In Tokyo, Obama Makes Concession on Marine Base

In Tokyo, Obama Makes Concession on Marine Base
By HELENE COOPER and MARTIN FACKLER
Copyright by The New York Times
Published: November 13, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/14/world/asia/14prexy.html?ref=global-home


TOKYO — President Obama, seeking to mend fences with America’s most important Asian ally, agreed on Friday to reopen talks on the contentious issue of the relocation of an American Marine base in Okinawa.

The decision to establish what Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama described as a high-level working group represents a concession for the Obama administration, less than a month after Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates appeared to have shut the door on reopening the issue, which was agreed to in 2006.

The two appeared at a joint press conference just a few hours after Mr. Obama touched down in Tokyo to begin his first presidential trip to Asia.

During their first meeting, Mr. Hatoyama offered Mr. Obama condolences for the shooting rampage at Fort Hood, Texas. Afterward, Mr. Hatoyama described the meeting as a success. “We’ve come to call each other Barack and Yukio, and gotten quite accustomed to calling each other by our names,” he said.

Both leaders said their talks had covered issues including the war in Afghanistan, nuclear non-proliferation and climate change.

Mr. Obama will spend the next week trying to convince Asian leaders that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have not completely distracted the United States from Asia.

But in Japan, Mr. Obama will have a lot of convincing to do. American relations with Japan are at their most contentious since the trade wars of the 1990s. Japan’s newly elected Democratic Party has been blunt about seeking a more “equal” relationship with the United States, and Japanese officials say they now intend to focus more on cementing their relationships with other Asian nations.

The Japanese government has said that the country intends to withdraw from an eight-year-old mission in the Indian Ocean to refuel warships supporting American military efforts in Afghanistan. And Japan also plans to revisit a 2006 agreement to relocate a Marine airfield in Okinawa to a less populated part of the island, and to move thousands of Marines from Okinawa to Guam.

In what has been widely interpreted as an effort to defuse some of the tensions before the trip, Japan announced earlier this week that it would sharply increase its nonmilitary aid to Afghanistan, pledging $5 billion for a range of projects that include building schools and highways, training police officers, clearing land mines and rehabilitating former Taliban fighters.

Mr. Obama plans to deliver a major speech on Saturday about America’s relations with Asia, before he heads to Singapore for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit conference. From Singapore, he is to travel to Shanghai, Beijing and Seoul before returning to Washington.

Mr. Obama’s visit to Tokyo comes as the two countries are grappling with a shift in their overall relationship. In the past, squabbles between the United States and Japan have focused mostly on economic issues, with Washington and Tokyo engaging in trade wars over luxury cars and semiconductors. The security alliance was more stable.

Now, things appeared to have flipped, with economic ties on a solid footing, and the most contentious part of the relationship falling squarely in the security arena.

In particular, the two sides have clashed on the United States Marine airbase at Futenma in Okinawa, the southern island that is home to about two-thirds of the 37,000 shore-based American military personnel in Japan . For years, Japanese residents — and residents of Okinawa in particular — have complained about the military base. Mr. Hatoyama campaigned for office on a pledge to revisit a 2006 agreement to relocate a Marine airfield in Okinawa to a less populated part of the island, and to move thousands of Marines from Okinawa to Guam.

Without giving any ground on the base issue, White House officials are clearly trying to smooth over the tensions.

“Populations in our key allies in northeast Asia support the alliances, but they want more equal partnerships with a lighter U.S. military footprint,” said Jeffrey Bader, senior adviser to Mr. Obama for Asia, in a speech at the Brookings Institution in Washington last Friday. “That is why we are reconfiguring our presence in Japan and South Korea.”

Mr. Bader added: “In neither case will our forward military presence be reduced, but in both cases it will be more acceptable to the populations whose security it contributes to so importantly.” He did not elaborate, though, on just how the United States planned to make that military presence more palatable to the local population in Japan.

During his visit to Tokyo, one of President Obama’s most pressing tasks will be improving communication with Japan ‘s new outspoken government.

Political experts and local news media now speak of a communication gap between Washington and Tokyo , which has led to what they call excessive concerns in Washington that Japan may try to alter the two nations’ postwar military alliance.

Mr. Hatoyama’s government has also alarmed the Obama administration by vowing to end the Japanese Navy’s refueling mission near Afghanistan. But Mr. Hatoyama has also said that his country still relies on the United States for its security in a geopolitical neighborhood that includes a fast-rising China and a nuclear-armed North Korea.

Political experts say Tokyo and Washington are actually much closer on bilateral issues than they may realize. But they say relations have fallen into a vicious cycle in which Tokyo sends conflicting signals, and Washington makes matters worse by raising public pressure.

The experts criticize Mr. Hatoyama for failing to clarify his government’s actual intentions as it speaks of ending Japan ‘s overdependence on Washington and reorienting toward Asia. They point to Mr. Hatoyama’s delays in taking a clear stance on contentious issues like the Okinawa base, which he now says he will decide in January after local elections.

“There are too many places where we don’t know what the new government really wants,” said Yasunori Sone, a professor of political and policy analysis at Keio University in Tokyo. “Their public relations have been poor.”

At the same time, experts also blame the Obama administration for overreacting to what they say is essentially political rhetoric aimed at a domestic audience, and failing to see that Tokyo ‘s new government has little stomach for making big changes to the alliance.

“This is Washington‘s projection of anxiety onto a new government in Tokyo that is talking about changing the status quo,” said Kiichi Fujiwara, a professor of international relations at the University of Tokyo. “Pushing the new government is not the best way to handle things.”

Mr. Fujiwara and others said part of the problem was that the Obama administration was pushing Japan‘s new government too hard, too early, and not giving it time to work out its policy stances. Japanese officials who were in Washington last month to prepare for Mr. Obama’s trip told their American counterparts and foreign policy experts to try to give the new Japanese government time to get its house in order, and asked them not press Japan immediately.

Instead, the two sides should shift the discussion to focus on issues on which the two sides can more easily agree, such as the environment or nuclear proliferation, Mr. Fujiwara said.

“Diving into the most contentious issues was not the right first step,” he said.

It remains to be seen whether Mr. Obama will have the patience to wait.

Political experts here say that Mr. Hatoyama’s more assertive tone reflects the widely held feeling here that Japan has been too meek in its relations with Washington. At the same, they say, public opinion in Japan still remains firmly behind the alliance, which has served Japan well since World War II.

Indeed, even as it has talked of changing some facets of the alliance, the new Japanese government has tried to compensate elsewhere. While Mr. Hatoyama wants to end the refueling operation, he has also pledged to increase humanitarian aid to Afghanistan, announcing $5 billion in non-military aid on Wednesday.

Still, American frustration with Mr. Hatoyama has risen as the new president delayed making decisions such as whether to go ahead with the relocation of the Okinawa base.

Frustration came to a head when Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates visited Tokyo in October. Mr. Gates, known for speaking bluntly, pressed Mr. Hatoyama and Japanese military officials to keep their commitment on the military agreements.

“It’s time to move on,” Mr. Gates said, calling Japanese proposals to reopen the base issue “counterproductive.” Then, adding insult to injury in the eyes of Japanese commentators, Mr. Gates turned down invitations to attend a welcoming ceremony at the defense ministry and to dine with officials there.

Mr. Obama will try to make up for some of the damage caused during the Gates visit. One of the first things on his agenda Friday night: dinner with Mr. Hatoyama.