EDITORIAL: Japan-U.S. ties must not be predicated on arms purchases

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and U.S. President Donald Trump boarded the destroyer Kaga at the Maritime Self-Defense Force Yokosuka Base in Kanagawa Prefecture on May 28 and addressed 500 or so Japanese and U.S. personnel gathered there.

It marked the first time for a U.S. president to board an MSDF vessel. It was also the first time for the leaders of Japan and the United States to appear together to offer encouragement to members of the SDF and U.S. forces.

The gesture seemed intended to demonstrate the strength of the Japan-U.S. alliance and thereby keep China in check.

The Kaga, a helicopter carrier, is scheduled to be retrofitted into an aircraft carrier. Trump said a retrofitted Kaga will help both nations “defend against a range of complex threats in the region and far beyond.”

Having an attack aircraft carrier, something that successive administrations refused to countenance, would make a mockery of Japan's stated principle of a defense-only policy.

The Kaga has already been deployed to the South China Sea and the Indian Ocean, where it took part in joint drills with U.S. and other forces.

In the absence of any serious debate, military cooperation between Japan and the United States appears bound to expand across the entire Indo-Pacific region once the Kaga takes on its new role.

The Kaga is expected to carry state-of-the-art, U.S.-made F-35B stealth fighter jets.

Japan initially decided to introduce 42 F-35 jets. One hundred and five more will be added to that fleet at a cost of around 1.2 trillion yen ($11 billion).

Trump referred to the huge order during his speech on the Kaga, saying it would “give Japan the largest fleet of F-35s of any of our allies.”

That said, the cause of the April crash of an F-35A attached to the Air SDF Misawa Air Base in Aomori Prefecture has yet to be determined. Japan should not rush ahead with the purchase as if nothing had happened simply to curry favor with Trump.

Among various steps Japan has taken to comply with Trump’s “Buy American” policy, moves to introduce land-based Aegis Ashore missile defense systems particularly raises questions about its real efficacy for the nation's defense.

To coincide with Trump’s visit, Kenji Harada, the senior vice defense minister, visited Akita and Yamaguchi prefectures, the candidate sites for deploying the missile tracking and interception systems.

Harada sought to gain the understanding of the communities that will host the sites by offering reassurances based on a study that radar waves from Aegis Ashore systems will have no impact on human health, despite fears to the contrary expressed by local residents.

Still, the introduction of Aegis Ashore systems will require a huge investment of several hundred billion yen. The Asahi Shimbun has argued in its editorials that this expenditure should be reconsidered from the viewpoint of cost-effectiveness, given Japan’s tight fiscal situation.

Gaining the understanding of candidate host communities is no easy task.

For example, in the town of Abu, Yamaguchi Prefecture, which lies adjacent to one of the candidate deployment sites, about 55 percent of all eligible voters have joined a group of residents opposed to the deployment plan.

The Defense Ministry has pledged to defend Aegis Ashore sites against possible terrorist attacks, but has yet to address residents' concerns that their communities would be the first to be attacked in the event of a military contingency.

We are left to wonder if the “Japan-U.S. ties,” which Abe talks so proudly of, are only mediated through the purchases of arms.

Measures to reduce the burden of U.S. military bases in Okinawa Prefecture were seldom discussed during the latest Abe-Trump summit, sources said.

That epitomizes the stance of the Abe administration, which attaches so much importance to ties with the United States but makes light of the desires of the residents of communities that underpin that alliance.

--The Asahi Shimbun, May 29