doubt.
Taliban take key capitals: As the US continues to withdraw forces from Afghanistan, the Taliban are overrunning ever-wider swaths of territory, including urban areas that they haven't controlled in decades. Over this past weekend alone, the jihadist insurgents swept through no fewer than six provincial capitals, including the strategically important northern city of Kunduz. The US has mounted fresh airstrikes — including with a few old B-52s — to help the beleaguered Afghan security forces hold the line, but with that support reportedly scheduled to stop at the end of August, the writing is on the wall: the Taliban are on their way back to controlling Afghanistan. As we recently wrote, Afghanistan's neighbors are bracing for a growing rush of refugees fleeing the war-ravaged country, and the EU, just a few years removed from the last refugee crisis, is watching warily as well.
Mozambique and Rwanda retake jihadist hotspot: Mozambican and Rwandan troops this week gained control of the gas-rich port city of Mocimboa da Praia in northern Mozambique. For more than three years, Islamist fighters loosely aligned with the Islamic State, have waged a brutal insurgency in the northern Cabo Delgado province. Mocimboa da Praia, the site of one of Africa's biggest liquefied natural gas projects, has become a jihadist hub in recent years. Fighting has killed more than 3,100 Mozambicans and displaced 800,000 more. Last month, Rwanda sent 1,000 troops to support Mozambique's army, and the military alliance — which also includes support from Zimbabwe, Angola, and Botswana — managed to retake control of the port, airport, and hospital in Mocimboa da Praia. This massive feat comes after the European Union said last month that it will establish a new military mission in Mozambique to help the government push back against the increasingly brazen Islamic insurgency. Still, analysts warn, the Mozambican government needs to remain vigilant because the militants might still regroup in the months ahead.
US offers NATO partnership to Brazil? During a visit to Brazil last week, US national security adviser Jake Sullivan reportedly told President Jair Bolsonaro that if he bans the Chinese tech company Huawei from building 5G networks in his country, the US would push for Brazil to become a NATO global partner. That's not quite full membership, but it would give Brazil preferential access to arms purchases and other security perks with the world's most powerful military alliance. According to the Brazilian daily Folha de São Paulo, which broke the story, the move is a bid by Washington to get Brazil on its side in a global push to squeeze Chinese tech firms out of 5G infrastructure. But Folha also reports that there are deep divisions within the Brazilian military about this: some higher-ups are implacably hostile towards China, while others say that Brasilia shouldn't ruin relations with Brazil's largest trade partner. Currently the only Latin American country that enjoys a NATO partnership is close US-ally Colombia.
A person protests against International Olympic Committee President Thomas Bach's visit to Hiroshima, in Tokyo, Japan.
Olympic-sized stakes for Japan’s prime minister
When the Tokyo Olympics begin on Friday, Japan watchers will be following more than just the performance of Japan's star athletes, including tennis star Naomi Osaka. They will also be tracking the political fortunes of Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga, who is taking a big gamble by staging the event — amid a raging pandemic — in the face of strong and longstanding opposition from the Japanese public. What are the stakes for Suga, particularly with elections on the horizon? Eurasia Group senior analyst Ali Wyne explains.
Why has Suga been so intent on going forward with the Olympics?
For starters, Japan has already postponed the Games once; they were supposed to take place last summer. Postponing them again — or even cancelling them — would be demoralizing, especially if neighboring China manages to execute a successful Winter Olympics this coming February.
Suga had hoped that the Games would be a showcase of Japan's resilience in the face of tragedies — not only the pandemic that continues to ravage the world, but also the triple disaster (earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear accident) that devasted Fukushima a decade earlier. He has gradually had to scale back his ambitions for the Games, which are probably far more modest now than they were even a month earlier.
Inertia is also at work. Cancelling the Games now could unleash a bitter legal dispute between the Japanese government and the International Olympic Committee. It would also anger the 60 or so Japanese corporate sponsors that have poured $3 billion into the event. And it would probably do little to appease Suga's political opponents and the broader public, who would ask why he did not pull the plug earlier in order to focus instead on accelerating Japan's sluggish vaccination campaign. Just over a fifth of the population is fully inoculated.
Finally, there is plain bad luck. Suga likely predicted that the global health landscape would be sufficiently benign by now to permit an energized, well-attended Olympics. But studies suggest that the delta variant now coursing through vast stretches of the developing world may be twice as transmissible as the original strain of the coronavirus.
The government has put in place a state of emergency. What will it mean for the Games?
Assuming they take place (the chief of the Tokyo 2020 organizing committee has not ruled out the possibility of a last-minute cancellation), these Olympics will be the first in history to occur without spectators, significantly limiting the extent to which Japan will be able to convey the sense of a well-executed global spectacle.
IOC President Thomas Bach declared on July 15th that the Games would be "the most restrictive sports event ever in the world," claiming that "the risk for the other residents of the Olympic village and risk for the Japanese people is zero." But given that more than 90 athletes and officials have already tested positive for COVID, the organizers are likely to enforce more stringent protocols to preempt a sustained outbreak. Bach says that 85 percent of those living in the Olympic Village (some 11,000 athletes and 7,000 officials) are either vaccinated or immune. He and his colleagues may well subject the remaining 15 percent to more rigorous monitoring and more frequent testing.
What are the risks for Suga?
The most obvious risk is that a COVID outbreak in the Olympic Village could force Suga to cancel the Games. The bigger risk is that the outbreak moves beyond the confines of the Olympics and ends up intensifying Japan's own fight against the coronavirus, compelling him to impose additional restrictions that hurt the economy and further inflame public opinion. Such a scenario would likely open him up to challengers from within his own Liberal Democratic Party.
Thus far Japan has fared far better than other advanced industrial democracies — it has recorded roughly 853,000 infections and 15,000 deaths (the figures for fellow G7 member Germany, by contrast, are approximately 3.76 million and 91,500). But with approval for his cabinet having plummeted to a record-low 31 percent, he can ill-afford to dismiss the possibility of another deeply unpopular round of lockdowns or coronavirus restrictions — particularly if they result from his decision to hold an Olympics that few Japanese wanted.
Are there potential rewards?
There are three big ifs: if there is no serious COVID outbreak at the Games, if they prove not to be a super-spreader event once the 18,000 athletes and officials return to their native countries, and if the participants largely go home proud and happy, Suga will be able to say that he pulled off an extraordinary feat in the most trying of circumstances and that he kept his promise to the Japanese people to hold a successful event.
Still, the Olympics will bring few economic benefits to Japan: the government spent over $7 billion on facilities that will be largely empty since no spectators will be allowed, and the hotel industry is grappling with more than 500,000 cancelled reservations.
What are the stakes for Suga of Olympic success or failure?
While failure would be unlikely to imperil the LDP's chances in the general election this fall — the opposition is too fractured — it could certainly jeopardize Suga's leadership of the party.
How vulnerable is Suga to a party revolt?
To stave off challengers, Suga has relied on strong support from his predecessor and former boss, Shinzo Abe. It was Abe, after all, who secured Tokyo's bid to host the 2020 Summer Olympics and believed that a successful Games could burnish his legacy. Failure could undercut both Suga and arguably his most important backer, leaving the prime minister on shaky political ground.
Are the Tokyo Olympics cursed?
Tokyo last hosted the summer Olympics in 1964, when Japan was still trying to restore its tarnished image after World War II. The Games went off swimmingly, and Japan raked in praise.
Indeed, Tokyo was hoping that the 2020 Olympics would be another 1964. But since COVID entered the scene, everything that could have gone wrong has gone wrong.
The Olympics that no one wants have so far been crippled by a series of crises and controversies that have overshadowed the sporting events. Here's a look at where things currently stand.
COVID outbreaks and vaccinations. Tallying the number of new COVID infections inside the Olympic Village has become a sport in and of itself. Since participants started arriving earlier this month, more than 70 people at the Tokyo Olympic Village have tested positive. Athletes who have spent years training for the event, like US tennis superstar Coco Gauff, have been forced to pull out, shattering dreams years in the making.
When Dick Pound — a longtime member of the International Olympic Committee — was asked recently what keeps him up at night, he said, unequivocally: a massive COVID outbreak at the Tokyo Games. For now, athletes who test positive are isolated and required to quarantine for 14 days. But how many cases would be enough to force a cancellation? What if infections spread to local communities? No one at the IOC seems to have answers to these questions.
Some observers say that a vaccine mandate would have circumvented the problem. But the IOC lacks the authority to enforce such a scheme, and the Japanese government — for a variety of political and economic reasons — opted not to. Moreover, many low- and middle-income countries, particularly in Africa, would have struggled to secure enough doses for their full teams to compete because their vaccine supplies remain low.
Japan's tough choice. Yoshihide Suga, Japan's prime minister, is not a popular man. For months, Suga has insisted that the show must go on despite more than 62 percent of Japanese opposing it, fearing the Games will be a super-spreader event for the dominant delta COVID variant. He is now hemorrhaging support, recording a net approval rating of -34. Indeed, survey after survey shows that the Olympics has been a massive factor behind the ruling Liberal Democratic Party cratering support ahead of national elections to be held this fall.
But the Japanese government has been caught between a rock and a hard place when trying to balance its economic commitments with public health concerns. Holding the Games without spectators is a massive blow to the country's beleaguered tourism sector (one Japanese professor estimates that the country stands to lose up to $23 billion). Still, the Japanese government was likely hoping that the events would spark some income-stimulating activities from the tens of thousands of athletes, coaches, support staff, film crews, and reporters who are flying in.
And Suga, for his part, probably hopes that pulling off a successful Olympics will help prop up his popularity ahead of an LDP leadership vote in September, as well as general elections, which have to take place by October 22. But, for now, that strategy appears to have blown up in the PM's face: one government official recently said that he was "not expecting any [economic] effect" from the Olympics at all.
A new rulebook for activism. This will be the first Olympics to take place since the 2020 killing of George Floyd in the US, which sparked a global reckoning with racism. Symbolic protest, particularly at large cultural and sporting events, has become a key part of the racial justice movement's modus operandi. The IOC has responded to the emotionally-charged moment by relaxing its rules on athletes expressing their political views (like kneeling before a game or wearing symbolic clothing) so long as they don't interfere with the competitions or official ceremonies.
While some critics say this is a tokenistic gesture and doesn't go far enough in allowing freedom of political expression, the IOC says this actually reflects most athletes' preferences. Regardless, trying to redefine the complex relationship between sports and politics at a time of heightened global sensitivity to race relations comes at the worst possible time for both racial justice advocates, who'll be protesting in empty stadiums, and for the IOC, which can no longer afford to straddle on such a fraught issue, especially for young fans.
There is, however, a sizable cohort that wants the Games to proceed: athletes. Participants from some 200 countries have spent years training for these Olympics, and recent disruptions have dealt a devastating blow to them and their support teams. For them, the stakes of the Tokyo Games are very, very high.
What We’re Watching: Peruvian presidential runoff, EU push to tax multinationals, Japan’s post-Olympics election
Peru's divisive choice: Peruvians head to the polls on Sunday to choose between two deeply polarizing candidates in the presidential runoff election. One is Pedro Castillo, a far-left yet socially conservative union leader and teacher. Castillo wants to rewrite the constitution to curb the power of the business elite and distribute more mining wealth to social programs. The other is rightwing firebrand Keiko Fujimori, who says she would continue the free-market policies championed by her strongman father in the 1990s. Fujimori says the country needs a demodura ("hard democracy"), a somewhat milder version of the dictablanda ("soft dictatorship") her dad once led. Castillo is beloved by rural Peruvians and anti-establishment urban voters, but his embrace of Marxism and Venezuela may alienate moderates. Fujimori, for her part, is backed by big business, but very unpopular outside her base, and negatively associated with her father's authoritarian rule and corruption — not to mention her own multiple legal troubles. Castillo is currently leading in the polls, but Fujimori has a shot at victory if voter turnout is lower than expected.
EU's new law to tax multinationals: After five years of negotiations, the EU Parliament has reached an agreement on tax guidelines for multinational corporations operating within the 27-member bloc. Under the new law, American behemoths like Apple, Amazon, and Google that make more than $916 million annually in two consecutive years will have to report their income, taxes, and number of employees across all EU countries, as well as in certain non-EU states designated on a tax-haven "blacklist," like the Cayman Islands. For years, countries like France have been calling for stricter tax rules for large corporations — particularly Big Tech firms — that flood EU markets yet pay scarce taxes back to their governments. While this is a big development, the text of the law will now have to go through the labyrinthine Brussels bureaucracy, and ultimately get unanimous consent by all 27 EU member states. Given that EU countries like Ireland and the Netherlands have greatly benefited from operating as tax havens for multinationals to stash their profits, Brussels will need to engage in lots of bargaining to get the law through. Meanwhile, the Biden administration has been pushing hard for a global minimum tax. If the EU gets this done, it will surely push things in that direction.
Japan's snap election: Japan's Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga is planning to call a snap election after the Tokyo Olympics, set to begin next month. Suga was initially popular when he took over from his predecessor Shinzo Abe last summer, but his approval ratings have rapidly declined in recent weeks due to his insistence on holding the Olympics, despite widespread opposition amongst Japanese who fear the games will give rise to new COVID outbreaks. Japan's sluggish vaccine rollout has also hurt the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, which is now worried about losing its majority for the first time in almost a decade. And there's reason to be concerned: less than two months ago, the LDP lost all three special elections to fill parliamentary seats — seats that were vacated by LDP members implicated in bribery scandals at a time when the Japanese people are becoming increasingly frustrated with government corruption. Suga will now have to pull out all the stops — perhaps including a new stimulus package to revive Japan's pandemic-battered economy — if he wants to stay in power.
Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga, US President Joe Biden, Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison, and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi are shown on the screen monitor during the Quad Summit meeting at Suga's office in Tokyo.
Can "the Quad" constrain China?
China is making its neighbors nervous these days. Chinese fighter jets are screaming into Taiwan's airspace. Hundreds of armed Chinese "fishing boats" are plying the disputed waters of the South China Sea. And Beijing is slashing imports from some trading partners because of disputes over political issues.
To push back against this increasingly aggressive behavior, regional powers Japan, India, and Australia, together with the US, are boosting cooperation via a 17-year-old grouping called the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, or simply "The Quad." But how effectively can these four countries really work together to counter China? Eurasia Group's Peter Mumford discusses the Quad's future.
What is the Quad?
It has its roots in 2004, when the US, Japan, India, and Australia came together to coordinate humanitarian relief following the Indian Ocean tsunami. Building on this experience, they created the Quad as a forum for discussing security issues among democratic nations in 2007, and held their first joint naval exercises. But the enthusiasm soon fizzled. China was angered by the creation of a grouping that seemed to pointedly exclude it. That prompted Australia to withdraw over fears of damaging ties with its biggest trading partner, China.
But attitudes shifted in the following years, as China began more aggressively asserting its control over disputed territories and waterways in the region. This convinced the original Quad members that they had to stand up to the rising power more forcefully. The grouping was relaunched in 2017, and though it didn't mention China by name, it pledged to promote a "free, open, secure, and prosperous Indo-Pacific" and to defend "freedom of navigation."
The Quad quickly became one of the few areas of multilateral cooperation favored by former US president Donald Trump, and it is now a key part of President Joe Biden's overriding foreign policy goal of assembling a united front to push back against China's expanding influence. The leaders of the four Quad countries held their first-ever (virtual) meeting last month. That has triggered media speculation that the grouping could someday become an "Asian NATO."
Can the Quad really become a NATO-like military alliance?
Very unlikely. The four countries have not shown any indication of wanting to establish a military alliance of the ambition of NATO, a massively integrated organization that entails military intelligence-sharing, binding defense commitments, and diplomatic representation at a single organizational headquarters. For one thing, Quad members are unlikely to agree to anything like NATO's "Article 5" commitment, which obligates member states to come to each other's aid if attacked. The country perhaps most suspicious of an arrangement like that is India, which has long favored a policy of nonalignment with world powers (following the norm-breaking decision to join the Quad, officials say they wish to maintain "strategic autonomy" for India). Meanwhile, the other Quad members already have bilateral defense treaties in place: one binding the US and Japan and another binding the US and Australia.
If not, what can the Quad do?
The four countries will continue holding joint naval exercises to improve coordination among their militaries. French vessels joined in the latest round of exercises, held earlier this month. And the Quad has ambitions to expand its cooperation into new areas. At their first summit in March, leaders of the four member nations agreed to provide 1 billion vaccine doses (mostly produced in India) to emerging market nations in Asia by the end of 2022, offering an alternative to China's vaccine diplomacy in the region.
And beyond that?
It gets a lot tougher. A climate working group is being established, but it is unclear how it could add value to other global initiatives. And despite the pledges to work together "as democratic nations" to achieve a "free, open, secure, and prosperous Indo-Pacific," the four members have varying levels of commitment to ideals such as free trade, as underscored by India's rising protectionism, and democracy promotion, as shown by diverse responses to the military coup in Myanmar, ranging from India's lukewarm condemnation to new US sanctions.
What do other countries of the region think about the Quad? Could they join it?
The grouping has held several "Quad Plus" meetings to which it has invited outside countries to attend. One of these is South Korea, which as a large democracy and close US ally would seem to be a leading candidate for inclusion in the Quad. Yet Seoul prefers to only slowly deepen cooperation with the Quad and test China's reactions, especially given strong economic ties with China and Beijing's key role in managing the North Korean nuclear threat. Moreover, tensions between South Korea and Quad-member Japan have risen in recent years over thorny trade disputes.
Similarly, it's unlikely any Southeast Asian countries would join the grouping. Most welcome the Quad's efforts to defend freedom of navigation and international law in principle, and they will be the main beneficiaries of the grouping's vaccine initiative. But they face a difficult balancing act. These countries are heavily dependent on Chinese trade and investment and worry that the Quad will antagonize China, making it harder to maintain good relations with both the US and China.
What could China do?
Southeast Asian countries in particular worry that if the Quad provokes China too much, Beijing will lash out through military or commercial channels. Some observers believe that the unprecedented number of Chinese ships swarming disputed waters in the South China Sea is itself a response to deepening Quad cooperation. Others interpret punitive trade action against Australia — with China slapping new restrictions on imports of Australian products ranging from coal to wine and cotton — as a warning shot to other countries not to join the Quad. But Beijing's increasingly assertive foreign policy only stiffens the Quad's resolve
What's next for the Quad?
A key focus will be delivering on its lofty promises on vaccines, which has become more challenging as India experiences a dramatic surge in COVID cases and restricts vaccine exports. Additional joint naval exercises are likely (including with other countries), further "Quad Plus" discussions are possible, and the recently established working groups on technology and climate issues will begin discussions. At some point later in the year, the Quad leaders also hope to gather for their first ever in-person meeting.
Peter Mumford is Practice Head for Southeast and South Asia at Eurasia Group.
PM Suga declares state of emergency in Tokyo region
Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga declared a state of emergency in Tokyo and its three neighbouring prefectures yesterday, amid a surge in the number of Covid-19 cases.
Japan PM Suga to decide on tourism campaign as approval rating plummets over Covid-19
TOKYO (REUTERS) - Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga could further restrict a much-criticised travel subsidy programme in an effort to contain coronavirus infections, local media said on Sunday (Dec 13), as his approval rating plummets over the handling of the pandemic.