By David Axe
Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan has been left to decide what to do about a controversial US air base. The choice is clear.
A gray US Air Force tanker banks sharply toward the runway, its four turbofans screaming as it flares for landing. As its tires hit the runway they give off a bluish smoke through which the outline of a US Navy maritime patrol plane taxiing on the tarmac becomes visible.
It’s the patrol plane’s turn now, and it accelerates, its propellers grinding the air, to take its place in a long line of aircraft waiting to take off from the Kadena Air Base, the largest part of what is arguably the most vital military complex in the Pacific for the United States and its closest regional allies.
An explosive political drama that reached its climax earlier this month underscored the importance of Kadena and the surrounding bases. On June 2, Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama stepped down after weeks of tumbling public support for his administration. The reason—the ongoing uncertainty over the future of US forces in Japan.
During the general election campaign last year, Hatoyama had vowed to reconsider a 2006 deal over the relocation of US Marines from the Futenma Air Station, a smaller base just south of Kadena. After strongly hinting that he would abandon the 2006 deal, Hatoyama announced in late May his continued support for the existing agreement reached under the previous Liberal Democratic Party administration.
Under this agreement, the Marines would eventually relocate their airstrip to a less-populated part of the island prefecture. But many Okinawans oppose any US military presence there at all. US bases—and Futenma, especially—have generally been unpopular among the now largely pacifist Japanese public, particularly Okinawans. In 1995, three US servicemen from Futenma abducted and raped a local schoolgirl, further stoking opposition to the base. And aircraft crashes are another safety concern, especially as Kadena and Futenma have between them several hundred US military aircraft permanently based at facilities surrounded by densely populated residential neighbourhoods.
The decision to stick with the 2006 deal represented the belated recognition on Hatoyama’s part that ‘there was no other good option’ for the strategically-vital Marine presence and for the US-Japanese alliance in general, according to Michael Auslin, an Asia expert with the American Enterprise Institute. In that context, the prime minister’s vague election promise to Okinawan base-detractors was a ‘miscalculation.’
So, will the Futenma dispute also prove the undoing of Hatoyama’s successor, Naoto Kan, who has so far stayed quiet on the base issue? If anything, the crisis over Futenma underscored the lasting, even growing, importance of US military facilities in Okinawa—not only for the United States, but also for Japan and other US allies. As China’s economic and military rise continues and tensions mount over North Korea’s nuclear programme and its alleged sinking of a South Korean warship, the US and its Asian allies need Okinawa more than ever.
‘The US, South Korea and Australia have been very vocal to Japan, saying, “Hey, be careful what you’re doing,”’ Sheila Smith, an analyst with the Council on Foreign Relations, says. ‘This isn’t a good moment to be taking large numbers of US forces out of Japan.’
Photo Credit: David Axe
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Smith
Japanese opposition to the bases is only because of two things, which is rudeness by US soldiers(rapes) and a huge portion of the island being occupied by the bases. Ending all bases in okinawa is just a dream from nationalists but these two things fuel them. I’m suprised they didn’t considered moving bases to areas isolated from the local population in the first place to reduce such tension.
P.S. The japanese government pays for 75% for the expenses of these military installations, AND these bases account for less then five percent of okinawa’s economy.
Magnus T.M.
3 points:
1. It seems the Americans want to defend Japan more badly than the Japanese do. You yanks need a reality check.
2. America does not actually need a military base physically on Japan to have a security pact with Japan. Guam isn’t that far away.
3. Japan’s navy is the strongest in Asia after the USN herself.
Loic
I am sure there are many Koreans grateful for the US-led intervention in the 1950s. As for the other conflicts, there is legitimate questioning into their causes.
But in the end of the day, we have to consider that there is no indigenous military in the Pacific that can even pretend to be a counterweight to the Chinese presence. Even Japan has had skirmishes with armed Chinese nautical survey vessels. Without the US presence, who would check China’s increasingly belligerent territorial claims on the high seas? There are proponents in the Chinese military that seek “permanent observer” status to the Arctic Circle Treaty and affirm that China has a right to territory it’s country doesn’t even border. Beyond that we have some military sponsored attempt to rewrite Korea as part of Chinese Manchuria and the sad fate of Tibet looming over it all. US brand imperialism as resulted in an independent Philippines, Japan, and South Korea among others. It can’t be all that bad can it?
Dr Michael Vaughan
The United States’ military commanders need a stronger argument than tactical convenience to justify the continued presence of unwelcome American bases on sovereign Japanese soil. The US Seventh Fleet, with its aircraft carriers, is more than capable of meeting any aggressive threat in Northeast Asia, should one arise. One needs to ask, against whom are the bases to be directed? China, although building up its military capacity, is not a revisionist state but a status quo state, with too much to lose from an unlikely war with Japan. North Korea is a far more dangerous proposition, it must be admitted, but it, too, risks annihilation in the event of open hostilities. It appears that, after 50 years, it is time for the US to quietly leave Okinawa as it has left other allies such as the Philippines and Germany.
Mitra
Self-serving drivel from the American foreign policy establishment. If I met the author, I would like to ask him a simple question. If the Japanense believed that they needed the US military base in Okinawa as much as the Americans, why would this be such an emotive issue in Japan? It reminds me of what a commentator said about the “North Korean crisis” during the previous Bush administration. The sense of crisis is greater the farther you move away from the Korean peninsula! And you get a full blown crisis by the time you get to Washington D.C! I have every reason to believe that the country which really objects to the military base being removed from Okinawa is NOT South Korea, Japan or Taiwan- it is the United States of America! Take that, Mr Axe!
Mladen Matosevic
Article gives good explanation of importance of Air Base. However, it does not explain why is not possible to reduce US ground forces. Okinawa is way too far to be at high risk of invasion and Japan is more then capable to provide coastal defense of the island. Simmering conflict is about large contingent of Marines, not Air Force. Is it necessary that Japanese start asking themselves are they still US occupied before US acts and reduces pressure to local population by moving some ground forces away?
Wataru Tenga
This article made me sad and angry. The author seems to assume the current order, with the US having bases all over the world more than 60 years after WWII, is the natural order of things, and that the bases are here for Japan’s own good. But what,actually, has the US done with those bases? It has used them to launch highly destructive wars in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan, painting stark pictures of enemies that turned out to be rather less a threat than they were made out to be. Now it has its eyes on Iran, even as it tries to depict North Korea and China as reasons to keep the bases in Okinawa, and as threats the marines are supposed to somehow protect us from.
It’s long past time that the US remove its military presence from Japan. If Japan feels we are somehow in danger from our neighbors, let us deal with that danger in our own way. The US is running a con game in order to use Japan as nothing more than a stepping stone for ventures in other parts of the world.
Robert L. Glover
What Mr. Tenga fails to understand is that the U.S. provides global security and access to the commons that are not now being matched by any other world power – not China, Russia, India, et. al. Access to the global commons has been a benefit of a strong U.S. presence across the world – a presence that Japan has been able to exploit successfully over the past six decades. Additionally, the economic impact of losing U.S. forces from Okinawa would be devastating, to say the least, for the Okinawan community at-large. The reality of the situation is that, even in today’s situation, a strong U.S. presence provides an unmatched blanket of security against the threat of hostilities. Not all situations can be diplomatically resolved – regardless of Mr. Tenga’s perspective. How does Mr. Tenga propose that Japan, “deal with that danger” in it’s own way? I would offer that pulling U.S. forces from the bases in Okinawa would not allow the Japanese government to work it out their own way. Mr. Tenga, you’re just plain wrong to assume that moving U.S. forces out of Okinawa and ‘wishing away’ a potential threat or threats is the solution. You may not agree with the policy of a U.S. presence, but don’t disregard the fruits of that presence.
Matt
Wataru Tenga,
Exactly which highly destructive war did the US launch in Korea? The Korean war was started after North Korea invaded the south, not after the US invaded the north.
If US forces do depart Japanese soil, how do you suppose that the region will be able to deal with growing Chinese military assertivness? Japan benefits by the US presence in strategic and in economic terms. Without the base, the Japanese would still expect to fall under the strategic umbrella provided by the US, surely then its fair that they bear some of the burden?
Regards,