Brothers in Arms

It’s always nice to see a friend. as U.S. President George W. Bush prepared to leave Washington—where his poll numbers are slumping and his second term is mired in a swamp of scandal—for a week’s swing through Asia, he could at least be assured of a warm welcome at his first stop. In Kyoto, Bush was to meet Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi. Bush loves Koizumi, and the feeling is mutual. More to the point, it has become conventional wisdom on both sides of the Pacific to assert that the U.S.-Japan alliance is now closer and stronger than it has ever been—an assessment strengthened by the rapid-fire conclusion of a number of military pacts between the two nations in the last month. But no amount of hugs between Bush and Koizumi can obscure some awkward questions about the alliance: what precisely does the U.S. expect from Japan? And whatever it is, will Japan be able to deliver it?

In Asia these days, the U.S. needs all the help it can get. Bush will leave Japan for the annual APEC summit in Pusan, South Korea. There, though his hosts will doubtless make the ritual declarations about the solidity of their own alliance with the U.S., it is an open secret that Washington and the government of Roh Moo Hyun have differed on everything from the U.S. armed forces’ mission in South Korea to the best way to nudge North Korea into a state of peaceful modernity. Sure, the six-party talks on the future of the peninsula achieved something of a breakthrough in September, when Pyongyang seemed to agree to forego its nuclear ambitions in return for economic assistance. But the South—desperate not to see a collapse north of the DMZ—would like to give the North more aid, and sooner than Washington contemplates. From Korea, Bush flies to Beijing, where he will meet with the leaders of a nation which, however much its economic future may be linked to that of the U.S., is certainly not an ally. In the last two months a veritable squadron of top U.S. officials—including Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick, Trade Representative Rob Portman and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld—have visited Beijing, to praise China’s economic development out of one side of their mouth, while complaining of Chinese behavior on everything from piracy to defense spending from the other. So far, China’s main response to U.S. lectures on the need to open up its political system has been to publish a white paper reaffirming the sacred right of the Communist Party to dominate public life.

In an Asia where old friends such as South Korea are not afraid to stick up for their own interests, and in which China is a new rival to the U.S. for local affections, sorting out unfinished business with Japan has become an American priority. On Oct. 26, U.S. Deputy Undersecretary of Defense Richard Lawless announced in Tokyo that the two countries had resolved a nine-year standoff over plans to relocate the Marine Corps’ Futenma Air Station in the town of Ginowan, Okinawa, to a less populated part of the island chain. The next day, the U.S. Navy announced that Japan had dropped a long-standing objection and agreed to let the Navy replace its 44-year-old, diesel-powered Kitty Hawk aircraft carrier, now stationed at Yokosuka, with a newer, nuclear-powered one. Then came the release of a report on the alliance that outlined the most sweeping revisions to U.S. base deployments and the most far-reaching strategic understandings between the two countries in more than a decade. The report confirmed the withdrawal of 7,000 U.S. troops from Okinawa (Japan has long sought to reduce the basing burden on the islands); the relocation of the U.S. Army’s I Corps headquarters from Washington state to Camp Zama, an hour outside of Tokyo; the establishment of joint U.S.-Japanese command of the Yokota Air Base; and a pledge by both countries to increase military cooperation, intelligence gathering and training.

If Washington’s interest in bolstering the alliance is plain, so is Tokyo’s. Koizumi has made a strategic decision to yoke his nation ever more tightly to the U.S. as a buffer to the seemingly inexorable rise of China, measured not least by the rapid modernization of its armed forces. During his four and a half years in office, Koizumi has pushed Japan and its so-called Self-Defense Force into a much higher profile on the world stage. In 2002, the Japanese destroyer Kirishima set sail for the Indian Ocean to help refuel U.S. and allied ships involved in Afghanistan operations, and Koizumi has offered unstinting support for Bush’s war in Iraq. Since 2004, the Japanese Prime Minister has dispatched around 550 troops to Iraq, where they remain, evidence that Japan still numbers itself among Bush’s “coalition of the willing.” Koizumi’s newly-appointed Foreign Affairs Minister Taro Aso is explicit on how the government sees its priorities and ranks its friends. “Japan,” Aso said on Nov. 2, “should first continue to build strong relations with America and, based on this, deepen relations with other Asian nations.”

Yet Japan may not be able to offer all that the U.S. wants. To be sure, its deployment of forces around the globe would have been unthinkable even 15 years ago. Japan contributed to the first Gulf War not by sending troops but by writing checks. But American officials still grumble that Japan is not taking enough responsibility for its own defense. (Since the Japanese forces in Iraq can only use their weapons in strictly defined circumstances, they have themselves had to be defended at various times by British, Dutch and Australian troops.) At a conference in Tokyo sponsored by the American Enterprise Institute, a Washington think tank, just a day before the Futenma agreement, Lawless stunned his audience by blasting the inertia, complacency and inadequacy of Japan’s armed forces. Rather than offering the usual congratulations for support in Iraq and the Indian Ocean, Lawless called Japan’s military initiatives over the years “quite modest.” Japan’s defense planning, Lawless said, was “episodic rather than systemic … reactive rather than proactive.” Lest there be any doubt about the message, Lawless spelled it out: “Japan must start doing things for itself that it has historically expected the U.S. to do on its behalf. We have to bring the substance of the alliance up to the level it should have achieved a long time ago.” Shigeru Ishiba, a Diet member, former defense minister and well-known hawk, agrees. Lawless, says Ishiba, is “genuinely frustrated at what he sees as Japan’s slow pace of change. And I can’t say I blame him. I am frustrated, too.”

But neither frustration among defense analysts nor Koizumi’s undoubted energy are likely to get Japan moving at the speed the U.S. would like. Japan’s constitution, written for it by Americans after 1945, assured that it would “renounce war as a sovereign right of the nation.” For good reason, many Japanese remain deeply conflicted about the use of force. The grand bargain struck at the end of World War II—in essence that the U.S. would protect Japan in return for diplomatic support for its endeavors—served Japan well. It allowed the Japanese to concentrate on building the most sustained economic miracle the world has ever seen, without having to worry about the costs of a massive defense establishment. Legal and constitutional constraints still severely limit Japan’s offensive military capabilities. Japanese law does not allow it to consider an attack on its allies as an attack on itself, something that is standard in most mutual defense pacts, and which is the very cornerstone of NATO. The Japanese Prime Minister does not have anything rivaling the independent military powers that the U.S. President and many other heads of government possess. For example, although Koizumi orchestrated Japan’s missions to the Indian Ocean and Iraq, each required a special act of parliament. And despite his popularity, Koizumi has faced stiff public opposition to every controversial military decision he has taken. Hiroshi Honma, a professor of international law at Hosei University, says the U.S. continues to underestimate Japan’s ambivalence about its military. “The U.S. is struggling to maintain its role as the world’s keeper of democracy and liberalization, and they’re asking Japan to take a bit of the burden off them,” says Honma. “But there’s a gap between how the U.S. and Japan see their own military forces—their goals and purposes—and the Japan-U.S. alliance.”

That’s not what American defense planners want to hear. With wars simmering in Iraq and Afghanistan, and potential conflicts looming in North Korea and Iran—to say nothing of China’s military buildup—allies are a must for the U.S. In that context, says Adam Ward of the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London, some U.S. strategists would like to transform Japan into “the U.K. of Asia”—a regional power on which the U.S. can rely not only for diplomatic support, but for military assistance all over the globe. It’s a nice idea, but Ward insists that the analogy ignores the deeply shared roots between the U.S. and Britain, to say nothing of long years of close military and bureaucratic cooperation. “For Japan to emulate Britain,” says Ward, “would be a quantum leap.”

Michael Schiffer, a Council on Foreign Relations Hitachi Fellow at the National Institute for Defense Studies in Tokyo, endorses that analysis. The future of the alliance, he says, turns on the answer to a fundamental question: what sort of military transformation is Japan really capable of, and in what time frame? For those dreaming of a new depth to the partnership, one that would safeguard the Asian interests of an overstretched U.S., Schiffer offers a sobering response. “For the long term,” he says, “the U.S. may have too much vision, and Japan too little, about an increased Japanese role in the alliance.” Friends are nice. But if the U.S. is going to continue to perform its vital balancing act among the Asian powers—new and old—it is likely to have to do most of the work itself.