http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2010-01/13/content_12805100.htm
TOKYO, Jan. 13 (Xinhua) -- Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama
voiced his appreciation on Wednesday of the Japan-U.S. security treaty
in his address to Japan's Self Defense force and his comments about
the pact being "indispensable" were undoubtedly earnest.
However media reports and political commentary, on the back of
Japanese Foreign Minister Katsuya Okada's somewhat fruitless meeting
with U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in Honolulu, Hawaii on
Tuesday, continue to swirl with speculation that Tokyo's stalling on a
key military issue in Okinawa threatens to subvert Hatoyama's
"indispensable" alliance, as Washington's agitation increases as the
debate trundles on.
The Japanese Prime Minister, following his election campaign
pledges, has created something of a Catch-22 situation for his ruling
Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) over the initial proposed relocating
of the U.S. Marine Corps' Futemma Air Station to Ginowan, a less
densely populated region of Japan's southernmost prefecture, and the
Japanese premier has extended his self-imposed deadline to find his
way out of the diplomatic labyrinth fashioned by his administration,
until May of this year, further rattling Washington's cage who has
persistently called for the issue to be resolved expeditiously.
POLITICAL PARADOX
"Like the Japanese public, the Obama administration has not
concealed its exasperation. The president and other senior officials
visiting the country have repeatedly called for an "expedited"
resolution to the base dispute," a recent editorial in The Washington
Post said.
"After the prime minister broke his own deadline just before
Christmas and announced that he would postpone the matter for another
few months, the Japanese ambassador to Washington was summoned for an
unusual dmarche by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton."
"The DPJ's campaign platform included language that questioned the
LDP's traditional lockstep alignment with U.S. foreign and defense
policy and fanned the hopes of constituents grown dissatisfied with
the noise and danger associated with the likes of outmoded Air Station
Futemma in crowded Ginowan City," added political analyst Jeff
Marchesseault, in an article for the Guam News Factor.
Further contributing to U.S. President Barack Obama's
administration's umbrage on the matter is the increased and incessant
wrangling from Hatoyama's junior coalition parties, most notably the
Social Democratic Party, who want to see the Marine Corps' base moved
outside Japan entirely, and thus what started as bilateral dialogue
between the U.S. and Japan and was at first a minor headache for the
former, is quickly morphing into a diplomatic migraine for
Washington.
The quandaries the Hatoyama-led DPJ face if they opt to move the
facility. Not only will they have to deal with the fallout from their
own coalition parties, the local government and people of Okinawa,
there's also the general electorate to consider, whose favor of the
ruling administration is already waning since their meteoric rise to
power in August 2009, which put pay to decades of Liberal Democratic
rule that held the Japan-U.S. alliance at the very core of its
political ideology.
With upper-house elections looming, such political and public
discontentedness is very untimely indeed.
WASHINGTON UNWAVERING
"But there is already a tacit realization by Prime Minister Yukio
Hatoyama and members of his ruling Democratic Party of Japan that
moving Marine Corps' Air Base Futemma anywhere outside of Japan will
compromise the power of U.S. deterrence in Pacific Asia," said
Marchesseault
"Furthermore, the U.S. has never wavered from its assertion that
after a near-20-year period of research, planning and conclusive
bilateral understanding and agreement between the governments of Japan
and the United States, there is no viable alternative to moving the
base from its present site," he added.
U.S. Secretary of Defense Dr. Robert M. Gates, the Pentagon's top
man, was the first U.S. Cabinet member to visit Japan, ahead of
President Barack Obama's goodwill visit to the nation, since the DPJ
government took office.
Gates left Tokyo adamant that the existing bilateral security
arrangements between the two countries should remain in place stating
that all the alternatives that have been looked at over the years are
either politically untenable or operationally unworkable and no
alternatives to the original arrangement that was negotiated exist.
As a deluge of top Japanese officials visit Okinawa, the latest
being Japan's Chief Cabinet Secretary Hirofumi Hirano who earmarked
two islands just off mainland Okinawa as possible relocation sites for
the base, Washington's position remains utterly unwavering and echoes
Gates' sentiments indubitably.
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in Honolulu, Hawaii on
Tuesday maintained Washington's unequivocal stance on the matter to
Japan's Foreign Minister Katsuya Okada, and as much as she praised
Japan's role as being "an essential pillar of the Asia-Pacific
security architecture," she stated that Washington's position was that
the agreed realignment road map presents the best way forward.
The decision to move the facility in and of itself has, according
to some U.S. sources close to the matter, sparked fears in Washington
that the Futemma issue may just be a pretext to the DPJ's
premeditative generating of frosty ties with Washington as part of
their well publicized commitment to nurturing and buttressing an East
Asian alliance, which a number of political commentators have noted
that far from being a diplomatic maneuver to steer Japan towards more
equal ties with the U.S., as the rhetoric goes, is a move towards
Japan lessening its reliance on the U.S. generally -- which has overt
military implications underlined by a serious geopolitical conundrum.
However it would seem the majority of U.S. political commentators
are playing down the rift between Tokyo and Washington, claiming that
"all is within Washington's design," and the extra leeway being
offered to Hatoyama and his government is a simple strategy that costs
nothing but time, as the conclusion to the issue has already been
decided -- in 2006 in fact.
"The chances are that if Mr. Hatoyama heads too far in that
direction, he will face a rebellion from his own party, not to mention
Japanese voters," according to The Washington Post's editorial on the
subject.
"So the Obama administration would be wise to avoid harsh rhetoric
and give the prime minister some space. The reality is that the
government cannot go forward with the new basing agreement before an
upper-house election, expected late this summer, without endangering
its own existence. Japan's nascent two-party system is a democratic
achievement, not a diplomatic nuisance; give it a little time to find
its course."
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