Gates rules out renegotiation

The DPJ has pushed on Futenma — and the Obama administration, in the guise of Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, has pushed back.

Gates, visiting Japan on a tour through Asia, delivered an unambiguous message to the Hatoyama government that the US government is not interested in renegotiating the bilateral agreement on the realignment of US forces in Japan. As he said in a joint press conference with Defense Minister Kitazawa Toshimi:

Our view is clear. The Futenma relocation facility is the lynchpin of the realignment road map. Without the Futenma realignment, the Futenma facility, there will be no relocation to Guam. And without relocation to Guam, there will be no consolidation of forces and the return of land in Okinawa.

Our view is this may not be the perfect alternative for anyone, but it is the best alternative for everyone, and it is time to move on.

We are — feel strongly that this is a complex agreement, negotiated over a period of many years. It is interlocking — (inaudible) – immensely complicated and counterproductive. We have investigated all of the alternatives in great detail and believe that they are both politically untenable and operationally unworkable.

I emphasized the paragraph above because I think it's probably the most honest statement of the US position at this point. The administration has enough problems on its hands that it has little interest in renegotiating what it sees as a done deal — signed by foreign ministers and everything — after years of hard work. I can understand the US position: Futenma has been a source of unpleasantness for a long enough time that the US government just wants the issue off the agenda.

But, on the other hand, the concerns of the new government and the people of Okinawa cannot be tossed aside simply because the US government is impatient. It is too convenient for the US government to say that it signed an agreement with the LDP and therefore the DPJ should just accept the agreement and move on — as if the transition from the LDP to the DPJ was a routine matter. I continue to find it perplexing that US officials expect that the DPJ would take power and attempt to change everything but the alliance, which was, after all, an integral piece of the 1955 system. The US may not view the alliance that way, but to pretend that the US was not a pillar propping up the LDP system for years, to pretend that the US-Japan alliance is an alliance like any other, is to be willfully insensitive to history. As much as Gates and the Obama administration would like to turn the page, their Japanese counterparts — the first government in a half-century based on a parliamentary majority for a party other than the LDP — cannot simply accept what it views as the product of the "abnormal" US-LDP alliance.

The Hatoyama government has already softened its stance on Futenma considerably by backing away from the position that the Futenma replacement facility should be outside of Okinawa. Is the Hatoyama government in a hopeless position? Gates may have been entirely sincere in the message he delivered in Tokyo, but it also is not a bad bargaining stance either. If ratcheting up pressure on the new government forces it to drop the issue — perhaps with a minor concession like this — the US will have gotten its way with little effort expended. But I doubt that the government will back down easily, certainly not without compensation. The domestic politics of the issue do not favor backing down: its coalition partners, the SDPJ in particular, want Futenma out of Okinawa, the DPJ is largely united against the current agreement, and the Okinawan people and their representatives are unhappy with the current agreement. Were it to back down now that it has put Futenma at the top of its agenda in advance of President Obama's visit next month, the Hatoyama government's public approval rating would probably suffer. And, beyond the government's interests, it should be stressed that the prime minister and his ministers actually object to the substance of the current agreement and want it changed and are willing to exhaust political capital to do so (and to show that a DPJ-led government is capable of standing up to the US).

If the Hatoyama government does not back down, what options are available to the Obama administration that won't make Futenma a bigger problem than it already is? If the administration simply refuses to talk about Futenma and then blames the agreement's failure on the Hatoyama government, how can it expect a constructive relationship with the new government on other issues? Would the Obama administration contemplate abandoning Futenma unilaterally and leaving the Japanese government to clean up after the Marines? I doubt that the situation will come to any of these scenarios. The US has little to gain by letting the issue fester — and, ironically, despite Gates's desire to "move on," rejecting the Hatoyama government's desire to renegotiate outright may be the surest way to guarantee that the allies will be unable to move beyond the question of what to do about Futenma and US forces in Okinawa.

The US ought to acknowledge that the Hatoyama government has actually shown itself to be relatively flexible on the question of Futenma when compared with earlier DPJ statements. The Obama administration must recognize that to simply say no to a Hatoyama government that is desperate to find a solution — that shares Gates's desire to move on — is to make it harder for the US and Japan to turn their attention to other, more important issues. For the sake of both countries I hope that Gates's position is not the Obama administration's final position.

And as for the Hatoyama government? Foreign Minister Okada Katsuya has a month until President Obama visits Japan. He should at the very least be ready to provide some idea of what concessions will be necessary to get the Japanese government to back away from more comprehensive revisions, however difficult it may be do so.

However tetchy the relationship looks at the moment, this is not a crisis for the alliance, but rather the DPJ simply doing what it said it was going to do: speak honestly to the US. When was the last time, after all, that a meeting of senior US and Japanese officials carried even a whiff of public controversy? As Ozawa Ichiro reportedly said in a meeting with US Ambassador John Roos, "I want the US to speak frankly about any problems, just as I think that Japan's DPJ government should speak directly to the US."

Towards a new alliance

Looking over Secretary Gates's visit to Tokyo, there were few surprises.

He "demanded" to legislators that Japan renew its refueling mission. He voiced his opposition to proposed cuts in Japan's host-nation support (i.e., the sympathy budget) for US forces in Japan. And has become standard for ministerial visits to Japan, he reasssured Japan of the viability of the US nuclear umbrella (as he noted in this conversation with Asahi editor-in-chief Funabashi Yoichi).

But, at the same time, in his speech at Sophia University on Friday, he hinted at a new vision for the US-Japan alliance. He asked,

What should Japan and the U.S. do together, and with others, to secure our mutual interests? Do we have the proper capabilities, individually and collectively, to address future challenges and uncertainties? Have we the proper mechanisms and infrastructure to meet our common objectives? These questions underlie the alliance transformation effort we have undertaken over the last few years. But we need to deepen our discussion and more importantly, be prepared to act on our findings and make the investments now that will better prepare us for the future.

Secretary Gates did not answer these questions, but these questions must be asked, if not in the final year of the Bush administration, then in the early days of the administration that will take office in January 2009.

Both Washington and Tokyo have come to have different expectations of the alliance, and as a result the alliance is handicapped, prevented from playing a constructive role in the region. The US, it seems, especially in the past six years, expects Japan to follow it wherever it goes, even with token commitments. It expects Japan to add its name to the list of any coalition of the willing. Japan, meanwhile, is happy to send token support (and continue underspending on its defense and punching beneath its weight internationally), in exchange for the US security guarantee, which has increasingly become interpreted to include supporting Japan on whatever areas Tokyo deems essential (i.e., the abductions issue).

The dissatisfaction with the US over Japan's bringing its refueling ships home and Japan's growing discontent over the US shift on North Korea suggest that this arrangement is unsustainable.

Nothing short of a fundamental bilateral rethink of the relationship will suffice. The region is changing too quickly not to, as the alliance is silent on the issues on contemporary security environment in Asia, as discussed by Secretary Gates. Most pressingly, the alliance has yet to coordinate an approach to China. To some, it is a bulwark against China. To others — and I think it's safe to include Mr. Gates in this category — the stronger the US-Japan alliance, the better able it will be to reach out to China and work on incorporating China into the regional security architecture. As Mr. Gates say of China, "I do not see China as a strategic adversary. It is a competitor in some respects and partner in others. While we candidly acknowledge our differences, it is important to strengthen communications and to engage the Chinese on all facets of our relationship to build mutual understanding and confidence."

As time passes, it becomes increasingly clear that for all the bonhommie in the alliance during the early years of the Bush administration, when Messrs. Bush and Koizumi played catch and the Bush administration was full of friends of Japan, both governments wasted the opportunity to that goodwill into real, fundamental change in the alliance. Instead, they opted for symbolic measures that signified ever more US-centrism in Japanese foreign policy, bringing the alliance to where it is today.

The next administration's Asia team must be prepared to tackle aggressively the challenge of forging a new relationship. It will require radically reconsidering the number and composition of US forces in Japan and altering how the US treats Japan and the opinions of its government in the hope of forcing Japan to be free — forcing Tokyo think hard about its national interests and what capabilities it needs to be able to secure them.