By Axel Berkofsky

Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama has given his government a deadline of May to decide whether or not Tokyo will stick to a Japan-United States agreement from 2006 on the relocation of US troops in Japan.

The 2006 accord foresees the relocation of the US Marine Corps air station Futenma from the residential area of Ginowan, located in the southern densely populated part of Okinawa, to Henoko, a less densely populated area on the northern part of the island.

As part of the agreement, signed after 13 years of cumbersome and controversial negotiations, Washington agreed to reduce the number of US troops stationed in Japan (47.000 in total) by relocating 8.000 marines from Okinawa to Guam by 2014.
Make the ‘right’ call, Washington says
Plans to revisit the existing relocation agreement have been on the agenda ever since the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) led by Hatoyama took power in September. The longer he waits to make the “right” call – which, as far as Washington is concerned, would be to stick to the existing agreement – the more he and his ministers are messing up the US-Japan alliance, said the Wall Street Journal in an opinion piece published on January 28 entitled “The Hatoyama Drift”.

“The more Japan’s ordinary citizens … worry that the US-Japan security alliance is at risk, the more they’ll lose confidence in their national leaders. Hatoyama’s approval ratings are already hovering around 45%, and falling,” the WSJ article claimed.

Yet Japan’s “ordinary citizens” are not mostly concerned with the country’s defense and security policies, as recent opinion polls have shown. The economy and the prime minister and DPJ secretary general Ichiro Ozawa’s alleged involvement in financial and corruption scandals are higher priorities.

As it turns out, Hatoyama not caving in to Washington on defense and security matters is one of the few things the Japanese public approves about his government.

US alarmism
United States analysts have in recent months rounded on Japan’s prime minister, claiming in print and behind the megaphone that Hatoyama’s decision to resist US pressure on the relocation agreement puts the US-Japan alliance at risk and jeopardizes Japanese national security.

This is alarmism, says Linus Hagstrom, acting director of research at The Swedish Institute of International Affairs in Stockholm. “The US reaction so far is utterly out of proportion with the gravity of the issue. When US officials and analysts call the base relocation issue a litmus test for the US-Japan alliance, they are overreacting. It is probably part of a strategy to compel Japan into compliance,” he told Asia Times Online.

Brad Glosserman, executive director of the Center for Strategic and International Studies Pacific Forum in Honolulu, says Japan’s relatively new government has yet to fill in some blanks in regards to knowledge of international relations in general and the troops’ relocation plan in particular.

“The Japanese administration doesn’t have much security expertise and doesn’t understand how the agreement works. It is an integrated whole, you can’t just do part of the package,” he told ATol.

This view is not shared by Christopher W Hughes, professor of international politics and Japanese studies at the University of Warwick, Britain.

“Japan has the right to try to negotiate the base agreements if it wants to. The Pentagon’s frustration with Japan after all these years of trying to solve Futenma is understandable, but it is not as if the US does not review and rethink policy or agreements with new administrations. These are two sovereign governments, and supposed allies, so they had better start talking again.”

Enough talk
Renegotiating the base relocation agreement, however, is not exactly on top of Washington’s Japan policy agenda, as US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton informed her counterpart Katsuya Okada in mid-January. At a meeting in Honolulu, Clinton again urged Tokyo to stick to the existing agreement and Japan’s alleged “commitment” to relocate the marines from Ginowan to Nago.

The agreement is – at least as far as Washington is concerned – most probably still what US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates called “non-negotiable” during his visit to Tokyo last November.

This is pretty much in line with how Washington has always dealt with Japan, as a junior alliance partner, says Linus Hagstrom. “Washington has urged Tokyo over the last 20 years to take on more responsibility in international affairs, engaging in so-called ‘burden-sharing’. Judging by the US reaction to the Futenma issue, however, it seems that Washington only supports an increased Japanese role as long as it can control Japan. Washington does not want a more independent ally and is not at all interested in ‘power-sharing’.”

Nobody wants them
Hatoyama in the meantime is hanging in there, although he has given up on his original idea to find a new home for the Futenma marine corps station outside of Japan.

“From the perspective of a deterrent force, moving all base functions to Guam will probably be impossible. The process will now focus on choosing a site in Japan,” the prime minister said recently after Washington made it repeatedly clear that it does not want more than 8,000 of its own soldiers in Guam by 2014.

Indeed, there is no shortage of suggestions coming from within the Hatoyama cabinet on where to relocate the base, but most are unrealistic.

Among others, it was suggested to move the marines to Shimoji, a small island about 280 kilometers southwest of Okinawa’s main island, or to Iwoto island, which is close to Tokyo. Others in Hatoyama’s cabinet thought it would be a good idea to keep the Futenma station in Ginowan and transfer some of its helicopter drills to what was referred to as a “remote island”.

All of them are bad ideas as far as Washington and interested parties in Japan are concerned, Hughes says.

“Of the alternatives in Okinawa, no one wants the marines corps airfield, and no one else in Japan seems to want it. And if someone did, I don’t think that would be acceptable to the US side if the idea is to keep the marines’ helicopters close to the marines’ ground forces,” Hughes fears.

Then again, Hughes adds, it might eventually not really matter where the troops move to as long as Washington continues pretending to be interested in negotiating with Tokyo. “I think Hatoyama’s plan, if he really has one, is to contain this crisis and get the US to negotiate. Then he might come up with some kind of compromise plan in May which his coalition partners, Okinawa’s population and the US will swallow.”

More trouble ahead?
All is well that ends well then? Perhaps not quite, since Washington remains worried that Japan’s attempts to renegotiate the base relocation agreement could be the beginning of the end of the asymmetric US-Japan alliance.

Hatoyama and his DPJ are already thinking out loud about changing the US-Japan Status of Forces Agreement that protects US troops from legal prosecution in Japan. What’s more, Hatoyama and party friends are planning to move the reduction of the Host Nation Support, ie Japan’s financial support for the US military in Japan (amounting to US$4 billion per year) up on the US-Japan agenda in the months ahead.

In the meantime, however, Tokyo and Washington are assigning funds for the relocation of US marines to an as yet unclear location in May.

In its fiscal budget for 2010, Tokyo has allocated 28.8 billion yen (US$321 million) for the relocation of the Futenma station and has put aside 34.6 billion yen for the transfer of marines from Okinawa to Guam.

Washington and the US Congress are doing the same, having in December adopted a $310 million budget for the transfer of marines from Okinawa to Guam in 2010 – though they could threaten to delay the allocation of funds beyond 2010 if Tokyo decides not to stick to the 2006 troop relocation agreement.

Familiar tit-for-tat US policies for sure, but Washington might for a change join Tokyo at the receiving end in the months ahead.

Professor Axel Berkofsky is Gianni Mazzocchi Fellow at the University of Pavia, Italy and senior associate research fellow at the Milan-based Istituto per Gli Studi di Politica Internazionale (ISPI).