Japanese Military Cleared For Role In Anti-Terror War

By Patrick Goodenough
CNSNews.com Pacific Rim Bureau Chief
October 29, 2001

Pacific Rim (CNSNews.com) - The United States and Britain Monday welcomed the passage of anti-terrorism legislation in Japan, which will enable its military to participate in conflict situations abroad for the first time since World War II.

The law, passed earlier Monday, expands the role of Japan's Self-Defense Forces (SDF) for use in a non-combatant capacity in the U.S.-led coalition against terrorism. They will thus be able to provide logistic support, surveillance, search and rescue and medical services to the combat forces.

Two separate bills passed enable the SDF to provide additional security around U.S. military bases in Japan, and allows Japan's Coast Guard to open fire on unidentified vessels suspected of criminal activity.

White House spokesman Ari Fleisher said the Japanese move "demonstrates the enduring strength of the U.S.-Japan alliance," words echoed by State Department spokesman Richard Boucher.

Boucher said the U.S. also appreciated Japan's humanitarian and refugee assistance to affected countries in the western Asia region.

U.S.-led airstrikes against the Taliban and the al-Qaida terrorist network in Afghanistan in retaliation for the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks have seen large numbers of Afghan refugees pour into neighboring Pakistan and Iran.

Japan's parliament approved the main bill by 140 votes to 100, the vote driven by the ruling three-party coalition. It was rushed through the parliamentary process in a faster-than-usual 25 days, after Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi - a popular conservative - voiced strong backing for the anti-terror campaign.

A British foreign office official also noted and welcomed the "speed and strength of the Japanese response."

The legislation has been highly controversial. Following Japan's expansionist aggression before and during World War II, its post-war constitution strictly prohibited the SDF from participating in military operations on foreign soil. During the 1991 Gulf War, however, Tokyo came under fire from allies for offering financial help but not tangible military assets to join the coalition against Iraq.

Despite strong political opposition - opposition Democratic Party leader Yukio Hatoyama called the decision not to require prior parliamentary approval "suicidal" - many ordinary Japanese appear to have been won over.

A weekend Kyodo News opinion poll published Monday showed 57 percent of voters supported the anti-terrorism bill, while almost 39 percent said they were opposed.

Sixty-three percent of respondents said they backed the U.S. military action in Afghanistan.

Shift in outlook

Just months ago, feelings were running high in Japan after a series of criminal incidents involving U.S. servicemen stationed in the country. A collision last February of an U.S. Navy submarine and a Japanese fisheries training vessel off Hawaii, in which nine Japanese died, added to the negative sentiment.

The events of Sept. 11 shook the nation, however. Koizumi later that month visited the scene of devastation where the World Trade Center had stood, and then in a meeting with President Bush pledged Japan's support to fight terrorism "with determination and patience."

Japan also offered $10 million in New York City rescue assistance, provided refugee relief funds to Pakistan, and lifted economic sanctions against both Pakistan and India in a move aimed at helping Pakistan's government withstand domestic opposition to backing the U.S.

The reality of terrorism has moved closer for many Japanese. Twenty-three Japanese remain missing, believed dead, in the Sept. 11 attacks. In the Kyodo survey, 78.1 percent of respondents voiced fears of possible terrorist attacks in Japan.

In a worldwide caution on Oct. 23, the State Department said there had been unconfirmed information that terrorists may target U.S. military facilities or places frequented by U.S. servicemen in Japan and Korea.

"These individuals do not distinguish between official and civilian targets," the caution said.

"The focus of the legislation was on whether we think of the U.S. terrorist incidents in New York and Washington on Sept. 11 as other people's business or as our own affair," Koizumi said after Monday's vote. "What was being questioned was our basic stance - whether or not we can share the sorrow and anger of the American people."

The legislation having been passed, the government will now draw up plans to send a naval contingent to the Indian Ocean for transport and shipment missions. Ships, possibly including one of Japan's four hi-tech Aegis guided-missile destroyers, are expected to leave by the end of November.

Their likeliest task will be to transport supplies from U.S. bases in Japan and Guam to Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean, where some of the U.S. bombers used in raids over Afghanistan are based.

"The passage of the anti-terrorism legislation will enable Japan's very modern and capable navy to perform logistics and intelligence operations in direct support of the U.S. Navy," noted Japan expert William Breer of the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

"This function will relieve American forces of these responsibilities so that they may be used elsewhere, and contribute significantly to the prosecution of the effort against terrorism," Breer said. "This is a major step forward in U.S.-Japan cooperation for both regional and global security."

ASIA: Public Pressure to Shape U.S. Military Presence in Region

By Tim Shorrock

WASHINGTON, Oct 4 — A combination of public opposition and financial instability is creating pressures on the United States and its Asian allies to scale down the number of U.S. bases and military personnel in North-east Asia, analysts of Asian politics and U.S. foreign policy say.

But populist concerns about the heavy U.S. presence in South Korea and Japan are growing at a time when the U.S. military is adding to its forward-bases posture in Asia and the Japanese government is contemplating a deeper military alliance with the United States in the wake of the Sep. 11 attacks in New York and Washington.

"A definite policy challenge is looming for the governments of the region and the United States," said Kent Calder, director of a programme on U.S.-Japan relations at Princeton University and the special adviser to two recent U.S. ambassadors to Japan, Walter Mondale and Tom Foley.

"Political competition is leading to pressure against U.S. bases across a whole range of countries," he pointed out.

"There sure is a major rise of populism which demands reduction of the U.S. forward deployment in Japan," added Yoichi Kato, a staff writer for the 'Asahi Shimbun' newspaper and a visiting research fellow at the National Defense University and the Centre for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.

"The role of the (U.S.-Japan) alliance in terms of defending Japan is being questioned seriously," he added.

Calder and Kato spoke here at a forum on Asian populism and U.S. bases sponsored by Japan's Sasakawa Peace Foundation.

The forum took place two days after the Department of Defense issued its Quadrennial Defense Review, a blueprint for U.S. military policy and strategy. This year's report, issued in the wake of the Sep. 11 attacks, emphasises "homeland defense" of the U.S. mainland and the need to maintain a "forward deterrent posture" in critical areas around the world, including East Asia.

Without specifically naming China, the report makes it clear the U.S. military intends to maintain enough forces in Asia to keep the Chinese military in check. "Asia is gradually emerging as a region susceptible to large-scale military competition," the report stated.

"The possibility exists that a military competitor with a formidable resource base will emerge in the region. The East Asian littoral — from the Bay of Bengal to the Sea of Japan — represents a particularly challenging area," the report explained.

To prepare for this challenge, the review calls for the U.S. Navy to increase its aircraft carrier battlegroup presence in the Western Pacific and study "options for homeporting an additional three to four surface combatants and guided cruise missile submarines".

That will add to the already formidable firepower at the U.S. naval base at Yokosuka, Japan, which is home to the Kitty Hawk, the only aircraft carrier based outside the United States.

The United States, the review stated, "will maintain its critical bases in Western Europe and North-east Asia, which may also serve the additional role of hubs for power projection in future contingencies in other areas of the world".

In Asia, those forward bases include Kadena in Okinawa, the largest U.S. Air Force base outside the U.S. mainland, and, on Okinawa, one of the U.S. Marine's three rapid deployment forces. Key U.S. bases in South Korea include U.S. Army installations.

In Europe, U.S. forces dropped from 250,000 during the Cold War to less than 85,000 today. But in Asia, the U.S. military structure is "largely unchanged", noted Calder, and in the last five years, "they've become even more forward-deployed".

But during that time, changes in the politics of host countries and economic shifts in Asia have altered the strategic landscape, creating the pressures that Calder and Kato now see as threatening to the U.S. military position in Asia.

In Korea, the relaxation of tensions between North and South as well as negotiations between the North and the U.S. government have substantially "reduced the (South) Korean sense of threat," Calder said.

That, combined with much greater political freedoms in a country once dominated by authoritarian military governments, is likely to make Koreans "less inhibited" and "more confrontational" about the impact of U.S. bases, he said.

That can already be seen in local movements opposed to a U.S. bombing range and the recent renegotiation of the Status of Forces Agreement with the United States.

Similarly, political discourse in Japan has widened as the ruling Liberal Democratic Party has lost political status with the public, culminating with the election by the party's rank-and-file of reformist Junichiro Koizumi over party elder Ryutaro Hashimoto.

Japan's faltering economy and corruption have also eroded the reputation of the once-powerful Ministry of Finance. On a local level, that has opened political space for NGOs in cities outside of Okinawa to criticise the presence of bases near their cities, Calder said.

In Okinawa itself, where nearly 75 percent of U.S. bases in Japan are located, anti-base sentiment remains high despite the attention paid by U.S. policymakers to the problems on the island. In 1995, the rape of a Okinawan girl by a U.S. marine triggered a crisis in U.S.-Japan relations. Six years later, the situation remains so volatile that another rape "would drive the alliance to almost collapse", said Kato.

In addition, Japan's deep financial problems and its decade-long recession are raising serious doubts among the Japanese public about the five billion U.S. dollars Japan spends every year to support the U.S. bases.

As the Japanese government embarks on a structural reform programme that is shifting economic policy from one of distribution of wealth to one of distribution of burdens, Kato said, "it's only natural that people ask 'are we getting a fair deal or being taken advantage of?' "

The LDP, which includes factions that are anti- and pro- American, is in a serious dilemma, Kato said, because of a "lack of plausible rationale for the alliance".

During the Cold War, a close military alliance could be justified by threats posed by the Soviet Union or North Korea. But with the Soviet Union long gone and dangers in Korea fading, the new threat has been explained as transnational terrorism. "But against (terrorism), the existing alliance is of little use," he said.

In Kato's view, Tokyo "should come out and say China is the reason for the alliance. If they talk of China as a potential target, people would really support it."

On the other hand, recent newspaper polls about the Koizumi government's decision to deploy Japanese Self-Defense Forces in support of U.S. military action in response to the Sep. 11 attacks show a deep ambivalence about Japan becoming a military power.

An 'Asahi' poll shows that 42 percent support the new mission, while 46 percent are opposed. Said Kato: "This shows the people are not yet sure Japan should take on a military role." (IPS/2001)