In the coming months, US and Japanese military officers and defense officials will be sitting down in Tokyo, the Pacific Command in Hawaii and Washington to determine ways to put muscle into the swiftly maturing alliance between the US and Japan.
If all goes well, those efforts will produce a joint declaration by US President George W. Bush and Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi next autumn that will reflect the most fundamental and far-reaching revision of the alliance since the US-Japan Security Treaty was rewritten in 1960.
The critical feature: The US and Japan will transform their security bond from one of senior partner-junior partner to one of more nearly equals in policy and strategy, even if the military power of the US still overshadows that of Japan.
ILLUSTRATION: MOUNTAIN PEOPLE
Among the vital issues to be worked out, Japanese and US officials say, are:
One, roles and missions, in which Americans and Japanese will decide on a division of labor and which forces will be responsible for what missions, to make best use of those forces and to preclude duplication.
Two, expanded combined operations and training, especially between Japan's Ground Self-Defense Force and the US Army and US Marine Corps. The navies and air forces, which already coordinate many operations, would do more of the same.
Three, sharing intelligence as the Japanese, in particular, strengthen their ability to collect and analyze information and then to meld it with intelligence produced by US services.
Four, revised war plans, a touchy subject that officials are reluctant to discuss in public. A US official said, however: "We continually review our bilateral coordination mechanisms and processes."
Five, moving a US Army corps headquarters to Japan from the US to put it in the region where it would operate and into close proximity to Japan's Ground Self-Defense Force for combined planning, training and operations.
Six, researching and building a combined ballistic missile defense that would be aimed first at the missile threat from North Korea, which fired a missile over Japan in 1998, and then at the longer range threat from China.
All of this is part of US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld's plan for a rigorous overhaul of the US military posture in Asia. It calls for dismantling the many-layered command structure in South Korea, consolidating control into a streamlined US headquarters in Japan, reducing US forces in South Korea and giving those that remain a regional rather than a local mission.
When US and Japanese officials began discussing the realignment of US forces in Japan, the US focused on the command element while the Japanese sought to reduce the friction of US bases next to Japanese neighborhoods. Before the negotiations went far, the two sides agreed that they needed basic reassessment of the alliance.
In Japan, Koizumi formed a commission on security led by a prominent business executive, Hiroshi Araki of Tokyo Electric Power. The commission recommended in October last year that Japan forge an "integrated security strategy" through "strategic consultations" with the US.
Then came two declarations in Tokyo and one in Washington that would have been unthinkable five years ago from a Japan that had wrapped itself in a pacifist cocoon after the devastating defeat of World War II.
In December, Koizumi's government published a new defense guideline and a plan to expand Japan's defenses over the next five years. The guideline said: "Japan's defense forces are the ultimate security of its national security."
The guideline further said(rt)0314p09.tif Japan should "engage in strategic dialogue" with the US to include role-sharing, intelligence exchange, cooperative operations, exchanges of technology and "efforts to make the stationing of US forces in Japan smoother."
Last month, Japan's Foreign Minister Nobutaka Machimura, Defense Minister Yoshinori Ohno, US Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice and Rumsfeld met in Washington to approve "common strategic objectives" that called for US and Japanese forces to "maintain the capability to address contingencies affecting the United States and Japan."
Machimura said that the strategic dialogue has three stages: The review of strategic objectives just concluded, an examination of Japanese and US missions and capabilities now started, and scrutiny of US bases in Japan.
Japan and the US have thus come a long way in sixty years. In April 1945, US and Japanese troops were locked in the bloody battle of Okinawa in which 250,000 people, including 150,000 Okinawan civilians, perished. Today, Japanese and US military officers sit side by side poring over maps and tables to figure out how best to deter mutual adversaries in the future.
Richard Halloran is a writer based in Hawaii.
The return of US president-elect Donald Trump to the White House has injected a new wave of anxiety across the Taiwan Strait. For Taiwan, an island whose very survival depends on the delicate and strategic support from the US, Trump’s election victory raises a cascade of questions and fears about what lies ahead. His approach to international relations — grounded in transactional and unpredictable policies — poses unique risks to Taiwan’s stability, economic prosperity and geopolitical standing. Trump’s first term left a complicated legacy in the region. On the one hand, his administration ramped up arms sales to Taiwan and sanctioned
The Taiwanese have proven to be resilient in the face of disasters and they have resisted continuing attempts to subordinate Taiwan to the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Nonetheless, the Taiwanese can and should do more to become even more resilient and to be better prepared for resistance should the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) try to annex Taiwan. President William Lai (賴清德) argues that the Taiwanese should determine their own fate. This position continues the Democratic Progressive Party’s (DPP) tradition of opposing the CCP’s annexation of Taiwan. Lai challenges the CCP’s narrative by stating that Taiwan is not subordinate to the
World leaders are preparing themselves for a second Donald Trump presidency. Some leaders know more or less where he stands: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy knows that a difficult negotiation process is about to be forced on his country, and the leaders of NATO countries would be well aware of being complacent about US military support with Trump in power. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would likely be feeling relief as the constraints placed on him by the US President Joe Biden administration would finally be released. However, for President William Lai (賴清德) the calculation is not simple. Trump has surrounded himself
US president-elect Donald Trump is to return to the White House in January, but his second term would surely be different from the first. His Cabinet would not include former US secretary of state Mike Pompeo and former US national security adviser John Bolton, both outspoken supporters of Taiwan. Trump is expected to implement a transactionalist approach to Taiwan, including measures such as demanding that Taiwan pay a high “protection fee” or requiring that Taiwan’s military spending amount to at least 10 percent of its GDP. However, if the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) invades Taiwan, it is doubtful that Trump would dispatch
RSS