OBAMA AND JAPAN / Futenma relocation a pressing issue

Written by Meenaa on Wednesday, November 19th, 2008

This is the second installment of a series examining the prospects for Japan’s relations with the incoming administration of U.S. President-elect Barack Obama, with a particular focus on security policies:

Expectations are surging in Okinawa Prefecture that the upcoming administration of U.S. President-elect Barack Obama will finally address a longstanding problem of huge significance to the prefecture–the realignment of U.S. forces in Japan scheduled for completion by the end of 2014 under an agreement between the Japanese and U.S. governments.

The planned realignment is part of a global reorganization of U.S. forces. Among those parts of the reorganization relevant to Okinawa Prefecture are the relocation of the U.S. Marine Corps’ Futenma Air Station, which lies adjacent to the densely populated area of Ginowan in the southern part of the main island of Okinawa, to a northeastern coastal area, and the moving of 8,000 marines in the prefecture to Guam.

The plans, if materialized, will reduce significantly the burden borne by the prefecture for decades because of the heavy presence there of U.S. troops.

The planned reorganization of U.S. forces stationed in Japan, however, has encountered problems since the prefectural government has taken exception to the Japanese-U.S. governmental agreement on the relocation of Futenma Air Station.

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Washington’s East Asia strategy

A view, meanwhile, has been gaining strength in Okinawa that the United States, with a Democrat at the helm of the government for the first time in eight years, will likely take a favorable stance with regard to the wishes of the prefecture, according to a top official of the prefectural government.

Okinawa Gov. Hirokazu Nakaima is not sitting on his hands on this matter. “I’d like to make a visit to the United States before the president-elect is officially inaugurated to obtain as much relevant information as possible,” he said.

As senior officials of the Foreign Ministry put it, however, the relocation of Futenma Air Station hinges more heavily on Washington’s military strategy in East Asia as a whole than its political considerations of Japan-U.S. bilateral relations. There is likely to be little difference between the administrations of President George W. Bush and Obama when it comes to U.S. military strategy in the East Asian region, according to the ministry officials.

Rather, there is the possibility that the Futenma relocation issue could develop into the first major problem Japan faces in its relations with the United States after Obama’s inauguration.

The U.S. Defense Department, in light of the planned transfer of the marine corps personnel from Okinawa to Guam, is set to assign funds for improving the facilities at the Guam military base in its budget draft for fiscal 2010, the period from Oct. 1, 2009, to Sept. 30, 2010.

The Pentagon will present the draft to Congress in February.

Some U.S. officials in charge of budgetary matters, however, have questioned the wisdom of the Pentagon’s planned spending.

Although the transfer to Guam of the marines from Okinawa must be carried out in tandem with the relocation of Futenma Air Station, the relocation process has already been considerably delayed, the officials have pointed out.

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Deadline drawing near

Okinawa Prefecture has been demanding that the Futenma base be relocated as far as possible off the shore of the marine corps’ Camp Schwab in Nago, instead of at a site built on the landfill on the camp’s coastline as agreed upon by the Japanese and U.S. governments. The prefecture’s demand is aimed at minimizing noise pollution and addressing the safety concerns of local residents.

In addition, groups opposing the planned relocation on environmental grounds have become increasingly strident.

In light of these developments, the government needs to finalize the Futenma base relocation plans by next spring at the latest. The location of the runway at the new site, among other issues, still needs to be decided. The government must also provide the prefectural government with necessary documents to prepare for an environmental impact assessment prior to the relocation.

If the situation remains unchanged, the prefectural governor may refuse to issue a landfill permit that is required as part of the relocation plans since the surface of the waters involved are under the jurisdiction of the prefectural government.

In the summer, Japan’s Defense Ministry received an inquiry from the Pentagon asking for solid reassurance that the Futenma relocation will be completed by the end of 2014. The ministry replied that the deadline could be met, since the ministry believed the relocation work itself could be completed in a shorter period than planned.

Adm. Timothy Keating, commander of the U.S. Pacific Command, said at a press conference in New York on Nov. 5, however, that the transfer of the 8,000 U.S. marines to Guam would likely be delayed, noting, “We won’t be done by 2014, or maybe even 2015.”

Keating’s remarks threw Chief Cabinet Secretary Takeo Kawamura into a panic since he had not received any report about the possibility of the schedule for the relocation being altered. Kawamura said there was no concern that the relocation would be delayed, while also denying that relocation costs were likely to balloon from initial estimates.

Ever since the administration headed by Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto reached an agreement in 1996 with the United States on the return of Futenma Air Station to Japan, the relocation issue has made little progress, primarily due to the situation faced by the Japanese side.

A plan endorsed at a Cabinet meeting in 1999 to have the Futenma base relocated to the reef area off Henoko, Nago, was replaced by the current plan in 2006.

The change of plan was prompted by remarks made in 2003 by then U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who expressed his deep concern over the delay of the 1999 relocation during a visit to the prefecture.

However, successive Japanese administrations have seemed unaware of U.S. concerns that the stalemate over the Futenma relocation issue could be serious enough to jeopardize the very basis of the Japan-U.S. alliance.

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Absence of prime mover

Under the administration of Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda, the Futenma relocation issue was addressed directly by close aides to the prime minister, then Chief Cabinet Secretary Nobutaka Machimura and Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary Masahiro Futahashi, the top bureaucrat at the Cabinet Office.

Machimura and Futahashi, in a bid to obtain compliance from Okinawa Prefecture over the relocation plan, came up with a “fine-adjustment” compromise plan to move the planned relocation site about 50 meters farther off the shore.

The United States resisted this proposal, though, saying that yet another change to the plan was tantamount to opening a Pandora’s box since the U.S. administration had only barely managed to placate dissatisfaction within the marine corps over the change of the relocation site from the proposed site near Henoko to the coast off Camp Schwab.

After the departure of Machimura and Futahashi from the Cabinet Office following the appointment of Prime Minister Taro Aso, there has been “nobody to play the leading role” in tackling the Futenma relocation issue, according to a senior Defense Ministry official.

The major opposition Democratic Party of Japan, which is intent on taking office after the next general election, has expressed a commitment to “continue scrutinizing without interruption” the pros and cons of the government’s plan to disburse more than 1 trillion yen in taxpayers’ money to help the transfer of the marines to Guam and other aspects of the envisioned realignment of U.S. forces based in this country.

The DPJ also has announced its intention to study ways of having U.S. forces in Okinawa Prefecture moved overseas. This has caused alarm on the U.S. side over the future of the relocation.

Summarizing this predicament, a high-ranking official of the government said recently he recalled what his U.S. counterpart said to him a decade ago: “Do you think there can be a breakthrough of the Futenma relocation issue? Because in my view that’s probably impossible.”
(Nov. 19, 2008)