This is an article you can never read in the mainstream big Japanese media.
The Will and Imagination to Return to Common Sense: Toward a Restructuring of the US-Japan Alliance
By Terashima Jitsuro
Translation by John Junkerman
In a discussion of early 20th-century China, the writer Lu Xun lamented how the Chinese, completely accustomed to their colonial status, had become “slave-faced.” Slave-faced is the expression of a person who is accustomed to being persecuted and lives by toadying to the powerful. It is the hollow expression of those who have lost the courage to think on their own about the condition they are in, of those who do not determine their own fates. That is “slave-faced.”
Tracking media reports on the Futenma base relocation issue since the fall of 2009, I realized that slave-faced expressions have become a permanent feature of Japanese intellectuals, including the media. The US-Japan military alliance has become fixed as an unalterable postulate, and the intellectual indolence of those who utterly reject any discussion of altering the alliance is simply astonishing.
To return to common sense. This is what is required of the Japanese, to return to the common sense of international society and to restore the recognition that it is unnatural for foreign military forces to be stationed for an extended period of time in an independent nation. A nation that does not have the will to transcend sophistry and narrow self-interest and confront this problem directly cannot be called an independent nation. Let me once again specify the facts we must face.
1) In the 65th year since the end of the Pacific War and 20 years after the end of the Cold War, there are some 40,000 US soldiers (and about 50,000 civilians and dependents) stationed in Japan on US bases that occupy approximately 1,010 square kilometers of land (1.6 times the area of the city of Tokyo).
2) Of the top five large-scale foreign bases that the US maintains around the world, four are in Japan (the Yokosuka naval base, and the Kadena, Misawa, and Yokota air bases).
3) Since an agreement is in place that makes the entire territory of Japan available for bases, and decisions on what areas to provide are made by the Joint Committee of US and Japanese government representatives (Article 2 of the Status of Forces Agreement [SOFA]), bases can be established anywhere in Japan without the approval of the Japanese Diet. There is a concentration of US bases in the vicinity of the nation’s capital, Tokyo, that is unparalleled anywhere in the world (the Yokota air base, the Yokosuka naval base, the Zama army base, and the Atsugi naval air station, among others).
4) 70 percent of the costs of stationing US forces in Japan are borne by the host nation, a situation that exists nowhere else in the world.
5) The status of US forces in Japan under the SOFA has been carried over from the Administrative Agreement that governed bases during the US occupation, and not only is Japanese sovereignty under the agreement weak, but Japan has had to bear base-related expenses that are not even specified in the SOFA.
Rediscoveries Made on a Trip to the US in Early December 2009
I visited New York and Washington during the first week of December. Since I returned to Japan in 1997 after working in the US for more than 10 years, I have made four trips a year to conduct “fixed-point observations.” The purpose of the trip was to share opinions with specialists on US-Japanese industrial cooperation in the environmental energy field, some nine months after the Obama administration launched the “Green New Deal;” and on next-generation information and communications technology, about which I chair a task force for the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communication. Discussions on the US-Japan security relationship were not on my agenda.
Nonetheless, simply because I am a long-time friend of Prime Minister Hatoyama Yukio and sometimes have an opportunity to share thoughts with him, the Nikkei and Yomiuri newspapers repeatedly portrayed my visit to the US as that of a secret envoy of the prime minister, sent to pave the way for a solution to the pressing Futenma problem. Parallel diplomacy is always to be avoided, since conducting negotiations on a separate plane when official negotiations are taking place can only confuse the situation, and I am not stupid enough to engage in such activity. In fact, considering the delicacy of the timing of the trip, I intentionally avoided the departments of State and Defense, the president’s office, and others with responsibility for US-Japan relations, and restricted my visits and discussions to Washington think tanks involved with international relations, the World Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank, and journalists and specialists involved with energy and environmental problems.
Those who just recently were saying, “Japan’s refueling mission in the Indian Ocean is living proof of the US-Japan alliance, and if it ends, the alliance will collapse,” are now insisting, “Unless Japan implements the terms of the US-Japan agreement on the Futenma relocation, the US-Japan alliance will crack.” Many of the Washington-based correspondents for Japanese media are only capable of reporting that “a breakdown of favorable US-Japan relations looms.”
Just what do these people mean by “favorable US-Japan relations”? I dare to say they think it is desirable to maintain the US-Japan relationship of the Bush-Koizumi era, when Japan responded swiftly to American expectations that it “show the flag,” by dispatching Self-Defense Forces first to the Indian Ocean and then to Iraq. In other words, the reports of my trip to the US reflected the overreaction of those who consider the US-Japan security relationship as the permanent status quo, to which any change is unwelcome.
However, we have witnessed the failure of the war in Iraq. The US has sacrificed the lives of over 5300 soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq, while spending over $1 trillion on the wars. The initiator of the war, President Bush himself, concluded the Iraq war was based on faulty intelligence, and it is estimated that the war has cost the lives of at least 100,000 Iraqis. In the US itself, this reassessment has led to a paradigm shift, with the Iraq war-opponent Obama as president. Among the Japanese, it is amazing how few have been willing to admit that the nation took the wrong path when it got involved with that war. But it is not possible to map out the future of US-Japan relations without first sincerely coming to terms with these issues. This is because a proper recognition of the process that led to the reorganization of the US military after 9.11 is the foundation for examining the next stage in the US-Japan alliance.
Still, the foul odor emanating from those who cling to US-Japan security is fierce. I keenly feel the need to keep at arm’s length those in Washington who make their living off US-Japan security, those who are generally referred to as “Japan hands” and “pro-Japanese.” These people greet visitors from Japan with smiles on their faces, and often participate in symposiums in Japan, where they sing the praises of “the US-Japan alliance as a permanent axis.” They always refer to the “responsibilities” of base-hosting Japan and call for increased cooperation with the US, in the name of making “international contributions.” Of course, there is a group of “US hands” and “pro-American” Japanese who sing in chorus, and this mutual dependence has long set the course for US-Japan relations.
On my trips to the US over the past several years, I have made an effort to meet with people who have a broader view of the world and to hear their thoughts on US-Japan relations from a diversity of perspectives. This is because I wanted to hear objective opinions that went beyond vested interests and preconceptions, in order to assess the present state of the US-Japan alliance within a broader view.
What I have been surprised to find is that, even among top-level intellectuals and specialists in international issues, most of those who are not directly involved in US-Japan relations don’t have any knowledge of the reality of the alliance (the state of the bases and the content of the SOFA). They might preface their response with “US national interest aside,” but they respond to the fact that this is the ongoing reality with puzzled expressions and honest doubt.
I would also like to mention a mind-twisting experience I had when I visited China to lecture at Peking University in October. In discussing the US-Japan alliance with a variety of diplomats and specialists in international affairs, they often mentioned as an honest concern the “cap in the bottle” theory. In short, this is the idea that, if an increasing sense of Japanese autonomy leads to the withdrawal of US military forces, the “cap” that suppresses the revival of Japanese militarism will be eliminated, to the alarm of Japan’s neighbors in Asia. This made me aware of the irony that it is not only those who make their living off of US-Japan security who want to maintain the current framework, but China itself is counting on the continued presence of the US military in Japan.
One can only smile bitterly over the twisted reality of US-Japan security, but what we Japanese must resolve is that the peace and security of Japan has to be secured through the exercise of the will of the Japanese people themselves. It is our responsibility to exercise a thoroughly pacifist self-restraint that will present no threat to our neighbors.
The Essence of US-Japan Security and Post-Cold War Changes
It hardly needs to be said that the US-Japan security system was established in the context of the Cold War. This was clearly stated by Prime Minister Yoshida Shigeru, who traveled to San Francisco in 1951 as the initiator of this system on the Japanese side. In Chapter 19 (“The Origins of the US-Japan Mutual Defense System”) of his memoir (Kaisō Jūnen [Recollections of 10 Years]), Yoshida wrote that the US-Japan security treaty was neither imposed by the US nor requested by Japan. Rather, Yoshida and Secretary of State John Foster Dulles “had the same perception of objective conditions and the prospects for Japan’s defense and the defense of the free world, and we decided there was no better policy to fill the vacuum in Japan’s defense that would result from the withdrawal of the occupation army after the peace treaty,” he explained. Yoshida then added, “The security treaty, as the treaty itself clearly assumes, is entirely a provisional measure. That is to say, if Japan’s ability to defend itself is strengthened sufficiently, or if international conditions improve dramatically and the need for the treaty is eliminated, it can be terminated at any time.”
The US-Japan Security Treaty got its start in the context of the Cold War and was provisional in nature. From then until the late 1980s, it must be said that the treaty functioned effectively as the framework for security in the Cold War standoff with the Eastern bloc. However, in the inertia of those four decades, Yoshida’s successors, politicians and diplomats alike, became fettered to the Cold War framework. They abandoned the ability to conceive of flexible policies that transcended that framework in active response to changing world conditions. And that continues today.
On the eve of the San Francisco Peace Conference and the signing of the US-Japan Security Treaty, Yoshida Shigeru told the young diplomats in his entourage, “I am prepared to sign, having made the judgment that it is appropriate to pursue postwar recovery and security as a member of the Western camp, but you must examine Japan’s diplomatic options with flexibility.”
Emerging from the Cold War era, the Berlin Wall was toppled in 1989 and the world entered the post-Cold War era. The US-Japan security system, which was premised on the Cold War, should have been fundamentally reexamined in the context of the changed world situation. However, conditions in Japan didn’t allow this. The “1955 System” that pitted the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) against the opposition Japan Socialist Party (JSP), in what amounted to a political proxy war in the East-West standoff, lost its reason for existence, and the political scene in the 1990s became much more fluid. In 1993 the Miyazawa Cabinet became the last in the unbroken string of one-party LDP governments, and a succession of relatively short-lived cabinets followed for the rest of the decade. This period even saw the birth of the Murayama Cabinet, heading a coalition of the LDP and the JSP. It was not possible to construct a new diplomatic foundation in this context.
During that first post-Cold War decade, Japan should have reviewed its US-centered security system, just as Germany did in 1993. As a result of the review of American bases in Germany, US forces were slashed from 260,000 to 40,000, and the SOFA was revised. In contrast, based on the perception that the Cold War had not ended in Asia, the US-Japan Security Treaty continued to be renewed automatically. To the extent there was a review, it was confined to the 1996 Clinton-Hashimoto Declaration that reaffirmed the security treaty and the 1997 revision of the guidelines for US-Japan defense cooperation.
In fact, the revised guidelines included provisions that harbored great danger. The emergencies that the security treaty was meant to address (now defined to include “situations in areas surrounding Japan”) were no longer restricted to the Far East, but instead were defined as situations that are judged to have “an important influence on Japan’s peace and security.” In other words, this created the possibility for Japan to cooperate militarily with the US anywhere in the world, if a situation was deemed to threaten Japanese peace and security.
It should be noted that the context for these decisions was the perception of the state of the world in the 1990s. It had become commonplace to discuss the “unipolar hegemony” of the US in the post-Cold War world, and to describe the US as “the sole superpower.” Without careful consideration, Japan became increasingly integrated into American global strategies. This was how things stood as we entered the 21st century, and when the US suffered the shock of 9.11 and the Bush administration, in a frenzy, invaded Afghanistan and Iraq, the unthinking decision that “Japan had no choice but to go along with the US” was unavoidable.
During the six decades since the security treaty was signed, what is incomprehensible amid the changing context is the ever-increasing share of the costs borne by the Japanese side. Originally, the SOFA did not impose a cost burden on Japan. Under Article 24 of the agreement, the costs of maintaining US forces in Japan were borne, not by Japan, but by the US. Japan was to provide the land for the bases, but maintenance expenses were to be paid by the US. There were even cases where the US paid a usage fee, just as it paid the government of the Philippines for the use of the Subic naval base and the Clark air force base until the US withdrew from these bases in 1992.
However, the Japanese cost burden increased steadily over the years. Beginning in 1978, when Defense Agency Director-General Kanemaru Shin offered to pay part of the welfare costs of Japanese employed by the US forces, in what he termed a “sympathy budget,” Japanese cost-sharing became the norm. When the costs of land rental and measures for the areas surrounding bases are included, the Japanese government continues to pay about ¥600 billion (about $6.7 billion) annually in expenses associated with the US bases. In the 20 years since the end of the Cold War, the Japanese people, through their taxes, have borne the “security cost” of more than ¥10 trillion (about $110 billion) in US-base related expenses.
There are no other places in the world where the host country pays 70 percent of the costs of US military bases, and one quickly realizes that this contributes to the difficulty of changing the status quo. The knowledge that Japan is the cheapest place in the world to station US forces permeates the US military establishment, and Japan’s payments nurture the population, in the US and Japan, that lives off the US-Japan security arrangement. Last fall, when the new Democratic Party of Japan government conducted its review of expenditures, it was pointed out that that wages paid to Japanese employees on US bases in Okinawa are 20–30 percent higher than wages paid for equivalent occupations in the civilian sector. There was discussion of paring these wages, which was met by angry comments from a representative of the base workers, an exchange that only highlighted the complexity of the base problem.
In any case, there was no structural review of the US-Japan security setup during the first “lost” decade of the post-Cold War era. Then, entering the new century, we were faced with 9.11 and the resulting “restructuring” of the US military, which further transformed the US-Japan alliance.
What Did the Restructuring of the US Military Amount To?
The military analyst Ebata Kensuke, who died in 2009, always based his analysis on accurate knowledge and information, and was much deserving of respect. His 2005 book, Beigun Saihen (US Military Restructuring), was a cool-headed analysis of the reality behind the restructuring of the US military in Japan. “The US is planning to use Japan,” he wrote, “as a forward position on the far side of the Pacific, from which to supply and deploy troops whenever necessary.” Identifying this as the true character of the restructuring, Ebata suggested that these goals do not coincide with Japan’s and indicated that “danger lurks” in the restructuring. He made strategic proposals for reducing and moving bases, revision of the SOFA, and reduction of the “sympathy budget.” We would do well to heed his warnings and pursue his recommendations.
The restructuring of the US military, which military officials in the US refer to as a “transformation,” was a strategy developed in response to the Iraq war and the war on terror, led by the Bush administration secretary of defense, Donald Rumsfeld. Its goals were, first, to increase the efficiency of the war on terror, including the use of preemptive attacks; and, second, to strengthen joint operations with allied forces. These goals deviate from the original goals of the US-Japan security relationship.
At a Tokyo symposium on US-Japan relations in December 2009, former deputy secretary of state Richard Armitage appealed to the audience, “The reason you can sleep peaceably tonight is because the United States is protecting Japan.” I’m sure his intentions were good, but he failed to accurately convey the fact that, unfortunately, the US-Japan security apparatus has strayed far from its origins in “protecting Japan” and “protecting the security of the Far East.” It has been transformed into the foundation for joint operations in “America’s war”—the war on terror, focused on Islamic fundamentalism from the Middle East to Central Asia. Fighting terrorists grounded in Islamic fundamentalism subtly increases hatred of Islam in general and runs the risk of igniting a clash of civilizations. From Japan’s perspective, it is foolish to place itself in a framework where Islam is seen as a threat to Japan’s security.
I have been involved with the problems of the Middle East since the 1980s, and I think Japanese should be aware that many people in Middle Eastern countries have respect and affection for Japan as the only developed country that has not exported weapons to or intervened in any Middle Eastern country. In addition, in contrast to the US, there are no domestic pressures on Japan to support the Israeli side in the Israel-Palestine conflict. We must be aware of where Japan stands and realize there are things in the world that should be confronted jointly with the US and others that should not.
Examining Afresh the “Threats” that Surround Japan
At the end of the first decade of the 21st century, with the world in the midst of major structural change, what exactly are the threats to Japanese security? We should reconsider them with a cool head.
Does Russia pose a threat? While it is true that there are disputes between Japan and Russia over the Northern Territories and fishing rights, the possibility of military aggression that existed during the Soviet era is no longer realistic. Rather, incidents like the Russian invasion of Georgia in 2008 increase tensions between the US and Russia, and if these tensions lead to a new Cold War, the more likely threat is that Japan would be drawn into an American war as an ally of the US.
What about the threat from North Korea? To be sure, North Korea’s continuing development of missiles and nuclear capabilities, out of proportion to its national strength, makes it a threat. But the North Korean threat today is different from what it was during the Cold War. Then, a North Korean invasion of the south represented a military action with the support of the Soviet Union and China, which posed the threat of transforming South Korea and Japan into socialist states. Today, the North Korean threat is that of a “rogue state,” without a message that would mobilize world sympathy; it is like the death cry of the “Military First” state, the orphan of the Cold War, and it only serves to deepen North Korea’s isolation.
However, a desperate North Korean invasion of the south cannot be dismissed entirely, and the presence of the US Marines in Okinawa as a deterrent force must be acknowledged. Nonetheless, what is most important for Japan is to pursue a diplomatic strategy that renders North Korean missiles and nuclear arms unusable, and to continue leading the initiative for a denuclearized Northeast Asia that also encompasses Russia, China, South Korea, and the US.
How about the Chinese military threat? Chinese military expenditures have increased annually for 21 years, and the 2009 budget was $70.3 billion (an increase of 14.9 percent over the previous year), which is substantially more than Japan’s military budget (¥4.7 trillion or $52 billion in 2009). Considering the low cost of personnel in China, it is clear that the country is aiming to build a prodigious complement of armaments. Many are swayed by the logic that the US-Japan alliance must be strengthened to meet this Chinese threat, but the reality is not so simple. This is because of shifts in the US-China relationship. The high-level US-China Strategic Economic Dialogue begun in 2006 was upgraded under the Obama administration in April 2009 to include political and security issues. Meanwhile, nearly 500 US corporations now participate in the US-China Business Council, which, in contrast to the recent sluggishness of the Japan-US Business Council, has increased the intensity of exchange.
Given this, let us explore whether the US-Japan Security Treaty would come into play and whether the US would take action if China, in a hypothetical scenario, were to forcibly occupy the disputed Senkaku (Diaoyu) Islands. In the Japanese view, since the Senkakus were under US administration until the moment Okinawa reverted to Japan, there is no question about Japanese possession of the islands. But in recent years, as seen in the statements of US diplomats that the US does not want to get involved in territorial disputes between China and Japan, the US stance is ambivalent. Probably, in a balanced view, the US government would heed American public opinion, and if it concluded that it was appropriate to take action, it might defend the Senkaku Islands.
Engaging in speculation of this sort leads to the conclusion that the threats that Japan and the US must face jointly have changed dramatically and are not always clearly defined. From the Japanese side, neither excessive expectations nor excessive dependence are reasonable. Rather, the most realistic view is what might be called a “strategic ambiguity,” that the US presence in the US-Japan alliance serves as a vague symbol of leverage in a time of crisis, and stands as a guarantee to the world that Japan does not stand alone.
The Evolution of the US-Japan Alliance
With this understanding of the status of the alliance in mind, what sort of US-Japan security relationship should we aim for in the 21st century? With both governments having a new party in power, this is a good time to explore new frameworks that transcend the vested interests and fixed ideas of the past.
In his book Embattled Garrisons: Comparative Base Politics and American Globalism, Reischauer Center for East Asian Studies director Kent Calder cites the intriguing statistic that, over the past 50 years, the probability that a regime change in a country hosting military bases was followed by a withdrawal of bases is 67 percent, even for US bases. If one makes a calm assessment of the situation of East Asia, it is likely that the US military’s presence in Japan should continue at a certain level, even if it is in the nature of a “strategic ambiguity.” However, we should proceed with a reconstruction of a US-Japan alliance worthy of our mutual trust, not with the inertia that has prevailed to date, but on the basis of careful deliberation. To that end, I would like to offer the following proposals.
1) Establish a mechanism for strategic dialogue between the US and Japan, to facilitate cabinet-level discussions on future-oriented US Japan relations in the areas of economics and security, and to redesign the US-Japan alliance. Specifically, carry out strategic dialogue to deepen US-Japanese cooperation in economics and industry, through such measures as industrial cooperation and free trade agreements; and strategic dialogue on the preferred state of US bases in Japan and US-Japan defense cooperation, to foster the evolution of the security system.
2) With regard to security, clarify Japanese thinking on long-term goals for the US-Japan military alliance. For example, while paying heed so as not to create a military vacuum in East Asia, examine the purpose of each US military base and facility, and eliminate those that have fulfilled their purpose, with a goal of a 50 percent reduction over 10 years. (Note that Article 2.3 of the SOFA states, “The facilities and areas used by the United States armed forces shall be returned to Japan whenever they are no longer needed.”)
3) With regard to the SOFA, gradually transition US military bases, under a framework administered by the Japanese government, to the stationing of US forces on Self-Defense Force bases, where they would be jointly administered (as provided in SOFA Article 2.4b). (Note that former Defense Minister Ishiba Shigeru once proposed, with the same concern in mind, that “in the future, as a matter of principle, all American forces should be stationed at bases controlled and operated by the Self Defense Forces,” in essence, that bases should be used jointly, under Japanese sovereignty.)
4) Regarding the future shape of US-Japan security, explore flexible scenarios, including an arrangement where Japan and South Korea bear an appropriate cost for retaining, for a certain period of time, an emergency dispatch force in Hawaii and Guam, as a mechanism to maintain a US presence and avoid a military vacuum in East Asia.
5) The problem of the relocation of the Futenma base should be considered in the context of the long-term review of the US-Japan security system, but, given the dangers to local residents from the continued use of the base, quickly determine realistic alternatives that will make it possible to fulfill the agreement with the US to move the base by 2014. In this case, considering US strategic planning, the point of agreement will likely be the maintenance of the combined strength of forces in Okinawa and Guam.
When you think about it, the perspective of “returning to common sense” that I mentioned at the beginning of this article resonates with the 1776 pamphlet that Thomas Paine wrote, using for his title the catchphrase “common sense” that was then used among Americans pressing for independence from Great Britain. Paine argued that it was common sense that American subordination to and dependence on Britain risked embroiling the colonies in unnecessary wars, fought in the name of “British justice,” and he appealed for American autonomy and self-respect. The historical context is different, but this spirit should resound in the hearts of Japanese today.
The time is nearing for us to calmly face a revision of the treaty in our era.
Terashima Jitsuro is the president of Tama University, as well as president of the Mitsui Global Strategic Studies Institute and chairman of the Japan Research Institute. His work has been regularly featured in Chuo Koron, Sekai, Forbes, PHP, and Asahi among others, and he has his own monthly TV program. A foreign policy advisor to Prime Minister Hatoyama Yukio, he was touted in some circles as a possible foreign minister. This is a slightly abbreviated translation of an essay that appeared as the lead article in a special section of Sekai (February 2010), devoted to the Futenma base relocation issue. It is the 94th installment of his column, “Lessons in Brain Power.” For another recent essay by Terashima, “Time for a Mature Foreign Policy,” originally published in Chuo Koron in October 2009, see Japan Echo, December 2009.
John Junkerman is an American documentary filmmaker and Japan Focus associate living in Tokyo. His most recent film, “Japan’s Peace Constitution” (2005), won the Kinema Jumpo and Japan PEN Club best documentary awards. It is available in North America from First Run Icarus Films. He co-produced and edited “Outside the Great Wall,” a film on Chinese writers and artists in exile that will be released in Japan and abroad later this year.
Recommended citatation: Terashima Jitsuro, "The Will and Imagination to Return to Common Sense: Toward a Restructuring of the US-Japan Alliance," The Asia-Pacific Journal, 11-3-10, March 15, 2010.
Thursday, March 25, 2010
Monday, March 22, 2010
（Nikkei） Aircraft Designed For SDF To Get OK For Civilian Exports
(There is much room for Japan's aerospace and defense industry to expand business both inside and outside Japan. Cheers, Kosuke)
Monday, March 22, 2010
Aircraft Designed For SDF To Get OK For Civilian Exports
TOKYO (Nikkei)--The government has decided to let cargo planes and some other aircraft developed for the Self-Defense Forces be exported for nonmilitary use as a way of revitalizing a defense industry hit by a decline in spending, The Nikkei learned Sunday.
Civilian exports of the XC-2 may soon be cleared for takeoff.The move will initially cover three domestic aircraft models. The XP-1 patrol plane and the XC-2 cargo plane, both co-developed by Kawasaki Heavy Industries Ltd. (7012) and the Defense Ministry, are undergoing flight tests. The US-2, produced by ShinMaywa Industries Ltd. (7224) for air-sea rescue work, is already being used by the Maritime Self-Defense Force.
Both Kawasaki Heavy and ShinMaywa had envisioned civilian use of these aircraft from the development stage. The XP-1 can be outfitted as a regional passenger jet, and the US-2 can be used for firefighting.
The Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry estimates global demand for 100- to 150-seat passenger planes like the XP-1 at 9,400 units over the 20 years through 2027. And demand for large cargo planes similar to the XC-2 is projected to almost triple from current levels by that year.
METI also anticipates demand to replace firefighting aircraft in France, Spain and Italy over the next five years.
The government is pushing civilian use of aircraft designed for the SDF because the nation's defense spending continues to decline and aircraft prices are rising. By selling the aircraft to the private sector, the Defense Ministry expects to cut per-aircraft introduction costs and recoup a portion of development costs.
A study group of officials from relevant ministries will be formed as early as next month to discuss civilian use of the XP-1, the XC-2 and the US-2. Because these planes use mostly nonmilitary components, the government determined that the move would not violate rules banning the export of weapons.
(The Nikkei March 22 edition)
Monday, March 22, 2010
Aircraft Designed For SDF To Get OK For Civilian Exports
TOKYO (Nikkei)--The government has decided to let cargo planes and some other aircraft developed for the Self-Defense Forces be exported for nonmilitary use as a way of revitalizing a defense industry hit by a decline in spending, The Nikkei learned Sunday.
Civilian exports of the XC-2 may soon be cleared for takeoff.The move will initially cover three domestic aircraft models. The XP-1 patrol plane and the XC-2 cargo plane, both co-developed by Kawasaki Heavy Industries Ltd. (7012) and the Defense Ministry, are undergoing flight tests. The US-2, produced by ShinMaywa Industries Ltd. (7224) for air-sea rescue work, is already being used by the Maritime Self-Defense Force.
Both Kawasaki Heavy and ShinMaywa had envisioned civilian use of these aircraft from the development stage. The XP-1 can be outfitted as a regional passenger jet, and the US-2 can be used for firefighting.
The Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry estimates global demand for 100- to 150-seat passenger planes like the XP-1 at 9,400 units over the 20 years through 2027. And demand for large cargo planes similar to the XC-2 is projected to almost triple from current levels by that year.
METI also anticipates demand to replace firefighting aircraft in France, Spain and Italy over the next five years.
The government is pushing civilian use of aircraft designed for the SDF because the nation's defense spending continues to decline and aircraft prices are rising. By selling the aircraft to the private sector, the Defense Ministry expects to cut per-aircraft introduction costs and recoup a portion of development costs.
A study group of officials from relevant ministries will be formed as early as next month to discuss civilian use of the XP-1, the XC-2 and the US-2. Because these planes use mostly nonmilitary components, the government determined that the move would not violate rules banning the export of weapons.
(The Nikkei March 22 edition)
Friday, March 5, 2010
Okinawa and the new domino effect By John Feffer
Yesterday I just finished filing my tax return for the last year. I am very relieved now. This is a very big job for any freelance journalist in Japan. You need to support your tax return form by every single receipt, just in case the taxation authorities may examine your filing closely in the future.
Well, a lot of such precious taxes, including mine and yours, still go for military-related expenses in Japan, especially for US military bases! Here is a good story to think about it. Cheers, Kosuke
Okinawa and the new domino effect
By John Feffer
For a country with a pacifist constitution, Japan is bristling with weaponry. Indeed, that Asian land has long functioned as a huge aircraft carrier and naval base for United States military power. We couldn't have fought wars in Korea (1950-1953) and Vietnam (1959-1975) without the nearly 90 military bases scattered around the islands of our major Pacific ally. Even today, Japan remains the anchor of what's left of America's Cold War containment policy when it comes to China and North Korea. From the Yokota and Kadena air bases, the United States can dispatch troops and bombers across Asia, while the Yokosuka base near Tokyo is the largest American naval installation outside the United States.
You'd think that, with so many Japanese bases, the United States wouldn't make a big fuss about closing one of them. Think again. The current battle over the US Marine Corps air base at Futenma on Okinawa - an island prefecture almost 1,600 kilometers south of Tokyo that hosts about three dozen US bases and 75% of American forces in Japan - is just revving up. In fact, Washington seems ready to stake its reputation and its relationship with a new Japanese government on the fate of that base alone, which reveals much about US anxieties in the age of President Barack Obama.
What makes this so strange, on the surface, is that Futenma is an obsolete base. Under an agreement the George W Bush administration reached with the previous Japanese government, the US was already planning to move most of the Marines now at Futenma to the island of Guam. Nonetheless, the Obama administration is insisting, over the protests of Okinawans and the objections of Tokyo, on completing that agreement by building a new partial replacement base in a less heavily populated part of Okinawa.
The current row between Tokyo and Washington is no mere "Pacific squall", as Newsweek dismissively described it. After six decades of saying yes to everything the United States has demanded, Japan finally seems on the verge of saying no to something that matters greatly to Washington, and the relationship that Dwight D Eisenhower once called an "indestructible alliance" is displaying ever more hairline fractures. Worse yet, from the Pentagon's perspective, Japan's resistance might prove infectious - one major reason why the United States is putting its alliance on the line over the closing of a single antiquated military base and the building of another of dubious strategic value.
During the Cold War, the Pentagon worried that countries would fall like dominoes before a relentless communist advance. Today, the Pentagon worries about a different kind of domino effect. In Europe, North Atlantic Treaty Organization countries are refusing to throw their full support behind the US war in Afghanistan. In Africa, no country has stepped forward to host the headquarters of the Pentagon's new Africa Command. In Latin America, little Ecuador has kicked the US out of its air base in Manta.
All of these are undoubtedly symptoms of the decline in respect for American power that the US military is experiencing globally. But the current pushback in Japan is the surest sign yet that the American empire of overseas military bases has reached its high-water mark and will soon recede.
Toady no more?
Until recently, Japan was virtually a one-party state, and that suited Washington just fine. The long-ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) had the coziest of bipartisan relations with that city's policymakers and its "chrysanthemum club" of Japan-friendly pundits. A recent revelation that, in 1969, Japan buckled to president Richard Nixon's demand that it secretly host US ships carrying nuclear weapons - despite Tokyo's supposedly firm anti-nuclear principles - has pulled back the curtain on only the tip of the toadyism.
During and after the Cold War, Japanese governments bent over backwards to give Washington whatever it wanted. When government restrictions on military exports got in the way of the alliance, Tokyo simply made an exception for the United States. When cooperation on missile defense contradicted Japan's ban on militarizing space, Tokyo again waved a magic wand and made the restriction disappear.
Although Japan's constitution renounces the "threat or the use of force as a means of settling international disputes", Washington pushed Tokyo to offset the costs of the US military adventure in the first Gulf War against Saddam Hussein in 1990-1991, and Tokyo did so. Then, from November 2001 until just recently, Washington persuaded the Japanese to provide refueling in the Indian Ocean for vessels and aircraft involved in the war in Afghanistan. In 2007, the Pentagon even tried to arm-twist Tokyo into raising its defense spending to pay for more of the costs of the alliance.
Of course, the LDP complied with such demands because they intersected so nicely with its own plans to bend that country's peace constitution and beef up its military. Over the last two decades, in fact, Japan has acquired remarkably sophisticated hardware, including fighter jets, in-air refueling capability, and assault ships that can function like aircraft carriers. It also amended the 1954 Self-Defense Forces Law, which defines what the Japanese military can and cannot do, more than 50 times to give its forces the capacity to act with striking offensive strength. Despite its "peace constitution", Japan now has one of the top militaries in the world.
Enter the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ). In August 2009, that upstart political party dethroned the LDP, after more than a half-century in power, and swept into office with a broad mandate to shake things up. Given the country's nose-diving economy, the party's focus has been on domestic issues and cost-cutting. Not surprisingly, however, the quest to cut pork from the Japanese budget has led the party to scrutinize the alliance with the US. Unlike most other countries that host US military bases, Japan shoulders most of the cost of maintaining them: more than $4 billion per year in direct or indirect support.
Under the circumstances, the new government of Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama proposed something modest indeed - putting the US-Japan alliance on, in the phrase of the moment, a "more equal" footing. It inaugurated this new approach in a largely symbolic way by ending Japan's resupply mission in the Indian Ocean (though Tokyo typically sweetened the pill by offering a five-year package of $5 billion in development assistance to the Afghan government).
More substantively, the Yukio Hatoyama government also signaled that it wanted to reduce its base-support payments. Japan's proposed belt-tightening comes at an inopportune moment for the Obama administration, as it tries to pay for two wars, its "overseas contingency operations", and a worldwide network of more than 700 military bases. The burdens of US overseas operations are increasing, and fewer countries are proving willing to share the costs.
Of dugongs and democracy
The immediate source of tension in the US-Japanese relationship has been Tokyo's desire to renegotiate that 2006 agreement to close Futenma, transfer those 8,000 Marines to Guam, and build a new base in Nago, a less densely populated area of the island. It's a deal that threatens to make an already strapped government pay big. Back in 2006, Tokyo promised to shell out more than $6 billion just to help relocate the Marines to Guam.
The political cost to the new government of going along with the LDP's folly may be even higher. After all, the DPJ received a healthy chunk of voter support from Okinawans, dissatisfied with the 2006 agreement and eager to see the American occupation of their island end. Over the last several decades, with US bases built cheek-by-jowl in the most heavily populated parts of the island, Okinawans have endured air, water, and noise pollution, accidents like a 2004 US helicopter crash at Okinawa International University, and crimes that range from trivial speeding violations all the way up to the rape of a 12-year-old girl by three Marines in 1995.
According to a June 2009 opinion poll, 68% of Okinawans opposed relocating Futenma within the prefecture, while only 18% favored the plan. Meanwhile, the Social Democratic Party, a junior member of the ruling coalition, has threatened to pull out if Hatoyama backs away from his campaign pledge not to build a new base in Okinawa.
Then there's the dugong, a sea mammal similar to the manatee that looks like a cross between a walrus and a dolphin and was the likely inspiration for the mermaid myth. Only 50 specimens of this endangered species are still living in the marine waters threatened by the proposed new base near less populated Nago. In a landmark case, Japanese lawyers and American environmentalists filed suit in US federal court to block the base's construction and save the dugong.
Realistically speaking, even if the Pentagon were willing to appeal the case all the way up to the Supreme Court, lawyers and environmentalists could wrap the US military in so much legal and bureaucratic red tape for so long that the new base might never leave the drawing board.
For environmental, political, and economic reasons, ditching the 2006 agreement is a no-brainer for Tokyo. Given Washington's insistence on retaining a base of little strategic importance, however, the challenge for the DPJ has been to find a site other than Nago. The Japanese government floated the idea of merging the Futenma facility with existing facilities at Kadena, another US base on the island. But that plan - as well as possible relocation to other parts of Japan - has met with stiff local resistance. A proposal to further expand facilities in Guam was nixed by the governor there.
The solution to all this is obvious: close down Futenma without opening another base. But so far, the US is refusing to make it easy for the Japanese. In fact, Washington is doing all it can to box the new government in Tokyo into a corner.
Ratcheting up the pressure
The US military presence in Okinawa is a residue of the Cold War and a US commitment to containing the only military power on the horizon that could threaten American military supremacy. Back in the 1990s, the Bill Clinton administration's solution to a rising China was to "integrate, but hedge". The hedge - against the possibility of China developing a serious mean streak - centered around a strengthened US-Japan alliance and a credible Japanese military deterrent.
What the Clinton administration and its successors didn't anticipate was how effectively and peacefully China would disarm this hedging strategy with careful statesmanship and a vigorous trade policy. A number of Southeast Asian countries, including the Philippines and Indonesia, succumbed early to China's version of checkbook diplomacy. Then, in the last decade, South Korea, like the Japanese today, started to talk about establishing "more equal" relations with the US in an effort to avoid being drawn into any future military scrape between Washington and Beijing.
Okinawa and the new domino effect
By John Feffer
Now, with its arch-conservatives gone from government, Japan is visibly warming to China's charms. In 2007, China had already surpassed the US as the country's leading trade partner. On becoming prime minister, Hatoyama sensibly proposed the future establishment of an East Asian community patterned on the European Union. As he saw it, that would leverage Japan's position between a rising China and a United States in decline. In December, while Washington and Tokyo were haggling bitterly over the Okinawa base issue, DPJ leader Ichiro Ozawa sent a signal to Washington as well as Beijing by shepherding a 143-member delegation of his party's legislators on a four-day trip to China.
Not surprisingly, China's bedazzlement policy has set off warning bells in Washington, where the People's Republic is still a focus
of primary concern for a cadre of strategic planners inside the Pentagon. The Futenma base - and its potential replacement - would be well situated, should Washington ever decide to send rapid response units to the Taiwan Strait, the South China Sea, or the Korean peninsula. Strategic planners in Washington like to speak of the "tyranny of distance", of the difficulty of getting "boots on the ground" from Guam or Hawaii in case of an East Asian emergency.
Yet the actual strategic value of Futenma is, at best, questionable. The South Koreans are more than capable of dealing with any contingency on the peninsula. And the United States frankly has plenty of firepower by air (Kadena) and sea (Yokosuka) within hailing distance of China. A couple thousand Marines won't make much of a difference (though the leathernecks strenuously disagree). However, in a political environment in which the Pentagon is finding itself making tough choices between funding counterinsurgency wars and old Cold War weapons systems, the "China threat" lobby doesn't want to give an inch.
Failure to relocate the Futenma base within Okinawa might be the first step down a slippery slope that could potentially put at risk billions of dollars in Cold War weapons still in the production line. It's hard to justify buying all the fancy toys without a place to play with them.
And that's one reason the Obama administration has gone to the mat to pressure Tokyo to adhere to the 2006 agreement. It even dispatched Secretary of Defense Robert Gates to the Japanese capital last October in advance of president Obama's own Asian tour. Like an impatient father admonishing an obstreperous teenager, Gates lectured the Japanese "to move on" and abide by the agreement - to the irritation of both the new government and the public. (See Gates gets grumpy in Tokyo, October 28, 2009)
The punditocracy has predictably closed ranks behind a bipartisan Washington consensus that the new Japanese government should become as accustomed to its junior status as its predecessor and stop making a fuss. The Obama administration is frustrated with "Hatoyama's amateurish handling of the issue," writes Washington Post editorial page editor Fred Hiatt. "What has resulted from Mr Hatoyama's failure to enunciate a clear strategy or action plan is the biggest political vacuum in over 50 years," adds Victor Cha, former director of Asian affairs at the National Security Council. Neither analyst acknowledges that Tokyo's only "failure" or "amateurish" move was to stand up to Washington. "The dispute could undermine security in East Asia on the 50th anniversary of an alliance that has served the region well," intoned The Economist more bluntly. "Tough as it is for Japan's new government, it needs to do most, though not all, of the caving in."
The Hatoyama government is by no means radical, nor is it anti-American. It isn't preparing to demand that all, or even many, US bases close. It isn't even preparing to close any of the other three dozen (or so) bases on Okinawa. Its modest pushback is confined to Futenma, where it finds itself between the rock of Japanese public opinion and the hard place of Pentagon pressure.
Those who prefer to achieve Washington's objectives with Japan in a more roundabout fashion counsel patience. "If America undercuts the new Japanese government and creates resentment among the Japanese public, then a victory on Futenma could prove Pyrrhic," writes Joseph Nye, the architect of US Asia policy during the Clinton years. Japan hands are urging the United States to wait until the summer, when the DPJ has a shot at picking up enough additional seats in the next parliamentary elections to jettison its coalition partners, if it deems such a move necessary.
Even if the Social Democratic Party is no longer in the government constantly raising the Okinawa base issue, the DPJ still must deal with democracy on the ground. The Okinawans are dead set against a new base. The residents of Nago, where that base would be built, just elected a mayor who campaigned on a no-base platform. It won't look good for the party that has finally brought real democracy to Tokyo to squelch it in Okinawa.
Reverse island hop
Wherever the US military puts down its foot overseas, movements have sprung up to protest the military, social, and environmental consequences of its military bases. This anti-base movement has notched some successes, such as the shut-down of a US navy facility in Vieques, Puerto Rico, in 2003. In the Pacific, too, the movement has made its mark. On the heels of the eruption of Mt Pinatubo, democracy activists in the Philippines successfully closed down the ash-covered Clark Air Force Base and Subic Bay Naval Station in 1991-1992. Later, South Korean activists managed to win closure of the huge Yongsan facility in downtown Seoul.
Of course, these were only partial victories. Washington subsequently negotiated a Visiting Forces Agreement with the Philippines, whereby the US military has redeployed troops and equipment to the island, and replaced Korea's Yongsan base with a new one in nearby Pyeongtaek. But these not-in-my-backyard (NIMBY) victories were significant enough to help edge the Pentagon toward the adoption of a military doctrine that emphasizes mobility over position. The US military now relies on "strategic flexibility" and "rapid response" both to counter unexpected threats and to deal with allied fickleness.
The Hatoyama government may indeed learn to say no to Washington over the Okinawa bases. Evidently considering this a likelihood, former deputy secretary of state and former US ambassador to Japan Richard Armitage has said that the United States "had better have a plan B". But the victory for the anti-base movement will still be only partial. US forces will remain in Japan, and especially Okinawa, and Tokyo will undoubtedly continue to pay for their maintenance.
Buoyed by even this partial victory, however, NIMBY movements are likely to grow in Japan and across the region, focusing on other Okinawa bases, bases on the Japanese mainland, and elsewhere in the Pacific, including Guam. Indeed, protests are already building in Guam against the projected expansion of Andersen Air Force Base and Naval Base Guam to accommodate those Marines from Okinawa. And this strikes terror in the hearts of Pentagon planners.
In World War II, the United States employed an island-hopping strategy to move ever closer to the Japanese mainland. Okinawa was the last island and last major battle of that campaign, and more people died during the fighting there than in the subsequent atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined: 12,000 US troops, more than 100,000 Japanese soldiers, and perhaps 100,000 Okinawan civilians. This historical experience has stiffened the pacifist resolve of Okinawans.
The current battle over Okinawa again pits the United States against Japan, again with the Okinawans as victims. But there is a good chance that the Okinawans, like the Na'vi in that great NIMBY film Avatar, will win this time.
A victory in closing Futenma and preventing the construction of a new base might be the first step in a potential reverse island hop. NIMBY movements may someday finally push the US military out of Japan and off Okinawa. It's not likely to be a smooth process, nor is it likely to happen any time soon. But the kanji (a form of Japanese writing) is on the wall. Even if the Yankees don't know what the Japanese characters mean, they can at least tell in which direction the exit arrow is pointing.
John Feffer is the co-director of Foreign Policy in Focus at the Institute for Policy Studies and writes its regular World Beat column. His past essays, including those for TomDispatch.com, can be read at his website.
(Copyright 2010 John Feffer.)
(Used by permission Tomdispatch)
Well, a lot of such precious taxes, including mine and yours, still go for military-related expenses in Japan, especially for US military bases! Here is a good story to think about it. Cheers, Kosuke
Okinawa and the new domino effect
By John Feffer
For a country with a pacifist constitution, Japan is bristling with weaponry. Indeed, that Asian land has long functioned as a huge aircraft carrier and naval base for United States military power. We couldn't have fought wars in Korea (1950-1953) and Vietnam (1959-1975) without the nearly 90 military bases scattered around the islands of our major Pacific ally. Even today, Japan remains the anchor of what's left of America's Cold War containment policy when it comes to China and North Korea. From the Yokota and Kadena air bases, the United States can dispatch troops and bombers across Asia, while the Yokosuka base near Tokyo is the largest American naval installation outside the United States.
You'd think that, with so many Japanese bases, the United States wouldn't make a big fuss about closing one of them. Think again. The current battle over the US Marine Corps air base at Futenma on Okinawa - an island prefecture almost 1,600 kilometers south of Tokyo that hosts about three dozen US bases and 75% of American forces in Japan - is just revving up. In fact, Washington seems ready to stake its reputation and its relationship with a new Japanese government on the fate of that base alone, which reveals much about US anxieties in the age of President Barack Obama.
What makes this so strange, on the surface, is that Futenma is an obsolete base. Under an agreement the George W Bush administration reached with the previous Japanese government, the US was already planning to move most of the Marines now at Futenma to the island of Guam. Nonetheless, the Obama administration is insisting, over the protests of Okinawans and the objections of Tokyo, on completing that agreement by building a new partial replacement base in a less heavily populated part of Okinawa.
The current row between Tokyo and Washington is no mere "Pacific squall", as Newsweek dismissively described it. After six decades of saying yes to everything the United States has demanded, Japan finally seems on the verge of saying no to something that matters greatly to Washington, and the relationship that Dwight D Eisenhower once called an "indestructible alliance" is displaying ever more hairline fractures. Worse yet, from the Pentagon's perspective, Japan's resistance might prove infectious - one major reason why the United States is putting its alliance on the line over the closing of a single antiquated military base and the building of another of dubious strategic value.
During the Cold War, the Pentagon worried that countries would fall like dominoes before a relentless communist advance. Today, the Pentagon worries about a different kind of domino effect. In Europe, North Atlantic Treaty Organization countries are refusing to throw their full support behind the US war in Afghanistan. In Africa, no country has stepped forward to host the headquarters of the Pentagon's new Africa Command. In Latin America, little Ecuador has kicked the US out of its air base in Manta.
All of these are undoubtedly symptoms of the decline in respect for American power that the US military is experiencing globally. But the current pushback in Japan is the surest sign yet that the American empire of overseas military bases has reached its high-water mark and will soon recede.
Toady no more?
Until recently, Japan was virtually a one-party state, and that suited Washington just fine. The long-ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) had the coziest of bipartisan relations with that city's policymakers and its "chrysanthemum club" of Japan-friendly pundits. A recent revelation that, in 1969, Japan buckled to president Richard Nixon's demand that it secretly host US ships carrying nuclear weapons - despite Tokyo's supposedly firm anti-nuclear principles - has pulled back the curtain on only the tip of the toadyism.
During and after the Cold War, Japanese governments bent over backwards to give Washington whatever it wanted. When government restrictions on military exports got in the way of the alliance, Tokyo simply made an exception for the United States. When cooperation on missile defense contradicted Japan's ban on militarizing space, Tokyo again waved a magic wand and made the restriction disappear.
Although Japan's constitution renounces the "threat or the use of force as a means of settling international disputes", Washington pushed Tokyo to offset the costs of the US military adventure in the first Gulf War against Saddam Hussein in 1990-1991, and Tokyo did so. Then, from November 2001 until just recently, Washington persuaded the Japanese to provide refueling in the Indian Ocean for vessels and aircraft involved in the war in Afghanistan. In 2007, the Pentagon even tried to arm-twist Tokyo into raising its defense spending to pay for more of the costs of the alliance.
Of course, the LDP complied with such demands because they intersected so nicely with its own plans to bend that country's peace constitution and beef up its military. Over the last two decades, in fact, Japan has acquired remarkably sophisticated hardware, including fighter jets, in-air refueling capability, and assault ships that can function like aircraft carriers. It also amended the 1954 Self-Defense Forces Law, which defines what the Japanese military can and cannot do, more than 50 times to give its forces the capacity to act with striking offensive strength. Despite its "peace constitution", Japan now has one of the top militaries in the world.
Enter the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ). In August 2009, that upstart political party dethroned the LDP, after more than a half-century in power, and swept into office with a broad mandate to shake things up. Given the country's nose-diving economy, the party's focus has been on domestic issues and cost-cutting. Not surprisingly, however, the quest to cut pork from the Japanese budget has led the party to scrutinize the alliance with the US. Unlike most other countries that host US military bases, Japan shoulders most of the cost of maintaining them: more than $4 billion per year in direct or indirect support.
Under the circumstances, the new government of Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama proposed something modest indeed - putting the US-Japan alliance on, in the phrase of the moment, a "more equal" footing. It inaugurated this new approach in a largely symbolic way by ending Japan's resupply mission in the Indian Ocean (though Tokyo typically sweetened the pill by offering a five-year package of $5 billion in development assistance to the Afghan government).
More substantively, the Yukio Hatoyama government also signaled that it wanted to reduce its base-support payments. Japan's proposed belt-tightening comes at an inopportune moment for the Obama administration, as it tries to pay for two wars, its "overseas contingency operations", and a worldwide network of more than 700 military bases. The burdens of US overseas operations are increasing, and fewer countries are proving willing to share the costs.
Of dugongs and democracy
The immediate source of tension in the US-Japanese relationship has been Tokyo's desire to renegotiate that 2006 agreement to close Futenma, transfer those 8,000 Marines to Guam, and build a new base in Nago, a less densely populated area of the island. It's a deal that threatens to make an already strapped government pay big. Back in 2006, Tokyo promised to shell out more than $6 billion just to help relocate the Marines to Guam.
The political cost to the new government of going along with the LDP's folly may be even higher. After all, the DPJ received a healthy chunk of voter support from Okinawans, dissatisfied with the 2006 agreement and eager to see the American occupation of their island end. Over the last several decades, with US bases built cheek-by-jowl in the most heavily populated parts of the island, Okinawans have endured air, water, and noise pollution, accidents like a 2004 US helicopter crash at Okinawa International University, and crimes that range from trivial speeding violations all the way up to the rape of a 12-year-old girl by three Marines in 1995.
According to a June 2009 opinion poll, 68% of Okinawans opposed relocating Futenma within the prefecture, while only 18% favored the plan. Meanwhile, the Social Democratic Party, a junior member of the ruling coalition, has threatened to pull out if Hatoyama backs away from his campaign pledge not to build a new base in Okinawa.
Then there's the dugong, a sea mammal similar to the manatee that looks like a cross between a walrus and a dolphin and was the likely inspiration for the mermaid myth. Only 50 specimens of this endangered species are still living in the marine waters threatened by the proposed new base near less populated Nago. In a landmark case, Japanese lawyers and American environmentalists filed suit in US federal court to block the base's construction and save the dugong.
Realistically speaking, even if the Pentagon were willing to appeal the case all the way up to the Supreme Court, lawyers and environmentalists could wrap the US military in so much legal and bureaucratic red tape for so long that the new base might never leave the drawing board.
For environmental, political, and economic reasons, ditching the 2006 agreement is a no-brainer for Tokyo. Given Washington's insistence on retaining a base of little strategic importance, however, the challenge for the DPJ has been to find a site other than Nago. The Japanese government floated the idea of merging the Futenma facility with existing facilities at Kadena, another US base on the island. But that plan - as well as possible relocation to other parts of Japan - has met with stiff local resistance. A proposal to further expand facilities in Guam was nixed by the governor there.
The solution to all this is obvious: close down Futenma without opening another base. But so far, the US is refusing to make it easy for the Japanese. In fact, Washington is doing all it can to box the new government in Tokyo into a corner.
Ratcheting up the pressure
The US military presence in Okinawa is a residue of the Cold War and a US commitment to containing the only military power on the horizon that could threaten American military supremacy. Back in the 1990s, the Bill Clinton administration's solution to a rising China was to "integrate, but hedge". The hedge - against the possibility of China developing a serious mean streak - centered around a strengthened US-Japan alliance and a credible Japanese military deterrent.
What the Clinton administration and its successors didn't anticipate was how effectively and peacefully China would disarm this hedging strategy with careful statesmanship and a vigorous trade policy. A number of Southeast Asian countries, including the Philippines and Indonesia, succumbed early to China's version of checkbook diplomacy. Then, in the last decade, South Korea, like the Japanese today, started to talk about establishing "more equal" relations with the US in an effort to avoid being drawn into any future military scrape between Washington and Beijing.
Okinawa and the new domino effect
By John Feffer
Now, with its arch-conservatives gone from government, Japan is visibly warming to China's charms. In 2007, China had already surpassed the US as the country's leading trade partner. On becoming prime minister, Hatoyama sensibly proposed the future establishment of an East Asian community patterned on the European Union. As he saw it, that would leverage Japan's position between a rising China and a United States in decline. In December, while Washington and Tokyo were haggling bitterly over the Okinawa base issue, DPJ leader Ichiro Ozawa sent a signal to Washington as well as Beijing by shepherding a 143-member delegation of his party's legislators on a four-day trip to China.
Not surprisingly, China's bedazzlement policy has set off warning bells in Washington, where the People's Republic is still a focus
of primary concern for a cadre of strategic planners inside the Pentagon. The Futenma base - and its potential replacement - would be well situated, should Washington ever decide to send rapid response units to the Taiwan Strait, the South China Sea, or the Korean peninsula. Strategic planners in Washington like to speak of the "tyranny of distance", of the difficulty of getting "boots on the ground" from Guam or Hawaii in case of an East Asian emergency.
Yet the actual strategic value of Futenma is, at best, questionable. The South Koreans are more than capable of dealing with any contingency on the peninsula. And the United States frankly has plenty of firepower by air (Kadena) and sea (Yokosuka) within hailing distance of China. A couple thousand Marines won't make much of a difference (though the leathernecks strenuously disagree). However, in a political environment in which the Pentagon is finding itself making tough choices between funding counterinsurgency wars and old Cold War weapons systems, the "China threat" lobby doesn't want to give an inch.
Failure to relocate the Futenma base within Okinawa might be the first step down a slippery slope that could potentially put at risk billions of dollars in Cold War weapons still in the production line. It's hard to justify buying all the fancy toys without a place to play with them.
And that's one reason the Obama administration has gone to the mat to pressure Tokyo to adhere to the 2006 agreement. It even dispatched Secretary of Defense Robert Gates to the Japanese capital last October in advance of president Obama's own Asian tour. Like an impatient father admonishing an obstreperous teenager, Gates lectured the Japanese "to move on" and abide by the agreement - to the irritation of both the new government and the public. (See Gates gets grumpy in Tokyo, October 28, 2009)
The punditocracy has predictably closed ranks behind a bipartisan Washington consensus that the new Japanese government should become as accustomed to its junior status as its predecessor and stop making a fuss. The Obama administration is frustrated with "Hatoyama's amateurish handling of the issue," writes Washington Post editorial page editor Fred Hiatt. "What has resulted from Mr Hatoyama's failure to enunciate a clear strategy or action plan is the biggest political vacuum in over 50 years," adds Victor Cha, former director of Asian affairs at the National Security Council. Neither analyst acknowledges that Tokyo's only "failure" or "amateurish" move was to stand up to Washington. "The dispute could undermine security in East Asia on the 50th anniversary of an alliance that has served the region well," intoned The Economist more bluntly. "Tough as it is for Japan's new government, it needs to do most, though not all, of the caving in."
The Hatoyama government is by no means radical, nor is it anti-American. It isn't preparing to demand that all, or even many, US bases close. It isn't even preparing to close any of the other three dozen (or so) bases on Okinawa. Its modest pushback is confined to Futenma, where it finds itself between the rock of Japanese public opinion and the hard place of Pentagon pressure.
Those who prefer to achieve Washington's objectives with Japan in a more roundabout fashion counsel patience. "If America undercuts the new Japanese government and creates resentment among the Japanese public, then a victory on Futenma could prove Pyrrhic," writes Joseph Nye, the architect of US Asia policy during the Clinton years. Japan hands are urging the United States to wait until the summer, when the DPJ has a shot at picking up enough additional seats in the next parliamentary elections to jettison its coalition partners, if it deems such a move necessary.
Even if the Social Democratic Party is no longer in the government constantly raising the Okinawa base issue, the DPJ still must deal with democracy on the ground. The Okinawans are dead set against a new base. The residents of Nago, where that base would be built, just elected a mayor who campaigned on a no-base platform. It won't look good for the party that has finally brought real democracy to Tokyo to squelch it in Okinawa.
Reverse island hop
Wherever the US military puts down its foot overseas, movements have sprung up to protest the military, social, and environmental consequences of its military bases. This anti-base movement has notched some successes, such as the shut-down of a US navy facility in Vieques, Puerto Rico, in 2003. In the Pacific, too, the movement has made its mark. On the heels of the eruption of Mt Pinatubo, democracy activists in the Philippines successfully closed down the ash-covered Clark Air Force Base and Subic Bay Naval Station in 1991-1992. Later, South Korean activists managed to win closure of the huge Yongsan facility in downtown Seoul.
Of course, these were only partial victories. Washington subsequently negotiated a Visiting Forces Agreement with the Philippines, whereby the US military has redeployed troops and equipment to the island, and replaced Korea's Yongsan base with a new one in nearby Pyeongtaek. But these not-in-my-backyard (NIMBY) victories were significant enough to help edge the Pentagon toward the adoption of a military doctrine that emphasizes mobility over position. The US military now relies on "strategic flexibility" and "rapid response" both to counter unexpected threats and to deal with allied fickleness.
The Hatoyama government may indeed learn to say no to Washington over the Okinawa bases. Evidently considering this a likelihood, former deputy secretary of state and former US ambassador to Japan Richard Armitage has said that the United States "had better have a plan B". But the victory for the anti-base movement will still be only partial. US forces will remain in Japan, and especially Okinawa, and Tokyo will undoubtedly continue to pay for their maintenance.
Buoyed by even this partial victory, however, NIMBY movements are likely to grow in Japan and across the region, focusing on other Okinawa bases, bases on the Japanese mainland, and elsewhere in the Pacific, including Guam. Indeed, protests are already building in Guam against the projected expansion of Andersen Air Force Base and Naval Base Guam to accommodate those Marines from Okinawa. And this strikes terror in the hearts of Pentagon planners.
In World War II, the United States employed an island-hopping strategy to move ever closer to the Japanese mainland. Okinawa was the last island and last major battle of that campaign, and more people died during the fighting there than in the subsequent atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined: 12,000 US troops, more than 100,000 Japanese soldiers, and perhaps 100,000 Okinawan civilians. This historical experience has stiffened the pacifist resolve of Okinawans.
The current battle over Okinawa again pits the United States against Japan, again with the Okinawans as victims. But there is a good chance that the Okinawans, like the Na'vi in that great NIMBY film Avatar, will win this time.
A victory in closing Futenma and preventing the construction of a new base might be the first step in a potential reverse island hop. NIMBY movements may someday finally push the US military out of Japan and off Okinawa. It's not likely to be a smooth process, nor is it likely to happen any time soon. But the kanji (a form of Japanese writing) is on the wall. Even if the Yankees don't know what the Japanese characters mean, they can at least tell in which direction the exit arrow is pointing.
John Feffer is the co-director of Foreign Policy in Focus at the Institute for Policy Studies and writes its regular World Beat column. His past essays, including those for TomDispatch.com, can be read at his website.
(Copyright 2010 John Feffer.)
(Used by permission Tomdispatch)
Sunday, January 31, 2010
POINT OF VIEW/ Steve Clemons: With allies that can say no, U.S. power in decline
THE ASAHI SHIMBUN
2010/01/21
Four strategic allies of the United States--Germany, Japan, Israel and Saudi Arabia--have each been saying "no" to the White House. The leaders of those nations have rebuffed President Barack Obama on key policy requests without taking the consequences, which itself illustrates a sharp downturn in global American power.
The United States under Obama's leadership presumes it sits at the head of the global power table, but increasingly, the world sees a once great nation that has fallen, that has traded substantive power for pretense, and which is being seen as impotent because it can't realize it must re-earn its leadership rather than assert illusions.
At the Group of 20 economic summit in London, held while the global economy tilted toward collapse, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Obama engaged in polite but serious debate on fiscal expansionary policies versus fiscal conservatism. Their exchange became the distinctive memory of the gathering as it overshadowed the efforts of British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and French President Nicolas Sarkozy to steal the show. Merkel rebuffed Obama's economic leadership and views, and Obama, swallowing his pride, maintained an image of cordiality and friendship with Merkel--despite her refusal to budge.
Japan, which, like Germany, was defeated by the United States in World War II and then rebuilt via American patronage and stewardship, has undergone significant political change following the Democratic Party of Japan's historic victory over the long-reigning Liberal Democratic Party in the Aug. 30, 2009, Lower House election.
For years, the United States has acted as if the basic "do what we say" dynamic toward Japan would never be challenged--despite a clear struggle within Japan over its emergent national identity. At the same time, Japan grappled with how to adopt healthy nationalism and reposition itself as it marks the 50th anniversary this year of its security alliance with the United States. The rising power of China is a further complication.
Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama is apparently trying to demonstrate that America is trailing history rather than leading it, while the United States defensively clings to protecting an agreement on the relocation of the U.S. Marine Corps Air Station Futenma in Okinawa Prefecture. That agreement was reached between the environmentally-insensitive and corruption-blind LDP and the U.S. administration headed by George W. Bush.
Hatoyama promised during his campaign that the base deal would not go through. Despite some bludgeoning of Japan's ambassador to the United States, Ichiro Fujisaki, by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton over the issue, and direct pressure from Obama, Hatoyama has refused to walk the course the United States has been pushing. This was despite threats by the United States that failing to yield might undermine core tenets of the relationship.
Ultimately, the U.S. obsession with the Futenma arrangement shows weakness rather than strength. This is because the United States needs Japan's economic and military resources as a full partner, not ambivalence, in standing up to China's rise. The United States would be undermining its own security to trade the broad strengths of the U.S.-Japan security relationship with the relatively minor issue of Futenma.
Probably, many people do not recall that Futenma was the very first "deal" Walter Mondale, as U.S. ambassador to Japan, clinched with the late Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto. It was signed in the aftermath of the rape of a 12-year old girl in Okinawa Prefecture by three U.S. servicemen. The deal then was to absorb Futenma into Kadena Air Force Base to combine the Air Force and Marine Corps functions into other U.S. military facilities there.
Ultimately, inter-service rivalry on the American side undermined this keystone agreement, which was a major element in revisions for the global realignment of U.S. forces. Obama and Clinton have shown little historic understanding of the roots of the Futenma problem. Instead, they engaged in saber-rattling in a manner that made it look as if the Obama team was threatening something it could not afford to lose, further enhancing the political benefits to Hatoyama of being seen to resist American pressure.
Saudi Arabia is not often acknowledged publicly in Washington as an ally, but in many ways the Saudis for decades have been America's most significant strategic partner in the Middle East, adjusting oil production and supply in patterns that helped Washington's strategic interests.
Most recently, the Saudis used their influence on Pakistan in providing oil at subsidized rates. This was intended to encourage Pakistan to take bolder action against al-Qaida and Taliban groups operating in the Swat valley of North-West Frontier Province.
When George W. Bush was running for president, his father arranged for Prince Bandar al-Sultan, then Saudi Arabia's ambassador to the United States, to secretly tutor him on foreign policy issues while traveling aboard the campaign aircraft.
During the Soviet military intervention in Afghanistan, the United States was allied with the Saudis in arming and equipping the Mujahadeen, many of whose leaders at the time are now enemies of the United States.
But recently, when Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah was asked by Obama to put forward a number of key concessions toward Israel as part of the "opener" in changing the dynamics of antagonism in the Middle East toward Israel, he refused.
The king had already initiated and resurrected a normalization proposal between the Arab League and Israel, first offered in Beirut in 2002, only to see it largely ignored and used occasionally and symbolically by the U.S. administration at moments of political expediency.
Abdullah warned Obama that Benjamin Netanyahu, the new prime minister of Israel, would ultimately embarrass the president as well as those who jumped the gun by trying to raise the ante in restarting the Middle East peace process. Not only did the Saudis rebuff Obama, they proved to be correct, identifying early on that the White House didn't realize that America's superpower status had been punctured badly during the Bush years. The Saudis also correctly surmised that before states would throw their lot behind American leadership, the White House would have to prove it had power to reshape and sculpt global relationships. Being told to trust that Israel would behave responsibly was not a convincing first move by the Obama team toward the Saudis.
Finally, Israel itself said "no" to the United States and Obama in the loudest and most politically consequential way. As a largely client state of the United States, which is overwhelmingly dependent on U.S. aid and transfer payments as well as an iron-clad security guarantee, Israel's schizophrenic approach to the Palestinian issue and a two-state solution has been one of many frustrating realities of the Middle East peace process. The government under former Prime Minister Ehud Ohlmert repeatedly and passionately stated that Israel's only chance at survival as a Jewish state and a functioning democracy was to make a two-state solution work. Netanyahu's government is highly ambivalent at best about the position of the previous government and has done much to undermine progress in negotiations with the Palestinians.
To kick-start the peace process in the aftermath of the Gaza conflict, Obama selected former U.S. Senator George Mitchell, a distinguished peace-forger, to take on the task as his special envoy. The White House decided that to convince the Arab world it was serious, it committed itself to put pressure on Israel to halt all new settlement activity. This raised hopes in the Arab world that Obama was serious, but it raised hackles inside Israel that Obama would ultimately sell out Israel's basic security.
Netanyahu demonstrated his statecraft skills in a high stakes but successful gamble in knocking back Obama. He rebuffed decisively the notion that settlements could be the portal through which Middle East peace talks were restarted. Consequently, the White House, which often internally compares itself to a hybrid of the Lincoln and Kennedy administrations, found that Netanyahu had become what Nikita Khruschev had been to John F. Kennedy.
Netanyahu, an ally, had shown the limits of Obama's power to resculpt Middle East realities--at least until there is some escalating political crisis between Israel and the United States in which Obama reclaims the heavyweight champion ring from Netanyahu.
Each of these episodes has its own distinctive political circumstances and ought to be grouped together only cautiously. But the fact remains that America's allies are rebuffing the United States more regularly and overtly than would have been imagined a decade ago. Global analysts often refer to the troubling behavior of problematic nations like Iran or North Korea or non-allies like China and Russia as yardsticks by which to measure America's weak position in the world.
But it is in the decisions of allies that the absence of what had been long-established equilibriums becomes clear and worrisome.
Despite the global fascination with Obama and his inspiring oratorical sketches of what the world could expect of itself and what nations could collectively do to meet the enormous challenges ahead, doubts remain about America's ability to achieve the objectives it sets out for itself.
The world sees the United States unrealistically threaten Japan with strategic rupture over a minor base issue in Okinawa Prefecture, where the United States maintains 39 military installations. It sees the United States try to convince the Arab world that it is serious about peace between Israel and the Palestinians by promising a settlement freeze and then reversing itself and acquiescing to Israel's recalcitrant prime minister. It sees the long-term, back room-managed U.S.-Saudi relationship contribute nothing to Obama's script for bringing lasting peace to the Middle East. It sees Obama politely humbled and rebuffed by Germany, a global capital surplus nation, at the G-20 summit in London. This happened at a time when Germany's own growth and welfare are tied in part to reflating the U.S. economy, which consumes Germany's exports.
America's current national security objectives are greater than its means, and the White House is demonstrating that it can't juggle all of these challenges at once. American power and leverage are dissipating in the face of too many failed causes.
It is time for America to rethink its national security course and re-prioritize its core goals. If America is to rebuild its power, it must accomplish what it sets out to do. That way, it can gain momentum from each small success. Recognizing the constraints on American power today, Obama nonetheless can reinvent America's position by scoring well-thought out victories. This would require Obama to defy conventional wisdom and not give in to countervailing forces.
Restarting a credible Russia-U.S. effort to reduce stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction and nuclear materials, which the Obama team may yet pull off, would be one such positive gain. Pushing ahead with talks to normalize relations between Syria and Israel comes to mind. Ending the restrictions on American citizens travel to Cuba and finally ending an anachronistic Cold War 90 miles (144 kilometers) from U.S. shores would also buy Obama global credits.
The White House can overcome the structural collapse of American power brought on by the Bush years by convincing its allies through prudent actions that America is worth backing again. Renewed and refocused momentum in the U.S. foreign policy agenda may convince foes that America's considerable assets would be more shrewdly used to help lead the world into a more stable and reorganized equilibrium.
Only this kind of progressive realist path will secure a positive foreign policy legacy for Obama and assure that the United States re-earns admission to global leadership from its current position as an anachronistic, reactive power falling behind events rather than leading them.
***
The author directs the American Strategy Program at the New America Foundation, a nonprofit, nonpartisan public policy institute, and publishes the political blog The Washington Note.
2010/01/21
Four strategic allies of the United States--Germany, Japan, Israel and Saudi Arabia--have each been saying "no" to the White House. The leaders of those nations have rebuffed President Barack Obama on key policy requests without taking the consequences, which itself illustrates a sharp downturn in global American power.
The United States under Obama's leadership presumes it sits at the head of the global power table, but increasingly, the world sees a once great nation that has fallen, that has traded substantive power for pretense, and which is being seen as impotent because it can't realize it must re-earn its leadership rather than assert illusions.
At the Group of 20 economic summit in London, held while the global economy tilted toward collapse, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Obama engaged in polite but serious debate on fiscal expansionary policies versus fiscal conservatism. Their exchange became the distinctive memory of the gathering as it overshadowed the efforts of British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and French President Nicolas Sarkozy to steal the show. Merkel rebuffed Obama's economic leadership and views, and Obama, swallowing his pride, maintained an image of cordiality and friendship with Merkel--despite her refusal to budge.
Japan, which, like Germany, was defeated by the United States in World War II and then rebuilt via American patronage and stewardship, has undergone significant political change following the Democratic Party of Japan's historic victory over the long-reigning Liberal Democratic Party in the Aug. 30, 2009, Lower House election.
For years, the United States has acted as if the basic "do what we say" dynamic toward Japan would never be challenged--despite a clear struggle within Japan over its emergent national identity. At the same time, Japan grappled with how to adopt healthy nationalism and reposition itself as it marks the 50th anniversary this year of its security alliance with the United States. The rising power of China is a further complication.
Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama is apparently trying to demonstrate that America is trailing history rather than leading it, while the United States defensively clings to protecting an agreement on the relocation of the U.S. Marine Corps Air Station Futenma in Okinawa Prefecture. That agreement was reached between the environmentally-insensitive and corruption-blind LDP and the U.S. administration headed by George W. Bush.
Hatoyama promised during his campaign that the base deal would not go through. Despite some bludgeoning of Japan's ambassador to the United States, Ichiro Fujisaki, by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton over the issue, and direct pressure from Obama, Hatoyama has refused to walk the course the United States has been pushing. This was despite threats by the United States that failing to yield might undermine core tenets of the relationship.
Ultimately, the U.S. obsession with the Futenma arrangement shows weakness rather than strength. This is because the United States needs Japan's economic and military resources as a full partner, not ambivalence, in standing up to China's rise. The United States would be undermining its own security to trade the broad strengths of the U.S.-Japan security relationship with the relatively minor issue of Futenma.
Probably, many people do not recall that Futenma was the very first "deal" Walter Mondale, as U.S. ambassador to Japan, clinched with the late Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto. It was signed in the aftermath of the rape of a 12-year old girl in Okinawa Prefecture by three U.S. servicemen. The deal then was to absorb Futenma into Kadena Air Force Base to combine the Air Force and Marine Corps functions into other U.S. military facilities there.
Ultimately, inter-service rivalry on the American side undermined this keystone agreement, which was a major element in revisions for the global realignment of U.S. forces. Obama and Clinton have shown little historic understanding of the roots of the Futenma problem. Instead, they engaged in saber-rattling in a manner that made it look as if the Obama team was threatening something it could not afford to lose, further enhancing the political benefits to Hatoyama of being seen to resist American pressure.
Saudi Arabia is not often acknowledged publicly in Washington as an ally, but in many ways the Saudis for decades have been America's most significant strategic partner in the Middle East, adjusting oil production and supply in patterns that helped Washington's strategic interests.
Most recently, the Saudis used their influence on Pakistan in providing oil at subsidized rates. This was intended to encourage Pakistan to take bolder action against al-Qaida and Taliban groups operating in the Swat valley of North-West Frontier Province.
When George W. Bush was running for president, his father arranged for Prince Bandar al-Sultan, then Saudi Arabia's ambassador to the United States, to secretly tutor him on foreign policy issues while traveling aboard the campaign aircraft.
During the Soviet military intervention in Afghanistan, the United States was allied with the Saudis in arming and equipping the Mujahadeen, many of whose leaders at the time are now enemies of the United States.
But recently, when Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah was asked by Obama to put forward a number of key concessions toward Israel as part of the "opener" in changing the dynamics of antagonism in the Middle East toward Israel, he refused.
The king had already initiated and resurrected a normalization proposal between the Arab League and Israel, first offered in Beirut in 2002, only to see it largely ignored and used occasionally and symbolically by the U.S. administration at moments of political expediency.
Abdullah warned Obama that Benjamin Netanyahu, the new prime minister of Israel, would ultimately embarrass the president as well as those who jumped the gun by trying to raise the ante in restarting the Middle East peace process. Not only did the Saudis rebuff Obama, they proved to be correct, identifying early on that the White House didn't realize that America's superpower status had been punctured badly during the Bush years. The Saudis also correctly surmised that before states would throw their lot behind American leadership, the White House would have to prove it had power to reshape and sculpt global relationships. Being told to trust that Israel would behave responsibly was not a convincing first move by the Obama team toward the Saudis.
Finally, Israel itself said "no" to the United States and Obama in the loudest and most politically consequential way. As a largely client state of the United States, which is overwhelmingly dependent on U.S. aid and transfer payments as well as an iron-clad security guarantee, Israel's schizophrenic approach to the Palestinian issue and a two-state solution has been one of many frustrating realities of the Middle East peace process. The government under former Prime Minister Ehud Ohlmert repeatedly and passionately stated that Israel's only chance at survival as a Jewish state and a functioning democracy was to make a two-state solution work. Netanyahu's government is highly ambivalent at best about the position of the previous government and has done much to undermine progress in negotiations with the Palestinians.
To kick-start the peace process in the aftermath of the Gaza conflict, Obama selected former U.S. Senator George Mitchell, a distinguished peace-forger, to take on the task as his special envoy. The White House decided that to convince the Arab world it was serious, it committed itself to put pressure on Israel to halt all new settlement activity. This raised hopes in the Arab world that Obama was serious, but it raised hackles inside Israel that Obama would ultimately sell out Israel's basic security.
Netanyahu demonstrated his statecraft skills in a high stakes but successful gamble in knocking back Obama. He rebuffed decisively the notion that settlements could be the portal through which Middle East peace talks were restarted. Consequently, the White House, which often internally compares itself to a hybrid of the Lincoln and Kennedy administrations, found that Netanyahu had become what Nikita Khruschev had been to John F. Kennedy.
Netanyahu, an ally, had shown the limits of Obama's power to resculpt Middle East realities--at least until there is some escalating political crisis between Israel and the United States in which Obama reclaims the heavyweight champion ring from Netanyahu.
Each of these episodes has its own distinctive political circumstances and ought to be grouped together only cautiously. But the fact remains that America's allies are rebuffing the United States more regularly and overtly than would have been imagined a decade ago. Global analysts often refer to the troubling behavior of problematic nations like Iran or North Korea or non-allies like China and Russia as yardsticks by which to measure America's weak position in the world.
But it is in the decisions of allies that the absence of what had been long-established equilibriums becomes clear and worrisome.
Despite the global fascination with Obama and his inspiring oratorical sketches of what the world could expect of itself and what nations could collectively do to meet the enormous challenges ahead, doubts remain about America's ability to achieve the objectives it sets out for itself.
The world sees the United States unrealistically threaten Japan with strategic rupture over a minor base issue in Okinawa Prefecture, where the United States maintains 39 military installations. It sees the United States try to convince the Arab world that it is serious about peace between Israel and the Palestinians by promising a settlement freeze and then reversing itself and acquiescing to Israel's recalcitrant prime minister. It sees the long-term, back room-managed U.S.-Saudi relationship contribute nothing to Obama's script for bringing lasting peace to the Middle East. It sees Obama politely humbled and rebuffed by Germany, a global capital surplus nation, at the G-20 summit in London. This happened at a time when Germany's own growth and welfare are tied in part to reflating the U.S. economy, which consumes Germany's exports.
America's current national security objectives are greater than its means, and the White House is demonstrating that it can't juggle all of these challenges at once. American power and leverage are dissipating in the face of too many failed causes.
It is time for America to rethink its national security course and re-prioritize its core goals. If America is to rebuild its power, it must accomplish what it sets out to do. That way, it can gain momentum from each small success. Recognizing the constraints on American power today, Obama nonetheless can reinvent America's position by scoring well-thought out victories. This would require Obama to defy conventional wisdom and not give in to countervailing forces.
Restarting a credible Russia-U.S. effort to reduce stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction and nuclear materials, which the Obama team may yet pull off, would be one such positive gain. Pushing ahead with talks to normalize relations between Syria and Israel comes to mind. Ending the restrictions on American citizens travel to Cuba and finally ending an anachronistic Cold War 90 miles (144 kilometers) from U.S. shores would also buy Obama global credits.
The White House can overcome the structural collapse of American power brought on by the Bush years by convincing its allies through prudent actions that America is worth backing again. Renewed and refocused momentum in the U.S. foreign policy agenda may convince foes that America's considerable assets would be more shrewdly used to help lead the world into a more stable and reorganized equilibrium.
Only this kind of progressive realist path will secure a positive foreign policy legacy for Obama and assure that the United States re-earns admission to global leadership from its current position as an anachronistic, reactive power falling behind events rather than leading them.
***
The author directs the American Strategy Program at the New America Foundation, a nonprofit, nonpartisan public policy institute, and publishes the political blog The Washington Note.
Friday, January 29, 2010
(WSJ) Okinawa Upset
I liked this column pretty much. It's definitely worth reading. Cheers, Kosuke
Okinawa Upset
Sunday's election deals a blow to U.S.-Japan relations, but the damage isn't fatal.
By TOBIAS HARRIS
This year marks the 50th anniversary of the U.S.-Japan alliance, but an election in the tiny city of Nago, Okinawa (population 59,742) may have unsettled the relationship. Nago is home to Camp Schwab, a Marine camp that is scheduled to be the site of a new American air base under the terms of a military realignment program agreed on by Japan and the United States in 2006. On Sunday, Nago elected a new mayor, Susumu Inamine, who opposes that plan. His victory has been interpreted as a victory for opponents of the 2006 agreement.
The biggest loser may have been the Hatoyama government, which campaigned last year on a promise to revisit the agreement but is now realizing the difficulty of finding an alternative. With Mr. Inamine's victory, the government will find it harder to retreat from its opposition to the 2006 roadmap, particularly given its sagging popularity and the corruption scandal surrounding Ichiro Ozawa, secretary general of the Democratic Party of Japan.
By the same token, Washington also lost Sunday. Some analysts have cautioned the Obama administration not to push the Hatoyama government too hard on Futenma, arguing that doing so could cause considerable harm to the alliance even if the U.S. were to get its way on the realignment of U.S. forces. With the election of Mr. Inamine the risks from pressuring the Hatoyama government have grown, not only because Washington will appear to be strong-arming a democratically chosen national government, but also because it would be pressuring that government to ignore a vote in a municipality directly affected by realignment.
Mr. Hatoyama has said that his government will make a decision on the 2006 agreement in May. In the meantime, the Obama administration must give serious thought to whether the 2006 agreement is worth poisoning the U.S.-Japan relationship. As it stands, Washington will either have to enlist the Hatoyama government as an ally in imposing the agreement on Nago—which seems like an unlikely partnership—or it will have to pressure both the Hatoyama government and the people of Nago to accept an agreement that neither desire.
The U.S. must bear considerable blame for insisting so strongly on an agreement that no Japanese government could sell to the Okinawan people for environmental, moral and historical reasons. While Washington would prefer to debate Futenma simply on the basis of strategic considerations, the reality is that for the people most affected by the 2006 roadmap, realignment is anything but a strategic question. The Okinawan people have been asked for too long to bear too great a burden—which includes the social and environmental costs of hosting more than half the U.S. forces in Japan—for them to accept the roadmap quietly, whatever its merits.
The election, moreover, is another reminder of the tension between the U.S.-Japan alliance and the development of Japanese democracy—or indeed democracy in any longtime U.S. ally, as the U.S. found when South Korea transitioned from one-party rule. The DPJ's victory in August, as the first unambiguous power transition from one ruling party to another in the postwar period, marked the first opportunity for the Japanese public to reconsider Japan's alliance with the U.S. While the DPJ is not opposed to the alliance—both the prime minister and Foreign Minister Katsuya Okada have stated their support repeatedly—the DPJ is opposed to how the alliance was handled by the Liberal Democratic Party. The DPJ alleges that the LDP ran the alliance behind closed doors and put the interests of the U.S. before those of the Japanese people, amounting to an unequal partnership between the two countries. Both the secret agreements on nuclear weapons under investigation by the Japanese foreign ministry and the 2006 roadmap are part of the DPJ's case against the U.S.-LDP alliance. And the vote in Nago is the latest sign that Japanese voters—at least in a city where the alliance is a local issue—buy the DPJ's argument that the relationship needs to be changed, at least as it pertains to them.
There is a silver lining here. Insofar as the Nago election makes the rejection of the 2006 roadmap more likely, this presents an opportunity for both Washington and Tokyo to step back and reconsider how the alliance should function and how it should be sold to the Japanese people in Japan's new democracy. The age when the alliance could be managed by bureaucrats and experts from both countries has passed.
The discussion now needs to include more voices from across Japan's political spectrum, from local governments as well as the elite ministries. It should be a two-way discussion, of course: the localities must learn to think in terms of national interests even as the U.S. government has learned to be more sensitive to local concerns. But the U.S. government needs to think harder about how to build support for the alliance, and not only in communities asked to host American forces. It must be able to explain plainly to Japanese citizens why they are there in the first place.
Ultimately the U.S. needs to worry less about the 2006 agreement, and more about building a sustainable foundation for the U.S.-Japan alliance by moving beyond the one-party regime that had been so amenable to U.S. interests for so long.
Mr. Harris, a former aide to a DPJ lawmaker, is a doctoral student in political science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Printed in The Wall Street Journal, page 012
Copyright 2009 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved
Tuesday, January 19, 2010
My latest story for Japan Focus
Hatoyama to Nanjing, Hu to Hiroshima? The New Face of China-Japan Relations
Kosuke Takahashi
TOKYO - With the world economy's center of gravity shifting from the West to the East, led by China's rising economic and corresponding political power, the year 2010 may witness a series of epoch-making events in Asia.
A grand rapprochement between Japan and China could be one such happening. The idea has recently been floated through the media by anonymous diplomatic sources in Tokyo and Beijing, attracting attention among experts worldwide.
The French newspaper Le Figaro reported from Tokyo on January 6 that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) had delivered to the ruling Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) the script of a spectacular reconciliation this year between the two countries. The report said that China had proposed that Japanese Prime Minister Hatoyama Yukio begin the process by going to Nanjing, where a mass killing of Chinese civilians by the Japanese Imperial Army took place in December 1937 and subsequently.
This first visit to Nanjing by a Japanese prime minister since the war would present to the Chinese people Tokyo's official apologies without ambiguity, easing lingering anti-Japanese sentiment among the Chinese public that many associate with unresolved conflicts over the war that ended more than six decades ago. In return, some months later, on August 15, the anniversary of the Japanese surrender in 1945, Chinese President Hu Jintao would go to Hiroshima, the first city to experience atomic bombing, and declare the three non-nuclear principles: China will not make a nuclear first strike, will not attack any non-nuclear country and will not export nuclear arms. The French paper named as its source only "our information".
Meanwhile, the Yomiuri, Japan's largest daily newspaper, also reported from Beijing on January 6 that China had unofficially sounded out Japanese government sources on a visit by Hatoyama to Nanjing, likely around the time he goes to the Shanghai Expo's Japan Day on June 12, with Hu visiting Hiroshima around the time of the November Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit to be held in Yokohama. The Japanese paper said reciprocal visits would aim at improving feelings between the two peoples. Still, unlike Le Figaro, the Yomiuri mentioned nothing about apologies or nuclear promises. It cited "several Japanese and Chinese sources".
China's Foreign Ministry denied the Yomiuri report on January 7, with ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu saying the media rumors of a Nanjing trip were "groundless". But she also said, in what sounded like a non-denial-denial, "It is too early to confirm the details." On the same day, Japan's chief cabinet secretary, Hirano Hirofumi, also denied the reports, saying "at this point, we are not considering" a visit by Hatoyama to Nanjing.
"I have not heard of any such plan," a top Japanese Foreign Ministry official told Asia Times Online, speaking on condition of anonymity. "My guess is that some persons involved might have presented their wish list to have better relations. There is nothing concrete about it." This official's comment suggests that such talks are still going on either at lower government-to-government levels or through party-to-party channels.
The reports by Le Figaro and the Yomiuri followed a similar report in November by the Japanese business magazine, Weekly Toyo Keizai. It reported a secret diplomatic schedule being prepared by relevant Chinese and Japanese players. It predicted that the visit to Beijing one month later by Ozawa Ichiro, secretary general of the DPJ, accompanying more than 600 people, including 143 DPJ lawmakers from the upper and lower houses of the Diet (parliament), would be the first of several Japan-China exchanges. The visit was conducted as part of regular exchanges between the DPJ and the CCP, whose general secretary is Hu.
Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping, who is widely seen as the front-runner to succeed now President Hu in the fall of 2012, visited Emperor Akihito on December 15 last year. This was the Japanese emperor’s first audience with a Chinese vice president since April 1998, when Hu visited Japan as vice president.
A day earlier at a banquet welcoming Xi, Hatoyama heaped praise on the Chinese guest as a man who is certain to become the country's leader.
Xi’s meeting with the emperor, however, stirred up controversy in Tokyo, as the Hatoyama administration had arranged it in breach of Imperial protocol which requires that a foreign government’s request for an imperial audience be submitted at least one month in advance, China's request for the audience was filed in late November—less than one month before the actual audience.
The Imperial Household Agency had strictly requested this protocol, especially after the emperor underwent surgery to treat prostate cancer in 2003, making his health the top priority of the agency.
Under these circumstances the audience highlighted the degree to which the Hatoyama administration is striving to improve Tokyo’s ties with Beijing.
The media reports by Le Figaro and the Yomiuri have triggered strong reactions. After Le Figaro's report, China's Global Times posted a questionnaire about possible Japan-China grand rapprochement on its Chinese-language website to which more than 30,000 Internet users responded.
When asked whether the Japanese leader should apologize at the Nanjing Massacre Memorial Museum, 95.0% said "yes". Only 1% said "no". When asked whether the Japanese leader's apology would lead to Japan-China reconciliation, 24.7% said "yes" and 29.5% said "no". However, when asked whether the Japanese leader could apologize in Nanjing, 17.1% said "yes" and 30.9% said "no." The remaining 52% offered no opinion (yes and no).
Japanese leaders' visits to this memorial are nothing new. Nonaka Hiromu, then acting secretary general of the Liberal Democratic Party, visited the memorial on May 9, 1998, laying flowers at the site and becoming the first leader from his party to do so. In the same month, former Japanese prime minister Murayama Tomiichi visited the site. However, no incumbent prime minister has visited the memorial.
Even if speculation over Hatoyama's visit to Nanjing and Hu's visit to Hiroshima turns out to be just that, it is still intriguing, as a possible indication of China-Japan rapprochement at a time when US-Japan relations are experiencing strains related to US plans to build a new base at Henoko on Okinawa in the face of deep-seated Okinawan opposition.
At the grass-roots level, there have been indications of easing of tensions centered on the war and war memory. From August 15 to November 15 last year, Japanese manga artists held an exhibition at the Nanjing Massacre Memorial Museum titled “My August 15.” This exhibition displayed 130 drawings depicting Japanese war experiences and condemning war atrocities and reflecting on militaristic brutality, but also showing the Japanese people as victims of war, including settlers in Manchuria and residents of Japanese cities destroyed by bombing. On the opening day of August 15, 2009, the 64th anniversary of the end of the war, some 20,000 people crowded the museum. It had taken seven years to arrange the exhibit in Nanjing on the theme of “My August 15”, the exhibit having been displayed in Japan in 2002.
For China, Nanjing is a microcosm of Japan's brutal colonial occupation. China’s Nanjing Massacre Memorial Museum and some scholars say that as many as 300,000 civilians, non-combatants, and surrendered soldiers were killed by Japanese troops from December 1937 through January-February 1938; at least 20,000 women were raped. Recent research by Japanese scholars, while recognizing that a major massacre occurred prior to and during the capture of the city, have estimated the deaths in the range of tens of thousands to more than 100,000. Although Japan has recognized that the mass killing of ordinary Chinese took place, calling it either the Nanjing Incident or the Nanjing Massacre, the number of dead has remained a point of contention between the two nations.
For Japan, Hiroshima is a crucial legacy of the Second World War. The United States dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, and Nagasaki three days later, on August 9. Approximately 140,000 people in Hiroshima and over 70,000 in Nagasaki were killed in a blink of an eye. In a Japanese census of 1950, 284,000 people reported having been exposed to radiation from atomic bombs in the two cities. The mayors and citizens of both cities have since appealed for recognition of the cruelty of the atomic bombs and elimination of nuclear weapons worldwide.
Since 1996, when then-prime minister Abe Shinzo chose Beijing for his first overseas visit, China seems to have refrained from using the historic Japan card to mobilize its own people and pressure Japanese leaders. Historically, the CCP has drawn legitimation from its struggle against the Japanese invader.
Why then might China want Hatoyama to visit Nanjing? There are conflicting views among Japanese experts. Some say that in preparation for a succession of power in 2012 and beyond, Beijing's internal political battles are intensifying. They note that a faction associated with ex-president Jiang Zemin, who irritated Japanese leaders by bringing up the history issue during a dinner banquet at the Imperial Palace with the emperor in November 1998, has been gaining ground recently. Many Japanese experts believe that Xi has the backing of Jiang, for whom he served as first vice premier, as well as the backing of the so-called princelings in the party, the children of high-level officials born to the party elite whose power extends across the party and business.
Others believe that Beijing wants to settle the historic issues once and for all, to enable the two nations, whose economies are so deeply intertwined, to build a future-oriented relationship of mutual trust, much like the Franco-German reconciliation that president Charles de Gaulle of France and West German chancellor Konrad Adenauer launched by signing the Elysée Treaty in 1963. The foundation of Franco-German cooperation has since been at the center of European integration.
Some US officials and experts may be displeased to see Tokyo's approach to Beijing at a time of conflict in US-Japan relations.
In a commentary titled "Japan's risky rapprochement with China" published on December 21 by The Wall Street Journal, Kelly Currie, a non-resident fellow of the Project 2049 Institute, a Washington think-tank, wrote:
Prime Minister Hatoyama will likely continue his promised efforts to "rebalance" Japanese relations with the US and China, but now that he's actually responsible for governing, Mr Hatoyama needs to ask himself: Which country would ultimately keep the Japanese people's best interests at heart - democratic America or authoritarian China? If the prime minister answers the latter, then the Japanese public - and the Obama administration - really will need to start worrying.
Relations between Japan and China have been rapidly improving since Hatoyama's China-friendly administration was inaugurated last September, as have relations between Beijing and Taipei since the mainland-friendly administration of President Ma Ying-jeou took office in Taiwan in May 2008. With China looming ever more important in the regional and world calculus, it is not surprising that the US administration of Barack Obama has followed suit.
Every country, driven by economic and political pragmatism, is rushing to come to terms with Asia’s and the world’s rising power. Japan is no exception. The result is the opening of a new and unsettled period in Japan-China-US trilateral relations, whose impact will be felt across East Asia, the Asia-Pacific and the world.
Kosuke Takahashi is a Tokyo-based journalist. Besides Asia Times Online, he is Tokyo correspondent for Jane's Defence.
This is a revised and expanded version of an article that appeared at Asia Times Online.
Recommended citation: Kosuke Takahashi, "Hatoyama to Nanjing, Hu to Hiroshima? The New Face of China-Japan Relations," The Asia-Pacific Journal, 3-4-10, January 18, 2010.
Kosuke Takahashi
TOKYO - With the world economy's center of gravity shifting from the West to the East, led by China's rising economic and corresponding political power, the year 2010 may witness a series of epoch-making events in Asia.
A grand rapprochement between Japan and China could be one such happening. The idea has recently been floated through the media by anonymous diplomatic sources in Tokyo and Beijing, attracting attention among experts worldwide.
The French newspaper Le Figaro reported from Tokyo on January 6 that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) had delivered to the ruling Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) the script of a spectacular reconciliation this year between the two countries. The report said that China had proposed that Japanese Prime Minister Hatoyama Yukio begin the process by going to Nanjing, where a mass killing of Chinese civilians by the Japanese Imperial Army took place in December 1937 and subsequently.
This first visit to Nanjing by a Japanese prime minister since the war would present to the Chinese people Tokyo's official apologies without ambiguity, easing lingering anti-Japanese sentiment among the Chinese public that many associate with unresolved conflicts over the war that ended more than six decades ago. In return, some months later, on August 15, the anniversary of the Japanese surrender in 1945, Chinese President Hu Jintao would go to Hiroshima, the first city to experience atomic bombing, and declare the three non-nuclear principles: China will not make a nuclear first strike, will not attack any non-nuclear country and will not export nuclear arms. The French paper named as its source only "our information".
Meanwhile, the Yomiuri, Japan's largest daily newspaper, also reported from Beijing on January 6 that China had unofficially sounded out Japanese government sources on a visit by Hatoyama to Nanjing, likely around the time he goes to the Shanghai Expo's Japan Day on June 12, with Hu visiting Hiroshima around the time of the November Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit to be held in Yokohama. The Japanese paper said reciprocal visits would aim at improving feelings between the two peoples. Still, unlike Le Figaro, the Yomiuri mentioned nothing about apologies or nuclear promises. It cited "several Japanese and Chinese sources".
China's Foreign Ministry denied the Yomiuri report on January 7, with ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu saying the media rumors of a Nanjing trip were "groundless". But she also said, in what sounded like a non-denial-denial, "It is too early to confirm the details." On the same day, Japan's chief cabinet secretary, Hirano Hirofumi, also denied the reports, saying "at this point, we are not considering" a visit by Hatoyama to Nanjing.
"I have not heard of any such plan," a top Japanese Foreign Ministry official told Asia Times Online, speaking on condition of anonymity. "My guess is that some persons involved might have presented their wish list to have better relations. There is nothing concrete about it." This official's comment suggests that such talks are still going on either at lower government-to-government levels or through party-to-party channels.
The reports by Le Figaro and the Yomiuri followed a similar report in November by the Japanese business magazine, Weekly Toyo Keizai. It reported a secret diplomatic schedule being prepared by relevant Chinese and Japanese players. It predicted that the visit to Beijing one month later by Ozawa Ichiro, secretary general of the DPJ, accompanying more than 600 people, including 143 DPJ lawmakers from the upper and lower houses of the Diet (parliament), would be the first of several Japan-China exchanges. The visit was conducted as part of regular exchanges between the DPJ and the CCP, whose general secretary is Hu.
Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping, who is widely seen as the front-runner to succeed now President Hu in the fall of 2012, visited Emperor Akihito on December 15 last year. This was the Japanese emperor’s first audience with a Chinese vice president since April 1998, when Hu visited Japan as vice president.
A day earlier at a banquet welcoming Xi, Hatoyama heaped praise on the Chinese guest as a man who is certain to become the country's leader.
Xi’s meeting with the emperor, however, stirred up controversy in Tokyo, as the Hatoyama administration had arranged it in breach of Imperial protocol which requires that a foreign government’s request for an imperial audience be submitted at least one month in advance, China's request for the audience was filed in late November—less than one month before the actual audience.
The Imperial Household Agency had strictly requested this protocol, especially after the emperor underwent surgery to treat prostate cancer in 2003, making his health the top priority of the agency.
Under these circumstances the audience highlighted the degree to which the Hatoyama administration is striving to improve Tokyo’s ties with Beijing.
The media reports by Le Figaro and the Yomiuri have triggered strong reactions. After Le Figaro's report, China's Global Times posted a questionnaire about possible Japan-China grand rapprochement on its Chinese-language website to which more than 30,000 Internet users responded.
When asked whether the Japanese leader should apologize at the Nanjing Massacre Memorial Museum, 95.0% said "yes". Only 1% said "no". When asked whether the Japanese leader's apology would lead to Japan-China reconciliation, 24.7% said "yes" and 29.5% said "no". However, when asked whether the Japanese leader could apologize in Nanjing, 17.1% said "yes" and 30.9% said "no." The remaining 52% offered no opinion (yes and no).
Japanese leaders' visits to this memorial are nothing new. Nonaka Hiromu, then acting secretary general of the Liberal Democratic Party, visited the memorial on May 9, 1998, laying flowers at the site and becoming the first leader from his party to do so. In the same month, former Japanese prime minister Murayama Tomiichi visited the site. However, no incumbent prime minister has visited the memorial.
Even if speculation over Hatoyama's visit to Nanjing and Hu's visit to Hiroshima turns out to be just that, it is still intriguing, as a possible indication of China-Japan rapprochement at a time when US-Japan relations are experiencing strains related to US plans to build a new base at Henoko on Okinawa in the face of deep-seated Okinawan opposition.
At the grass-roots level, there have been indications of easing of tensions centered on the war and war memory. From August 15 to November 15 last year, Japanese manga artists held an exhibition at the Nanjing Massacre Memorial Museum titled “My August 15.” This exhibition displayed 130 drawings depicting Japanese war experiences and condemning war atrocities and reflecting on militaristic brutality, but also showing the Japanese people as victims of war, including settlers in Manchuria and residents of Japanese cities destroyed by bombing. On the opening day of August 15, 2009, the 64th anniversary of the end of the war, some 20,000 people crowded the museum. It had taken seven years to arrange the exhibit in Nanjing on the theme of “My August 15”, the exhibit having been displayed in Japan in 2002.
For China, Nanjing is a microcosm of Japan's brutal colonial occupation. China’s Nanjing Massacre Memorial Museum and some scholars say that as many as 300,000 civilians, non-combatants, and surrendered soldiers were killed by Japanese troops from December 1937 through January-February 1938; at least 20,000 women were raped. Recent research by Japanese scholars, while recognizing that a major massacre occurred prior to and during the capture of the city, have estimated the deaths in the range of tens of thousands to more than 100,000. Although Japan has recognized that the mass killing of ordinary Chinese took place, calling it either the Nanjing Incident or the Nanjing Massacre, the number of dead has remained a point of contention between the two nations.
For Japan, Hiroshima is a crucial legacy of the Second World War. The United States dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, and Nagasaki three days later, on August 9. Approximately 140,000 people in Hiroshima and over 70,000 in Nagasaki were killed in a blink of an eye. In a Japanese census of 1950, 284,000 people reported having been exposed to radiation from atomic bombs in the two cities. The mayors and citizens of both cities have since appealed for recognition of the cruelty of the atomic bombs and elimination of nuclear weapons worldwide.
Since 1996, when then-prime minister Abe Shinzo chose Beijing for his first overseas visit, China seems to have refrained from using the historic Japan card to mobilize its own people and pressure Japanese leaders. Historically, the CCP has drawn legitimation from its struggle against the Japanese invader.
Why then might China want Hatoyama to visit Nanjing? There are conflicting views among Japanese experts. Some say that in preparation for a succession of power in 2012 and beyond, Beijing's internal political battles are intensifying. They note that a faction associated with ex-president Jiang Zemin, who irritated Japanese leaders by bringing up the history issue during a dinner banquet at the Imperial Palace with the emperor in November 1998, has been gaining ground recently. Many Japanese experts believe that Xi has the backing of Jiang, for whom he served as first vice premier, as well as the backing of the so-called princelings in the party, the children of high-level officials born to the party elite whose power extends across the party and business.
Others believe that Beijing wants to settle the historic issues once and for all, to enable the two nations, whose economies are so deeply intertwined, to build a future-oriented relationship of mutual trust, much like the Franco-German reconciliation that president Charles de Gaulle of France and West German chancellor Konrad Adenauer launched by signing the Elysée Treaty in 1963. The foundation of Franco-German cooperation has since been at the center of European integration.
Some US officials and experts may be displeased to see Tokyo's approach to Beijing at a time of conflict in US-Japan relations.
In a commentary titled "Japan's risky rapprochement with China" published on December 21 by The Wall Street Journal, Kelly Currie, a non-resident fellow of the Project 2049 Institute, a Washington think-tank, wrote:
Prime Minister Hatoyama will likely continue his promised efforts to "rebalance" Japanese relations with the US and China, but now that he's actually responsible for governing, Mr Hatoyama needs to ask himself: Which country would ultimately keep the Japanese people's best interests at heart - democratic America or authoritarian China? If the prime minister answers the latter, then the Japanese public - and the Obama administration - really will need to start worrying.
Relations between Japan and China have been rapidly improving since Hatoyama's China-friendly administration was inaugurated last September, as have relations between Beijing and Taipei since the mainland-friendly administration of President Ma Ying-jeou took office in Taiwan in May 2008. With China looming ever more important in the regional and world calculus, it is not surprising that the US administration of Barack Obama has followed suit.
Every country, driven by economic and political pragmatism, is rushing to come to terms with Asia’s and the world’s rising power. Japan is no exception. The result is the opening of a new and unsettled period in Japan-China-US trilateral relations, whose impact will be felt across East Asia, the Asia-Pacific and the world.
Kosuke Takahashi is a Tokyo-based journalist. Besides Asia Times Online, he is Tokyo correspondent for Jane's Defence.
This is a revised and expanded version of an article that appeared at Asia Times Online.
Recommended citation: Kosuke Takahashi, "Hatoyama to Nanjing, Hu to Hiroshima? The New Face of China-Japan Relations," The Asia-Pacific Journal, 3-4-10, January 18, 2010.
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