However, it’s also a fact that in July 2010, half of Japan’s Upper House seats will be up for election. The DPJ controls that chamber of the Diet by virtue of its alliance with two smaller parties, the left-of-centre Social Democratic Party and the populist/conservative People’s New Party. And in the run-up to this election, I’m far from alone in believing that politics is intruding into the national security decision-making process of the current Japanese leadership.
Granted, the historic August 2009 DPJ victory ended more than five decades of uninterrupted rule by the Liberal Democratic Party in post-war Japan. And the new administration is inexperienced in governing and suspicious of close to two generations of career Civil and Foreign Service employees who served under the LDP for close to a half a century. These reasons alone, however, don’t explain why Japan would not want to honour the 2006 agreement in whole or part.
Hatoyama has in the past made statements suggesting that US troops in Japan either be significantly reduced or withdrawn altogether, though he backed away from these statements once he was elected and confirmed the centrality of the alliance to Japan’s security. The present government has also put forward a vision of a Japan that is more ‘normal,’ in that it is more assertive and independent on the international stage. Members of the Hatoyama government have been quoted as supporting increased contributions in personnel and materiel to international security operations, but to do so only in missions that are authorized by the UN Security Council.
But these are non sequitur responses for the real reason I believe Hatoyama is withholding a decision on Futenma: to obtain the votes of those Okinawans and a vocal minority of other Japanese who are opposed to US troops on Japanese soil.
There are reports this week that Foreign Minister Katsuya Okada presented US Ambassador John V. Roos with a proposal to settle the dispute. However, the fact that the Hatoyama government has twice put off giving a definitive response, on whether it will honour Japan’s security commitments relating to Futenma, leaves no doubt in my mind that a final decision will be further delayed until after the July 2010 Upper House elections. But even if the election brings a greater majority to the DPJ, the present government will find itself bound up by implicit domestic and expedient political campaign promises that fundamentally alter our 50-year national security relationship.
Indeed, my suspicions were confirmed in a telling exchange with State Secretary Koichi Takemasa, one of the few political appointees at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Takemasa remarked that he had just met with the US Pacific Commander and his Pentagon colleagues in Guam a few days before, and ‘they told us of the importance of the deterrence power of US forces in the region.’
But Takemasa added no comment of agreement to reinforce the statement. After an awkward pause, I left him with a military truism about the ‘tyranny of time’ on the battlefield that Senator James Inhofe has also used in an East Asian security context. I said, ‘Mr. Secretary, it takes two hours to fly from Japan to North Korea; it takes six hours to fly from Guam to North Korea.’ Takemasa looked at me, said nothing, and entertained the next questioner.
Joel E. Starr serves as Counsel and Legislative Assistant to U.S. Senator James M. Inhofe of Oklahoma, and the Ranking Member of the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on East Asian and Pacific Affairs. Mr. Starr was Deputy Assistant Secretary of State from 2007-09, and is a Major in the US Army Reserve Judge Advocate General’s Corps.
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Takahiro Katsumi
As a Japanese national working in the Japanese legislature I cannot condone this remark coming from the current Deputy Assistant Secretary of State of our supposedly closest ally, saying that our head of the government is ‘withholding a decision on Futenma’ for the minuscule aim of obtaining ‘the votes of those Okinawans and a vocal minority of other Japanese who are opposed to US troops on Japanese soil.’
First of all, from what position does Mr.Starr make this assertion that only a ‘vocal minority’ of our people are opposed to having ‘US troops on Japanese soil?’ We don’t have an updated, reliable national poll on this one in Japan and neither should your government. I would like to ask the basis of Mr. Starr’s assertion on this point.
Secondly, how could a person working under the foreign service of one state assert publicly the motive of the head of the government of another sovereign state based on such simplistic, personal assumption? I find it very inappropriate, insulting, and destructive in
its nature to make such an assumption.
If there is a clear basis for this argument I would also like to hear it.
Finally, although it is understandable that your government as well as your legislature is ‘more than a little disappointed’ that the ‘important relationship’ may be called into question by the action or inaction of the Hatoyama Administration, I still feel it is inappropriate to assert that the head of the government of your ally is weighting national political realities over the bilateral obligations that both states agreed are ‘important’, unless you are knowingly making such remarks that would present as ‘gaiatsu’ to the foreign as well as domestic press, with the intent to further strain the already strained bilateral relations.
Yair Shachar-Hill
Can we be surprised that a Japanese Prime Minister would call for a reassessment of the cost/benefit ratio of the US alliance? The previous US administration failed to prevent a nuclear North Korea or to exact a price for it and the present administration has been at pains to bow to the Chinese leadership both literally and politically over issues of concern to Japan. Both of these are of deep concern to Japan. Furthermore, Obama has slighted (European nations among others), bullied (Israel) and betrayed (Poland and the Czech republic) US allies worldwide. These actions and inactions send a clear message that Japan can no longer count unquestioningly on the US to keep it safe.
Darrel
When you are allies with everyone, then you are allies with no one. On the bright side, Japan is starting to need China as much as we do so that shouldn’t really matter too much in the future.