Strategic Changes to US-Japan Alliance

An editorial in the Japan Times - I found it unsettling. I hope that the reform of article 9 will not lead to a more equal military alliance between the US and Japan, but to the US being kicked out as an unecessary military presence. I guess I'll be disappointed, then.

By RICHARD HALLORAN, HONOLULU -- Much of the American and Japanese news coverage of the new security agreement between Washington and Tokyo has focused on its political aspects but overlooked the far-reaching strategic changes it has projected for the revitalized alliance.
This pact is intended to draw together a sweeping realignment of U.S. forces in Asia and the forthcoming revision of Japan's Constitution. That revision is calculated to raise the Japanese military and diplomatic posture after six decades of pacifism that was the consequence of Japan's defeat in World War II.
Robert Scalapino, a prominent American scholar on Asia, noted the changes: "Japan wants to be a major power," he said in an interview. "It wants to be in a partnership with the United States but not in a patron-client relationship."
The agreement on Oct. 29 was the most significant milestone in a process that began nearly three years ago when the Bush administration started negotiating with Japan to reposition forces, revise command lines and make U.S. forces more flexible and responsive to contingencies.
Before the negotiations had gone far, the Japanese and the Americans agreed that they needed a basic reassessment of the alliance begun in 1952 after the postwar American occupation of Japan. "We had reached a place in our alliance where we needed to look beyond force structures and to make fundamental changes in our roles and missions," said an American official aware of the negotiations who asked not to be named.
The outcome is the document titled "U.S.-Japan Alliance: Transformation and Realignment for the Future," which has been signed by Foreign Minister Nobutaka Machimura and Minister of State for Defense Yoshinori Ohno as well as U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.
In a press conference after the agreement was issued, Rumsfeld said: "Like all alliances, this relationship must and is in fact evolving to remain strong and relevant." Ohno agreed, saying that the purpose of the earlier alliance was to defend Japan. Now, Japanese and U.S. forces could undertake joint operations elsewhere.
The agreement says: "These measures are designed to enhance the alliance's capability to meet new threats and diverse contingencies." Those "diverse contingencies," a term appearing repeatedly, were not specified but referred to potential threats from China, North Korea, terrorists and pirates who operate in the shipping lanes of the South China Sea.
Key to Japan's deployment of forces alongside U.S. forces is the revision of Japan's Constitution, especially Article 9, the "no-war" clause that has been interpreted as permitting Japan to defend itself but little more. A final draft is working its way through the ruling Liberal Democratic Party and the legislature.
The provision pertaining to national security says that in addition to operations to defend Japan, "defense forces can take part in efforts to maintain international peace and security under international cooperation, as well as to keep fundamental public order in our country."
The new agreement says the U.S. will continue to hold its "nuclear umbrella" over Japan: "U.S. strike capabilities and the nuclear deterrence provided by the U.S. remain an essential complement to Japan's defense," it says. That renewed guarantee should also blunt a Japanese move to acquire nuclear weapons, if it appears.
The agreement further says "a common operational picture shared between U.S. forces and the SDF (Japan's Self-Defense Forces) will strengthen operational coordination." That common assessment of potential adversaries will be reflected in joint training and jointly devised contingency plans.
The nuts and bolts of the U.S. force realignment, some of which were adopted to accommodate political demands in Japan, include establishing a joint operations center at Yokota Air Base, now a U.S. base, in western Tokyo. Japan's Air Defense Command will move from Fuchu, also in western Tokyo, to Yokota.
The U.S. Army will deploy a corps headquarters at Camp Zama, southwest of Tokyo in Kanagawa Prefecture, where Japan will set up a Central Readiness Force Command for its ground forces.
Bowing to political pressure in Okinawa, Japan's southernmost prefecture, the U.S. Marines will move a headquarters and 7,000 marines to Guam, which is U.S. territory in the central Pacific. Some aircraft will be removed from a controversial base at Futenma and the airfield itself will be redesigned to move runaways away from residential areas.
These changes in Japan's military posture have raised cries in China and the two Koreas that Japan is undertaking a full-scale rearmament. Cold-eyed scrutiny, however, shows that Japan's military spending is not scheduled to rise, military forces are not slated to expand, and the defense industry remains small.

Richard Halloran, formerly a correspondent for Business Week, The Washington Post and The New York Times, is a Honolulu-based freelance journalist.
The Japan Times: Nov. 17, 2005

Tsurunen-san: Respect, man. Re-SPECT.

Last week I was looking for information on the Constutional Research Committee in the Japanese Diet - and found next to nothing on it's proceedings. My Japanese isn't great, so the Japanese websites yielded even less information for me than the English ones, and so I decided to email Marutei Tsurunen (former Finn now in the House of Councillors, see link to his homepage), who is on the committee. I haven't decided what to write my thesis on yet but constitutional reform is a (very) possible topic, and I asked Tsurunen if he might be able to direct me to information on the work of the committee and constitutional debate in the Diet in general. Well, I got an email from Marutei Tsurunen's secretary today, saying that they have gathered and prepared some materials for me in English, and that she's now ready to post them to me if I inform her of my address. I should probably get the package within two weeks. I am so excited!

I have a lot of respect for Tsurunen (DPJ), who's carved such an unusual career for himself. I read his autobiography (in Finnish. I have no idea whether it exists in English or Japanese) some years ago, and the strength of his determination to change Japan leaps off the pages. I hope the frustrations of party politics and being constantly in the opposition wont deflate his enthusiasm. Saying that, politicians are usually optimists.
He started out in Japan as a Lutheran missionary at the age of 27, then went on to establish a language school in Nagano and worked as a translator, but he felt that he had to become Japanese in order to really be able to make a positive impact on his adopted home country, and that politics was the only way to do it, rather than teaching or preaching.
There was a only very short description in the book on how he divorced his Finnish wife and simply shipped her and the kids back to Finland, and then went on to marry a Japanese woman and change his nationality. He didn't elaborate on his personal life or the reasons for divorce, but I got the feeling that it, and then marriage to a Japanese woman, somehow completed his integration into Japanese society, which was his ultimate goal. It was so matter-of-factly written as well: "I've got to become Japanese in order to do good for the country, and that's all there is to it". Then he did it.

Tsurunen comes from the poorest part of Finland in northern Carelia, close to the Russian border in the Finnish 'Midlands', which was a seriously deprived area when he was growing up. I think his journey is amazing. I'm also delighted that there's a member in the HoC who necessarily has a kind of double-consciousness and an awareness of the position of minorities and foreigners in Japan, and he regularly comments on 'foreign affairs'. He's got 'objective blue eyes' (These blue eyes featured in some of his campaign books; I'm not saying that people with brown or green eyes aren't objective, okay?).

His profile on his web page mentions that for some reason, he is popular with high school students in Japan....WTF? It's wholly believable, remembering the fads that gripped kids in Tokyo one day, and were gone the next, but I'm dying to find out what the hype on a 65-year old politician is amongst kids. Does anyone know anything about this phenomenon?

The cartoon was found on www.tsurunen.net . He often uses the crane as a symbol, as tsuru means just that in Japanese. He has Japanized his name from Martti Turunen.

Happy Birthday, Condi!

It's my birthday today. It's also Condi Rice's b-day, which proves that November the 14th has seen the births of many powerful people, including also, by the way, Nehru and Senator Joseph McCarthy. Hmm. I wonder what I'll be like if/when I enter politics? The precedents are pretty daunting. Will I establish a democracy; spread democracy through tough-love diplomacy and the unlawful use of force; or will I simply ruin the lives of many, many people in unfair, loony, political witch hunts (televised witch hunts, no less)? Only time will tell.

I have been a far less active blogger than I set out to be, but there's an explanation for my recent silence. I've had all sorts of tests and assessments thrown at me last and this week, but I'm finally free of these unwarranted shackles on my mind, so I'll be able to process that piece on the DPRK... I really need to post about it, it'll save me time come examination period.