For nearly 15 years, the two largest economies on Earth and two of the world’s top military powers have spent much of their alliance management time discussing the fate of one airfield, the U.S. Marine Corps’ Futenma Air Station on the island of Okinawa.
This is a poor preoccupation for the allies given the other, huge issues that confront the two countries – dealing with nuclear North Korea, the rise of China, the global problem of Islamic extremism, wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and many other matters such as recovery from the global recession and mitigation of the global warming threat. It is time to move beyond it.
Japan’s new leader, Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama, has just reopened the issue when it appeared settled. That is his prerogative, and there are military alternatives for the United States – but any such decision should not be made lightly and would oblige Japan to find new and bold ways to contribute more to the alliance as well as global security.
In 2006, Tokyo and Washington finally agreed to move Futenma to a less populated, northern area of the main Okinawan Island. The current facility’s location in the heart of Ginowan City brings with it problems of noise, risk of accidents and interference with local economic development strategies.
But Mr. Hatoyama is not sure he wants to bless a deal put together by the Liberal Democratic Party that his upstart Democratic Party finally managed to defeat in an election this past summer. At a substantive level, members of his governing coalition feel the small island is asked to do too much for the alliance, hosting more than half of all U.S. military personnel in Japan.
Mr. Hatoyama’s reluctance pits him against not only the LDP, but the Japanese bureaucrats who want to implement the relocation plan and the United States – which has said its entire willingness to relocate half of its Marines from Okinawa to Guam is contingent on Mr. Hatoyama accepting what other parties saw as a done deal.
