The Looming Crisis in U.S.-Japan Relations
Author(s): Patrick M. Cronin
Original Post: The Looming Crisis in U.S.-Japan Relations
Type: Op-Ed
Date: 11/13/2009
As U.S. President Barack Obama lands in Tokyo on the first stop of his inaugural visit to Asia, he may unknowingly step into a looming crisis in the alliance with Japan. But it is not the alliance crisis he may be led to expect. Much of the punditry in the media would have us believe that Japan and the United States were on the verge of a breakup over where to relocate 60 Marine helicopters. Yet durable alliances are based on common interests, not simply disagreements over means. As difficult an issue as the relocation of Futenma Marine Air Station has been, however, the salient question is whether next year’s half-centenary celebration of the 1960 Mutual Security Treaty will mark the end of the alliance as we know it or the beginning of the alliance we both need for the 21st century.
The alliance and treaty were unequal from the beginning. How could it have been otherwise given the circumstances of postwar Japan? History could not be undone, but the psychological scars of America’s occupation and role in drafting Japan’s postwar constitution would eventually have to be. This was notwithstanding that the Truman and Eisenhower administrations saw a resurgent Japanese economy as the engine of growth in the Asia-Pacific region. Providing an unsinkable aircraft carrier in exchange for Japan’s economic revival was a deliberate political choice made by Washington and Tokyo based on their vital interests at the time of the original 1951 treaty.
We succeeded beyond our wildest imagination. As President Obama makes his way through Asia, many leaders may see him not as the representative of a superpower colossus but instead an equal partner astride a burgeoning East Asian Community. Asian economies have proven most resilient in the face of the global financial crisis. Perception of rising Asian power eclipsing U.S. and Western power may be outstripping reality, but the point is that American alliances founded on asymmetrical relationships will need to be forged anew out of a crucible of equality—even if Americans tend to define equality as responsibility sharing and Japanese tend to define equality as decision-making authority.
Conveniently, equality is one of the mantras of the new government in Tokyo led by Prime Minister Hatoyama of the Democratic Party of Japan. If only unity were another. The cacophony of voices coming from the Hatoyama Cabinet alone over the sensitive issue of bases in Okinawa prompted Secretary of Defense Robert Gates to break character last month and snap at the Japanese in public. Gates was disturbed to find that America’s linchpin ally had lost its singular voice and was simultaneously pursuing the implementation of the 2006 base realignment agreement between the two governments and renegotiating that agreement—all depending on whether you listened to Defense Minister Kitazawa or Foreign Minister Okada.
Equality is a principle for alliance management, not a strategy. President Obama and Prime Minister Hatoyama need to lift the sights of the alliance above the din of the moment, and allow public opinion to reflect on the past decades during which Americans and Japanese have come to enjoy unprecedented prosperity and opportunity.
If tomorrow’s alliance is to secure future prosperity, then it will have to be recalibrated, redefining the ends of the alliance, adapting the means of the alliance, and ensuring that the importance of power is not lost in translation.
The redefinition of security encompasses the changing security environment, which is increasingly distinguished by its diversity, complexity and danger. Challenges of stabilizing fragile states like Afghanistan, turning back the nuclear ambitions of states like Iran and North Korea, and fashioning effective responses to climate change and pandemic disease will require more comprehensive strategies and more partners. Just as both the United States and Japan have heightened their economic ties to China in recent years, both governments need to be comfortable with a growing partnership with China, whose assistance is badly needed to address these and other complex problems.
Adapting alliance modalities will mean eschewing America’s occasional paternalism and Japan’s sometimes reluctance to acknowledge the alliance’s benefits to the Japanese people. Either the alliance benefits both sides or it will cease to benefit either. Messrs. Obama and Hatoyama need to arrest the hemorrhaging over bases and re-impose a stable, clear alliance management process led by the Secretaries of Defense and State working from the same script. Okinawans have paid dearly for Japan’s security, but there is no easy way to locate bases in today’s developed, democratic Japan. Officials have scoured maps for solutions, both as part of the 1996 review process and 2006 base realignment, which settled on transferring Marine helicopters to reclaimed land at Camp Schwab and moving many Marines and their families to Guam. Settling this issue means getting on with closer combined planning and assessment, training and operations.
Finally, both Messrs. Obama and Hatoyama need to keep their eye on the ball. Although they rightly place greater emphasis on soft power, seeking to influence others without coercion, neither should lose sight of the fundamental role which hard power plays in the value of the alliance. The risk in Mr. Obama’s strategic reassurance to China is that it may do nothing to slow the modernization of the PLA. The trouble with Hatoyama’s refusal to prize America’s military presence and decision to curtail Japan’s security role in the Indian Ocean is that it appears to dismiss the continuing role of hard power in the world. Japan’s substitution of increased development assistance to Afghanistan and Pakistan ($5 billion and $2 billion, respectively, over the next five years) in a sense seems to set back the alliance clock to the first Gulf War when Japan was reduced to playing the world’s ATM.
We have a bit of time. We both have able officials who can guide a strategic dialogue toward a happy conclusion by the September 2010 anniversary of the Mutual Security Treaty.
The gathering crisis in the U.S.-Japan alliance is not short-term perturbations flowing naturally from the recent installation of two liberal governments. Rather, the real danger resides in the longer-term political trajectory of two prosperous and secure democracies who may have forgotten how they got here.
Patrick M. Cronin is senior advisor and senior director of the Asia-Pacific Program at the Center for a New American Security.
Topic(s): U.S. Foreign Policy, U.S. Military Forces & Operations, U.S. National Security Strategy
Project(s): Asia-Pacific Security
People: Dr. Patrick Cronin
