Why have Washington and Tokyo racheted up the issue of relocating the Futenma Marine Corps Air Station on Okinawa into a high-stakes faceoff that could corrode and even irreparably damage the US-Japan alliance?
From the US perspective, Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama is walking away from a painstakingly negotiated deal formally approved by the Diet in May 2009 when the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) was still in power. That agreement would restructure US military bases in Japan, relocate the marine base at Futenma on Okinawa to Henoko on Okinawa, and shift a large portion of the US Marine presence from Okinawa to Guam, thereby reducing the burden on Okinawans. The US is exasperated by Hatoyama’s weak leadership and by the contradictory messages coming from his cabinet.
Secretary of Defense Robert Gates during his October 2009 visit to Tokyo veered from customary diplomatic niceties by publicly lecturing Tokyo that there was no alternative to the 2006 realignment plan and that “it is time to move on.” Gates snubbed his hosts by declining a dinner invitation from Defense Minister Toshimi Kitazawa, saying he had to prepare for a trip to meet with NATO. The message: Gates had more important tasks than massaging the feelings of Japan’s new government.
The Pentagon may have also wanted to mobilize Japanese domestic pressure on Hatoyama. The Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) did not win the August 2009 election due to its stance on Okinawa bases. Signs that the party was mishandling relations with the US could alarm the media and public enough to compel acceptance of the existing plan. The same calculation probably motivated Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to summon Japanese Ambassador Ichiro Fujisaki to her office on a day when a snowstorm closed the rest of Washington. Clinton demonstrated the absence of daylight between State and Defense.
Compounding the problem are US suspicions about the DPJ’s general foreign policy orientation. Despite his repeated statements that the alliance with the US will remain the cornerstone of Japan’s foreign policy, Hatoyama has provoked consternation in Washington by criticizing “U.S.-led [economic] globalization” in a pre-election magazine essay, by terminating Japan’s naval refueling mission in the Indian Ocean in support of the military campaign in Afghanistan, and, in his summit meeting with Chinese president Hu Jintao, proposing a half-baked concept of an East Asian community without including the US. Washington worries that the DPJ may be reorienting Japan toward East Asia at the expense of the US. DPJ Secretary-General Ichiro Ozawa’s high-profile visit to China in December accompanied by a massive delegation including 143 DPJ Diet members only reinforced US concerns. In sharp contrast to his pro-active China diplomacy, Ozawa appears reluctant to engage US officials (partly because he is riled that they ignored him during his years in the opposition.)
