Abe will be sorely missed

It is an understatement to say that PM Shinzo Abe’s resignation constitutes a setback to India-Japan relations. Practitioners of conventional diplomacy the world over believe that personal chemistry does not matter in the conduct of foreign policy. Abe, Japan’s longest-serving PM, is an outstanding exception to this rule. If Indian diplomats generally concede that the equation between principals plays some part in matters of the State, the most recent and concrete example is the outgoing Liberal Democratic Party’s two-time head of government in Tokyo.

Like Indira and Rajiv Gandhi in India, like the Kennedys and the Bush family in the US, it was Abe’s destiny to be Japan’s PM. His father, Shintaro Abe, was Japan’s foreign minister for four years.

Nobusuke Kishi, a predecessor who became PM in 1957, was Shinzo Abe’s grandfather, and shared a special chemistry with Nehru. Together, they laid the foundations of Japan’s post-World War II relations with newly independent India. Eisaku Sato, whose record as Japan’s longest-serving PM was recently beaten by Abe, was Kishi’s younger brother: all part of an enduring political dynasty.

Abe’s personal equation with Indian leaders is multi-layered and cuts across parties as well as professions. External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar befriended Abe when he was Deputy Chief of Mission at the Indian Embassy in Tokyo, from 1996. Abe had just become a backbench member of Japan’s House of Representatives.

Jaishankar preserved his friendship with Abe long after he left Tokyo in 2000. For Abe, this association came in handy when he was visiting New Delhi as Chief Cabinet Secretary in 2006. India’s bureaucracy put Abe in a straitjacket during that visit, limiting his access in Delhi strictly according to protocol and reciprocity. Abe was keen to meet PM Manmohan Singh but the Ministry of External Affairs would not countenance such insolence from a mere Cabinet Secretary on a routine visit.

Abe got in touch with Jaishankar, who was in a delicate position because he was Joint Secretary for the Americas. Civil servants, including Indian Foreign Service officers, fiercely protect their turf: officially, the Joint Secretary for the Americas has nothing to do with a Japanese official’s visit and any interference would be met with resistance.

Jaishankar briefed Sanjaya Baru, then a close aide of Singh, that Abe would one day be Japan’s PM, and, therefore, Singh should grant a meeting. As soon as Baru conveyed this to Singh, the latter waived protocol, overruled the MEA babudom and invited Abe to a tête-à-tête over tea.

Abe became PM faster than anyone expected and he never forgot the grace with which Singh received him as Chief Cabinet Secretary. Although Singh ceased to be PM in May 2014, six months later, Abe’s government bestowed Japan’s high civilian honour, the Grand Cordon of the Order of the Paulownia Flowers, on him.

Long after the 2006 meeting, the outgoing Japanese PM had an occasion to return Jaishankar the favour. He was visiting Tokyo as Foreign Secretary and got a surprise call from the abode of the Chrysanthemum Throne for a meeting with the then Emperor Akihito. In tradition-bound Japan, such a meeting between the reigning monarch and a foreign visitor, who was not even a minister, is unheard of.

Not even the Americans, the closest allies of Japan, could have pulled it off. That is Abe for India and he will be missed in New Delhi. It will be said in the coming months that India’s relations with Japan are institutional and that the departure of one Japanese PM will not make any appreciable difference to State-to-State relations.

However, when Abe was replaced in 2007 by Yasuo Fukuda after his first, short span as PM, Fukuda clearly demonstrated his lack of enthusiasm for India. He did not follow up any of Abe’s initiatives, including the pioneering concept of ‘confluence of the two seas’ between the Pacific and the Indian Oceans. It was this vision of Abe’s that the US has since copyrighted and claimed credit for as their Indo-Pacific initiatives.

Japan’s relations with India are very complex. Despite enduring bonhomie at one level, the people of Japan have grave misgivings about India: perhaps the biggest mistrust is over India’s nuclear policies since the Japanese are the only nation to have suffered a nuclear attack and its consequences that are not forgotten even today. In fact, those memories were reinforced nine years ago by the Fukushima nuclear plant accident. Only another leader like Abe, who can understand India and Indians as Abe was taught by his ancestors, can steer through those complexities.

Abe’s departure poses formidable challenges not only for Japan’s relations with India, but also for ties with the US, China and the rest of the world, which had come to terms with the outgoing PM’s predictable, even if often disagreeable, ways.

It is often said on Embassy Row, the seat of major diplomatic missions in Washington, that there are only two leaders who could handle Trump without serious damage to their countries: Modi and Abe. This was easier for Modi than for Abe. India could get away often by not doing anything, such as not having even a limited bilateral trade deal during Trump’s February visit lest it created a storm in the White House.

It was a bigger challenge for Abe, if only because Tokyo’s relations with Washington span everything from trade to defence. Moreover, Japan and the US are allies with inevitable tensions.

In his memoir of the time spent as Trump’s controversial National Security Adviser, John Bolton devotes more pages to Abe than to any other foreign leader. That alone is proof that Abe was no pushover, a valuable friend who could also be a dangerous adversary.