Past Time to Rethink Our Approach to Japan

posted at 3:49 pm on March 11, 2010 by J.E. Dyer
[ Diplomacy ]    printer-friendly

“Smart power” from the Obama administration is looking downright differently-abled to basically everyone outside the United States, where if most people think about Japan it’s because they own a Toyota or they love the Winter Olympics, or just like ‘em some sushi or yakisoba.

The Brits perceive us as having a tiff with Japan.  Asia-based The Diplomat perceives us as having a tiff with Japan.  The Chinese perceive us as having a rift with Japan.  Al Jazeera perceives us as having a tiff with Japan.  The New York Times perceives us as having a tiff with Japan.  The Japanese perceive us as having a tiff with Japan.

Newsweek offers a rare contrasting view pointing out that in some key ways, even if we are, in fact, having a tiff with Japan, our relations are still strong.

But the current situation is troubling, because what it amounts to is the Obama administration being dismissively recalcitrant about something that does, in fact, involve Japanese sovereignty and Japan’s mastery of her own destiny.  The situation is that we want to move a Marine Corps air base to Futenma on Okinawa – from its previous location on Okinawa – and Okinawans don’t want the base at Futenma.  (They want it gone altogether.)  There’s been resistance to it for some time, but a previous Japanese government concluded an agreement with the Bush administration in 2006 to go ahead with the Futenma move.  Since the new prime minister, Yukio Hatoyama, formed his government in September 2009, however, Japan has been rethinking the 2006 agreement.

There were different ways to handle this, but what the Obama administration has done is insist, with what is perceived as summary rudeness, that the 2006 agreement be honored.  Hatoyama signaled in December that his government would not simply agree to that right away, and announced that a final decision would be given no earlier than May.  Hillary Clinton called in the Japanese ambassador and gave him a talking to.  Obama himself declined requests for a personal sidebar with Prime Minister Hatoyama at the Copenhagen summit (although since he also declined such requests from Gordon Brown, Hatoyama might not need to feel super-especially slighted.  “Diss our best allies” seems to be one of the principles of Obamian Smart Power).

Now senior American officials are visiting Japan and being interviewed every other week uttering veiled threats about the consequences, if Japan doesn’t stop with the domestic politics already, and just move forward with the Futenma base.

Have we lost our minds?  For one thing, what happened to all that Obama business about shedding arrogance and being solicitous of the rest of the world?  If we went by his administration’s rhetoric and supposed aspirations, we’d think that if the Okinawans don’t want a Marine air base, Obama would be the first one to listen and take their concerns to heart.  Indeed, if Republican senators under a GOP administration were over in Japan telling the Japanese that Futenma is the place we need to put the base, Obama would probably lead the charge against such “imperialism.”

But there’s a more fundamental issue here, and it makes the Obama administration’s weird inflexibility particularly ill-timed.  The issue’s origin is very simple:  time has passed.  The world has changed in some important ways since 1945.  We haven’t given our alliance with Japan a really fresh, critical look since Nixon handed Okinawa back in 1971, and it’s high time we did.

The UK Guardian article linked above comes, like most such treatments, from the perspective that the only alternative to a divisive tiff between the US and Japan is the restoration (or at least reaffirmation) of the post-1971 status quo in our relationship.  But that status quo is losing support in Japan, and it’s not because the Japanese “don’t like us,” or because they want to reemerge as an imperial power and start talking about Co-Prosperity Spheres again.  It’s because the justification for the features of Japan’s role in the alliance is starting to crumble.

Most Americans aren’t aware that Japan pays the cost of maintaining the military bases we use there.  It costs the Japanese a lot of money to host our forces.  That feature of our relationship might not be called into question if there were no dispute over how many bases there should be, and where they should go – but there is.  If there were still a Soviet Union rattling a big saber short miles across the La Perouse Strait from Hokkaido, such disputes might loom smaller in Japan’s domestic politics.  But there isn’t.  It’s shortsighted to dismiss an emerging sense among Japanese voters that they’d be perfectly safe with fewer bases hosting fewer US forces on their islands, and it’s downright obnoxious to demand that the national government behave as if that sense didn’t exist, or wasn’t a real and serious factor in its internal obligations to its people.

Japan has every right to her own evolving perceptions about her security requirements.  This is a voluntary alliance, not the Warsaw Pact.  We may not like all of those evolving perceptions, and they may present inconvenient decision points for us, but throwing diplomatic tantrums is exactly, and I mean precisely, the wrong way to handle such developments.  The truth is, our relationship with Japan has to evolve.  We can grunt angrily and resist, or we can get out ahead of the problem and do some rethinking ourselves.  That’s what we have State and Defense Departments for:  to think ahead of current conditions to what will position us for future ones.

What we should want is to manage our way to a new, more sustainable relationship with Japan.  The day is going to come when we assume more of the cost of basing forces there, and probably have to keep fewer on the Japanese islands anyway.  This need only happen in alarming, confrontational jolts if we sit around twiddling our thumbs and assuming nothing has to change.  It’s not a bad thing to contemplate our alliance with Japan evolving to a different basis.  It’s a necessity, but it’s also a positive opportunity.

I think we will always want to count Japan as an ally – an official military ally, by treaty agreement – but our alliance in 2010 and beyond doesn’t have to have exactly the same features as our alliance up to now.  Getting on a new footing with Japan isn’t something to be feared, it’s something to be planned, negotiated, and managed.

The signals our moves send to China and Russia (as well as everyone from India to Australia) will also matter tremendously.  It’s not to our advantage at all for the US-Japan alliance to appear grudging, and maintained mainly out of fear of China.  (It’s not to Japan’s either; Japan is and will always be too big for China to intimidate militarily anyway, without China rattling sabers that would bring retribution down on her from elsewhere.)

The US has a permanent interest in an East Asia that is not under the domination of a hostile hegemon, but is as democratized as feasible and open to trade, travel, and cultural exchange.  This interest is common up the scale of national interests, from pure defense (we can’t let the other side of the Pacific become an armed imperium), to trading interests, to our national interest in promoting liberalization and consensual self-government.  This should be our starting point for strategy – not the exact wording of today’s Status of Forces Agreement with Japan.  The latter is something that can change over time without compromising our security or interests.  As Lord Palmerston famously said, it’s the interests that endure.

Update:  An alert reader points out to me, quite correctly, that the Marine air base has been at Futenma, and the 2006 agreement was to move it elsewhere.  Wet noodle to the noggin.  The desires of Okinawans, however, are to remove the air base entirely.   Thanks to L. Douglas Garrett at http://competinghypotheses.blogspot.com/.

Cross-posted at The Optimistic Conservative.

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