Resisting Abe’s Sales Pitch

[bananas]

http://www.dianuke.org/resisting-abes-sales-pitch/

Resisting Abe’s Sales Pitch
M. V. Ramana
JAN 27 2014

After all the build-up over the last few weeks, it seems that the best that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh could come up with after meeting Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was: “Our negotiations towards an agreement for cooperation in the peaceful uses of nuclear energy have gained momentum in the last few months”. The blandness of the statement suggests that the momentum cannot be all that great and the pace of movement on the agreement is quite slow.

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The primary motivation for a nuclear agreement between Japan and India dates back to the US India nuclear deal. In 2008, William Burns, a senior U.S. diplomat, told the U.S. senate that as its part of the bargain, the Manmohan Singh government had “provided the United States with a strong Letter of Intent, stating its intention to purchase reactors with at least 10,000 megawatts (MW) worth of new power generation capacity from U.S. firms (and) has committed to devote at least two sites to U.S. firms” . Those sites are Mithi Virdi in Gujarat and Kovvada in Andhra Pradesh. We also know thanks to Wikileaks that in 2007, former Chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission, Anil Kakodkar told a nuclear trade delegation from the US-India Business Council that “the Jaitapur site in southern Maharashtra would go to the French”. All of these reactors need key components produced in Japan and the Japanese government has to formally allow these exports.

There is a confluence of interests here. Exports “of nuclear components and technology, as well as conventional arms” are said to be a key element in Prime Minister Abe economic program, dubbed “Abenomics” by many. This is somewhat reminiscent of the Soviet Union after the Chernobyl disaster, when the Soviet nuclear industry was desperate to improve its image and Soviet leaders were willing to sell nuclear reactors at concessional prices. The result of that drive was the 1988 agreement to buy the Koodankulam reactor. We do not know what the Soviet population then thought of that idea, but we do know that the majority of Japanese do not support the export of Japan’s nuclear technologies. A public poll found that a mere 24 percent are in favour of such sales.

Abe’s democratic credentials are evident from his various attempts at peddling reactors despite this overwhelming opposition. In October of last year, Abe reached an agreement with Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan, another head of state who doesn’t seem to be particularly concerned about democratic sentiment, to sell two nuclear reactors. The majority of the Turkish public too opposes the construction of nuclear power plants [See here and here].

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Abe’s visit provoked widespread protests against the proposed agreement and for a change these were actually covered by the mainstream press. As most of those in protest presumably realize, the primary goal should be to have the idea of reactors at Jaitapur and Mithi Virdi and Kovvada abandoned. And there is some hope for that. Recently even the nuclear establishment seems to have realized that the cost of imported reactors is prohibitively high and the secretive “negotiations” they have been involved in for several years now don’t seem to be making the price come down to anywhere close what they think they can get away with. One hopes that the opposition that developed before the Abe visit will, like the negotiations of the would-be Indo-Japanese agreement, gain momentum and force the government to call off the entire idea of importing nuclear reactors.

via http://nuclear-news.net/2014/02/05/shinzo-abes-nuclear-marketing-trip-to-india-not-a-success/

[davidpdx]

1. Abe has a screw loose

He thinks he's Ronald Reagan.

[kristopher]

2. He's swimming in a political current that has been there since before the Black Ships...

...sailed into Tokyo Bay.

He's bolstered by the collapse of the economy in the late 80s and the continued economic malaise since. That informs the perception of the rise of China. Top that off with a devastating natural disaster and the total failure of nuclear power - possibly their signature domestic technological accomplishment and you have fertile ground for a totally amoral political party such as what the LDP has become.

I think he probably sees himself more in the mold of Tokugawa Ieyasu** than Reagan.

**Ieyasu laid the foundation for and established the military dictatorship that lasted 200 years.

In 1603 the emperor granted Ieyasu the title of shôgun, an honor helped along by his 'Minamoto' genealogy. He held this post for only two years before officially retiring in favor of his son Hidetada. Retreating to Sumpu in Suruga province, he supervised the expansion of Chiyoda (Edo) Castle and the expansion of the surrounding town over the next few years, and conducted diplomatic business with the Dutch (1609) and Spanish, with whom he distanced Japan.
In May 1611 Ieyasu returned to Kyoto at the head of 50,000 men, his trip ostensibly to attend the retirement of Emperor Goyôzei and the succession of Go-Mizonoô. During his stay in the Capital, Ieyasu ordered the expansion of the Imperial Court's buildings and grounds and asked the western daimyô to sign a three-part document vowing their fealty.2 Perhaps based on his experiences on this trip, he composed the Kuge shohatto in 1613, a document that placed restrictions on the activities of the nobility, essentially limiting that class to ceremonial and aesthetic pursuits. In 1615 he would order the preperation of the Buke Shohatto, a document which contained the injunctions contained within the 1611 order and was initially a 13-article code (amended in 1635). Drawing on previous house codes and earlier ideas, Ieyasu, possibly concerned for the future of his house, formalized what was esentially a 'house code' for the nation's daimyô. In a further move to secure the stability of the Tokugawa regime, he issued the final and most sweeping Christian Expulsion Edict in 1614.

http://www.samurai-archives.com/ieyasu.html