client state-Gavan McCormack

개번 매코맥 "日의 對美의존, 결국 쇠락 가져올 것"

'종속국가 일본' 저자 개번 맥코맥 교수 인터뷰

 

2001년 고이즈미 준이치로 정권이 출범한 뒤부터 '내셔널리즘'이라는 표현은 일본 정치를 수식하는 관용어처럼 됐다. 그러나 개번 매코맥(71ㆍ사진) 호주국립대 명예교수는 "이 시기부터 일본이 완전한 종속국가(client state)가 됐다"고 단정한다. 야스쿠니 신사를 참배하는 이미지로 고이즈미를 기억하는 한국인에겐 어리둥절한 얘기다. 매코맥의 관점을 세밀하게 풀어 쓴 책 <종속국가 일본>(창비 발행)이 한글로 번역돼 나왔다.

한글판 출간에 맞춰 방한한 매코맥 교수는 24일 기자회견을 갖고 "일본은 미국의 세계전략에 편승해 지역패권을 노리고 있는데, 미국의 요구에 따라 헌법을 개정해 군사협력을 강화하고 신자유주의적 '개혁'으로 미국 자본의 일본 진출을 용이하게 만들고 있다"고 말했다. 다만 "천황에 대한 충성심을 강화하는 방향으로의 교육기본법 개정 등 겉으로만 내셔널리즘의 특징을 띠는데, 그것은 레토릭(수사)일 뿐이며 본질은 대미의존도 강화를 통한 종속화"라는 것이다.

그는 일본의 종속정책이 "성공적이지 못할 것"이라고 예측한다. 악화되는 일본과 미국의 경제상황, 중국의 부상으로 인한 미국의 동아시아 전략 변화 등이 근거다. 그는 "종속화의 귀결은 결국 쇠락하는 일본"이라고 결론짓는다. 그의 책은 심화되는 종속화의 징후들과 함께 종속화의 약한 고리인 오키나와, 핵정책 문제 등을 심도있게 다룬다.

매코맥 교수는 대미 의존성을 높이고 뒤늦게 '고이즈미 식 개혁'을 좇아가는 한국의 이명박 정부에 대해서도 "성공적이지 못할 것"이라고 전망했다. "과거 일본이 의존하던 시기에 비해 미국은 쇠퇴기에 있는데, 이런 나라에 일방적으로 의존하는 것은 이해할 수 없는 일"이라는 것이 그의 말이다. 유상호기자 shy@hk.co.kr 입력시간 : 2008/09/27 02:39:58

 

출처: http://news.hankooki.com/lpage/culture/200809/h2008092702395384210.htm

 

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In Client State, Gavan McCormack examines the current transformation of Japan, designed to meet the demands from Washington that Japan become the “Great Britain of the Far East.”

 

Client State is an extraordinary d0cumentation of Japan’s history and current submission to American policy at the loss of tradition, free speech, neighbouring allies and national consciousness in favour of military defense, government corruption and growing involvement in US global imperialism. This chilling work masterfully narrates a story of submission, corruption and the startling decline of Japan’s impressive economy, which has recently left over 1 million Japanese families on welfare and another 2 million in need.
 

“One of the most important writers in English at work today on all of the countries of Northeast Asia.” — Chalmers Johnson, President of the Japan Policy Research Institute, and author of Blowback

 

Gavan McCormack is Emeritus Professor in the Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, Australian National University, Canberra. His recent books include The Emptiness of Japanese Affluence; Japan’s Contested Constitution and Target North Korea: Pushing North Korea to the Brink of Nuclear Catastrophe.

 

 

출처: http://www.versobooks.com/books/klm/m-titles/mccormack_g_client_state.shtml

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Books

• Japanese Imperialism Today: Co-prosperity in Greater East Asia (co-authored with Jon Halliday), London and New York, Penguin and Monthly Review Press, 1974, 279 pp. ISBN 0-14-021669-3.

• Crisis in Korea, co-edited with John Gittings, Nottingham, the Russell Press, Spokesman University Paperback No.17, 1977; 190 pp. ISBN 0-85124-186-7.

• Chang Tso-lin in Northeast China, 1911-1928: China, Japan and the Manchurian Idea, Stanford University Press, 1977, 334 pp. ISBN 0-8047-0945-9.

• Korea North and South, co-edited with Mark Selden, New York, Monthly Review Press, 1978, 240 pp.

• Twice Victims: Koreans at Hiroshima, edited and introduced, jointly translated from Japanese with Kang Ok Su, Tokyo, The Korean Peace Committee in Japan, 1981, 44 pp.

• Cold War Hot War: An Australian Perspective on the Korean War, Sydney, Hale and Iremonger, 1983; 191 pp ISBN 0-86806-082-8, ISBN 0-86806-083-6 (pbk).

• The Price of Affluence: Dilemmas of Contemporary Japan, translator-in-chief and editor of Rokuro Hidaka's Sengo Shiso o Kangaeru (Tokyo), Iwanami, 1980). Tokyo and New York, Kodansha International, 1984

• Japanese Society: Ins and Outs in Showa 60, translated and edited by Gavan McCormack and Yoshio Sugimoto, Papers of the Japanese Studies Centre, Melbourne, No. 8, December 1986, 30 pp.

• Democracy in Contemporary Japan, co-edited with Yoshio Sugimoto, Sydney, Hale and Iremonger, and New York, M.E. Sharpe, 1986, 272 pp ISBN 0-87332-397-1, ISBN 0-87332-398-X (pbk).

• The Japanese Trajectory: Modernization and Beyond, co-edited with Yoshio Sugimoto. Cambridge University Press, 1988, 300 pp ISBN 0-521-34515-4.

• Bonsai Australia Banzai: Multifunctionpolis and the Making of a Special Relationship with Japan, Gavan McCormack, ed., Pluto Press, Sydney, 1991, 228pp.

• The Burma-Thailand Railway: memory and history, (co-edited with Hank Nelson), ed, Sydney, Allen and Unwin, 1993, 175pp;

• Korea Since 1850, (co-authored with Stewart Lone), Melbourne, Longman Cheshire, and New York, St Martin's Press, 1993, 226 pp. ISBN 0-582-87111-5, ISBN 0-312-09685-2.

• Peace and Regional Security in the Asia-Pacific: A Japanese Proposal, translated, edited and introduced, Peace Research Centre, Research School of Pacific Studies, ANU, Working Paper No 158, September 1995, 59pp.

• The Emptiness of Japanese Affluence, Armonk, New York: M.E. Sharpe, 311pp. 1996. (Co-published with Allen and Unwin, Sydney). ISBN 1-56324-711-9, ISBN 1-56324-712-7 (pbk).

• Multicultural Japan: Palaeolithic to Postmodern, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1996. (co-edited with Donald Denoon, Mark Hudson, and Tessa Morris-Suzuki). 296 pp. ISBN 0-521-55067-X

• (with Glenn Hook), Japan's Contested Constitution - d0cuments and analysis, London and New York, Routledge, 2001, 212 pages. ISBN 0-415-24099-9 (hbk), ISBN 0-415-24100-6 (pbk).

• Target North Korea: Pushing North Korea to the Brink of Nuclear Catastrophe, New York, Nation Books, and Sydney, Random House Australia, 2004. 228 pp. ISBN 1-56025-557-9.

출처: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gavan_McCormack

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Client state is one of several terms used to describe the subordination of one state to a more powerful state in international affairs. It is the least specific of these terms and may be treated as a broad category which includes satellite state, puppet state, neo-colony, protectorate, vassal state and tributary state. (See also unequal treaty.) The idea that there might be a hierarchy of states, some more or less dependent on others, contradicts the doctrine of Westphalian sovereignty which holds that each state is a distinct, separate and sovereign entity.

 

Client states have existed for millennia as stronger powers forced their neighbours to become subservient to them as they grew in status and strength. In ancient times states such as Persia and Greek city-states would create client states by making the leaders of that state subservient. One of the most prolific users of client states was Republican Rome which, instead of conquering and then absorbing into an empire, chose to make client states out of those it defeated, a policy which was continued up until the 1st century BC when imperial power took over. The use of client states continued through the Middle Ages as the feudal system began to take hold.

 

More commonly the terms were applied to nations ruled by dictatorships backed openly by either the United States or the Soviet Union. In the case of the United States during the Cold War many Latin American nations such as Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua prior to 1979, Cuba prior to 1959, and Chile under the regime of General Pinochet were seen as U.S. client states since the U.S. government had significant influence over the policies of those dictatorships. The term applied to other authoritarian regimes with close ties to the United States, more appropriately referred to as U.S. proxy states during the Cold War such as South Vietnam, Iran prior to 1979, Cambodia under the regime of Lon Nol, the Philippines and Saudi Arabia among others.

Arguably the term might also be used for those states extremely dependent for economic health on a more powerful nation. The three Pacific countries associated with the United States under the Compact of Free Association may fall somewhat in this category.

 

Soviet proxy or "client" states included much of the Warsaw Pact nations whose policies were heavily influenced by Soviet military power and economic aid. Other third world nations with Marxist-Leninist governments were routinely criticized as being Soviet proxies as well, among them Cuba following the Cuban Revolution, People's Republic of Angola, People's Republic of Mozambique, People's Democratic Republic of Afghanistan, Democratic Republic of Vietnam (A.K.A. North Vietnam), amongst others.

 

출처: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Client_state

 

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Zbigniew Brzezinski, senior advisor to several US presidents, once spoke of a world divided into three kinds of countries : vassal, tributary, and barbarian. The "three grand imperatives of imperial strategy", he said, are "to prevent collusion and maintain security dependence among the vassals, to keep tributaries pliant and protected, and to keep the barbarians from coming together".

According to Gavan McCormack, Japan clearly ranks among the vassal states, although he also uses the expression "client state", or even "puppet state", to characterize its subordination to the US. The expression "puppet state", or kairai kokka in Japanese, refers of course to Japan's treatment of Manchukuo until 1945, where the "last emperor" Pu Yi was put on the throne in a process that the author compares to General McArthur's decision to maintain emperor Hirohito as the symbol of the Japanese state in the 1947 constitution.

Indeed, the analogy with the war and the post-war period runs further. According to McCormack, US officials who, like Richard Armitage, lecture Japan on its need to become "the Great Britain of East Asia" are modern proconsuls who keep treating the Japanese like twelve-years old children, as General McArthur once allegedly said. US hegemonic imperialists share with war-time Japan the same disdain for international rules, the same belief in the superiority of military might, and the same urge to remodel an entire region (then East Asia, now the Middle East) according to their own plans. And Japan is following a path of political violence and nationalist hyperbole that might present "a replay of the collapse of parliamentary politics in the 1930s".

Australian academic G. McCormack uses such hyperbole that I sometimes wonder whether he describes the same country that I have studied and lived in for more than fifteen years. He begins his book by describing a wave of media campaigns and terrorist assaults conducted by ultra-nationalists groups that sends shrills down the spine of his uninformed readers. According to his creed, Japan has fallen into the grips of a neo-nationalist, revisionist, and reactionary clique that sets back the clock to the worst pages of its history. It has become a plutonium superpower that puts nuclear weapons (American, but it could very well produce its own) at the core of its defence strategy. Under prime minister Koizumi, it has embraced neo-liberalism with the enthusiasm of a late convert, dismantling the protective welfare state along the way. And it has become a useful servant in Bush's world, casting away its commitment to peace and its efforts at regional integration in favour of reckless foreign adventures in Iraq and sabre rattling against North Korea.

At the heart of McCormack's argument lies what seems to me a basic historical mistake: the idea that the US occupation forces, aided by anthropologist Ruth Benedict and other proponents of the culturalist approach, imposed on Japan the idea of a distinctive, deeply-rooted and homogeneous culture in order to distance the country from Asia and to keep it firmly into America's embrace. But China was a staunch ally of the US until 1949, was offered a permanent seat at the UN security council, and figured prominently in US strategic plans for the region until the communists took over. It makes therefore little sense to argue that the US deliberately separated Japan from Asia by insisting on its non-Asian identity. Truth is, US occupation forces tried to extirpate the remnants of militarism and feodalism from Japanese society, and it is a distortion of facts to see a continuity between war-time proponents of the "kokutai", American culturalists, and modern conservative thinkers preoccupied with "Japaneseness".

I nonetheless found some useful snippets in the book, provided one is informed of the author's bias. The chapter on Okinawa is an interesting case study of a province whose distinctiveness is seldom reported. There are valuable quotes of some Japanese liberal intellectuals, such as Tokyo University philosophy professor Tetsuya Takahashi or Hokkaido University political scientist Jiro Yamaguchi. But I would recommend direct access to their writings, some of which are available in English, rather than to rely on such a inflammatory diatribe.

 

출처: http://www.amazon.com/Client-State-Japan-American-Embrace/dp/184467133X