The easy part of newly assigning a US aircraft carrier to Japan, which was to persuade the Japanese to accept a nuclear-powered vessel, has been accomplished. Now comes the hard part, deciding which one of 10 carriers should be based in the port of Yokosuka.
Deployments of the world's mightiest warships are not to be taken lightly. They are the most visible symbols of the ability of the US to project seapower and to maintain a presence far from its shores. In a crisis, often the first question from the White House is: "Where are the carriers?"
Indeed, the decision of which carrier to base in Japan is so complicated that it may go all the way to US President George W. Bush. The move must take into account Japanese attitudes, US military strategy and US politics and economics -- much of which will be difficult to reconcile.
At the moment, the leading candidates would seem to be USS Abraham Lincoln, named for the American perhaps most revered in Japan, and USS George Washington, named for the father of his country. Lincoln, based in Bremerton in the state of Washington, belongs to the Pacific Fleet while Washington is assigned to the Atlantic Fleet and is based in Norfolk, Virginia.
Among the carriers that should not be under consideration is USS Harry S Truman, named for the president who ordered the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 to get Japan to surrender and end World War II. Similarly, USS Nimitz is named for the US naval commander, Admiral Chester Nimitz, in that war against Japan.
Posting USS Dwight D. Eisenhower to Japan would recall the cancelation in President Eisenhower's visit to Tokyo in 1960 in the face of violent protests against the US-Japan Security Treaty. USS Enterprise, the first nuclear-powered carrier to visit Japan, stirred up similar protests in Sasebo, a port in southwestern Japan, in 1968.
USS Theodore Roosevelt is named for the president who negotiated a treaty to end the Russo-Japanese war of 1905 that many Japanese thought unfair. USS John C. Stennis and USS Carl Vinson are named for chairmen of the Senate Armed Services Committee unknown to most Japanese. Finally, USS Ronald Reagan would get an indifferent reception.
Triggering this search is the need to replace USS Kitty Hawk, the conventionally powered carrier based in Yokosuka now. She is scheduled to be retired in 2008. USS John F. Kennedy, based in Mayport, Florida, is also conventionally powered and is to follow shortly after.
After months of quiet negotiations, US diplomats recently got an agreement from Japan that Kitty Hawk's replacement would be nuclear-powered. The "nuclear allergy" of Japan that is the legacy of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki appears to be fading. Moreover, nuclear plants generate a third of Japan's electricity today.
US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld is preparing a report for Congress known as the Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR), that officials say will reflect a shift in US power from the Atlantic to the Pacific caused by the rise of China, the belligerence of North Korea, piracy in vital sea lanes in Southeast Asia, and the threat of terror.
The QDR, to be delivered early next year, will call for shifting a carrier from the Atlantic to the Pacific so that six of those 90,000-tonne warships, each carrying 85 fighters, bombers and other aircraft, and operated by 5,500 sailors and aviators, will be posted in the Pacific and four in the Atlantic. The sixth Pacific carrier would most likely be based at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. Here's where politics weigh in.
The five carriers based in Norfolk are under the vigilant eye of Senator John Warner, chairman of the Armed Services Committee. He is a Republican, as is Virginia's other senator, George Allen, and five of the state's eight representatives.
Rumsfeld will find it hard to persuade Republican allies to give up a ship that brings dollars and jobs into their electoral districts. Ship maintenance, supplies and spending by the crews all pump large sums into economies around naval bases. Even so, sending one of the five carriers from Norfolk to Hawaii or Japan would seem to be on the horizon.
In contrast, the senators from California, Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein, and from Washington state, Maria Cantwell and Patty Murray, are Democrats critical of the Bush Administration. Their pleas to keep ships in San Diego or Bremerton are not likely to be given much heed.
Richard Halloran is a writer based in Hawaii.
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