The costs of using history

How might national leaders be given (or effectively come to perceive) necessary incentives for putting the history issue in the past?

Before I attempt a tentative answer to this question, let me first say what “putting history in the past” might mean. The truth is historical antagonisms will never go away completely; history will constantly be reinterpreted to fit the purposes of those doing the interpreting. So what I mean by “putting history in the past” is getting (back) to a point where the politics of historical memory do not prevent leaders from meeting, do not inspire a spiral of nationalistic statements and actions by leaders, and do not weigh heavily on expectations for future relations (manifested in foreign direct investment, military contingency planning, etc.)

This being said, what changed incentives are necessary for governments to contain (or even reduce) the negative effects of historical antagonisms? If we assume leaders want to preserve their position, the problem is that “using” historical antagonisms presently appears helpful for maintaining power. But is this necessarily the case? Not if leaders’ incentives were to change so that healing international historical wounds actually helped them domestically. How might such change of incentives come about, to the benefit of more cooperative international relations in Northeast Asia?

The answer has to do with economics and accountability. Second only to providing for physical security and maintaining a domestic monopoly on its enforcement, governments stay in power by advancing the economic livelihood of their people. While it’s true that governments can “use” historical issues to aid their own legitimacy, divert people’s attention away from domestic problems by rallying them around the flag, and be deployed as a stick against other government’s policies, such tactics are generally bad for business. If the historical issues in Northeast Asia get much worse, they will visibly weigh on people’s prosperity. Are the publics of Japan, China and South Korea sophisticated enough to understand this? Of course. Are they willing to take their leaders to task for failing to act in their greater economic interests? I think yes.

For leaders’ incentives to change for putting history in the past, they need to be convinced of the economic costs of history politics, and publics need to hold their governments accountable for these costs.