Japan's Oda Diplomacy After The Cold War

ODA means official development assistance. ODA diplomacy is a kind of a diplomatic policy and exercise for special strategic goals, in which ODA is taken as a tool in practicing the donor state's bilateral and multilateral diplomacy. These strategic goals vary from state to state at different times.During the cold-war era, Japan's ODA diplomacy targeted at economic interests, ensuring resources and foreign markets for its economic development. A few ODA exercises for political goals are mostly concerted actions with U. S., rarely for political interests of Japan itself. In the post-cold war era, seeing the great changes in the international society, Japan again launched the "the UN -orientated theory" in its diplomacy and sought the permanent member of the Security Council actively. During that course, ODA is taken as a main tool. It is mainly reflected in following fields: the financial support for UN and other international organizations, in the field of development, in the field of international security and created favorable conditions for running for the seat of permanent member of the Security Council. The distinguishing features of Japan's ODA diplomacy are as follows: political interests are considered more important than economic ones when donating ODA; concentrates mostly on those fields where Japan can have a leading role; takes Asia as the key area in Japan's ODA diplomacy and tries to realize the globalization of Japan's ODA at the same time. Still, Japan's diplomacy has the side of coordinating and sharing responsibility with U.S. Japan's ODA is getting more and more politicized and the target of Japan's ODA diplomacy turns from economic interests to political ones.Reasons for the change in Japan's ODA diplomacy are as follows. Internationally, in the post-cold war era, UN's position in theininternational society has risen greatly, which made Japan realized the role of UN. Meanwhile, the role of the military factor now dropped considerably with the collapse of cold-war structure. The financial crisis of the UN is also a favorable condition for Japan's change in its ODA diplomacy. Domestically, seeing the favorable changes in the post-cold war period that changed Japan's diplomatic mode of thinking and policy, Japan itself desired to change its "economic giant but political dwarf" status. Military diplomatic tools shortage, Japanese government and people's strong support for ODA and the change of the trend of thought in Japan in 1990's are all reasons for such a diplomatic change.Japan's ODA diplomacy has yielded some positive results. The Resolution on deleting the "enemy state" clause has been passed in the UN's 50th session. Its demand for becoming the permanent member of the Security Council has won a lot of support in the world. At the same time, Japan's status in UN is moving up and its image is improved. Japan also established its leading role in the field of development and the ODA diplomacy is a good try on its self-dependant diplomacy. However, there are several defects in Japan's ODA diplomacy that are hard to overcome. ODA itself has some features that are not suitable for being a diplomatic tool. Moreover, the effectiveness of ODA is declining. For Japan, ODA diplomacy can't cover its wrong attitude on its history of aggression. Such is the biggest block for Japan to become a powerful political state. ODA diplomacy makes it clearer that Japan is seriously short of "human assistance", which casts doubts on Japan's ability to be the permanent member of the Security Council. Meanwhile, Japan's America-dependent diplomacy prevents its ODA diplomacy's effect from full play.In the future, Japan will continue its ODA diplomacy in activities with UN, but its position will not be that high. ODA will expand to a multiple assistance with "human assistance". Japan will also change itsIVway of assistance by strengthening propaganda on Japan's ODA at home and abroad to realize its "seeing face" assistance so that Japan's ODA can serve its political goals more effec...