The Hatoyama government tackles the alliance early

With US President Barack Obama scheduled to visit Japan at the start of an East Asian swing in November — he will stop in Tokyo before going to Singapore for APEC and then concluding his trip with meetings in China and South Korea — the Hatoyama government is working hard to hammer out positions on the two major sticking points between the DPJ and the US government, the future of the refueling mission in the Indian Ocean and the Futenma question.

Regarding the former, Nagashima Akihisa, parliamentary secretary for defense, made waves this week when, in a speech in his Tokyo constituency Monday, he argued that the refueling mission ought to continue with a new mandate from the Diet. [Full disclosure: I have met with Nagashima on a number of occasions.]

In response, Nagashima was warned by his superior, Defense Minister Kitazawa Toshimi, by Consumer Affairs Minister and Social Democratic Party head Fukushima Mizuho, and most significantly, by Hirano Hirofumi, the chief cabinet secretary, who stressed that it is for the government to decide policy in this area. In a meeting Wednesday morning Hirano advised caution from Nagashima.

Perhaps Nagashima should not have used a speech in his constituency to advance an argument for a position that appeared to be at odds with the government's. (I say appeared because officially the government's position on Afghanistan remains to be decided — all we know is that the refueling mission will not be "simply" extended.) But just as was the case with Kamei Shizuka's comments about the debt repayment moratorium for small- and medium-sized enterprises, every note of discord within the Hatoyama government should not be a cause for alarm and an occasion for critics to declare that the government is out of control. As I've argued before, no government is free of disagreement: the important thing is how dissent is handled.

As the Hatoyama government decides what to do about Afghanistan — it will need to be in a position to offer something to Obama when he visits Japan — Nagashima should be included in the discussion on the basis of his distinct position on the issue, and the fact that he is well-connected in Washington (not to mention that his substantial security policy expertise). And I suspect he will contribute to the debate within the government, although perhaps in a less visible manner henceforth. Simply silencing dissenters (if that's even the right word) will not be to the government's benefit.

The problem for the government on Futenma is different, being less a matter of dealing with internal disagreements than with the uncomfortable reality that the Hatoyama government is trapped between a US government uninterested in renegotiating and an Okinawan public that wants the matter resolved. Accordingly, Prime Minister Hatoyama Yukio hinted that the DPJ would be willing to reconsider its position and accept the bilateral agreement on realignment. Bloomberg reports that US Ambassador to Japan John Roos said that the Obama administration will not renegotiate the agreement on relocating Futenma, although from the article it is unclear whether the administration is opposed to renegotiating entirely or whether it is simply opposed to the idea of relocating the air base to somewhere outside of Okinawa entirely; Roos apparently said that the administration will listen to the Hatoyama government's position.

For its part, the Hatoyama government, while still interested in finding a solution other than building an offshore replacement facility in Okinawa, may be softening its position. Not only did Hatoyama allude to the possibility of abandoning a manifesto position, but after an inspection visit to Okinawa Kitazawa said that the idea of relocating the Marine air station outside of Okinawa, the position espoused in the DPJ's Okinawa vision paper, is extremely difficult. The government is still considering whether to propose an alternative site within Okinawa, but it seems that the DPJ-led government will not push quite as hard for its optimal plan.

Dealing with these issues now is good politics. Not only will it give some meaning to Obama's visit next month — Okada stressed in an appearance on NHK last month that the government wants to assemble its policies on Okinawa, refueling, and Afghanistan by Obama's visit — but it will also push foreign policy out of the headlines after Obama leaves and the DPJ devotes its attention entirely to drafting next year's budget and finding ways to pay for its new spending programs. Its coalition partners will undoubtedly complain about the inevitable compromises the DPJ will make in relations with the US, but dealing with these matters now will make it that much harder for the LDP to gain traction against the DPJ by attacking the government on its handling of foreign policy in advance of next year's upper house election. By dealing with these tricky issues now the Hatoyama government can ensure that nothing will detract from encomiums to the alliance during next year's sixtieth anniversary celebrations.

It is unlikely that the DPJ will do anything to spoil next year's celebrations in the meantime. Far from the oft-heard criticism that the DPJ is reflexively anti-American, the Hatoyama government is showing that the flexibility it showed during the campaign was not a pose. The DPJ is willing to compromise with the US. It recognizes that there are limits to the political usefulness of criticizing Washington. The government's compromise position has yet to take shape, but there seems little question now that it will be a compromise position.

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.