05/22/2008BY YOICHI KATO THE ASAHI SHIMBUN
The Japan-U.S. alliance is struggling with a "priority gap." Both countries seem to have no problem agreeing on shared values, common strategic objectives and basically every policy of alliance management.
That includes the relocation of the U.S. Marine Corps Air Station Futenma in Okinawa Prefecture, which was the main pillar of the 2006 "Roadmap for Realignment Implementation."
But when it comes to the implementation of actual policy, Japan and the United States are often out of step. Some experts suggest the alliance is actually in a state of drift.
Following are excerpts of an interview with Richard Lawless, former U.S. deputy undersecretary of defense, who headed negotiations on the realignment of U.S. Forces in Japan, which culminated in the roadmap:
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Question: How do you view the current state of the Japan-U.S. alliance?
Answer: Since the beginning of the Fukuda administration, we have had a bit of a drift in the implementation of the agreements of alliance transformation, for example, the relocation of the U.S. Marine Corps Air Station Futenma to the new facility in the north of the (Okinawa) island. It is now facing an additional delay, we've been told, of at least a year. If this project stalls, as it is now, it stalls everything else, including the departure of 8,000 Marines and 9,000 family members from Okinawa to Guam. These things cannot be executed individually, independent of one another.
Q: Will the U.S. government accept modification of the Futenma relocation plan?
A: No. There are three very good reasons. First of all, the plan that the United States accepted was offered by the Japanese government. It wasn't necessarily the one we wanted. But the Japan side said that they have studied all the issues and decided that this is the best plan and that Americans have to live with it. They also said that they absolutely guarantee us that they can execute it. So we compromised and accepted the Japan plan with the condition that they absolutely promise us that they will execute this exact plan.
Reason number two is, when you begin changing things, it never stops and will result in additional delay.
The last point, if the United States were to begin talking with Japan about any change, such a discussion would re-insert the United States into the equation--the decisions in the special equation that exists between the central government of Japan and the government of Okinawa.
Q: Why do we have a drift in the implementation of alliance transformation?
A: I think the execution of alliance transformation has come into a state of drift because the top levels of the Japanese government may be somewhat distracted by other issues. For example, the Ministry of Defense not only is in the process of becoming a new institution, it has its own problems with the Atago incidents, has had its problems with procurement scandals. And now we have Defense Minister (Shigeru) Ishiba, who is incredibly intelligent and brilliant in terms of strategy and understanding technology. He is very heavily focused on the so-called defense reform law.
It appears that a good deal of the focus on our alliance transformation that did exist under the Koizumi and Abe governments does not exist under this government. What we really need is a top-down leadership that says, "Let's rededicate ourselves to completing all of these agreements on time; let's make sure that the budgeting of the money is a national priority." We've got a problem here in the United States that if it looks like to our Congress that Japan has decided that these are agreements in name only and there's something that can be delayed, watered down, or in some way mitigated, and they're not really that important to Japan, the U.S. Congress will take a very negative view and also begin making adjustments.
It is not deteriorating the capabilities of the alliance. However, if we didn't transform the alliance and make it more inter-operative, make it more integrated, make it more capable, that we would begin to lose momentum and it would begin to lose relevance, and it would begin to lose relative capability in the region.
The last point is, the losers in this case would be the people of Okinawa. We made a whole bunch of promises to them. If we can't execute against the promises we made, the people of Okinawa have every right to be unhappy. I don't think in the first instance they should blame the United States of America, which is prepared to get on with doing what it's supposed to do.
Q: Do you think it is a good idea to issue a new joint security declaration?
A: I think it's a great idea, if the underlying execution is credible. But it is a bad idea, if we're going to make another declaration at the same time that we're failing to execute the fundamentals of an agreement that we reached three years before. When you make a new declaration, it had better be backed up with real execution. Otherwise it's hollow, and every person in Japan and the United States will know this. But more importantly, everybody else in the region will know this.
Q: What are the challenges that the alliance now faces?
A: The biggest challenge, I think, is to recognize that there is a new tempo in Asia, a tempo of policymaking that hasn't existed at this particular speed and determination over the past 50 years. Other nations in the region are adapting to the pace that is being set by the more aggressive nations. Not militarily aggressive, but aggressive in terms of developing new systems and deploying operational deployment systems. Japan has had the luxury of having a relatively slow decision-making cycle that typically takes seven to nine years. In that same period of time, other countries in the region have made three different decisions and executed all of them. The alliance can't move any faster than one of its partners. Right now, Japan clearly is not making adjustments and developing the alliance in its own best interest. Somehow it has to find a way to change its own tempo of decision-making, deployment, integration and operationalizing this alliance. Otherwise, Japan becomes marginalized and the alliance becomes increasingly marginalized.
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The writer is chief of The Asahi Shimbun's American General Bureau in Washington.
(IHT/Asahi: May 22,2008)
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