Vol. 73/No. 44      November 16, 2009

The newly elected Japanese government is considering whether it will implement a previously signed agreement with Washington relocating U.S. forces on the island. The Obama administration has warned that any reversal of this pact could have serious consequences.

In 2006 Washington and the Japanese government, then led by the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), signed off on a deal to move U.S. military operations from the Futenma Air Base, located in a densely populated urban area of Okinawa, to a rural coastal area of the island. A new air base would be constructed there by 2014. The deal, which took more than a decade of negotiations, also calls for moving 8,000 U.S. Marines from Japan to Guam.

Vowing to make Tokyo’s alliance with the United States a “more equal relationship,” the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) won control of the government in August elections, ending more than 50 years of LDP rule. Japanese prime minister Yukio Hatoyama has said he wants the U.S. base moved off Okinawa completely. Two-thirds of the 48,000 U.S. troops stationed in Japan are on Okinawa. Their presence is unpopular among workers and farmers living there.

The DPJ “swept to power promising a wholesale cleanup of Japan’s post World War II policies,” noted the Wall Street Journal. This includes “beefing up ties with its Asian neighbors” and “reassess[ing] some aspects of Japan’s bilateral relationship” with Washington. In an effort to pressure Tokyo to abide by the agreement, U.S. secretary of defense Robert Gates visited Japan October 20-21, meeting with government leaders. “It is time to move on,” stated Gates, warning that if the Japanese government pulls apart the troop “realignment road map” it would be “immensely complicated and counterproductive.”

Gates called on Tokyo to accept the agreement before President Barack Obama visits Japan November 12-13. Hatoyama responded that such a decision cannot be rushed.

“If the disagreement on security continues for a long time then the alliance will loosen,” warned the Nikkei Business Daily. “The Obama administration will start considering China as a reliable partner rather than its ally Japan.”

In January Tokyo will end its eight-year-old operation refueling warships in the Indian Ocean for the U.S.-led forces in Afghanistan. The Japanese government is reviewing other options to help the war effort, “including dispatching its self-defense forces” to Afghanistan, reported the Wall Street Journal.

Hatoyama has been promoting the idea of establishing an East Asian Community modeled after the European Union. It would include China but not necessarily the United States.

Further irking Washington is a fact-finding investigation the DPJ-led government has initiated into decades-old secret agreements between Washington and Tokyo over storage or transshipment of nuclear weapons in Japan.

“Under an understanding reached in the early 1960s, Japan agreed to look the other way when nuclear-armed U.S. ships used Japanese ports,” noted the Journal. “A 1969 agreement allowed nuclear weapons to be stationed in emergency cases in U.S. bases on the island of Okinawa, after it was returned to Japanese control in 1972.”

In his visit to Tokyo, Gates warned government officials to not let this investigation get too far out of hand.
 
 
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