POINT OF VIEW/ Sheila A. Smith: More mature basing policy needed in Japan

Yukio Hatoyama resigned as prime minister on Wednesday, citing his inability to fulfill his party's campaign promise on the Futenma airfield relocation as a key reason.

Despite the intense effort by the Hatoyama Cabinet and the Obama administration to find common ground on a way forward on Futenma, Hatoyama's ruling Democratic Party of Japan found itself torn asunder by domestic political opposition to its efforts to work with Washington on the difficult issue of consolidating U.S. bases in Okinawa Prefecture.

Granted, Hatoyama set forth goals that seemed impossible to realize, and the criticism of him was relentless. Politics trumped a thorough discussion of policy goals, and the pressures on the DPJ government's first prime minister were too intense to allow a full policy review.

This is not the first time that Japan and the United States have sought a solution to moving the U.S. Marine Corps Air Station Futenma in Ginowan, nor is the policy conversation over.

In 1996, as a result of the Special Action Committee on Okinawa, the two governments committed to closing Futenma, and the search for a replacement began. The first option was defeated by a nonbinding referendum in Nago City, and then by a refusal by the governor at the time, Masahide Ota, to endorse the plan.

Similarly in the 1990s, the two governments spent years examining options and potential solutions in the Defense Policy Review Initiative talks that resulted in the 2005-2006 agreements on transformation and realignment.

Hatoyama has assumed responsibility for the latest agreement, and resigned. His predecessors, Ryutaro Hashimoto and Junichiro Koizumi, also confronted the difficulty inherent in finding a way forward to closing Futenma. Thus, we should expect that Hatoyama's successor will also need to work closely with Okinawa and the United States to implement it.

My own view after watching the complex negotiations and political maneuvering on this issue for more than a decade and a half is that we need to take stock of the approach being used, and understand its limitations. Here are some basic observations, starting with the most obvious.

1) Okinawa has been asked to host too much of the U.S. military presence in Japan.

In the 1970s, as the Vietnam War ended and U.S. forces in the region were drawn down, a broad consolidation of U.S. bases in the Kanto region was implemented. U.S. forces, in their foreign uniforms and occupation-era imagery, were taken out of the view of most metropolitan Japanese.

Those that remained in Japan were removed to Okinawa, where broad tracts of land still allowed for a relatively uncongested region for military activities. Economic incentives were to be had, certainly. But the real motive was to have U.S. forces out of sight and out of mind for the bulk of Japanese. Total numbers of U.S. forces were reduced and key bases were shut. Thus, the issues associated with base communities were seen as "local problems," whether they were in Yokosuka, Misawa or Kadena.

Okinawa suffers from several factors. The first and most obvious is that it was the site of the bloodiest land battle fought on Japanese soil in World War II. U.S. forces landed and then stayed through a 27-year occupation.

The second is that Okinawa has long been dependent on the largesse of Tokyo in the highly centralized governance system of postwar Japan. Bargaining with Tokyo is virtually impossible unless the residents of Okinawa are ready to give up the economic subsidies that for many communities are bread and butter sources of jobs and income.

Finally, the NIMBY dynamic of course works everywhere in the world; asking the Japanese government to put the bases elsewhere runs smack into this phenomenon. Is it fair? No. Discriminatory? Absolutely, as it rests on the premise that Okinawans cannot say no.

Will the Japanese communities in the main islands accept some of the functions that Hatoyama asked them to share? Not clear. Should they? Of course. The U.S.-Japan alliance will be vulnerable so long as this Achilles heel of concentrating deployment patterns of U.S. forces is maintained.

2) Localizing the impact of the U.S. bases was a strategy to handle citizen grievances.

Grievances were handled as quietly as possible via the old Defense Facilities Administration Agency (now the Defense Ministry proper) and local politicians. While Okinawa's local politicians found themselves more often than not sitting uncomfortably between those who benefited from land rents or community subsidies and those who were strongly opposed to the confiscation of their family land, this localized method of problem-solving was a sort of divide and conquer strategy that more or less worked.

But then the rape in 1995 changed that, and yet again, the Okinawa islands became infuriated by the lack of central government attention to the issues that frustrated life in local base-hosting communities.

Today the Association of Governors Hosting U.S. Military Bases is beginning to take a more proactive stance regarding the shared policy challenges, and the governors of Kanagawa and Okinawa prefectures lead this effort.

But there ought to be a broader dialogue between Washington and Tokyo on how to improve policy coordination on basing issues.

The United States and Japan have had focused consultations on operational issues in their Defense Guidelines Review, and emerged with a strong policy agenda for improving military cooperation.

Similarly, a review of the oversight issues that affect the U.S. military presence--comprehensive and problem-solving in orientation--would go a long way to creating a stronger foundation for the U.S. military presence in Japan.

3) The Japanese government has not articulated its reason for supporting a strong U.S. military presence in Japan.

It remains striking to me, perhaps because I am American, that very few Japanese political leaders or policymakers feel comfortable articulating why U.S. forces are necessary to the defense of Japan. In private meetings, I am often asked to explain to Japanese the importance of U.S. military forces to Japan, and I know that my colleagues in government are asked to similarly explain the utility of the U.S. military presence.

But I have come to resist this framing of the question. The U.S. military has been in Japan for more than half a century, ostensibly because the Japanese government has fulfilled its treaty obligations. But this is not the answer that most Japanese want. The question in their minds is why the U.S. military presence, and cooperation between the U.S. military and the Self-Defense Forces, is necessary at all?

Last spring, when North Korea was threatening to go ahead with a series of missile launches, I was dumfounded when several Japanese reporters asked me why Defense Secretary Robert Gates openly refused to defend Japan. Gates had simply stated that he did not think the missile launches posed a direct threat to the United States, but many in Japan seemed to interpret this as the U.S. government refusing to defend Japan.

At the time, of course, U.S. Aegis destroyers were deployed in the Sea of Japan alongside their MSDF counterparts, and the U.S. Air Force was in constant contact with its counterparts in the ASDF who led Japan's own ballistic missile defense operations.

In short, operational integration between the U.S. and Japanese militaries is a daily prerequisite to an effective defense of Japan.

Yet, U.S. forces seem damned if they do reside in Japan, but damned if they are not there whenever the Japanese public feels vulnerable. It seems to me the time has come for a clear and explicit discussion by the Japanese government of Japan's defense requirements and the role of Japan-U.S. military cooperation in meeting those requirements.

4) There is considerable confusion as to why U.S. Marines must remain in Japan.

It seems that many in Japan, and even in Washington, find the U.S. Marine Corps the easiest target for blame in the Futenma issue, and have put pressure on the Marines to rationalize their presence. In response, U.S. Marine Corps leaders have put forward rationales based on changing regional contingencies. But the overarching question is what role the Marines play in U.S. forward deployments in the region, and that is a question not only for Marine Corps commanders but for our secretary of defense.

Northeast Asia has changed considerably since the mid-1990s, and, therefore, rethinking our overall force posture needs to be based on the shifting security environment.

But the fact remains that most of us are not entirely sure why the U.S. Marines have to be in Japan, even those of us who understand that in many ways they are an asset that most U.S. planners count upon for a rapid, flexible response in a variety of contingencies.

Likewise, the Japanese government seems to support their presence, as it provides host nation support for their training and operational support. But the Japanese public remains mystified, and without a clear publicly understood rationale for the U.S. Marine presence, they are vulnerable to the argument that they could--and should--go elsewhere.

Ultimately, the U.S. government feels they add strength and flexibility in Northeast Asia at a time when the situation within North Korea suggests the potential for greater rather than less tension (the Cheonan sinking in March, for example) for the foreseeable future.

Regional attention also is focused on Chinese maritime activities in the South China Sea as well as in and around Japanese territorial waters. Taking large numbers of forces out of the region is a risk at any time, but it is not one that many in the U.S. government feel comfortable with right now.

But if Japanese security planners feel they can complement the capabilities that the U.S. Marines offer, then perhaps a more direct discussion of the regional security balance is in order; one that focuses on Japan's own military capabilities.

5) Japan's Self-Defense Forces ought to be based alongside the U.S. military. Building new military bases, dedicated for use solely by U.S. forces, seems politically to be a bridge too far in contemporary Japan.

Finally, it seems obvious now, after a decade of trying to construct a new base in Okinawa for the U.S. Marine Corps, that we are refusing to see a fundamental political reality in Japan. There is little appetite for constructing new military bases, especially those dedicated solely to use by the U.S. military.

If a deeper analysis and set of decisions regarding the requisite level and type of U.S. military presence in Japan is the first step in thinking about our long-term goals of military cooperation, then it seems to me that there is a second order conversation to be had about how we achieve those ends.

At a time when the Asia-Pacific region is moving in the direction of greater regionalism and stronger efforts at finding cooperative approaches to ensuring regional stability, we might want to turn our efforts toward a more mature basing strategy in Japan.

The U.S. military partnership with the Self-Defense Forces is a strong and close one, and their effectiveness in meeting the changing defense needs of Japan--and the emerging needs of the region--will in large part depend on their ability to operate alongside each other.

Functionally, there may continue to be different roles and missions for each national military, but the real need will be for deep understanding of each other's perspectives and approach to carrying out their missions.

Just as the need for joint exercises and interoperability reflects the integrative approach to our military cooperation, so too should our basing strategy.

The Japanese people should be given the opportunity by their own government to understand the value of our bilateral military cooperation to their own livelihood and future prosperity. Moreover, they should see in front of them not bases with American flags and barbed wire, but bases with the Japanese and American flags staffed by both of our militaries to better reflect the reality of how our military cooperation ought to work.

Joint use of bases by the U.S. military and the SDF should not just be a means to an end; it should be a reflection of the maturity of our bilateral military cooperation as well as our demonstration of the fact that the time has come to shift more responsibilities to Japan's own national military.

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The author, an expert on Japan and Asian international relations, is a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.