The 2006 roadmap's impasses

In the wake of its defeat the Kan government has made it patently clear that the Hatoyama government's "ratification" of the 2006 realignment plan was nothing of the sort — it is now saying that it will be impossible to complete negotiations before Okinawan gubernatorial election in November. The government once again is considering alternatives to the V-shaped runways to be built at Henoko bay, and is reluctant to impose a solution on the Okinawan people.

But, as the Wall Street Journal reports, American domestic politics is emerging as a new constraint on implementing the 2006 agreement. Both houses of Congress have voted to cut funding for the construction on Guam that is necessary to prepare the island to receive the 8,000 Marines and their dependents that according to the plan will move from Okinawa to Guam in 2014.

Congressional staff members said the problems in building new facilities for the Marines in Guam loomed even larger than the politics in Japan in their decision to cut funding.

The Senate appropriations committee said they remained concerned about Guam’s inadequate water, electrical, road and sewer infrastructure — and said inadequate planning had gone in to preparing for the nonmilitary aspects of the move.

The House Appropriation Committee report echoed the Senate findings about Guam, and said it had made the cuts because of the Defense Department’s “inability to address numerous concerns about the sustainability of the buildup as currently planned.”

These budget cuts come more than two years after the US government's Government Accountability Office (GAO) criticized the Defense Department the the US military for dragging its feet on the Guam end of the realignment plan and suggested that it was unlikely that the 2014 target would be met — and not because of Japanese politics. In late 2008 Admiral Timothy Keating, then the commander of US Pacific Command, acknowledged that the plan would most likely not be executed on schedule, citing budgetary concerns.

Corey Wallace is right to point to Washington's hypocrisy — for all of Washington's hand-wringing about political instability in Japan, the reality of the 2006 agreement was that the domestic political conditions concerning the agreement in both countries were at best complicated, and at worse impassable. For the realignment to go forward on schedule, the US government would have to secure the support of the people of Guam and Congress would have to budget a tremendous amount of money to improve the island's infrastructure, while Tokyo secured the support of communities in Okinawa and budget for the Futenma replacement facility and the construction underway on Guam.

In the rush to get something committed to paper, the Bush administration and the LDP have left the alliance with a festering sore, an agreement that looks all but unimplementable, has eroded trust between Washington and Tokyo, and mortally wounded the DPJ in its ten months in office. Considering these costs, it is remarkable that the Obama administration has clung so tenaciously to this Bush administration legacy. Is there anything in American foreign policy making to rival the much-vaunted bipartisan consensus on Japan?

On the Nago election

My thoughts on the election of Inamine Susumu as mayor of Nago City can be found here, in the Wall Street Journal Asia.

Preparing to retreat?

As the Hatoyama government approaches the end of its first 100 days in office, the air is thick with condemnation of the DPJ-led government's handling of the relationship with the United States, particularly the ongoing dispute over the future of Futenma air station and the US presence in Okinawa.

Smelling blood in the water, the LDP and its allies in the conservative commentariat have gone on the offensive against the government. On Thursday Tanigaki Sadakazu, the leader of the LDP, said that the government was acting irresponsibly when it came to the hopes of the Okinawan people and harming relations with the US. Compared to what others were saying, Tanigaki was being charitable. Conservative journalist Sakurai Yoshiko, speaking in Kyushu at a forum sponsored by the Sankei-affiliated journal Seiron, said the Hatoyama government was effectively giving comfort to China by taking on the US on Futenma. (Sakurai also criticized the Hatoyama government for neglecting the military to spend money on child allowances, and insisted that Japan is on the path to becoming a dependency of China.) Sankei's prose is no less purple than Sakurai's. In an editorial published Thursday, Sankei accused the Hatoyama government of creating a crisis in the US-Japan alliance, and says that Hatoyama has committed an act of betrayal towards President Obama by prioritizing the stability of his government over his country's security.

Richard Armitage, visiting Tokyo earlier this week along with Michael Green, added his criticism of the Hatoyama government in a meeting with Tanigaki, questioning the government's ability to lead.

It is hard not to conclude that the Hatoyama government has miscalculated, in part I think because Hatoyama assumed that he could resolve the problem by speaking frankly with Obama (which would explain the prime minister's desire to summit with Obama on the sidelines in Copenhagen). In effect, Hatoyama seems to have desired the mirror image of Koizumi Junichiro's relationship with George W. Bush: where the Bush-Koizumi relationship deepened Japan's dependence on the US and led Japan to support US wars abroad, his relationship with Obama would based on mutual trust and would result in the creation of an "equal" US-Japan relationship that would focus on cooperation in non-security fields.

To build this relationship Hatoyama seems to have decided to take a calculated risk. If the two countries could tackle Futenma quickly — an issue which has been a millstone around the alliance for years — the way would be open to the kind of relationship Hatoyama purports to desire. By addressing this issue in the first months of its tenure, his government could signal a break with past practices in the alliance and demonstrate its ability to follow through on its promises and its deftness in foreign policy.

Instead the Hatoyama government faces its worst-case scenario: it has painted itself into a corner, having systematically eliminated alternatives to the current agreement, while appearing incompetent in its handling of foreign policy, deepening the mistrust of US officials (many of whom were already skeptical about the DPJ) in the process. Also, by dangling the possibility of a new agreement that could remove Marines from Okinawa entirely, the Hatoyama government raised the hopes of the Okinawan people, perhaps to unreasonable heights.

I am hesitant to declare this situation a crisis for the alliance because the Hatoyama government may already be moving in the direction of accommodation: Hatoyama has said that all options are on the table (including the agreement on hand), and has indicated that his government's plan will be forthcoming as early as next week. Foreign Minister Okada Katsuya has concluded that relocating Futenma's operations to Kadena is not an option. After visiting Guam, Defense Minister Kitazawa Toshimi — perhaps the leading defender of the status quo in the cabinet — concluded that relocating Futenma to Guam is not doable. The Hatoyama government is running out of alternatives to the 2006 agreement. Even the Social Democrats may be coming around: a senior member of her own party criticized SDPJ leader Fukushima Mizuho for suggesting that she could pull her party out of the government over the Futenma issue.

If it ends up embracing the 2006 agreement, it will be hard to conclude that the Hatoyama government did not injure itself by dragging out the process only to maintain the status quo. I do not think that it will be a mortal blow to the government because ultimately Futenma is a low-stakes issue domestically. It does reinforce the image that the DPJ is inexperienced on foreign policy, but then the Japanese public already believed that last summer before the general election and still voted the DPJ into power. More significantly, it calls into question Hatoyama's ability to lead his cabinet.

I am more sanguine than most when it comes to the significance of disagreements among cabinet ministers — I do think that the DPJ's model is a prime minister who is first among equals. That being said, on the Futenma issue Hatoyama has not been first at all, despite his periodic interjections to remind the public and the US that the final decision will be his and his alone. Given the sensitivities of this issue, Hatoyama needed to use a heavier hand to guide the deliberations of his ministers. Someone needed to take control of the process of reviewing the agreement. Okada tried, but apparently failed. It needed to be the prime minister. Hatoyama may be trying to correct that now, but the damage has been done.

What have we learned from this dispute?

First, my earlier misgivings about Hatoyama's ability to lead are justified. Hatoyama seems to have some idea of where he wants to take Japan, but he seems to have little idea how to go about it. Hatoyama strikes me as too much of a dreamer and not enough of a strategist. This tendency would be less of a problem if Hatoyama had a Machiavelli in his cabinet, but it is not yet clear to me who in the government will fill this role, if anyone. (For all we know it may be Ozawa Ichiro after all, although I am not convinced of this just yet.)

Second, as noted above, I think the lasting damage from this dispute will be limited, especially if it works out in Washington's favor. Having been burned on this issue and facing an general election upper house election (I hope writing general election where I meant upper house election doesn't prove prescient) and a fight over the budget in the new year, we will be hearing less from the Hatoyama government on foreign policy in the months to come, perhaps clearing the air for a proper discussion of the future of the alliance and the future of US forces in Japan (what Hatoyama, Ozawa, and others are most interested in anyway). This discussion needs to happen, the sooner the better, and Futenma and Okinawa are sideshows to the bigger question of where the DPJ sees the alliance in its Asia-centered foreign policy and what is the minimum level of commitment the US will expect from Japan if the alliance indeed narrows its focus to the defense of Japan. Someone, if not Hatoyama, needs to start signaling how the Japanese government plans to translate its foreign policy ideals into concrete policy.

Third, the DPJ may hold the upper hand in its relationship with the SDPJ. The SDPJ does have the nuclear option of pulling out of the government and reducing it to a minority in the upper house, but it is a one-shot weapon. Once the SDPJ uses it, it's done and who is to say how the SDPJ would fare in a snap election triggered by its pulling out of the government. What would the SDPJ have to gain from pulling out of the government? With Fukushima in the cabinet it has a seat at the table, giving it more influence over policy now than it could expect to have in opposition (just ask the LDP) or as a silent partner in the Diet. While the SDPJ's hand — and, for that matter, the PNP's hand — looks impressive given that it holds the balance in the upper house, its position is weaker than meets the eye.

The Hatoyama government misplayed the Futenma dispute. But it is possible that the prime minister and his ministers will learn from the experience and be a bit savvier the next time around.

Waking up to a new alliance

The day of Barack Obama's first visit to Japan is approaching rapidly and the focus of the allies remains on the future of Futenma and the US-Japan agreement on the realignment of US forces in Japan.

The Hatoyama government is still weighing its options — and Prime Minister Hatoyama has said on more than one occasion that his government will not be treating Obama's visit as a firm deadline for coming up with an alternative to the status quo agreement. Okada Katsuya, the foreign minister, is pushing hard for the Kadena option, which he made clear in response to questioning in the upper house last week is for the moment his personal preference and not the policy of the government. On the other side of the debate is Kitazawa Toshimi, the defense minister, who has emerged as the cabinet's advocate for upholding the current agreement. Last month he stated that he thinks relocating the Marine helicopters at Futenma to the air force base at Kadena is "extremely difficult," and he subsequently suggested that it would not violate the DPJ's election manifesto if the government were to uphold the agreement to build a replacement facility at Camp Schwab.

The US government, not surprisingly, also sees Kadena as a non-starter. Following Secretary of Defense Robert Gates's statement, General Edward Rice, commander of US forces in Japan, told Asahi that Kadena would not work as an alternative. Assistant Secretary of State Kurt Campbell is due in Tokyo Thursday for talks, but on Tuesday State Department spokesman Ian Kelly stressed that "it’s up to Japan to decide what kind of relationship they want to have." In other words, the US government has no interest in renegotiating, and the Japanese government can take it (and suffer the political costs at home) or leave it (and embitter the Obama administration towards the new government).

Okada is also under fire from Okinawans, including Okinawa governor Nakaima Hirokazu, who sees the Kadena option as doing nothing to relieve the burden on Okinawa's citizens.

In other words, the Hatoyama government is no closer to having a proposal to present to the US.

While the conventional wisdom says the Hatoyama government's deliberate pace is a cause for alarm for the alliance — see this Jiji article for example — I am still convinced that the complaints about the public disagreements between Hatoyama's ministers are more a product of observers being unaccustomed to the cabinet actually making policy as opposed to genuine disorder in the government. This is normal government. Indeed, this debate over the alliance lies at the nexus of the DPJ's plans to normalize Japan's foreign and domestic policies, as it shows the cabinet shining light on its deliberations — removing alliance management from the shadows of Kasumigaseki — while also not being bullied by Washington into rushing its decision. In other words, the DPJ is doing exactly what it said it would do. Rather than treating the US with "deference" (remember that word?), the Hatoyama government is weighing its options. It has not ruled out the status quo, but it will not be pressured into accepting the status quo for its own sake either.

Nevertheless, some in Washington seem to feel that the Hatoyama government was in need of — in Michael Green's phrase — a "smackdown." [Although, to be fair, it's possible that he did not choose that unfortunate word for the title of his post.] Upon reading his post at Foreign Policy's Shadow Government one could be excused for thinking that he was discussing the relationship between an empire and its satrap and not two sovereign governments. In addition to his use of the word "smackdown," he calls Hatoyama "defiant" (as opposed to Hatoyama patiently weighing his government's options); Gates's stance, he writes, "sent shudders" through the DPJ; and the DPJ has been "slapping around" the US (instead of articulating a policy approach that happened to differ from its predecessor's).

In a single post Green managed to illustrate why the DPJ's approach to the alliance is merited. During the "golden age" — Green appears to have taken the rhetoric from days of George and Jun and (briefly) George and Shinzo seriously — the US government did not need to deliver "smackdowns," it seems, because Tokyo followed along nicely (which, given the frustrations endured by US negotiators during the Defense Policy Review Initiative talks, was a convenient facade for what was actually a fairly contentious period for the alliance). The difference seems to be that LDP governments kept their disagreements private. The difficulties of the Koizumi years wash away and we're left with talk of a golden age.

The US government is now paying the price for believing that the post-1996 decade was a golden age for the alliance, for believing that pocketing cooperation from the Koizumi and Abe governments meant that it enjoyed the support of the Japanese people as a whole. Green can tell himself that the alliance is popularity among three quarters of the Japanese — which may be true (although the latest figure is actually 68.9% favorable, a seven-point drop from the previous year's poll), but the alliance's overall approval rating says very little about what the Japanese public thinks about specific pieces of the alliance's agenda in recent years. Voters may not have had the alliance and foreign policy at the top of the list of reasons to vote for the DPJ, but it is difficult to say that they were voting for the status quo on the alliance. It strikes me as odd that voters would be open to the DPJ's promises of sweeping changes in how their government functions (easily the most popular portion of the DPJ's agenda) but would demand that the government cling resolutely to the status quo in foreign policy. As the DPJ is illustrating, it is entirely possible to support the maintenance of the alliance while demanding changes in how it operates.

And, meanwhile, a recent report based on a series of discussions among US and Japanese experts convened by the National Bureau of Asian Research (NBR) and drafted by Michael Finnegan and exposes Green's argument about a "golden age" as a myth. Premised on the idea of "unmet expectations" — expectations that were unmet well before the DPJ took power — Finnegan concludes "despite public statements about strength, the alliance is actually quite brittle precisely at a time when both allies are perhaps depending on it more than ever." The idea of mismatched expectations from the alliance is not a new one, but Finnegan provides a frank assessment of the state of the alliance and shows despite the apparently close relationship between President Bush and Prime Minister Koizumi, the relationship among the national leaders did not translate into a frank and realistic discussion of whether the alliance is headed.

What does Finnegan see as the mismatched expectations? He sums of each country's expectations in two words: for the US, "Do More," and for Japan, "Meet Commitments." It is difficult to say whether the report's assessment of Japan's expectations for the alliance continue to hold under the DPJ government, but "Do More" pretty much sums up US expectations going back decades. The irony was that the advent of unipolarity ratcheted US expectations of Japan and its other allies to unprecedented levels — despite (or because of) the US was unchallenged by a rival superpower and towering over all rivals even during the peace divided 1990s, the US decided to bear more burdens than ever, which meant more demands for burden-sharing with its allies. Accordingly, after 1996 the US came to expect greater operational cooperation with Japan and greater Japanese involvement in providing security far from Japanese shores. The failure to strengthen bilateral cooperation for the defense of Japan is particularly glaring, and it falls on the Japanese government's shoulders. This failure raises an obvious question: if the LDP was such a faithful friend of the alliance, why is Finnegan able to provide such a lengthy list of operational deficiencies short of the major sticking point of the ban on the exercise of Japan's right of collective self-defense?

Finnegan concludes the report by offering a list of options available to each government going forward, and proposing that the allies scale back their expectations so to acknowledge political constraints in Japan and refocus the alliance on the core mission of defending Japan. He writes: "The new bargain suggested here would establish a laser-like focus on the core expectation of the alliance, the defense of Japan. Such a recalibrated or tempered arrangement would forgo out-of-area missions, instead recognizing a division of labor within the alliance. On the one hand, Japan would assume primacy in the defense of Japan, focusing all of its defense efforts and resources on this singular mission. Japan would be its own 'first line of defense' for the first time in the postwar period." Having argued for precisely this model of the alliance in the past, I fully agree with this proposal and am glad that Finnegan and the NBR study group managed to flesh out what it means in concrete terms. (Indeed, I argued for precisely this kind of discussion on the occasion of a previous Gates visit to Japan, when the secretary was working for a different president.)

The greatest virtue of the NBR report is that it recognizes that whether or not it was possible to create the expansive global alliance desired by some Japan hands after 1996, it is not possible today. Even before the DPJ took power Japan's leaders recognized that the challenge for the coming decades is carving out a role for Japan as China solidified its position as a regional superpower. Even Hatoyama's LDP predecessors recognized that they could no longer get away with antagonizing China over Yasukuni and other history questions. Neither of Abe's LDP successors saw it worthwhile to talk about the values shared by the US and Japan and to expend political capital deepening cooperation among the region's democracies. The challenge for the US and Japan is to build an alliance based on the notion that Japan has little choice but to be deeply engaged in regional cooperation, whatever form it ends up taking. Hatoyama, Okada, and other DPJ leaders do not believe they have to choose between Asia and the US, but they do believe that the alliance as it was conceived by alliance managers in the 1990s and early 2000s forces them to pick a side and constrains Japan's freedom of action.

As difficult as the Futenma dispute is, I am still fairly sanguine over the ability of the Obama administration to manage the shift to a deep but narrow security partnership, in which security cooperation is focused almost exclusively on the defense of Japan and embedded in a broader partnership in which the allies cooperate closely in areas other than security outside of East Asia and are free to pursue independent initiatives as necessary within the region. At the very least, an alliance based on Yokosuka and Kadena can still be valuable to the US.

It is time, however, for US officials (and former officials) to stop acting surprised that the DPJ is doing precisely what it promised it would do — and to wake up and recognize that the early 2000s were not a golden age and that there are more points of continuity between the LDP post-Koizumi and the DPJ than most are willing to admit. I am truly dismayed by how Washington — inside and outside of government — has handled the transition to DPJ rule. While the Obama administration deserves credit for having Secretary of State Hillary Clinton meet with Ozawa Ichiro when she visited Japan back in February, the administration seems taken aback by the Hatoyama government's following through on its promises to manage the alliance differently from the LDP. It is time for commentators in Washington to stop clinging to the notion that the DPJ is "badly divided internally" on foreign policy. While the Hatoyama government may be debating how best to resolve the Futenma issue, it is anything but divided when it comes to changing how the alliance is managed and where the alliance should fit in Japan's foreign policy. The Hatoyama government is entirely serious, and it will be running the government in Tokyo for the foreseeable future.

It is time for Washington to wake up to the reality of DPJ rule. The NBR report is an excellent step in the right direction.

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."

Okada diplomacy

Not even a week into the Hatoyama government, it is clear that Foreign Minister Okada Katsuya will be a force to be reckoned with in the new cabinet.

Even before the government formed, Okada raised the alarm that the new national strategy bureau would encroach on his turf in foreign policy making — prompting Hatoyama Yukio to stress that the bureau's primary task will be budgeting (i.e., it will not follow Okada's lead on foreign policy, if it plays any foreign policy role at all).

In the days since the government formed, Okada has become the sole voice on the DPJ-led government's approach to the world, which for the moment means the U.S.-Japan relationship.

The point is not that the policy content of Okada's diplomacy is markedly different from the party as a whole. Rather, Okada has made clear in his public remarks that he will be the voice of the government on foreign policy, not a bad thing seeing that he is perhaps the most articulate member of the government when it comes to explaining why the DPJ wants a more equal partnership with the US, what that will mean in practice, and why Asia should be at the center of Japan's foreign policy — and why that is a good thing for the US. (See his interview in the FT here.) And he has shown on multiple occasions that he has a knack for showing why efforts to paint the DPJ's foreign policy beliefs as anti-American are mistaken.

Meanwhile, it seems clear from Okada's remarks that the DPJ will try to get everything it wants on the alliance. I thought it possible that if the Obama administration continued to say no to any discussion of Futenma, that the Hatoyama government — having softened its language on negotiations — might sound a retreat so as not to have a dispute with the US harming its position in advance of the 2010 upper house election. But Okada has said that the government wants to come to a decision with the US on Futenma within the year, or "100 days," as he told the FT.

Okada said that the reason for the rush is to ensure necessary outlays are included in next year's budget, but it also looks that from a political standpoint, scoring a quick and substantial diplomatic victory — and showing that under a DPJ government Japan can be allied with the US while still disagreeing over the details of bilateral cooperation — could neutralize foreign policy as an issue in the 2010 upper house election. It is not that voters are all that concerned about whether there needs to be a new realignment agreement, but that voters may be looking for reasons to question the DPJ's capabilities and cast a protest vote for the LDP next year. Recall that the LDP polled substantially better than the DPJ when it came to which party respondents felt more confident in on foreign and security policy. But if the DPJ's push for renegotiation results in another round of protracted, working-level discussions, its gambit could fail or at least do little to win the government recognition for boldness in foreign policy.

For its part, the Obama administration appears more pliant than it did last week, when talk was of Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell's encouraging Japan to continue the refueling mission, not long after Morrell's State Department counterpart completely ruled out renegotiating the agreement on realignment. While in Tokyo, Assistant Secretary of State Kurt Campbell stressed that while the administration wants to stick with the current agreement, "We can’t dictate. We have to listen, and clearly the new government has committed to some reviews in terms of certain aspect of our alliance." Hardly a guarantee of renegotiation, but a marked change of tone from earlier remarks from spokesmen. Elsewhere, Derek Mitchell, deputy assistant secretary of defense for Asian-Pacific affairs, said that the administration is not alarmed over DPJ questions over how Japanese government contributions will be spent in Guam.

At the same time, the Obama administration may also not be particularly eager to rush to forge a new agreement before the end of the year. I expect that Okada may press for a new agreement to be ready when President Barack Obama visits Japan in November, but that strikes me a wildly optimistic.

At least Okada is aware that, in advance of his and Hatoyama's trip to the US this week, Japan cannot only say no and expect the US to be cooperative. Okada did rule out sending the JSDF to Afghanistan in an appearance on TV Asahi Sunday, but that comes as no surprise. But Prime Minister Hatoyama hopes to secure approval in New York for Japan's broadening its support for stabilizing the Afghan economy and society.

While Hatoyama will be the one speaking in New York, Okada has already made clear that he will be the man to listen to on the Hatoyama government's foreign policy. Okada, no less committed to the DPJ's foreign policy agenda, is clearly more realistic when it comes to his understanding of the give-and-take of the alliance relationship.

The DPJ contemplates its opening moves with the US

In a survey of candidates' political attitudes, Mainichi found that DPJ and Komeito candidates overlapped more than Komeito and LDP or LDP and DPJ candidates. Whether the policy affinities between DPJ and Komeito candidates presages cooperation between the two parties after the election will depend on other factors, but what interested me about this survey was what it revealed about the DPJ itself.

It is common to discuss the divisions in the DPJ, to assume that no matter how well the DPJ does in the general election the new DPJ government will run aground on the internal divisions of the ruling party. This assumption is due for a revision, and the Mainichi survey at least helps suggest otherwise.

Consider questions related to Japan's constitution. While a majority of DPJ candidates recognized the value of constitution revision generically, only around 20% approved of revising Article 9. Only a fraction more (25%) approved of reinterpreting Article 9 to permit the exercise of the right of collective self-defense. Or the dispatch of the JSDF to Afghanistan, approved by roughly 15% of DPJ candidates. The party is more divided on the general orientation of Japan's foreign policy, although a clear majority (62%) approved shifting the emphasis to Asia and a clear minority (18%) supported placing the most stress on the US-Japan alliance. It is not exactly clear what the remainder prefers. The DPJ is even more uniform on domestic policy.

The danger therefore is not paralysis but the opposite: that uniformity leads the party's leadership to take a more reckless course than it might do otherwise. Similarly, as MTC argues, there is the danger that because so many DPJ candidates are running on the basis of the manifesto, they will make it difficult for the party to back away from the manifesto when it inevitably conflicts with reality.

What will this mean for Japan's foreign policy? A DPJ government could be more confident in challenging the US than perhaps some observers expect. On the whole, I still don't expect the DPJ to spend much energy on foreign policy within its first year in office, but there are signs that the DPJ might actually attempt to follow through on its goal of halting the construction of a Futenma Replacement Facility in Heneko Bay as stipulated in the US-Japan agreement on realignment. Mainichi's survey did not include a question pertaining to realignment, but I would imagine that the party may be even more uniform in its opposition to the current plan than on some other foreign policy issues, because even pro-alliance hawks are skeptical of the arrangements for realignment.

Accordingly, Kan Naoto, on a visit to Okinawa (notice how the DPJ's most radical statements on foreign policy are always made in Okinawa), said that there is a "high possibility" of a discussion between the new prime minister and President Obama in September. What exactly does this mean? Will Hatoyama Yukio go to Washington upon taking office? I suppose it is possible, given that if elected he wants to attend the opening of the UN general assembly on 15 September (which assumes, of course, that Japan will have a new government by then). Kan said that there must be a relationship in which "the new prime minister" can speak from the heart with Obama. A desire for a heart-to-heart (building "fraternity" I suppose) is all well and good, but will that be enough? Having talked with enough working-level US officials who have been involved in negotiations related to Okinawa, I can imagine that Hatoyama's heartfelt plea would not be particularly welcome in Washington.

That does not mean it shouldn't be. Problems in the realignment plan continue to emerge, the latest being construction of housing on Guam for Marines relocated from Okinawa, and, more seriously, the Abercrombie amendment to the 2010 Defense Authorization act, which would restrict the use of foreign labor for construction related to the realignment and mandate that laborers be paid higher, Hawaiian construction wages. It is estimated that if passed the Abercrombie amendment would double the already $10 billion price tag for the relocation. On both the Guam and Okinawa ends the realignment plan strikes me as a disaster waiting to happen. It may be completed, but past its deadline, over budget, and having stirred up considerable bilateral acrimony in the meantime. It does seem like alternatives exist. I found this contribution by Peter Ennis of The Oriental Economist to NBR'S US-Japan forum of value: Ennis suggests that the helicopters should move to Kadena, that the only real obstacles are infighting between the US Air Force and the Marines and the need for a facility that could handle surge capacity in the event of a crisis. While the DPJ has said that it wants facilities out of Okinawa entirely, I think that the DPJ would settle for a move to Kadena in place of building an FRF. But as Ennis suggests, it's going to take executive leadership.

But Futenma wasn't the only bilateral issue Kan discussed while in Okinawa. Kan also criticized the foreign ministry for its secret agreements with the US, especially the agreement permitting the introduction of US nuclear weapons without consulting the Japanese government in advance. The foreign ministry itself denies the existence of secret agreements but says that there were negotiations of differing interpretations. But Hatoyama has decided to run with this issue, suggesting that just as in the case of Futenma what's necessary to resolve the matter is a heart to heart with Obama. Hatoyama seems convinced that he can simply persuade Obama to change US policy to accord with the three non-nuclear principles. (Don't the Japanese realize that there are at least two Obamas, if not more?) And yet, at the same time, only two days earlier Hatoyama said that maintaining the US nuclear umbrella is unavoidable. I preferred Hatoyama's position last month, when, in the face of the contradiction of the three non-nuclear principles and the US-Japan secret agreement, Hatoyama suggested that he would consider revising the principles to accord with reality.

I think the DPJ's leaders need to stop talking so much. Win the election first, put together a cabinet, and then decide what the best way to approach the US on these issues is. Keep talking and what remains of the DPJ's credibility will be gone before the party even takes office. It is revealing that Hatoyama is avoiding burasagari press conferences in order to avoid gaffes. The more Hatoyama and others speak, giving the impression as if policy has been set in stone, the more they will have to retract once a DPJ-led government actually forms.

Ozawa holds his ground

Earlier this week, I discussed the furor that greeted Ozawa Ichiro's remarks about the reduction of US forces in Japan.

The LDP, unable to resist the urge to go on the offensive for a change, immediately jumped to condemn Ozawa's remarks as dangerously naive.

"It's unrealistic," said Kawamura Takeo, chief cabinet secretary.

"Nothing but irrational," said Machimura Nobutaka, former chief cabinet secretary and foreign minister and head of the Machimura faction.

Aso Taro weighed in too: "A person who has some knowledge of defense affairs would by no means say such things."

Ozawa answered this criticism with a degree of perplexity, saying that it was a "natural" matter for discussion, that "if Japan carries out as a great a role as it can, the US burden can shrink, as can the US presence in Japan." He also said that he was not saying that Japan should commit to intervention in crises in the Korean Peninsula or the Taiwan Straits.

This whole debate has a farcical quality to it, as so much in Japanese politics does today. The LDP, a party whose founding statement calls for the restoration of Japan's independence, whose list of basic policies describes itself as committed to Japan's defending itself, a party whose leader two years ago was committed to revising Japan's constitution in order to guarantee its independence, is in little position to criticize Ozawa without ignoring the efforts of a good portion of its members over the past fifty years to achieve greater autonomy from the US (within the confines of the alliance, of course). I wonder what Kishi Nobusuke, leader of the faction from which the Machimura faction is directly descended, would say to his successor's calling the idea of Japan's playing a greater role in its own defense with a smaller US presence "irrational." Or for that matter what Yoshida Shigeru, the prime minister's grandfather, would say, seeing as how he did not view the idea of Japan's being dependent on the US for its defense as a permanent arrangement.

There are reasons to question Ozawa's statements. I offered some myself in my initial post. Nevertheless, why shouldn't his ideas be seriously engaged by LDP leaders, instead of dismissed as ignorant or irrational? Are US forces meant to be stationed in Japan permanently? Is it sensible to count on that being the case? What is the appropriate level of forward-deployed US forces on Japanese soil? This is precisely the kind of debate Japan needs to be having as the Marines prepare to relocate from Okinawa to Guam. Ozawa may not be acting in good faith, but Nakagawa Hidenao has it exactly right: this is the kind of thing that should be debated in question time on the floor of the Diet and other public settings by Japan's leaders. Even if Ozawa is wrong, the subject shouldn't be dismissed as so controversial as to be beyond discussion.

Why shouldn't Japanese politicians debate whether some day, sooner or later, it might want to or need to play a greater role in defending itself, and if so, how it will go about paying for it, what contingencies it will prepare for, what capabilities it will require, whether it will have to revise the constitution, what role the alliance should play in the region, what role Japan should play in the alliance, etc.? And why should it wait for something drastic to happen before having this debate? Even if for the foreseeable future it is unlikely that there will be drastic changes to the status quo, it bears having this debate. It will not be settled conclusively now or in an election campaign or even under a DPJ government (should one form), but Japan must have a debate on the questions raised by Ozawa. His remark was more or less designed to raise debate, seeing as how he offered nothing specific about how or when Japanese capabilities should replace US conventional forces in Japan.

But the LDP, facing death, cannot bring itself to engage in this debate. Instead its leaders condemn Ozawa in the hopes of getting some political traction out of this issue, hoping to paint Ozawa and the DPJ as untrustworthy and anti-American. In the process, Aso, Machimura, and others have illustrated the cognitive dissonance undoubtedly felt by Japanese conservatives, who are now wedded to a vision of the US-Japan alliance grounded in ever closer cooperation even as their first principles lead them to desire greater autonomy and remilitarization.

Building on Ozawa's argument, Sasayama Tatsuo — a onetime Diet member who followed Ozawa out of the LDP and remained with him until 2000 when he lost as a Liberal Party candidate — argues that with the economic crisis clouding the future, it is only sensible that Japan consider what it would do in the absence of US military power. This is a future that may not come to pass, especially seeing as how Japan may find itself even more constrained militarily than the US, but I see little harm in Ozawa's broaching the subject.

What is Ozawa's angle?

Ozawa Ichiro, a week after his meeting with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, has focused attention once again on the DPJ's approach to the US-Japan alliance, a day after two prominent DPJ members gave their own perspectives on the future of the alliance (mentioned in this post).

Speaking with reporters Wednesday, Ozawa indicated that under a DPJ government Japan would seek to build an equal partnership with the US, which he said would entail reducing the US military presence in Japan to the Seventh Fleet, based at Yokosuka in Kanagawa prefecture. It would also mean Japan's taking greater responsibility for its own defense, while the US military focused on providing stability in East Asia.

MTC wonders whether Ozawa, in calling for this drastic reduction in the US forward presence, is bargaining with China, with a drastic reduction of US forces in Japan a means of taking Japan out of China's line of sight. In this sense one should pair these remarks with Ozawa's remarks earlier this week about China-centered foreign policy.

But there are a number of other perspectives from which to consider these comments. Indeed, knowing Ozawa, invariably he is sending different messages to different actors.

First, given Ozawa's emphasis on winning the next election, it bears asking what political significance these remarks have. Perhaps this is simply Ozawa's way of signaling that despite his meeting with Clinton last week, his government, should it ever exist, will not be a US dependency. What I wonder is just how salient this position is. Not having talked to voters in the regions where Ozawa has been traveling, I cannot say for certain, but I cannot but wonder what Ozawa is hearing from the voters with whom he has been interacting for the past several years. Is he consistently hearing abiding skepticism of the alliance as it has been managed under the LDP? Does this message play in the chiho? Will taking this position actually improve the DPJ's performance in the next general election? If so, that simply makes Ozawa no different than any other democratic politician. And if it's the case, then the US has a bigger problem than Ozawa's "independent" line. A long-term US presence in Japan is unsustainable if a broad swath of the public — and not just in the communities hosting the bases — does not see a reason for it. The Obama administration better get an ambassador to Tokyo quick to start repairing the damage, if the president means what he says about the alliance.

Second, it bears asking how this enhances Ozawa's position within the DPJ and the opposition more broadly. As numerous commentators have noted and concluded that the DPJ is doomed to collapse, Ozawa, now and should he become prime minister, has to balance between vastly divergent views on Japan's national security. The DPJ has effectively internalized the cold-war era political cleavage structure within its ranks. With these remarks, Ozawa has said nothing that members of the more hawkish sections of the party haven't already said. Go back and read this speech by Nagashima Akihisa, one of the most prominent DPJ hawks, given in the Diet in March 2007. Nagashima stresses the importance of Japan's regaining its independence by becoming less dependent on the US for its own defense, while recognizing the importance of the US foreign presence in providing regional public goods (for which the naval forward presence is critical). In his formulation, in wartime the US bears the risks, while in peacetime Japan bears the costs; his desire is to correct this imbalance. I'm not sure whether this formula is quite accurate — the US bears plenty of the alliance's peacetime costs simply by virtue of its military expenditures, while Japan would bear wartime risks by virtue of hosting US troops — but it does capture the thinking of the DPJ's hawks.

Naturally Ozawa has to give the occasional nod in their direction, for the sake of party unity. The reaction of Social Democrats, to say nothing of the JCP, shows that Ozawa cannot go too far in this direction, because should the DPJ form a government, it will need the SDPJ's votes in the upper house even if it can govern independently in the lower house. Emphasizing Japan's independence from the US while stressing the need for taking a greater responsibility for Japan's defense may be Ozawa's attempt to split the difference.

But this need for balance shows that no matter what Ozawa says, radical change in the US-Japan security relationship and Japanese foreign policy will not occur under his watch, not least because foreign policy remains an extremely low priority for the Japanese public. Any radical step in any direction will likely be met with opposition from within the party — turmoil that an LDP in opposition could exploit — and so Ozawa will likely take care to proceed deliberately and gingerly on security policy. A further reason to believe that the DPJ will make few drastic changes in security policy is the defense budget. With a number of expensive promises of far greater importance to Japanese voters, would a DPJ government truly be willing to reverse the decade-long decline in the defense budget and commit the resources to the JSDF that would be necessary were Ozawa's vision to come to fruition?

In sum, under the DPJ, the status quo on security will remain. With the Obama administration's willingness to develop non-security dimensions of the relationship, that may do just fine.

That being said, Ozawa's remarks may simply be a way of negotiating with the US over Okinawa. Why should we being quibbling over this location or that location in Okinawa, Ozawa implies, when we could be discussing about the US military presence holistically? I am certain that as unpleasant as US officials have found negotiations with Tokyo over Okinawa, they would dread a discussion over a drastic reduction of the US military presence in mainland Japan, especially given US investments in realignment at Yokota, Zama, and elsewhere. By threatening to escalate the discussion, Ozawa may be trying to get a major concession from the US, namely the Futenma Replacement Facility that is a major obstacle to concluding the 2006 realignment agreement (I guess now I should say the 2009 realignment agreement), and with it the presence of US Marines in Okinawa. I doubt this tactic will work, largely for the aforementioned reasons about why the US could easily call Ozawa's bluff, but it bears mentioning as a possible explanation for Ozawa's remarks.

Finally, it bears mentioning that Ozawa has been consistent over time in his belief in the importance of an independent defense posture and the ability of Japan to defend itself. Ozawa is not a pacifist and he is not philo-American, although that does not make him anti-American. Ozawa is first and foremost concerned with Japan and its national interests. At heart he believes in the importance of Japan's being able to defend itself and, moreover, not cooperating with the US in areas that he believes are not in Japan's interests. He has consistently emphasized the importance of formulating policy on the basis of the national interest and has criticized the LDP for neglecting the same. Some might disagree with his assessment of Japan's national interests, but he is clearly thinking along these lines.

Obama's Asia team takes shape

The Japanese establishment is undoubtedly breathing a sigh of relief following the announcement of the Obama administration's prospective Asia policy team, including the ambassador to Japan.

Not surprisingly, Kurt Campbell, reportedly close to Hillary Clinton, will succeed Christopher Hill as the assistant secretary of state for East Asia and the Pacific. Marine General Wallace Gregson (ret.), who retired as the commander of US Marines in the Pacific, will succeed James Shinn for Asia affairs at the Pentagon. Jeffrey Bader, a China specialist at the Brookings Institution and a foreign policy adviser for the Obama campaign, will be senior director for Asia at the National Security Council. And in perhaps the most noteworthy pick, Harvard Professor Joseph Nye will head to Tokyo to serve as ambassador.

Worried Japanese elites can take comfort in this lineup. Change, it seems, is for matters other than Asia policy.

While some press reports have called attention to Professor Nye's ideas about soft power, it is worth asking whether the Joseph Nye being sent to Tokyo is the "soft power" Joseph Nye or the Joseph Nye who was the architect of the 1996 version of the US-Japan alliance, the prime mover in the Democratic Party in the shift to remake the alliance into a more robust security partnership. Dr. Campbell, his deputy in the 1990s, may be an even more enthusiastic proponent of the Armitage-Nye vision of the alliance than Professor Nye himself. (Dr. Campbell and Michael Green, onetime colleagues at CSIS, have for a time been something of a bipartisan duo on the alliance.) As Dr. Campbell told me when I interviewed him for my master's thesis (2006), "What we’ve had over the past five years is a high level of engagement between the US and Japan that is unprecedented: a high level of engagement on a set of strategic issues in terms of bases, out of area activities and the like that is truly unprecedented, and extraordinarily impressive and it will be hard to match in the future."

So the Campbell-Nye team — with Professor Nye reporting to Dr. Campbell this time around — will undoubtedly reassure Japan's elites that their voices will still be heard in Washington. General Gregson, meanwhile, as commander of Marines in Okinawa and then the Pacific as a whole, is intimately familiar with issues related to the realignment of US forces in Japan and will ensure active leadership on the issue from the Pentagon.

I wonder, however, whether this team will be capable of moving the alliance in the direction I think it should go. Both Professor Nye and Dr. Campbell may ultimately be too connected with the status quo to push for a dramatic departure from the Bush administration's approach.

That said, I'm not completely without hope. I think even from Tokyo Professor Nye will be the central player in the debate over the alliance's future. While he played a leading role in building the 1996 alliance, his views are far more subtle than the China hawks who have made use of the framework he developed in the mid-1990s. Professor Nye — with Robert Keohane a major proponent of the idea of mutual interdependence — argued that the alliance could not simply be about containing China, that while strengthening the alliance was part of the equation, the decisions made by the allies would influence the character of China's rise. That is even more true today. As ambassador, Professor Nye could be instrumental in moving towards a bilateral approach to China that transcends security matters. He is trusted in Tokyo, and if he learns to listen more than his predecessor, his appointment could be a critical turning point for the alliance.

Given the likelihood that Professor Nye could be dealing with a DPJ-led government from early in his ambassadorship, I hope his first goal is building a new relationship with the leading opposition party. Jun Okumura suggests that the Obama administration will put pressure on the DPJ to change what he calls its "fantasy of a foreign and national security policy." I think Okumura is being a bit unfair to the DPJ. I have criticized Ozawa Ichiro in the past for his loopy foreign policy ideas (see this post), but I also think that one can go too far in criticizing the DPJ based on the outlandish statements of one DPJ politician or another. Insofar as we can tell, a DPJ government's foreign policy would involve a bit more assertiveness on the realignment question — the DPJ has indicated that it wants to revise the 2006 roadmap and the DPJ is reluctant to commit Japanese funds to Guam construction, certainly not without more assurances that Japanese money will be used properly — and greater focus on working with China and other Asian powers on regional cooperation. A DPJ-led government may be reluctant to commit the JSDF to combat missions abroad, suggesting a retreat from the globalization of the alliance during the "golden age." But is this such a bad thing? Have Japan's symbolic contributions abroad done anything more than provide cover for the Bush administration, while antagonizing segments of the Japanese public (as seen in Mr. Morita's book)? The US needs to work on rebuilding the alliance so that it rests on more than a narrow partnership between Washington and Tokyo elites. Not acting imperious to the DPJ is a good way to start building the new partnership. (For more on the DPJ's foreign policy, see this post.)

To sum up, I think there are reasons to hope that the Obama Asia team will introduce some change to an alliance badly in need of it. They are certainly familiar enough with Japanese concerns, but hopefully their familiarity will enable them to work forthrightly with Japanese officials of whatever party to find new avenues of cooperation that recognize Japan's limitations instead issuing demands to Japan's government. After the Bush administration sided with Japanese elites while alienating the Japanese public, the Obama administration has an opportunity to repair the damage and build a new relationship.

UPDATE: I may be premature in considering Professor Nye as ambassador. However, perhaps this post makes the case for why he should take the job.

Guam recedes into the distance

A US official has finally admitted that it is unlikely that the US and Japan will meet the 2014 target date for initiating the relocation of US Marines from Okinawa to Guam.

Admiral Timothy Keating, commander of US Pacific Command, was in New York City last week, where he reviewed the state of the Defense Policy Review Initiative (DPRI). In his remarks, he acknowledged that in light of the financial situation in both countries, it is likely that "it'll take a little bit longer to effect – we won’t be done by 2014, or maybe even 2015, but it’s about a decade in execution."

Admiral Keating's admission is the first such admission — to my knowledge — from a senior US official involved with the process. It confirms the picture presented by the Government Accountability Office in its report on Guam. I still think the official view is too optimistic. I see too many potential obstacles to be confident that the process will be implemented according to schedule and according to plan. The biggest question in my mind is what happens if and when the DPJ forms a government. The DPJ's "Okinawa vision" paper — discussed in this post — strongly suggests that should the DPJ take power, it will seek to revise the 2006 agreement.

For now, the extent of the delay will depend on the makeup of President-elect Obama's Asia policy team. If the bulk of Asia policy positions go to China or Korea hands, I would suggest that the outlook for realignment is grim indeed. Realignment will proceed smoothly only if the foreign policy team is seeded with individuals intimately familiar with the issues at stake and capable of making the case for why it is essential that the realignment must proceed as soon as possible. (And, I hope, be willing to consider doing it unilaterally if Japan drags its feet.)

But even with the right people in place the outlook isn't good for Guam. In the current environment, it will be hard to get the necessary support from Congress and the upper levels of the administration.

Japan may have to accept that the Marines may be in Okinawa for longer than expected.

General Rice criticizes the Japanese media (implicitly)

Your humble blogger was invited to attend a media roundtable with Lieutenant General Edward Rice, United States Air Force, the commander of US Forces Japan (previously discussed here), the sole "new media" representative sitting around a table with wire service correspondents and reporters from the major Japanese newspapers and TV networks.

The meeting wasn't General Rice's first with the press: he emphasized his desire to maintain an open channel of communication, especially with the vernacular media.

In his brief opening statement, the general expressed his belief in the strength of the US-Japan alliance, reiterated remarks by President Bush on the alliance's being the cornerstone of US foreign and security policy in Northeast Asia, and thanked Japan's coast guard and National Police Agency for the help they provided in guarding US bases before and during the G8 summit. He then shifted gears and provided an update on USFJ's efforts to combat crime by US service personnel stationed in Japan. He emphasized that USFJ takes crimes by US personnel extremely seriously, and is continuously looking to strengthen measures to prevent serious crimes and hold perpetrators accountable for their actions. But he also made a point similar to an argument made previously by Jun Okumura. US personnel in Japan, General Rice said, have half the crime rate of the crime rate for the Japanese general public. He stressed that there is no way to prevent crime entirely, but noted that US safeguards have been tremendously successful. He noted that the US has prosecuted service personnel for crimes in instances when Japanese courts would not have prosecuted. US service men and women are here to serve the alliance, he said, and the vast majority of them adhere to the high standards of the US military.

It is hard to read this as anything but a message to Japanese media to tone down sensationalist coverage of crimes by US military personnel and put said crimes in perspective, perspective both in the sense of the overall crime levels in Japan and in the sense of the benefits to Japan from having US forces forward deployed in Japan (namely the savings to Japan in terms of not having to spend as much on defense as it would have to otherwise). This impression was reinforced in General Rice's answers to questions about crime.

Will they get the message?

Meanwhile, I asked the general about the progress on realignment and his thoughts on the DPJ's latest "Okinawa Vision" paper. The DPJ released its latest statement on Okinawa policy last week, in which the DPJ provided a far more detailed and comprehensive statement on Okinawa than its previous vision paper (discussed here). The position on the realignment of US forces in Okinawa — and by extension US forces in Japan — can be found starting from p. 3, in the section covering the DPJ's policies in four areas. Realignment is the first area.

The DPJ once again emphasizes the need to reduce the US presence in Okinawa as much as entirely possible. Once again the DPJ wants to remove US forces first from Okinawa, and then from Japan, although it adds a proviso stipulating that this process will "be based on changes in the strategic environment." But the document proceeds to explain DPJ policies in eight areas related to the alliance that would mark a significant break from the LDP approach. Tellingly, the document does not mention the 2006 roadmap on realignment, suggesting that a DPJ-led government would look to start from scratch and cut the US presence in Okinawa even more drastically than under the terms of the 2006 agreement.

First, the DPJ wants to revise the Status of Forces agreement with the US, and together with the SDPJ and the PNP submitted a proposal to the government earlier this year (which the government dismissed). This plan would have the US military submit a plan on base usage every eight years, hold the US responsible for providing restitution for environment damage caused by US military activities, prohibit low-altitude flights, have only the lowest necessary level of air-traffic control at US bases, have service personnel living off-base register as resident aliens, and give Japanese authorities primary jurisdiction for off-base crimes and use Japanese facilities to intern suspects, and make the US 100% responsible for providing restitution for crimes committed by US service personnel, US military employees, or their families.

Second, the plan calls for the return of more US facilities in Okinawa — especially logistics and communications facilities in urban areas and unusued land — to Japan. The DPJ wants to hasten the suspension of flights from Futenma in the interest of reducing the danger to citizens of surrounding communities.

Third, the DPJ reiterated the concerns about how Japan's host-nation support (HNS) is used by the US military, concerns that led the DPJ to allow HNS to lapse for one month at the start of the current fiscal year. It calls for a more accountability and transparency in how Japanese money is used.

Other demands include provisions related to the redevelopment of Okinawa following the reversion of bases, greater participation by prefectural and local authorities in talks on the bases, the elimination of US military noise pollution, and the use of Okinawa as a headquarters for peace and stability operations by international organizations.

Missing from these proposals is any indication of how a DPJ government would convince the US to accept these demands. Despite the use of the word "vision," there is little vision in this document, at least in terms of how realignment will (and should) impact the US-Japan alliance. Few if any of these changes can be implemented unilaterally. It will depend on negotiation with US military and diplomatic officials. Is the DPJ prepared for that? Do they have an idea of how they would get what they want in negotiations? Much of this report has to be classified as electioneering by the DPJ — making a less than reliable guide to how a DPJ government might act once in power — but it is still the best indication we have of what the DPJ will do with the 2006 agreement.

General Rice gave no sign that USFJ is reaching out to the DPJ and looking to open a channel of communication in the hope of forestalling an antagonistic relationship if and when the DPJ forms a government. He said, "We will work with the Government of Japan as it exists today. It is not helpful to speculate." He was optimistic about the implementation of the 2006 roadmap, stating that he expected it to be implemented on schedule, with the Marines in Okinawa leaving for Guamn in 2013 as planned.

I hope that USFJ will reconsider its attitude towards the DPJ. Obviously it shouldn't shift policy now in anticipation of a DPJ victory that might never come, but it is important that the military deepen its ties with the DPJ in the hopes of preventing the DPJ from running against the US military. By the same measure, if the DPJ is serious about governing Japan, it should be looking to develop its own ties with USFJ. US forces are part of the political environment in Japan, like it or not, and the DPJ must be prepared to negotiate in good faith should it have the opportunity to form a government.

I'm not convinced that the latest Okinawa vision is a demonstration of the DPJ's good faith.

An Ozawa indiscretion?

Ozawa Ichiro's comments on the US decision to proceed with removing North Korea from the list of state sponsors of terrorism — mentioned here in passing — have apparently caused a tempest in Washington, as US Asia watchers have taken issue with his claim that the US "never" takes Japan's wishes into account when making decisions.

Wrote Chris Nelson, eponymous author of the Nelson Report, the indispensable newsletter on US Asia policy:

Japan's political leadership has never successfully restored adult supervision in balancing the DPRK's nuclear weapons and offensive missile threat vs the heartbreaking humanitarian issue of the "abductees."

As a consequence, Japan has played itself out of a central role in dealing with its most obvious strategic threat, and has compounded the failure by blaming it all on the US.

Opposition leader Ozawa today distinguished himself by saying that Bush's decision to start the de-listing process, in order to proceed with the de-nuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, shows that "...Japanese people now realize that the United States never takes into consideration Japan's wishes when making a decision."

Never?

I have a hard time taking issue with this interpretation of the split on North Korea; I made the same argument earlier this week in this post.

I will attempt, however, to defend Mr. Ozawa from detractors in Washington who have jumped on this latest remark as more evidence of a pronounced anti-American streak in Mr. Ozawa's thinking that will taint the foreign policy of an Ozawa-led DPJ government.

What is Mr. Ozawa's purpose in making this statement?

In all likelihood, Mr. Ozawa made this statement with domestic considerations in mind. Indeed, everything that Mr. Ozawa says and does should be considered in light of its consequences for the DPJ's position in the next general election. Will the position outlined help or hurt the DPJ in its campaign to unseat the LDP? Mr. Ozawa today is the consummate political animal. That may not have been the case at one time, when he was the great hope for reformers domestically and alliance managers in Washington who thought that under his leadership Japan might become a normal nation.

As Shiota Ushio wrote of the DPJ's embrace of Mr. Ozawa in Minshuto no kenkyu:

Ozawa has been called an 'ideas and policy politician.' More than this, the hidden side of the 'political situation and political game politician' is Ozawa's true self.

On the other hand, the 'ideas and policy DPJ' has structural flaws as a party, being conspicuously weak and fragile in its ability to respond to the political situation, its governance and management abilities, its election strategy, and its organization. Does 'political situation and political game Ozawa' plan to remake the DPJ's longstanding image as a 'ideas and policy party,' and with that, does he aim to fix the DPJ's structural flaws and strengthen the party?" (269-270)

Mr. Ozawa's behavior in the two years since taking control of the DPJ — and Mr. Shiota's own analysis — suggest that the answer to both questions is yes. For Mr. Ozawa, political calculations take priority over policy considerations, a trait that has frustrated certain DPJ members and American Japan hands to no end.

Accordingly, his statement on the US government's never taking into account the wishes of the Japanese people is less a criticism of the US government than of the LDP for its handling of the US-Japan alliance. A report at the DPJ website of the press conference where Mr. Ozawa made this statement provides context for the remark, context that is lacking from the Mainichi article from which Mr. Nelson quoted.

At the press conference — which, it is important to note, was held in Okinawa — Mr. Ozawa spoke on the alliance at length, not just on the Korean question. He addressed problems with the realignment of US forces in Japan, and in Okinawa in particular. His speaking in Okinawa should immediately set off a red flag. As noted previously, the DPJ has struggled in Okinawa in the past (Okinawa's lower house delegation currently has no DPJ members) and has tailored its policies on the realignment of US forces in Okinawa accordingly. Therefore, it is no surprise that in his remarks he embedded his criticism of the US shift on North Korea in a discussion of the problems with US bases in Okinawa and the status of forces agreement.

"To have a true alliance relationship, it is absolutely necessary that it be equal," he said. He then proceeded to criticize the LDP for failing to create a more equal alliance: "Under the current LDP administration, the US-Japan alliance cannot be called an alliance. This SOFA makes that perfectly clear."

It is this thread — that the LDP has failed in its management of the alliance — that runs throughout Mr. Ozawa's remarks in this press conference. Mr. Ozawa was primarily concerned with criticizing the LDP and making the case for a DPJ government to an Okinawan audience; he was not necessarily criticizing the US, at least not on North Korea.

Indeed, Mr. Ozawa recognizes that the US will make policy decisions based on its own assessment of its interests. He reserves his criticism instead for the LDP and its allies in the bureaucracy, both of whom he claims failed to recognize how the US makes its decisions.

"The decision by our largest ally America to lift [the terror sponsor designation] is a decision based on its own national interests and global strategy," he said.

"It is a tragedy for the Japanese people and a tragedy of LDP-Komeito politics that the government, that the bureaucracy has no recognition of this."

In short, Mr. Ozawa was making an election pitch to the people of Okinawa in this press conference. He was arguing that LDP governments over the past seven years have failed to stand up for Japan and have failed to articulate and defend Japan's national interests, preferring instead to hope that the US will defend Japan's national interests. Again, his position is less critical of the US for "abandoning" Japan than critical of LDP-led governments for leaving Japan in a position to feel abandoned in the first place.

In light of my own argument about the inequities in the US-Japan alliance, I am extremely sympathetic to Mr. Ozawa's argument here. The alliance is unequal. LDP governments have been overly solicitious of the US. The alliance will be stronger if Japan learns to say no when it disagrees with the US. Japan should not expect the alliance to function like a Japanese interpersonal relationship, a complex set of obligations accumulated over time that will enmesh the two countries indefinitely. What Japan's policymakers may come to realize from the North Korea shift is that past support for the US (in Iraq, for example) is no guarantee of reciprocal support for Japan in areas deemed vital to Japanese national interests (the abductions issue, for example). Future Japanese governments — LDP or DPJ — will likely take this lesson to heart and will likely be less forthcoming with support for the US unless (1) Japanese interests are clearly at stake or (2) there is an explicit quid-pro-quo.

Moreover, I should mention that Mr. Ozawa's position is likely a popular one. Insofar as the Japanese people are interested in foreign policy — and that's not particularly far — they are dismayed with the government's failure to stand up for Japan in its relations with other countries, whether China, North Korea, South Korea, or the United States. "Standing up for Japan" is a matter of style, not policy; Japanese citizens seem to desire a government that speaks out in defense of its interests and forcefully challenges insults to Japan's honor.

So would foreign policy be much different under a Prime Minister Ozawa? Probably not. In his remarks, Mr. Ozawa promised to listen to the people of Okinawa and solve the problem of US bases in Okinawa. He offers no hint of what this would entail (apparently not the 2006 realignment agreement?). He calls for an equal alliance with the US, but offers little hint for how to get there. Presumably in the event of a US-led war, Japanese involvement would depend on a UN security council resolution, as Mr. Ozawa has said on a number of occasions. An Ozawa government would undoubtedly look for closer ties with other regional powers, not least China.

But like the Fukuda government, a DPJ-led government would be overwhelmingly focused on "livelihood" issues — to borrow from the DPJ's 2007 election campaign, a DPJ government would be a seikatsu daiichi government. Foreign policy issues would take a back seat to fixing the welfare and healthcare systems and reforming the political system through redistricting to enhance the DPJ's long-term electoral prospects. An Ozawa government would not expend significant amounts of political capital on foreign policy, meaning that for better or worse the core of the US-Japan alliance would remain unchanged. It would probably be less global in its activities, but otherwise the US would remain Japan's leading ally in the region, and vice versa.

Would it be preferable for Mr. Ozawa to avoid hyperbolic remarks? Yes, of course, but observers must be aware of the reasoning behind his remarks and not rush to conclusions about the policy implications.

Guam, Okinawa, and the fate of realignment

The Joint Guam Program Office, the US Department of Defense office responsible for drawing up plans for the expansion of US military facilities on Guam to accommodate the forthcoming influx of US military personnel, has a new website.

For a look at the scale of the on-base construction project — the project to which the Japanese government will contribute — the JGPO has a draft of its master plan (PDF) available that shows the extent of the task at hand.

Meanwhile, Japanese democracy may have dealt its latest blow to the realignment as the Okinawan voters delivered control of their prefectural assembly to the opposition.

The DPJ, which currently has no representative from Okinawa in either chamber of the Diet, increased its representation in the prefectural assembly from one to four in this election, and is looking for ways to enhance its electoral performance in Okinawa. Not surprisingly, it has staked out a position opposing the relocation of the US base at Futenma to Nago city, an integral step in the bilateral roadmap for realignment. As Hatoyama Yukio said Monday, "The emphasis of the DPJ and other opposition parties has been that the transfer should be not to Nago city but outside the prefecture...First we are groping for a transfer outside the prefecture, and after that we are aiming for transfer outside the country."

With a DPJ or DPJ-led coalition government a distinct possibility in the near future, US authorities should steel themselves for the inevitable calls for revision of the realignment roadmap that would accompany the DPJ's ascension to power. The DPJ's "Okinawa Vision" is a bit dated; released in 2005, it does not appear to have been edited to acknowledge the promulgation of the 2006 roadmap. But the document shows a DPJ hostile to the idea of continuing US presence in Okinawa — and somehow I don't think the "transfer to the mainland first, then transfer out of the country" model would be politically tenable (cf. Iwakuni). At the same time, the DPJ is willing to consider POMCUS, the prepositioning of material configured in unit sets, to enable Okinawa to provide surge capacity for the US Military in the event of a crisis in the region.

That said, as long as the DPJ contains a multiplicity of views on security policy and the alliance, its position on Okinawa will likely be tempered by the need to hold the party together.

But the reality remains: the more Japanese democracy evolves, the more the US-Japan alliance will come under public scrutiny, the more the public will seek to revise or abandon deals made by LDP governments in the absence of oversight. The US military and the US government can either resist the change, or they can accept it and embrace the need to make their case directly to the Japanese people — and accept that more radical change in the configuration of US forces in Japan may be necessary in the future.

Gates in Asia

Robert Gates, the US secretary of defense, is in Asia for the Shangri-La Dialogue, an annual meeting of defense ministers in Singapore. Mr. Gates has also stopped in Guam, and will visit Thailand and South Korea before returning to the US.

Before addressing the substance of the secretary's swing through the region, it is worth pointing that there is something unfortunate about Gates's tenure at the Pentagon. Like Fukuda Yasuo, Mr. Gates may be the right man for his job, but at the wrong time, coming into power too late to implement the changes that he feels must be made in US defense policy. Mr. Gates has given considerable thoughts on the way forward for US defense policy more broadly and US Asia policy specifically — but he may ultimately have too little time at the Pentagon to make a lasting impact on policy.

At Shangri-La, Mr. Gates showed that he has given serious thought to the changing nature of US Asia policy, and acknowledges that US power in Asia may be best applied in concert, not just in the postwar bilateral alliances, but in multilateral vehicles that may even include China. He clearly rejects a simplistic "stop China" approach to US Asia policy.

In his speech in Singapore he spoke in detail about the changing nature of the US role in Asia. He called for a continuing commitment to an open Asia, with transparent security relations that reduce the potential for misperceptions and misunderstandings (remarks undoubtedly aimed at China) and emphasized that the US is a "resident power" in Asia and will thus remain committed to an active role in Asia. The note Mr. Gates sounded is not of an America in retreat from Asia but of an America playing a quieter but no less effective role in the region as it allows its Asian partners to take the lead in shaping the regional security environment. (Perhaps this is a Nixon Doctrine redux.)

Accordingly, the US will work to strengthen and utilize all available foreign policy tools, not just its military power: "Asia in recent years marks a shift that reflects new thinking in overall US defense strategy. We are building partner-nation capacity so friends can better defend themselves. While preserving all of our conventional military deterrence abilities as traditionally understood, we have become more attentive to both 'hard' and 'soft' elements of national power, where military, diplomatic, economic, cultural, and humanitarian elements fold into one another to ensure better long-term security based on our own capabilities and those of our partners."

Mr. Gates clearly appreciates that US power must be used in connection with the broader aim of preserving stability (and thus promoting further economic growth) in Asia. While the US and Japan repeated their call for greater transparency from China, Mr. Gates's message was on the whole positive and constructive.

To his credit, Ishiba Shigeru, Japan's defense minister, emphasized the need for Japan to contribute to stability in the region in his remarks at Shangri-La. Mr. Ishiba acknowledged that Japan's qualified acceptance of its wartime wrongdoings has complicated relations with its Asian neighbors, complications that must be addressed if Japan is to use the JSDF to contribute to peace and stability in the region.

The challenge of making the case for a responsible Japan will become more urgent as 2014 approaches, as US Marines leave Okinawa for Guam and necessarily yield greater responsibility for the defense of Japan to the JSDF.

It is no clearer, however, whether Guam will be ready by 2014.

Secretary Gates acknowledged the importance of the realignment in his Shangri-La address — "Our Asian friends, whether or not they are formally allied to us, welcome our growing presence on Guam. As the island’s new facilities take shape in coming years, they will be increasingly multilateral in orientation, with training opportunities and possible pre-positioning of assets" — and while touring Guam on his way to Singapore.

In Guam, the secretary met with local officials, including Felix Camacho, the governor, to discuss the daunting infrastructure project facing the US and Japanese governments, as well as the government of Guam, in preparing Guam to receive a massive influx of US military personnel (the bulk of which will be Marine elements relocated from Okinawa). The question remains whether the job can be done by 2014.

In a meeting with Ishiba Shigeru, his Japanese counterpart, in Singapore, Mr. Gates and Mr. Ishiba agreed that the realignment must proceed as scheduled. But there are a number of potential bottlenecks that could delay or derail the whole process: the environmental impact assessment in Okinawa related to the construction of the Futenma replacement facility (FRF); the environmental impact assessment in Guam, not due to be completed until 2010; the budget processes in both the US and Japan (neither government has appropriated funds for Guam construction yet); and Guam's civilian infrastructure, which left as is could hinder the effectiveness of relocated US forces. These obstacles are by no means fatal, but they will not be overcome without sustained attention from Washington.

That is the challenge for Asia policy as a whole. While Mr. Gates is right to note that the US is a resident Asian power (i.e., it will not be withdrawing from Asia anytime soon), the quality of US engagement in Asia can clearly vary. Sustained, high-level attention is essential if the US is to play a constructive role in Asia along the lines envisioned by Secretary Gates.