IP: Asahi Editorial, 11/15/95

[Dave Farber <farber () central cis upenn edu>]

Give us a new security treaty to address our future


Would we buy an insurance policy without reading the fine print over and over
and without knowing how it affects our future?


Such a thing is just about to happen to us as Prime Minister Tomiichi Murayama
and President Bill Clinton renew endorsement of the Japan-U.S. Security
Treaty in a Tokyo declaration Nov. 20. That event is supposed to be the
culmination of nearly a year of bilateral talks on "redefining" the pact.


But such a declaration is like a press handout jointly issued by a pair of
disreputable insurance companies. This is especially true as it applies to
Japan's diplomatic and defense bureaucrats, who are, as ever, like
white-shoed salesmen, refusing to offer even a modicum of honesty. Japanese
citizens get a sense of what redefinition really means by reading "United
States Security Strategy for the East Asia-Pacific Region" issued by the
U.S. Department of Defense in February.


So thorough is the information blackout on this side of the Pacific that in a
great demand is what amounts to an analytical summary of the Defense
Department report written for the July-August 1995 issue of "Foreign
Affairs" by Joseph Nye, Jr., the assistant secretary of defense
forinternational security affairs, one of the overseers of the original DOD
report.


We now know, for example, that "redefinition," is, in fact, "rewriting" of the
pact. The Defense Department, for example, now envisages deployment of U.S.
troops in Japan as protecting not only the U.S. interests in Asia, but as
far away as the Persian Gulf.


Consider this. In July, the Navy got a new mission with the establishment of
the Fifth Fleet's submarine group headquarters at the Yokosuka naval base
in Kanagawa Prefecture. The fleet covers the Persian Gulf. The Seventh
Fleet, also at Yokosuka, is tasked with a quick-response capability to the
same region.


This is quite a leap from what we had been led to understand the "Far East" to
mean. Article VI of the original 1960 pact says that U.S. forces can use
bases in Japan to contribute to "the security of
Japan and the maintenance of international peace and security in the Far East."
And Japan has defined "Far East" to mean Japan and the surrounding area
north of the Philippines, including South Korea and Taiwan.


Is the Persian Gulf--with the Indian Ocean in between--in the Far East? Such a
question might seem naive. The Japanese bases were crucial in the Vietnam
War. Japanese minesweepers cruised to the Middle East after the 1991
Persian Gulf War.


For a long time, Washington and Tokyo have stretched the interpretation of the
security pact, emphasizing the Soviet menace. It is gone. We must now go
back to the basics of the pact before it is virtually rewritten even beyond
the already-overstretched interpretations.


There is another disturbing factor emerging from the evolving security scene in
this part of the world. It seems that the latest Defense Department
strategy for Asia-Pacific--plus the Persian Gulf and perhaps East
Africa--is also a Washington effort to encroach upon a Japanese sanctuary.
Superficially, at least, the Japanese government has insisted that the
Constitution bars participation in collective defense arrangements.


In his "Foreign Affairs" article, Nye states: "Japan has reaffirmed the option
of maintaining the U.S. alliance, while working with us to tailor it to the
post-Cold War period." Tailor it to the new U.S. strategy? Does this not
suggest a step closer to collective defense ties in the post-Cold War era?


Japan and the United States, meanwhile, are now closing in on conclusion of an
agreement regarding their new cooperation in logistics and procurement.


We know that the doctrine of no collective defense that is part of the nation's
defense policy was trampled upon in the Cold War. To cite one example, in
PACEX 89, the largest regional military exercise ever, Japanese and U.S.
forces staged joint simulated attacks on Soviet military installations. It
was a collective-defense (or, more appropriately, offense) scenario
introduced into a live exercise.


If the "redefinition" of the security pact means the acquiescence of Tokyo to
Washington in continuing to distort the interpretation of the pact and the
Constitution as well into preparations for what amounts to collective
defense arrangements, we need to stop and think before we buy into the
redefinition.


It is now apparent that the statement to come from Murayama and Clinton is not
going to be enough to sell the redefinition. The trouble with such a
statement is that we will never know if it accurately reflects the results
of the redefinition talks between Tokyo and Washington. A more serious
problem is that the Diet, our legislative body, however shoddy it may be, as
well as the media and the public through Diet debate, have had no chance to
examine it nor to question it, even well after the fact, let alone in
advance.


One way to force genuine debate to determine what we are doing is to issue a
Tokyo declaration of a starting point for writing a new security treaty,
not to declare some back-room redefinition of
operations that would be an ending point. Any international treaty must be
submitted to the Diet for
debate.


There are other reasons favoring a new treaty. Japan has long been
criticized for getting a "free ride." But Japan now pays as much as 70% of
the cost of supporting the U.S. military presence in Japan. We are thus
paying ten times the rate Germany pays per American serviceman. Must we pay
so much?


Let us abandon the notion that we must pay to help offset our trade surplus.
The United States must economize and reduce its government deficit if it is
to reduce its trade deficit the way it wants.


Tokyo and Washington have already signed a new agreement that would increase
Japan's "sympathy budget." Our tax money has been and continues to be spent to
perpetuate the presence of U.S. troops, together with housing for them and
their dependents and other military facilities, mostly at the expense of
people in Okinawa. A drastic reduction in the U.S. base presence on the
island is in order. Diet debate on a new treaty will surely underscore the
unfair burden of
Okinawans and force us to think of a solution.


It is time, in fact it is long past time, to review our security situation on
our own--not for the Americans, as most Japanese bureaucrats and
politicians have almost reflexively done for the past half-century.