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JAPAN: Promised U.S. Base Relocation: Made to Be Broken?

Analysis by Suvendrini Kakuchi

TOKYO, May 7 2010 (IPS) - Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama’s disastrous visit this week to Okinawa island, host to the largest U.S. military bases in Japan, has highlighted a rocky road ahead for the country’s much awaited change pledged by the postwar democratic and socialist government that came to power in August 2009.

“Betrayal and infuriation for the people of Okinawa,” shouted the headline on May 5 of a leading Japanese daily, ‘Tokyo Shinbun’, referring to Hatoyama’s landmark visit on May 3 and 4 that failed to resolve the issue of relocating the controversial Futenma military base out of the densely populated Ginowan city, Okinawa, located in the far south of Japan and made up of hundreds of small islands.

Even Hatoyama’s desperate bid to appease his supporters by suggesting the base be moved to Tokushima island was also unsuccessful when he met with fierce resistance from the local residents there.

Experts view the huge public disappointment against Hatoyama as a blow to some much-needed change in Japan.

Hatoyama’s Democratic Party of Japan (DJP) and allies are creating policies that aim to weed out heavy spending on public works project that damage the environment, curtail traditional bureaucratic waste and support social budgets for better child care.

The thrust to bring a more Asia-oriented policy with less dependence on the U.S. security umbrella has also been promoted as a wise move.

But Okinawa has shown that such expectations could fall by the wayside. There are predictions that the upcoming Upper House election in July will see fewer seats won for DJP, not the best omen for ushering in a new Japan.

DJP was swept to power with much fanfare in August last year. The sweeping support for the DPJ during the House of Representatives elections was viewed as a sign of simmering frustration against the long-ruling conservative Liberal Democratic Party’s (LDP) economic policies that had seen the rise of alarming social issues, as well as the U.S.-Japan Security Pact supporting the presence of 25 U.S. military bases that occupy two-thirds of Okinawa.

“People were fed up with LDP-led governments that they felt had placed economic expansion above everything else. They want solutions to the high unemployment rates, a widening gap between the haves and have-nots and a stop to Cold War diplomacy that forced Japan to support the former Bush administration’s war policies,” explained Koichi Ishiyama, author and former international finance professor at Toiin University of Yokohama.

Taking a cue from a disgruntled public, Hatoyama, along with his partymates, promised a mandate for change before his election.

In his essay, “New Path for Japan,” published in Japan last August, he criticised U.S. globalisation, suggesting that Japan’s identity should be as an Asian nation and called for the creation of an East Asian community.

Where the United States was concerned, he talked about a ” balanced approach based on equality,” a viewpoint that resonated with the public, who felt the time had come for Japan to assume a different stance toward the United States. For Professor Shinichi Kitaoka of Tokyo University and an expert on Japan- U.S. relations, Hatoyama made promises that did not necessarily reflect the realities on the ground.

In an article published in ‘Japan Echo’ magazine in March, Kitaoka argued that Hatoyama was acting rashly. The relocation of Futenma should have been considered more carefully, given the rise of China as a new superpower, he said.

“When we consider China’s growing military power and the North Korea situation on the one hand and Japan’s huge fiscal deficit on the other, it seems self-evident that the Japan-U.S. alliance is our most cost-effective and efficient security option,” he wrote.

Reinforcing perceptions of North Korea posing formidable threats to global security, notably Japan’s, are South Korean newspaper reports this week that the blast that sank a South Korean warship in March, killing almost half its crew, was due to an attack by North Korea.

It has not helped that notions of a close alliance between China and North Korea have been bolstered by media reports that the latter’s reclusive dictator Kim Jong il made a secret visit to Beijing on Tuesday purportedly for talks on nuclear disarmament and Chinese aid.

It is little wonder then that experts are now calling for a “common-sense” approach to the future of Japan-U.S. alliance, one that carefully considers the security threats facing Japan – North Korea’s nuclear weapons programme and China’s rising defense spending.

Such a strategy would mean Hatoyama abandoning his populist pledges and conceding that Futenma can be relocated by 2014, which has already been decided between the LDP and Washington.

Yet another way forward is searching for a “flexible” U.S.-Japan security alliance, opined Professor Jitsuro Terashima, honorary chairman of the non- profit Japan Research Institute.

In his article published in February in the monthly magazine ‘Sekai’, he suggested “the redesign of the alliance…taking into account also the U.S. strategic plans.” This implies the beginning of a closer Japan-U.S. alliance based on a recognition that collaboration must be mutually beneficial and include both industrial as well as security issues.

In the meantime, Okinawans are demanding that Futenma be banished posthaste, as Hatoyama had promised, turning the base issue into his biggest challenge yet.

“Such sentiment, once roused, will not go away,” Toiin University’s Ishiyama warned. “There is no doubt Japan needed a change from the old LDP tactics, but its chances of happening look bleak, thanks yet again to a rudderless leadership.”