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Rahm Emanuel is America’s version of a wolf-warrior. The U.S. ambassador to Japan has made it part of his mission to mock the foibles, missteps and hypocrisies of Xi Jinping, the Chinese government and the Chinese Communist Party. Among his posts on X, the former Twitter,:”Xi’s playbook is clear: shamelessly exploit human tragedies for political gain without any regard for the live lost.” “Thanks to Xi-nomics, investors are in search of a new financial center in Asia, and that opportunity is Japan.” Pugnaciousness — and political smarts — have long been Emanuel’s calling card. He was a senior adviser to President Clinton, chief of staff to President Obama, an Illinois Congressman, and a Chicago mayor before shipping out to Japan. As ambassador, he has helped elevate the role of Japan in Washington policy circles and promoted the U.S. as a spirited ally in Asia. This interview is part of Rules of Engagement, a series by Bob Davis, who covered the U.S.-China relationship at The Wall Street Journal starting in the 1990s. In these interviews, Davis asks current and former U.S. officials and policymakers what went right, what went wrong and what comes next.

Q: What’s your sense of the U.S.’s role in Asia, Japan’s part, and how much revolves around China?

A: In the last two years, both countries — Japan and the U.S. — have adopted a major change in their approach to the Indo-Pacific, and to domestic policies that back them up. These are probably the most significant two years in our Indo-Pacific strategy with our lead ally partner and friend, Japan. 

They’ve adopted or changed five separate 70-year-old policies. Any one of them would’ve been significant, but five in two years is memorable. The defense budget is going from 1 percent to 2 percent of GDP; they are acquiring counter-strike capability, taking the cap off defense exports, normalizing relationships with South Korea to a heightened level of friendship and alliance, and have issued three national security documents that reorient the approach of Japan in the region.

For the United States, the hub-and-spoke architecture [revolving around the U.S.] not just on the security side, but also the diplomatic side, is becoming a kind of lattice.

China no doubt plays a role but there are times where China is not the significant motivator behind a policy. North Korea also plays a significant role in the calculations when it comes to areas of cooperation. 

When I was in the Senate [for confirmation hearings] I said — not flippantly, but as a soundbite — that the next three years [in the U.S.-Japan relationship] will determine the next 30 years. I think that’s turned out to be an accurate assessment. These two years or three years will determine the next 20 to 30 years because they’re creating a foundation — a new strategic architecture and set of policies to back that up.

Is the reason for the changes that you just outlined with Japan policy because of fear of China? 

To quote from Prime Minister Kishida, Ukraine today could be the Indo-Pacific tomorrow. It’s not just China. There have been other presidents who talked about altering our policy in the Indo-Pacific and prioritizing it differently, as opposed to Europe or the Middle East.

My take is that we’re all undergoing a major, major reassessment of assumptions and policies because of three Cs that changed the world — Covid, conflict, and coercion. 

Beyond a loss of jobs, they are the main motivations behind the pulling back on globalization and trade, and the rethinking of who you do agreements with. How do you do supply chains? How do you approach things?

Before there was a tank on the Ukrainian border, Prime Minister Kishida called for going from 1 percent to 2 percent of GDP on defense. So was that China? Yes. On certain policies, you can kind of do a straight line from that policy to China as the instigator of that change. On other ones, it’s a factor, but not as dominant as on others.

How much of the change is due to the weakness of Japan? When I first started talking to you back in the Clinton administration, Japan was the adversary, the target. It was the time of  ‘Japan as number one’. Then it all kind of faded away. The concern had been a triumphant Japan. Now is it a Japan with an aging population just looking for help?

I disagree with that. As I have said here in Japan, I started my career with President Clinton’s campaign in Arkansas. We were running advertisements in Ohio, Michigan, and Wisconsin, focusing on Japan.

You couldn’t pull that off today because Japan is the number three most trusted ally we have based on public opinion polling. Now you say out of weakness? Japan is our number one foreign direct investor for the last four and a half years, and that probably will become five consecutive years. You don’t get the kind of political pushback you used to get. 

In America’s pastime of baseball, Japan is probably the hottest property. Not just [the Dodgers’ Shohei] Ohtani, but all the Japanese players. You have had three recent Japanese movies in the cultural space: From “Drive My Car” to “Godzilla Minus One” to “Boy and the Heron,” all have played a significant role in our cultural pastimes.

They have domestic challenges; we have domestic challenges. You talk about a declining population. That is also true for China, and it’s true for Korea. Japan has been dealing with this for 20 years. When you look at the 10 top automation and robotic companies, six of them are Japanese. They have a leadership position in probably one of the most important pieces of technology for the future — robotics and automation. 

So, they have weaknesses. Name me a country that doesn’t. There are vulnerabilities and they’re addressing them. That’s what leadership is about.

Taiwan has been talked about as the biggest flashpoint in Asia, but in reality maybe it’s the Second Thomas Shoal. [The shoal is a submerged reef in the South China Sea disputed by the Philippines and China. The Philippine Navy stations a handful of Marines on a World War II-era landing craft that it ran aground there in 1999 to prevent China from trying to seize the reef and build on it.]

Let’s unpack this a little. A year and a half ago, MaryKay Carlson, who’s our ambassador to the Philippines and myself were at the IndoPac Conference in Hawaii. It’s with all the ambassadors in the region — kind of a tight-knit group. This is when the [U.S.-Japan] Korean trilateral was just heating up and getting public. 

Over this breakfast, she and I started talking. We wrote a memo to the State Department and the National Security Council — to Secretary Blinken and Jake Sullivan, and Kurt Campbell — about a potential track [involving the U.S., Japan and the Philippines], given where Japan was going with its Philippine relationship, and where we were going with the election of President Marcos. I’m not saying we were the authors of this. A lot of other people were having very similar thoughts.

One of the big pieces we announced at the trilateral [meeting of the leaders of Japan, the U.S. and the Philippines in April 2024] was about the Luzon corridor and economic development, investing in the port, the roads, and the airport. [Commerce Secretary] Gina Raimondo recently led 50 CEOs from the United States to the Philippines to look at opportunities for investment. Japan and the United States, combined, are as big an investor as China.

No doubt there’s also a security component. Prime Minister Kishida four months ago was the first Japanese prime minister to do a joint session speech to the Philippine Congress. This has tremendous significance because China not only is pushing the Philippines, but they claim the entire South China Sea. They not only have a conflict with the Philippines. They have one with Vietnam as it relates to oil and gas. They have one with Malaysia as it relates to oil and gas. China claims that entire body of water as a pond of theirs.

The Philippines in 2016 took China to the international tribunal [over territorial claims] and they won the case. China says well, they can just go pound sand. So, you either have a court system that holds big and powerful countries to the same level of justice and rule of law as a smaller country or you don’t. 

The Philippines is the one in focus, but don’t kid yourself. You can see hot flashes between China and the other countries that border the South China Sea. Based on their premise, it’s their pond. Based on other countries’ viewpoints, no, it’s their fishing rights.

So, what happens in the Second Thomas Shoal? What’s your forecast? 

Nobody can predict what happens. This is a situation where nobody really knows where deterrence ends and provocation begins.

So I don’t know where it goes except for I know that you have a China that’s adamant about not allowing any country in the South China Sea to claim any part of their EEZ [exclusive economic zone] even though the international court has ruled against China. The United States has been unambiguous as recently as just two days ago [at the Shangri-La security conference in Singapore] by Secretary of Defense Austin, that the Philippines is a treaty ally, and we will defend a treaty ally if a line gets crossed.

Then you have fishing rights and oil-and-gas rights. I didn’t realize that 14 percent of the entire world’s fresh catch occurs there. And obviously there is the importance for international maritime trade. There’s also been a massive discovery by Malaysia, Vietnam, and the Philippines [in the South China Sea] of oil and gas.

What are the two insecurities in China? Food and energy. That’s why they’re claiming it. Breaking news — oil and gas, fishing, and food security have the makings for real problems.

We’re very clear we’re going to stand by our ally, the Philippines, and China knows that. Australia has made certain kinds of commitments, though not at the same level because they’re not a treaty ally [of the Philippines]. Japan has done that as well for the Philippines. They’ve already done 12 Coast Guard crossings and they are going to do another five. Seventeen Coast Guard ships from Japan to a single country is a major commitment. These Coast Guard ships are meant to secure Japan’s fishing and oil-and-gas rights, and protect their fishermen who rely on that catch. 

In these interviews I get to talk to other people who have been in positions of authority regarding China policy. I talked to [former George W. Bush and Obama Defense Secretary] Robert Gates and he criticized the Obama administration [and others] for not doing more when China started building up the islands. [Obama Defense secretary] Ash Carter basically said the same thing. He said DOD pivoted to Asia , but that the State Department didn’t. It was an incomplete shift. 

How much do you think what you’re doing now is making up for what should have been a more forceful response in the Obama administration? 

Well, first I want be clear, I was mayor of Chicago at that time. [laughter]

I’m not blaming you.

You don’t have to. My mother will do that for you.

I wasn’t there, but a lot of people thought they had a negotiated agreement with China and then China violated that agreement. I put it in a slightly larger context. For a long time, the United States saw China as a strategic competitor. This was under the Obama administration. It was true about the Bush administration and true about the Trump administration. 

Then other parts of the government came to the conclusion that China was no longer just a strategic competitor, they were a strategic adversary. Xi Jinping changed the paradigm in which China dealt with the United States. 

That may be why Gates and Ash Carter articulated what they said to you, that the State Department, quote-unquote, ‘was dragging its feet.’ This is why you have the National Security Council and why you convene people to talk through things. Some parts of the security apparatus realized we were holding onto an old assumption. And some were not dragging their feet but were still holding on — whether it was out of hope, whether it was realism — to China as a strategic competitor. 

I think the whole government — not just the executive branch, but even the legislative branch — has changed and come to the conclusion that China is not a strategic competitor. They’re approaching us as a strategic adversary, and we better wake up. 

You cannot have a relationship based on trust if stealing and cheating is the modus operandi. And it’s unfortunate because China has a lot to offer the international community.

It is pretty clear that around 2012, President Xi had a choice to make between the Mao Zedong road or continuing on Deng Xiaoping’s road, and he went the Mao road. It’s pretty clear that he made a series of decisions based on his view that after the ’08 financial crisis that America’s best days were behind it. The East was rising, he said, and the West was declining, and the United States was not a strategic competitor but an adversary. 

That’s when you get the wolf warrior. That’s when you get a whole host of economic coercion. 

The old assumption was that if you brought the Chinese in [to the Western-led economic system], they would be invested in the interests of the system because they were gaining economically and pulling people out of poverty. But they’re not, they’re not.

Look, there are three major semiconductor machine companies, ASML, Tokyo Electron, and Nikon. They compete, they innovate, they go after business. Some win, some lose, et cetera. Four or five months ago, it was discovered that China was stealing ASML’s intellectual property. Tokyo Electron didn’t do that. Nikon didn’t do that. Google, two months ago, discovered China was stealing their AI intellectual property. 

That is what a strategic adversary does, not a strategic competitor. [After 2012], there were a set of policies that signified this was China’s moment [from Beijing’s point of view]. They started going after the Philippines’ EEZ. They started using economic coercion against Japan. They became very involved in economic espionage. That’s what an adversary does, not a competitor.

It just is what it is. They hate when you say it, because you are calling out that the emperor has no clothes. You can’t talk to me about a win-win situation when there’s no major company in areas of quantum computing, AI, semiconductors that’s not catching their hand in somebody else’s cookie jar. That is what China is doing. 

You cannot have a relationship based on trust if stealing and cheating is the modus operandi. And it’s unfortunate because China has a lot to offer the international community.

[The Biden administration’s National Security Strategy doesn’t label China as an adversary. Rather it says, “The PRC is the only competitor with both the intent to reshape the international order and, increasingly, the economic, diplomatic, military, and technological power to do it.”]

I did another interview with Mike Rogers, the former head of the NSA, who talked about the 2015 deal in the Rose Garden where Xi Jinping said to President Obama that China wouldn’t use cyber espionage to steal corporate secrets anymore. And Rogers said that lasted literally six months. Then it was back to doing the cyber espionage that they promised they would stop.

As President Obama’s former chief of staff, as President Clinton’s former senior advisor, and now sitting where I’m sitting here, it wouldn’t surprise me that [Washington] institutions would move at a different speed [in understanding the China challenge]. I do think today there is an absolute understanding and appreciation that China is a strategic adversary. If I had a cautionary note to that, it would be that we lost a decade with China.

President Biden has led the country, I think, in the most significant re-evaluation [of the U.S. approach to the region] by putting together the building blocks of a new strategic architecture. Think about the past two years and how much furniture got moved in this region, from trilaterals to quadrilaterals, to different types of security agreements.

That said, with all that urgency, you can panic and do something stupid. I don’t think that’s happened to date, but all of us need to be aware that you don’t want to overshoot the runway. 

Now, I’m gonna mix metaphors here and say you don’t swing at every pitch. Part of governing is knowing which ones count and are valuable, versus which ones aren’t — what set of policies and what type of events do you react to with urgency, versus not urgency. The craft of national security, diplomacy, and political work is making sure all the levers are saying the same thing.

You have been a very unusual ambassador. Why do you take it on yourself to troll Xi Jinping and the Chinese Communist Party? 

That’s not my role. I’m the ambassador to Japan. But their ambassador to France said that Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia weren’t real countries. That’s going to be breaking news to Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia. Second, the Chinese government said that the United States armed forces were responsible for the fires in Honolulu. They said the United States armed forces were responsible for COVID.

I called them out. It’s painful, I suppose. The other day at the Shangri-La conference, they said that NATO moving east was the reason for Putin wanting to invade Ukraine. Well, that airbrushes 200 years, if not 400 years, of history about Russia’s relationship with Ukraine. I was like, ‘You act like Poland, Lithuania, Romania, Latvia, Estonia, the Czech Republic have no self-expression.’ They chose to join NATO. NATO didn’t gobble them up. Now, that’s different from what Putin and Xi would like to see. 

Let me be clear, NATO did not move east. All those countries moved west because freedom has a pull on people.

I’m not disagreeing with your analysis. I’m asking why you make it in such a colorful way.

I’m a middle child. You know, I used to joke that if middle children wrote a book, it would be, ’War or Peace.’ We could do either one. 

It’s important in this region that our allies step up to take on a more significant and essential role, and also to point out where a major power in the region literally has one set of rules that apply to themselves and another set of rules to apply to everybody else. From my platform, I’m going to call that out. I haven’t said anything that other voices inside the administration haven’t said. I may say it a little more colorfully. I’m direct about it — and I’m still here. 

Do you look at yourself and [China ambassador] Nick Burns as a good cop, bad cop? 

Nick does a great job. He’s unbelievable. He’s a friend; he’s a colleague. It’s not so much good cop, bad cop, although it may be interpreted that way. We all have our role to play. 

You can’t be an effective congressman, you can’t be an effective ambassador, if you don’t have multiple tools in the toolbox. 

You see one set of tools I use. There are other things that I do that you don’t see. You play an inside game, you play an outside game, you use a forceful voice, and sometimes you back up and are more quiet. You’ve just got to decide what the situation calls for. I’m doing that. 

You could use the category good cop, bad cop. But there’s nothing I’ve said, even when it came to China’s minister of defense or the minister of foreign affairs, that hasn’t been true.

Could American policy execute without me saying what I say? Yes. You could use the category good cop, bad cop. But there’s nothing I’ve said, even when it came to China’s minister of defense or the minister of foreign affairs, that hasn’t been true.

I said their secretary of defense had gone missing. It was true. Now, the truth may be painful, but it’s true. And when you have 400 nuclear weapons, it’s kind of helpful to know where the minister of defense is, who he is, and who’s in charge.

You had some great hits there. I mean, very direct comments, very colorful certainly. 

You say that, but I’m not gonna let you get off with that, Bob. Are any of them not true? 

All I said was that the minister of defense, like the minister of foreign affairs, has gone missing. That’s two major cabinet people and there are other ministers since then.

There’s definitely something going on there, presumably involving the corruption issue. You tweeted Xi’s cabinet lineup is now ‘resembling Agatha Christie’s novel, And Then There Were None.’

I just wanted to prove that I had a good liberal arts education. I read some good literature. [laughter]

The Chicago Tribune, which watches you as closely as anybody, wrote this about you and your tweets in September 2023: ‘Was he replaying his old Washington role of tacitly approved attack dog? Was he going rogue out of a sense of personal moral outrage of China’s lack of transparency? Was he setting himself up for another run for office? Most likely, in our view, Emanuel is reminding the Biden inner circle of his political skills and willingness to take the heat for being a caustic back channel, that’s allowing Sullivan and Blinken to take the high road.’ Is that a reasonable interpretation of what you’re doing? 

Let me say, as I often say to people who write columns, whether that’s the editorial page or opinion page, I don’t get the luxury of working within the cozy comfort of a column. That’s their interpretation. Others will pontificate. 

But maybe the motivation is I had my own view and my own evolution in thinking after there was all this intellectual property being stolen, and a lack of transparency when it came to COVID. Remember, Australia had the audacity to say, ‘What was the origin of Covid?’ And there were three years of economic warfare started by China against Australia where China finally threw in the towel. Maybe it’s just that I don’t really like to be deceived and played for a fool.

The idea that you’re going to come and steal our primary research which our taxpayers paid for, and we’re going to sit around as if that is okay? Well, that ain’t going to happen. You say it out loud: You just don’t want to be played for a chump anymore.

You’re not a career ambassador, although you have had many jobs where you’ve had to deal with foreign policy. Is some of it just getting out to Asia, seeing what’s going on, and getting pissed off? 

Well, first of all, whether you’re chief of staff, mayor of a major city, caucus chair, or senior advisor, you may not be a diplomat, but you have got to have diplomatic skills. Nobody leaves not knowing where I stand. I’m honest, and I also listen.

One of the ironies is that we like to think of China as this communist government system. It’s actually quite entrepreneurial as a culture. The biggest hit to China in the last 12 years has been the putting of entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship in a deep freeze, because everybody’s scared. Everybody is getting arrested, some without knowing why. A capital outflow, a people outflow is a reflection of this incredible crushing of the entrepreneurial character and spirit of the Chinese society and economy.

Do you think that China’s economic problems make China more or less likely to be aggressive because they have to worry about the domestic economy and popular support?

To say it as a blanket statement for every kind of moment would be wrong. I think in general it’s a deterrent. But it’s not been a deterrent in how they’re confronting the Philippines. A lot of times we all —and I make this mistake too — we all want black-and-white absoluteness. There are nuances and you’ve got to be sensitive to those nuances. But generally, the slowdown in the economy has a deterrent impact.

In May, you were in the westernmost island of Japan, Yonaguni, which is 60 miles east of Taiwan. What was the point of that visit? 

I fully briefed the Japanese before I went, because I was the first U.S. ambassador to ever go to that island. We also went to the next island, Ishigaki, and then stayed the weekend and did other stuff. I thought it was important to go. The southwest Islands of Japan are a critical part [of Japan]. When we have a defense agreement with Japan, it goes from Yonaguni all the way to the northern tip of Hokkaido. We’re not selective about it. It is all of Japan. 

Right. But also 60 miles from Taiwan. A pretty clear message to China. 

You say that, but you know when China wanted to respond to Speaker Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan, they did a series of exercises. It was reported here that the very top of the Chinese government made a decision to fire five missiles in the Japanese EEZ. I mean, what would you do about it? 

It’s part of Japan. We defend all of Japan, not selected parts.

The mayors that I met in both those islands can’t get enough of America, whether economically, diplomatically, or security-wise. They want investments in airport and port improvements, more tourists to come, and more economic development. And unless you’re down there firsthand seeing it, it is just something somebody writes a memo about. I gained a greater appreciation for what our security agreement means.

There are a record amount of United States tourists coming to Japan. They shouldn’t be limited to Tokyo and Kyoto. Japan is a big country that has a lot to offer American tourists. And there’s a great potential for investment by the United States

On the day off that we had that Saturday, I went scuba diving. I love scuba diving; I had an incredible trip. 

How would you describe the way Japan looks at Taiwan now? Biden officials made a really big deal of it when an early communique with Japan mentioned concern about the Taiwan Straits. I was thinking, well, that’s interesting, but it’s a line in a communique. How would you describe the support? 

I laugh at that because after the state visit [by Prime Minister Kishida in April 2024] , I was running around, using these State Department terms — deliverables, communique. As chief of staff, I don’t think I ever, ever paid attention to what a communique or deliverable is. I said, ‘I feel like there’s been an invasion of the body snatchers because I’m now talking like a State Department employee.’ 

Going back to one of your first questions, one of the five big changes beyond increasing the defense budget and acquiring certain capabilities that didn’t exist before, was that Japan rewrote their national security documents. 

What sometimes gets lost is that during that same 12-month window, we rewrote ours and so did Korea, all independently. The symmetry is incredible. Those national security documents by Japan clearly orient themselves to the region in a way that fits hand-in-glove with how we see the region.

Let’s shift to economics and trade. You’ve been involved in a lot of trade fights in the U.S.. Japan would love the U.S. to rejoin the Trans-Pacific Partnership or negotiate something like that. I heard that before you left for Japan, you were making the argument internally that trade wasn’t as poisonous an issue as is often thought. What do you think the role of trade and trade agreements might be when it comes to the U.S. and Japan, and the U.S. and Asia? 

Let me quote the late Ash Carter. He was asked what he would choose if he could have either another aircraft carrier for the region vs. being more economically integrated — and at the time he was talking about TPP. He said he would pick TPP. 

Another telling sign was a day after the United States, the U.K. and Australia announced AUKUS, do you remember what China did? They announced that they wanted to join TPP. [AUKUS is a U.S.-U.K.-Australian plan to build nuclear submarines for Australia and work on other advanced technology.]

The Chinese didn’t say, here’s our new anti-submarine technology. They didn’t say, here’s our new missile.

I’ll come back to this point. But I’m fascinated and really intrigued that as the president announces [the infrastructure plan] Build Back Better, Prime Minister Kishida announces ‘New capitalism,’ [former U.K. prime minister] Boris Johnson announces, ‘Leveling Up,’ and President Xi announces ‘Common Prosperity.’ Different governments in different parts of the world were announcing policies [to counter how] globalization had created massive social and economic stress, mainly through wealth and income disparity. There were different ways of trying to address it, but there was a common theme. Globalization as practiced was not working in a societal, economic and political way.

The United States and China can’t be farther apart on certain things, but there was something similar in trying to address or scratch an itch about the consequences of how globalization had been practiced. 

I say this both as a political person but also as a father of two Navy kids — I don’t think we should put the entire burden of America in the Indo-Pacific on the young men and women that I’ve met on the USS Ronald Reagan, the Abraham Lincoln, or the Coast Guard down in the Naha part of Okinawa. This region, whether it’s from Vietnam, to Japan, to Korea, or Philippines, wants all of America, not some of America.

If this century is known as the Indo-Pacific century and America is a permanent Pacific power, why would we only give half of America to that endeavor? Now, as somebody who’s a practitioner of politics, I get domestic constraints. If America overshot the runway on ‘all trade is good,’ I think ‘all trade is bad’ is equally wrong. And I think the pendulum will swing.

So even with a difficult politics, you would give something like the TPP a try?

No. That’s a cheap question, if I can call you out. I think there’s a way to match our international security interests with our domestic politics. I don’t think the TPP negotiated back in 2014 says anything about China’s coercion. I don’t even know how you could do that. You just can’t hit the reset button, like COVID, conflict, and coercion never occurred.

What I’m saying is that the president made a valiant effort with the IPEF. [So far, the U.S. has failed to finalize the trade portion of the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework.] How do you figure out an economic component, given the domestic politics, with a security component? That’s what you do with statecraft. There are domestic pressures in the country. You try to figure out the right politics to see your interests through. It’s not that hard.

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