Jan 14th 2010 | GINOWAN CITY, JAPAN
From The Economist print edition
Wrangling over an American base puts Japan’s new government in a bind
ON THE wall of the Sakima Art Museum in this bustling city is a work called the Battle of Okinawa. It depicts the suffering of local civilians during the American invasion of Okinawa in 1945, partly at the hands of murderous-looking Japanese troops. On the roof of the museum, there is a more mischievous—but equally effective—work of anti-war polemic, this time directed against the Americans. A platform looks out over the fenced-off Futenma Marine Corps Air Station, which stretches out to the sea over an area larger than Central Park in New York. In just a few minutes, your correspondent witnessed a transport plane taking off, three fighter jets roaring overhead and a military helicopter rumbling to life. An aircraft-carrier might be less noisy.
The base was seized by the American army in 1945, but since then Ginowan has grown to surround it with offices, homes and government buildings. Ginowan is only a small city, of 92,000 people; even so, imagine how New Yorkers living around Central Park would feel, were it an air base bristling with marines belonging to a country that once colonised them. That gives a sense of why Futenma, however much it has helped keep the peace in East Asia, has long needed to move.
That much America and Japan agree upon. Negotiations to find a replacement have dragged on since 1996, the year after three American marines gang-raped a 12-year-old Okinawan girl. But since the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) took power last September, the issue has opened an unusually deep wound in relations between the two countries. It still festers. On January 12th Katsuya Okada, Japan’s foreign minister, and Hillary Clinton, America’s secretary of state, agreed not to let the dispute stop them discussing other ways to bolster their military alliance. But Mrs Clinton continued to press for Futenma to be relocated in Okinawa.
The friction is partly to be expected. In opposition the DPJ repeatedly objected to an agreement to move part of the air station, including landing strips, to a pristine bay in north-eastern Okinawa, in exchange for the withdrawal of 8,000 marines and their families to American territory in Guam. Yukio Hatoyama, the new prime minister, personally promised Okinawans during the election campaign that Futenma would be shunted off the island.
That promise swiftly put his government at loggerheads with the Obama administration. As one of her first acts of diplomacy last February, Mrs Clinton signed an agreement under which Japan would contribute $6 billion to relocating Futenma. The other signatory was from the former Liberal Democratic government, which was doomed to suffer an electoral rout in August. But a deal, the Obama administration insisted to the DPJ, was a deal. Some analysts believe that may have been an overly bossy assessment. Even under the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), which for much of its 53 years in power was a pliant American ally, the Futenma relocation was often a source of friction.
Indeed, over the decades relations with the LDP had not always been smooth. They got off to a good start. The 1960 Treaty of Mutual Co-operation and Security turned out to be a strikingly successful insurance policy. The Japanese paid the premiums by offering American troops bases and cash. The Americans promised nuclear and non-nuclear American deterrence, which helped underwrite peace in the region, while at the same time acting as a “cork in the bottle” against possible Japanese remilitarisation.
But after the cold war relations appeared to come adrift. When Junichiro Koizumi, prime minister from 2001-06, pledged strong support for the “war on terror” after September 11, 2001, America hoped Japan would take on a global security role commensurate with its economic power. But it did not. According to a recent study by Michael Finnegan of the National Bureau of Asian Research, a think-tank in Seattle, America and Japan no longer see eye-to-eye on “what constitutes a threat to their shared interests”. Both countries still refer to the alliance as a cornerstone of their security policies, but it is, says Mr Finnegan, a brittle one.
Defenders of the alliance argue that it has done more than keep the peace: it has enabled Japan to keep its military spending low, and attract global status in other ways, notably economic. Nonetheless, some in Japan feel the country has subordinated itself to America, and this has riled nationalists. And in Washington, DC, critics accuse Japan of “cheap-riding” on American security guarantees.
It is against this backdrop that the new government’s review of the Futenma accord raised hackles in Washington. Adding to the sense of drift was Tokyo’s decision to end an eight-year maritime refuelling mission for troops fighting in Afghanistan this month. It has also promised to investigate secret agreements in the 1960s and 1970s that enabled nuclear-armed American warships to enter Japan.
Above all, since the DPJ took power, it has been unclear how its goal of partially balancing Japan’s ties to America with closer ones to China would affect the American alliance. The 50th anniversary of the security treaty might be a good chance to update the accord to reflect China’s rise. But security analysts say the Futenma dispute threatens the mutual trust needed for such an undertaking.
Payback time
To make matters worse, most Okinawans seem determined to hold Mr Hatoyama to his word about removing the base altogether. As the painting at the Sakima gallery suggests, Okinawa nurtures an historic grudge against the mother country, piqued by the second world war massacre. Many locals feel that for too long Tokyo has outsourced American bases to the island—it houses 60% of American forces and their families in Japan—and offered only grubby fiscal handouts in return.
Critics accuse the Japanese authorities of producing a cooked-up environmental assessment, which skates over the dangers the new base would pose to the dugong, a rare sea mammal that grazes on sea grasses near the site of the proposed airstrips. Even supporters of the new base admit that it is hard to judge the full ecological impact because America has given imprecise figures about how many troops and aircraft would remain.
If the Hatoyama administration does break its promise to the Okinawans, it would be “suicidal”, says Yoichi Iha, mayor of Ginowan and a staunch opponent of the agreement. And even then, some fear that protesters could make it very difficult to start construction work. A mayoral election takes place on January 24th in Nago, the city where the new base is proposed. Relocation is the main campaign issue. If the incumbent who supports it is ousted, that will be a strong indication of the level of anger. An election for governor of Okinawa in November is likely to bring the same tensions to the fore island-wide. But with America sticking to its guns, the Hatoyama administration is bound to upset one side or other. Its battle of Okinawa has only just begun.
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