Magnificent News: Today's WorldView: Four ways to see Shinzo Abe’s legacy

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By Ishaan Tharoor
with Sammy Westfall

Four ways to see Shinzo Abe's legacy

A photo of former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is displayed on a makeshift memorial near the scene where Abe was fatally shot, in Nara, Japan on July 9. (Yosuke Mizuno/Kyodo News/AP)

The family of Shinzo Abe will hold a wake Monday, a day before a planned funeral. Japan and, indeed, much of the world, remains stunned by the assassination of the former prime minister, which took place at an election rally Friday where Abe was stumping for a local candidate. In the 21st century, such fatal shootings of prominent leaders are exceedingly rare, let alone in a country that registered only one gun-related homicide in 2021.

Police have opened an investigation, and the culprit, who has confessed guilt, said the killing was not politically motivated.

Abe leaves behind a considerable and complex legacy. He is the longest-serving Japanese premier in t-World War II era and a leading proponent of Japan's economic reform and geopolitical reimagining in the 21st century. His loss was memorialized around the world — flags flew at half-staff from Washington to New Delhi to myriad other capitals.

Here are some ways in which he will be remembered:

The preeminent statesman of the Indo-Pacific

In power for much of the past decade, Abe pushed forward what he and his allies dubbed a "proactive" vision of Japan's place in Asia and the world. Abe tugged at the 20th-century tethers that restrained Japan under a pacifist constitution and sought to focus attention on the threats posed by a saber-rattling, nuclear-armed North Korea and an expansionist China.

"Abe's approach to China — a healthy mix of hawkish skepticism and realpolitik acknowledgment of its trading status — became what is now the backbone of western policy f President Xi Jinping's regime," wrote Bloomberg's Gearoid Reidy.

His energetic global diplomacy — visiting more than 80 nations in his tenure — yielded mixed results. Few world leaders called on Russian President Vladimir Putin as frequently as Abe, but those overtures did little to mend fences between the Kremlin and the influential Group of Seven nations. In 2019, an Abe mission to Iran awkwardly preceded a deadly conflagration over the Persian Gulf.

But Abe did emerge as the linchpin in a new vision of Asian security, one that was loosely strung around cooperation with major regional democracies, with the United States also closely involved. More than previous Japanese leaders, Abe was deeply animated by the perceived need to hedge against China's rise.

"He knew two things: that the United States' continued presence is vital for the region and beyond, and that for the United States to stay engaged in the region, Japan is vital," Tomohiko Taniguchi, a longtime Abe foreign policy adviser and speechwriter, told The Post's Josh Rogin. "His tactful relationship-building [efforts] both with [Barack] Obama and [Donald] Trump were all based on that realist consideration."

"Abe was the first world leader to elaborate the vision of a free and open Indo-Pacific," wrote H.R. McMaster, former national security adviser in the Trump White House. "He encouraged cooperation among the so-called Quad — Japan, the United States, Australia and India — to address emerging challenges in the region."

"I think he will be remembered as among the most consequential leaders of contemporary Asia," said Kurt Campbell, the current White House's top Asia-focused official, to reporters after Abe's death.

The assertive — and divisive — nationalist

At home and in Japan's neighborhood, Abe was hardly a figure of consensus and unity. His right-wing nationalism periodically incensed the public and officials in nearby China and South Korea, where Abe's denial or downplaying of Japanese atrocities during World War II rankled. His unrealized desire to amend the country's pacifist constitution to change the footing of Japan's "self-defense" forces was bitterly opposed by adversaries to the left and remains a source of tension within Japanese politics.

"He was the most polarizing Japanese political figure in several generations, a political battler whose commitment to his vision of the country's future invited the adoration of his friends and the opprobrium of his critics," wrote Tobias Harris, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress.

"While many are extolling him as a great leader, his personal vision for rewriting Japanese history, of a glorious past, created a real problem in East Asia which will linger, because it divided not just the different countries' approach to diplomacy with Japan; it also divided Japanese society even further over how to approach its own responsibility for wartime actions carried out in the name of the emperor," Alexis Dudden, historian of modern Japan and Korea, told the New Yorker.

The champion of the neoliberal order

His bid to revive Japan's stagnating economy after the global financial crisis — a set of pro-growth policies dubbed "Abenomics" — achieved mixed results. Company profits surged and unemployment was halved while he was in office, but he still fell short of his stated goals.

"Abe was thwarted; the core ambition — a 2 per cent inflation target — was never met on his watch," explained a Financial Times editorial. "But the effort was not in vain. Ultra-expansive monetary policy successfully weakened the yen and cut borrowing costs. His ambitions were let down by fiscal squeamishness — in particular, by raising the consumption tax too quickly, which choked off momentum. Japan needed more of Abe's bold positivity, but benefited from what it got."

On the world stage, at a time of ascendant populism in the West, Abe emerged as a pillar of the traditional "liberal" order. He was a proponent of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) — an ambitious U.S.-led free trade pact — and worked to keep it, or a version of it, alive after it was nixed by President Donald Trump.

The "shadow shogun"

Even out of office, Abe loomed large over Japanese politics and was a commanding figure of an influential faction within the ruling Liberal Democratic Party. His authority and kingmaker role led him to be hailed by some as the "shadow shogun" within the party.

Now, Japan's politicians are left to navigate an economic and political environment conditioned for years by Abe's agenda. After the ruling party secured a clear majority in Japan's upper house of the parliament, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, an Abe ally, finds himself in a "golden period" of three years without elections to complicate his rule. He had set about on a somewhat different course than his predecessor, invoking a "New Capitalism" that sought to tackle economic inequality and was, in some senses, a tacit rebuke of Abe's neoliberalism.

Abe's death "may now make it more difficult for Kishida to distance himself from Abe so explicitly," explained Bloomberg's Reidy. "In the coming months, he will have to decide on a replacement for Haruhiko Kuroda at the Bank of Japan, a decision that may define Kishida's entire economic legacy. Abe's death comes as the yen drops to a historic low; and there is intense pressure on the BOJ to join other central banks in tightening, though Kishida has been broadly supportive of the Abe-Kuroda consensus so far."

1,000 Words

(Dinuka Liyanawatte/Reuters)

(Eranga Jayawardena/AP)

Turmoil in Sri Lanka deepened as demonstrators stormed the president's home Saturday, picnicking in the gardens and swimming in the pool. Following a weekend of fierce anti-government protests that saw tens of thousands flooding Colombo's streets, the country's president and prime minister agreed to step down. Political parties in Sri Lanka now face intense pressure to quickly form an interim government.

Developments from Ukraine

• In the nearly five months since Russia invaded Ukraine, Secretary of State Antony Blinken has maintained the same posture toward Moscow: Do not engage. The top U.S. diplomat has not held a single meeting or phone call with a senior Russian official throughout the conflict — a cold-shoulder strategy he continued over the weekend at a gathering of foreign ministers of the world's 20 biggest economies in Indonesia, where his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, was sometimes in the same room with him.

• The family and friends of Grady Kurpasi, 50, a U.S. military veteran who went missing in Ukraine have accused the Biden administration of inaction, saying any hope for finding him alive hinges on diplomacy between Washington and Moscow but that so far the government's efforts are lacking.

• My colleagues profile Father Vitalii Kester, a Ukrainian priest who splits Sundays between church and the front lines. His Sunday routine, they write, is not what it used to be, before war drove most of his congregation away and he started wearing army pants beneath his robes.

• A Russian strike hit a five-story apartment complex in the eastern Ukrainian city of Chasiv Yar. On Sunday, emergency workers were feverishly searching the rubble for survivors of the attack, which killed at least 15 people.

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The Uber Files

The Uber Files is an international investigation into the ride-hailing company's aggressive entrance into cities around the world — while frequently challenging the reach of existing laws and regulations. Documents illuminate how Uber used stealth technology to thwart regulators and law enforcement and how the company courted prominent political leaders as it sought footholds outside the United States.

The project is based on more than 124,000 emails, text messages, memos and other records. They were obtained by the Guardian and shared with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, which helped lead the project, and dozens of other news organizations, including The Washington Post. Journalists from 29 countries joined the effort to analyze the records over four months.

(Lucy Naland/Washington Post illustration; Justin Sullivan/Getty; Uber screenshots; Unsplash; iStock)

Uber leveraged violent attacks against its drivers to pressure politicians

Five years into Uber's war to supplant the taxi industry, executives at the ride-hailing app were in danger of losing a crown jewel in their global conquest: Paris.

The San Francisco start-up was flush at the start of 2016, valued by investors at more than $50 billion, and was racing to expand into Africa, India and Asia. But Uber's first international outpost — the French capital — had become the center of a bloody battle over the company's ambition, a trove of documents from inside the corporation shows.

In the previous year, more than 80 Uber drivers had been physically attacked across Europe, and dozens of their cars destroyed, in clashes with taxi drivers who were fearful of losing their livelihoods as Uber's low fares upended their industry. When protests against the company erupted in Paris, managers began working from an unmarked office and for safety reasons were ordered not to wear Uber-branded clothing in public, the documents show.

In a series of text messages on Jan. 29, 2016, Uber's then-chief executive, Travis Kalanick, pushed his top lieutenants to mount a counterprotest. Kalanick wanted a peaceful sit-in or march in the city's center. "Civil disobedience" "15,000 drivers" "50,000 riders," he wrote in a burst of unpolished, often abbreviated messages. One executive in response raised concern "about taxi violence against" Uber drivers, and another said the company could "look at effective civil disobedience and at the same time keep folks safe."

Kalanick shot back, saying that if the crowd was big enough, Uber drivers would be safe. And if clashes did occur, he appeared to suggest, that could benefit Uber, too:

"I think it's worth it," the chief executive wrote. "Violence guarantee success."

The company launched operations on four continents in rapid succession, often without seeking licenses to operate as a taxi and livery service, casting itself as merely a technology platform that connected willing passengers and drivers. To try to rewrite laws to recognize its position, Uber exported sophisticated American lobbying methods, the documents show, and it leveraged violence against its drivers in its efforts to win sympathy from regulators and the public.

In some instances, when drivers were attacked, Uber executives pivoted quickly to capitalize, the documents show. If a driver had been stabbed or beaten, or bricks had been thrown at his car, company officials behind the scenes provided details to the media if they thought the violence would result in negative attention for the taxi industry, the communications show. Uber would simultaneously activate its lobbyists, using attacks on drivers to secure meetings with politicians and push for regulatory changes, the documents show.

In the case of the demonstration in Paris, Kalanick and Uber managers helped arrange for a public show of support for the company at a time when taxi drivers were already clashing with police over Uber's growing presence in the country. The night after the counterprotest in the city's center, police said they intervened to prevent serious injuries as some 50 taxi drivers clashed with Uber drivers on the outskirts of Paris.

Two former Uber executives who spoke on the condition of anonymity said that company officials saw potential utility in the violent clashes and sought to capitalize on such incidents for public relations and political benefit. One said that the company would have been foolish not to do so. "Why can't we be as fierce competitors as they are, so long as we are doing it in a reasonably legal way?" the person asked.

In response to questions from The Post, Jill Hazelbaker, Uber's senior vice president for marketing and public affairs, acknowledged past mistakes in the company's treatment of drivers, especially under Kalanick, who was forced out as chief executive by investors in 2017. But she said no one, including Kalanick, wanted violence against Uber drivers.

Taxi drivers clashing with riot police protesting against transport services such as Uber and Cabify as tourism exhibition FITUR starts. (Marcos del Mazo/LightRocket via Getty Images)

The documents shed new light on how Uber's arrival in Paris and around the world drove taxi drivers to desperation. Uber burned through investor money, suddenly and radically altering the ride-hailing market with artificially low fares when it entered a new foreign city. In Madrid, the documents show, the company at one point was paying incentives of $17.50 an hour to each driver — accounting for almost two-thirds of their pay. In Hamburg, Uber drivers would have made $2.20 per hour under market conditions, minus a small commission, but the company paid each driver an additional $15 per hour — giving away rides almost for free.

Uber was spending heavily to influence the levers of power in countries it entered. Globally, the company's budget for policy and communications work was $90 million in 2016, according to one draft budget document. Uber confirmed that the figure was accurate and that about 45 percent went to public affairs work overseas. To press its case with foreign governments, the company was also spending heavily to hire big names such as David Plouffe, a senior White House adviser under President Barack Obama.

As it operated in some countries despite court orders to desist, Uber maintained a 24-hour, multicountry emergency-response system that was used to keep company information out of the hands of investigating authorities, the documents show. The "kill switch," as the company's chief executive and others called it, was used at least a dozen times to sever connections to Uber's internal computer networks as investigators moved in, sometimes with employees using stall tactics to keep detectives away from screens until they went dark, records show.

Hazelbaker said Uber does not employ such tactics today. She said "mistakes" made under Kalanick led five years ago to "one of the most infamous reckonings in the history of corporate America. That reckoning led to an enormous amount of public scrutiny, a number of high-profile lawsuits, multiple government investigations, and the termination of several senior executives. It's also exactly why Uber hired a new CEO, Dara Khosrowshahi, who was tasked with transforming every aspect of how Uber operates."

"We have not and will not make excuses for past behavior that is clearly not in line with our present values. Instead, we ask the public to judge us by what we've done over the last five years and what we will do in the years to come," Hazelbaker said.

Today, Uber has abandoned its ambitions to dominate markets such as Germany and India. It is winding down its operations in Russia and has pulled out of China altogether. In some countries, Uber has begun to work with the taxi industry it couldn't replace, allowing passengers to book cab rides on its app.

Nonetheless, Uber is growing. The company operates in 71 countries and books some 19 million trips over its app each day.

In the wake of that success are altered lives and livelihoods. Taxi drivers from Cape Town to Connecticut have been plunged into financial hardship, according to records and interviews, strapped by falling fares and in some cases encumbered by debt from mortgaged taxi licenses that have plummeted in value. As the Uber subsidies waned, many of its drivers also have struggled to make ends meet. From New York to New Delhi, a handful of taxi and Uber drivers have died by suicide, citing deep debt and disgust with the company.

Moments of candor tucked in the gigabytes of leaked internal records show that some Uber executives knew early on that the phone app was on a collision course with hard realities.

"Get some sleep when you can," the company's head of communications, Nairi Hourdajian, wrote to one of the company's top European lobbyists in December 2014. "Remember that everything is not in your control, and that sometimes we have problems because, well, we're just f------ illegal."

Hourdajian declined to comment. — Aaron C. Davis, Rick Noack and Douglas MacMillan

More from The Uber Files:

'Hit the kill switch': Regulators entered Uber's offices only to see computers go dark before their eyes as the company used covert tech to thwart government raids. Read the full story.

As Uber steamrolled into France, Emmanuel Macron was a 'true ally': The French president has never hid that he was an early Uber supporter. But documents suggest his backing for the controversial company went far beyond what has been known publicly. Read the full story.

Takeaways from the Uber Files investigation: Findings from the Uber Files, an investigation based on more than 124,000 records exposing the company's aggressive entrance into cities around the world. Read the full story.