New Challenges to Japan's Aid: An Analysis of Aid Policy-Making

Abstract

I N THE LAST DECADE, Japan has emerged as the largest aid donor in the world. Recently, though,Japan's foreign aid has reached a turning point in the face of domestic and international challenges. The political and economic conditions affecting Japan's Official Development Assistance (ODA) have been rapidly changing, forcingJapanese decision makers to reexamine their existing aid programs. Meeting these challenges, however, has been difficult as the Japanese aid administration is fragmented and involves intense competition and bargaining among various policy-making units. Contrary to the popular Western notion ofJapan as a monolithic entity, Japanese aid policy-making groups exhibit diverse views and opinions as they perceiveJapan's ODA from their own sectarian interests. Therefore, to analyze howJapanese aid leaders have viewed and dealt with these emerging challenges necessitates careful scrutiny of the interests, goals, and policies of a variety of Japanese aid organizations and groups. Circumstances surrounding Japan's ODA to Vietnam and Cambodia typify the international and domestic challenges tojapanese aid. The reduced U.S. presence in Indochina has leftJapan with a major opening for achieving economic and diplomatic influence in the region. Japan resumed full-scale aid to Vietnam in 1992, well before the U.S. had lifted its own embargo on that country. Tokyo also sent Self-Defense Forces to Cambodia in 1992-93 to take part in peace-keeping operations of the United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia (UNTAC), representing the first deployment of Japanese forces overseas since World War II. Japanese aid and involvement in Indochina can be seen as an opening shot in defining a new Japanese role in the post-cold war world. This has brought about conflict, at times sharp, among various policy-making leaders in Japan about the role that Tokyo's aid to Indochina can and ought to play. While Japan is devoting substantial aid resources to the region,' exactly how and for what purposes aid policies should be carried out is a focus of contention.