Hatoyama's calls for independence from U.S. lack vision

Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama's repeated calls for an end to Japan's policy of depending on Washington have confused the U.S. government because he has yet to show a specific strategy to achieve his goal.

Concern is growing within the U.S. administration about the impact the dispute between the two countries over the relocation of U.S. Air Station Futenma will have on the Japan-U.S. alliance as a whole. However, there is more to the friction.

The key to the maintenance and improvement of the bilateral alliance is President Barack Obama's diplomatic philosophy of finding common benefits when there are problems with relations with other countries.

The Obama administration has called on North Korea and Iran to hold dialogue while announcing that it will review its missile defense system deployed in Europe in a bid to build cooperative relations with Russia.

However, Washington has failed to clarify how it intends to strike a balance between such international cooperation and its longstanding relations with its close allies.

Michael Green, former senior director for Asian affairs at the U.S. National Security Council, describes the Obama administration's diplomacy as dual-natured. He pointed out that the U.S. government attaches importance to its cooperation with China in dealing with global issues while placing emphasis on the Japan-U.S. alliance with the balance of power in mind.

China is paying close attention to such relations between Japan and the United States as it is seeking to form a Group of Two -- a framework in which China, a major emerging country, and the United States, a major developed country, will jointly manage the world.

As if to symbolize the move, Obama will visit Japan for only two days during the upcoming Asia tour while he is scheduled to stay in China for four days. Moreover, the U.S.-China summit meeting on Sept. 22 lasted for 90 minutes -- three times the length of Japan-U.S. talks the following day -- and addressed wide-ranging issues from Iran and North Korea's nuclear issues and the global financial crisis to climate change.

The Japan-U.S. alliance has begun to drift under the two new leaders. Will it eventually lead to sober relations between Japan, whose influence has declined after being replaced by China as the leader of East Asia, and the United States, which no longer expects much from Japan? Or will the two countries open the door to a new era of bilateral relations by redefining their alliance?

(By Shinichiro Nishida and Muru Yamada, Political News Department, Yoso Furumoto, Washington Bureau, and Joji Uramatsu, Beijing Bureau)

(This is the third part of a five-part series on the Japan-U.S. alliance)