TOKYO, Jan. 13 (Xinhua) -- Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama voiced his appreciation on Wednesday of the Japan-U.S. security treaty in his address to Japan's Self Defense force and his comments about the pact being "indispensable" were undoubtedly earnest.
However media reports and political commentary, on the back of Japanese Foreign Minister Katsuya Okada's somewhat fruitless meeting with U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in Honolulu, Hawaii on Tuesday, continue to swirl with speculation that Tokyo's stalling on a key military issue in Okinawa threatens to subvert Hatoyama's "indispensable" alliance, as Washington's agitation increases as the debate trundles on.
The Japanese Prime Minister, following his election campaign pledges, has created something of a Catch-22 situation for his ruling Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) over the initial proposed relocating of the U.S. Marine Corps' Futemma Air Station to Ginowan, a less densely populated region of Japan's southernmost prefecture, and the Japanese premier has extended his self-imposed deadline to find his way out of the diplomatic labyrinth fashioned by his administration, until May of this year, further rattling Washington's cage who has persistently called for the issue to be resolved expeditiously.
POLITICAL PARADOX
"Like the Japanese public, the Obama administration has not concealed its exasperation. The president and other senior officials visiting the country have repeatedly called for an "expedited" resolution to the base dispute," a recent editorial in The Washington Post said.
"After the prime minister broke his own deadline just before Christmas and announced that he would postpone the matter for another few months, the Japanese ambassador to Washington was summoned for an unusual dmarche by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton."
Japanese Foreign Minister Katsuya Okada, left, speaks as Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton looks on at a news conference in Kapolei, Hawaii Tuesday, Jan. 12, 2010.(Xinhua/Reuters Photo) Photo Gallery>>>
"The DPJ's campaign platform included language that questioned the LDP's traditional lockstep alignment with U.S. foreign and defense policy and fanned the hopes of constituents grown dissatisfied with the noise and danger associated with the likes of outmoded Air Station Futemma in crowded Ginowan City," added political analyst Jeff Marchesseault, in an article for the Guam News Factor.
Further contributing to U.S. President Barack Obama's administration's umbrage on the matter is the increased and incessant wrangling from Hatoyama's junior coalition parties, most notably the Social Democratic Party, who want to see the Marine Corps' base moved outside Japan entirely, and thus what started as bilateral dialogue between the U.S. and Japan and was at first a minor headache for the former, is quickly morphing into a diplomatic migraine for Washington.
The quandaries the Hatoyama-led DPJ face if they opt to move the facility. Not only will they have to deal with the fallout from their own coalition parties, the local government and people of Okinawa, there's also the general electorate to consider, whose favor of the ruling administration is already waning since their meteoric rise to power in August 2009, which put pay to decades of Liberal Democratic rule that held the Japan-U.S. alliance at the very core of its political ideology.
With upper-house elections looming, such political and public discontentedness is very untimely indeed.
WASHINGTON UNWAVERING
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton (L) greets Japan's Foreign Minister Katsuya Okada as he arrives for a bilateral meeting at a hotel in Honolulu.(Xinhua/Reuters Photo) Photo Gallery>>>
"But there is already a tacit realization by Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama and members of his ruling Democratic Party of Japan that moving Marine Corps' Air Base Futemma anywhere outside of Japan will compromise the power of U.S. deterrence in Pacific Asia," said Marchesseault
"Furthermore, the U.S. has never wavered from its assertion that after a near-20-year period of research, planning and conclusive bilateral understanding and agreement between the governments of Japan and the United States, there is no viable alternative to moving the base from its present site," he added.
U.S. Secretary of Defense Dr. Robert M. Gates, the Pentagon's top man, was the first U.S. Cabinet member to visit Japan, ahead of President Barack Obama's goodwill visit to the nation, since the DPJ government took office.
Gates left Tokyo adamant that the existing bilateral security arrangements between the two countries should remain in place stating that all the alternatives that have been looked at over the years are either politically untenable or operationally unworkable and no alternatives to the original arrangement that was negotiated exist.
As a deluge of top Japanese officials visit Okinawa, the latest being Japan's Chief Cabinet Secretary Hirofumi Hirano who earmarked two islands just off mainland Okinawa as possible relocation sites for the base, Washington's position remains utterly unwavering and echoes Gates' sentiments indubitably.
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in Honolulu, Hawaii on Tuesday maintained Washington's unequivocal stance on the matter to Japan's Foreign Minister Katsuya Okada, and as much as she praised Japan's role as being "an essential pillar of the Asia-Pacific security architecture," she stated that Washington's position was that the agreed realignment road map presents the best way forward.
The decision to move the facility in and of itself has, according to some U.S. sources close to the matter, sparked fears in Washington that the Futemma issue may just be a pretext to the DPJ's premeditative generating of frosty ties with Washington as part of their well publicized commitment to nurturing and buttressing an East Asian alliance, which a number of political commentators have noted that far from being a diplomatic maneuver to steer Japan towards more equal ties with the U.S., as the rhetoric goes, is a move towards Japan lessening its reliance on the U.S. generally -- which has overt military implications underlined by a serious geopolitical conundrum.
However it would seem the majority of U.S. political commentators are playing down the rift between Tokyo and Washington, claiming that "all is within Washington's design," and the extra leeway being offered to Hatoyama and his government is a simple strategy that costs nothing but time, as the conclusion to the issue has already been decided -- in 2006 in fact.
"The chances are that if Mr. Hatoyama heads too far in that direction, he will face a rebellion from his own party, not to mention Japanese voters," according to The Washington Post's editorial on the subject.
"So the Obama administration would be wise to avoid harsh rhetoric and give the prime minister some space. The reality is that the government cannot go forward with the new basing agreement before an upper-house election, expected late this summer, without endangering its own existence. Japan's nascent two-party system is a democratic achievement, not a diplomatic nuisance; give it a little time to find its course."
