Obama Cozies Up to Japan
The first — and most important — stopover on President Obama’s long-awaited trip to Asia has been cut in half as he delayed his departure by a day. In Tokyo, he will have just enough time to meet Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama, drop in on the emperor and empress, and give a speech on America’s role in Asia.
In Asia, Japan is America’s “cornerstone” relationship. From Japanese ports and airfields, we base the forces that defend the South Koreans, guard the Taiwanese, and patrol contested sea lanes. Without Americans in Japan, Chinese warships and planes would soon vie for control of East Asia, from the North Pacific to the Malacca Strait.
So will we find ourselves without our crucial Japanese facilities? Today, that seems inconceivable. Americans have been basing troops there to defend Japan’s islands since the end of the Second World War. Yet the historic election of the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) in September — a landslide ending more than a half century of almost uninterrupted rule by the Liberal Democratic Party — has unsettled the relationship between Washington and Tokyo, and the new Japanese leader could change the alliance in ways that weaken the bond that was once thought unshakable.
Hatoyama, in short, leads a loose coalition that generally wants to look east toward China and the rest of Asia, not west toward America. On the eve of the September contest, a poll revealed that only a minority of DPJ candidates supported U.S. security objectives. Hatoyama, when he is questioning the alliance, is merely reflecting the views in his party and a Japanese electorate increasingly skeptical of their country’s ties to the United States. Although 76 percent of the public is still in favor of the military pact with Washington, support throughout society is slipping.
Support is slipping at this moment partly because the Obama administration started out by taking an uncharacteristically hardheaded approach to Japan. Hatoyama had signaled that he wanted to renegotiate a 2006 deal to realign American forces in the country. The flashpoint controversy involved the Marine Corps Air Station Futenma in Okinawa, which would have been closed and moved to a remote location on the island according to the pact.
Hatoyama, however, demanded that the facility be moved off Okinawa. His party won seats there in the September election on the platform of moving American forces away from the island, and so he has sided with the Okinawans, who feel they bear a disproportionate share of the burdens of the alliance. In fact, they are right: they host more than half the American troops, sailors, and airmen based in Japan because they are strategically placed at one of the crossroads of East Asia. Defense Secretary Robert Gates stunned the Japanese last month by snubbing their leaders and telling them he would not consider redoing the 2006 deal, which lacked support in Japan even before the Liberal Democratic Party lost power.
Orient-ation
East is East, and West is West;
If you are in Japan, which way
do you look to see the US ?
To see China ? Which is closer ?
Japan will not abandon the US, but
if the US abandons Japan, forcing
it to come to terms with China,
the Land of the Rising Sun will
learn to sing “The East is Red”,
the national anthem of the New
Greater South-East Asia Co-
Prosperity Sphere.
The US will then be in the position
which Imperial Japan once occupied:
Forced to pay a high price for
raw materials, or be denied them
entirely, if they are required for
military uses.
That was Casus Belli, then and now:
A just cause for war.
Why do I get the feeling that this will end badly? I’m glad Obama’s interested in talking to our friends for once, but after all those State Department debacles earlier this year, I get the feeling Obama is going to do something really stupid.
M. Report, yes, China is closer to Japan in a geographic sense, but the Chinese always find ways to push the Japanese closer to us.
myth buster, yes, this could end badly. Thanks for recognizing that.
The one saving grace is that Obama can be pushed around. And this is one situation where his preference for weak solutions could actually benefit us.
The realignment of the alliance has been coming for some time, but the current circumstances are not the best for it. The DPJ does not see China as the threat that the US and LDP do, and they are unlikely to boost military spending on anything except developing ways to respond to possible NK aggression. If anything, the DPJ will look for ways to reduce military spending.
M. Report, it was a cause of the war, but it was not a just cause. Also, this realignment would have little to do with raw materials the US needs as Japan just doesn’t have them. Unless we think of manga, anime, and wasabi as essential raw materials for our military.
As for Japan switching from a US-centered stance to something else, if the DPJ remains in power over the next couple of decades, I think Japan will increasingly abandon the US and embrace an economic pan-Asianism. In that, M. Record is quite right to point back to the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greater_East_Asia_Co-prosperity_Sphere
We know that Michelle wanted to go shopping in Tokyo.
If I recall correctly, the military bases on Guam are undergoing extensive expansion and upgrading to handle at least part of the shift in Asian troop locations. Do you know how this fits into the current picture?
tom, what about steel and electronics? Good thing our own steel industry isn’t completely dead, even if it has fallen dramatically from its heights.
The Japanese message is clear:
Reduce or eliminate American military support facilities to eliminate wars and imperialistic offensives in Asia/Middle East.
Trade is the 21st century game. Out with military power. Invest in technology and commerce, not weapons and wasteful resources.
The historical challenges that the USA has with Japan include more than just the A bombs or even civil/dual use of technology that the USA is wary of. Interesting article here, with a ground level view of old wounds in Okinawa – the sort of thing that must be addressed for progress…
http://www.counterpunch.com/mitchell11132009.html
… but is Obama aware of such grievances? Is he able to act at all?
tom, the longer the DPJ remains in power, the more time it will have to recognize the increasingly difficult nature of China. That, over time, should strengthen the alliance with us.
BBC, the 2006 deal contemplates that some of the Marines on Okinawa will be transferred to Guam. That deal will obviously be superceded by the review that Obama and Hatoyama just agreed to.
henry, thanks for the link. And to answer your question, Obama, our first President of the Pacific, is oblivious.
The Japanese would be fools to advocate disarmament right now. They can’t protect themselves because it is illegal for them to arm themselves sufficiently- that was a policy quite rightly forced on them after WWII, but the result is that they are dependent on us to protect them.
DPJ may not look at the Chinese as a “threat”, but the Chinese sure look at Japan as one. Regardless of what the folks in Japan think, the Chinese will never embrace them. Japan truly is Asian, but it’s also it’s own culture and has never played nice with the rest.
A blind squirrel finds an acorn once in a while is what I’m taking from this article, in regards to our current blunderer-in-chief.
Who knew that Akihito is a muslim potentate? Obama, a loyal muslim, bows ONLY to muslim royalty!
We have not seen the end of history;
It remains true that gold will not
always get you good soldiers, but
good soldiers can always get you gold.
It does not follow that we will see
a repeat of the Pacific War, complete
with another Battle of the Coral Sea;
China’s first aircraft carrier may run
into a swarm of Japanese micro-war-bots
before it gets within range of its target.
The Kamikaze might have stopped the US Navy
the same way, except for a palm-sized bit of
1945 Hi-Tech known as the Proximity Fuse.
Trade builds ties to defeat war; A Sino-
Japanese alliance makes more sense than
a war between the two; Absent US power
projection, the Alliance will own SE Asia,
and the Pacific, eventually including Hawaii.
Two more:
1) Where does the US military get its
Integrated Circuits ?
2) What happened to the stockpiles of
strategic raw materials, including some
critical to fabricating ICs ?