Japan threatens Asian stability

Japan threatens Asian stability

Opposition to the United States' military bases in Japan continues to escalate, particularly in Okinawa -- and Japanese politicians have made an inadequate response to it. Our Asia correspondent Harvey Stockwin suggests that, as was once the case in the Philippines, so now in Japan, the political foundations for the U.S. presence, thought by many to be vital for regional security, are weakening.

HONG KONG (JP): To the ongoing Taiwan Straits Crisis, and the ongoing Korean Crisis, add another: the crisis which threatens regional security in East Asia because of the absence of leadership within Japan.

The anti-bases movement in Japan, and particularly in Okinawa, where the majority of U.S. military installations in Japan are sited, is once again flourishing. Japanese politicians are doing a poor job explaining to the electorate why such agitation is scarcely in Japan's interests right now. In fact, they are doing nothing, even though it remains official Japanese security policy that the U.S. military presence is essential.

The latest maneuvers by the anti-bases movement are aimed at disrupting the very large circular signals antenna in Yomitan, central Okinawa, run by the U.S. Navy. Once the U.S. military had a similar intelligence-gathering antenna, called an "elephant cage" because of its size, at Clark Air Base in the Philippines but that was lost when the U.S. was forced to withdraw from the Philippines in 1993.

On March 31, the lease ran out on one small 236-square-meter plot of land among the many such plots which comprise the 530,000-square-meter area upon which the Yomitan facility is built. The small plot belongs to Shoichi Chibana, one of the leaders of those opposing the continuance of U.S. bases in Okinawa. He refuses to renew the lease on this small plot. He will not take payment for it. Instead he wants to "visit" his property. So far, he has been prevented from doing so.

Anxious to avoid a growing headache, on March 26 the Japanese authorities charged with helping the Americans sustain their bases, the Defense Facilities Administration Agency and the police arrived at the elephant cage in force, and hurriedly constructed a high fence around it.

This essentially defensive action was coupled with equally defensive legal maneuverings. As a result of a case brought by the Japanese government, the Naha branch of the Fukuoka High Court ordered the Okinawa prefectural governor to sign the extension of the leases of base lands. The Governor refused. He has not been charged with contempt of court. Instead, Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto signed the renewed leases.

Whether these compulsory extensions will enable the Yomitan facility to go on doing its work, or will only grant temporary legal relief is not yet clear. The controversy over U.S. land use in Okinawa, because of the bases, seems certain to escalate. Apart from Chibana, there are 2,900 other landowners who are reportedly refusing to accept lease extensions and are instead demanding that their property, dotted around many U.S. bases, be given back.

The potential seriousness of this situation can be gauged from the fact that until recently the conventional wisdom was that the landowners would do no such thing. While anti-bases feeling has long been considerable in Okinawa, the bases were sustained by the fact that the landowners grew relatively rich earning substantial rents from their often small plots. It was thought that they would therefore not be inclined to rock the boat.

But now they are rocking it. On the surface, the controversy gained renewed thrust in the middle of 1995 when three U.S. Marines raped a 12-year-old Okinawan schoolgirl, thereby reviving and reinvigorating the anti-bases movement in Japan.

Beneath the surface, the political foundations of regional security in East Asia are cracking. Since the closure of the two giant U.S. bases in the Philippines, the East Asian power balance has become peculiarly dependent on the U.S. bases in Japan.

This is a responsibility which Japanese politicians have, so far, been unable to bear. So the U.S. military presence in East Asia rests on weak political foundations.

On the one hand, the importance and utility of the bases is increasing. On the other hand, Japanese prime ministers and politicians seem incapable of explaining that importance to the Japanese people.

To take only one small but vital example. The prime minister could request 20 minutes of air-time from all Japanese television and radio stations, and use it to explain the wider ramifications of the bases issue.

The trouble is that speaking directly to the electorate on crucial issues is not something that Japanese prime ministers do very often. In fact, I cannot recall any Japanese prime minister using such channels since Gen. Douglas MacArthur revived democratic forms within Japan exactly 50 years ago.

Of course, Japanese prime ministers make speeches in the Diet, and elsewhere, which are sometimes broadcast -- but that is different from a prime minister speaking straight to the whole electorate, in order to secure a greater degree of national consensus on a vital issue.

A Japanese prime ministerial "fireside chat" would have been particularly relevant in the last two weeks. Without any exaggeration, the prime minister could have started off his remarks by stating that it is matter of deep concern in Japan that a Chinese ballistic missile recently landed to the north of Japanese territory.

The Chinese missile which test-landed to the east of the Taiwan port of Keelung was generally thought to have landed well to the south of Japan. Actually it splashed down north of Japan's southernmost Sakishima Islands, which end to the east of Taiwan.

Whatever else this meant, it clearly signaled that the Japanese could no longer afford to be ostriches in relation to regional security matters. But these wider issues are apparently of no concern to those Japanese opposing the U.S. bases.

The regional stability, which Japan has taken for granted for so long, is now much less certain.

For a start, 50 years after the atom-bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, nuclear weapons are still being tested in the region. France belatedly heeded the protests of Japan and other nations, and brought its reduced series of tests at Mururoa Atoll to a permanent conclusion.

China, to the contrary, is not merely insisting that it must continue nuclear testing. Beijing is also jeopardizing the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, now being negotiated in Geneva, by insisting that it should have the right to indulge in "peaceful nuclear explosions" even after any such treaty comes into effect.

Secondly, there is the continuing Cold War on the Korean peninsula, long after the Cold War was supposed to have ended. Additionally, there is the uncertain state of affairs in North Korea which, like communist countries in Eastern Europe a few years ago, could be in danger of collapse. North Korea may be facing famine but it is still trying to demolish the Korean armistice agreement under which peace has been maintained since 1953.

Third, there is the increased tension in the Taiwan Straits, plus the unusual measures recently adopted by China in an effort to intimidate Taiwan immediately prior to its first popular presidential election.

At one level, increased regional uncertainty means that the U.S.-Japan Security Treaty is more vital than ever. The overwhelming majority of the Japanese ruling elite believe it is essential that the U.S.-Japan security treaty should be maintained.

At another level, Japan's political leaders have done very little to defend that treaty against the attacks of those many Japanese isolationists in the anti-bases movement. Despite some U.S. pleas for leadership, there has been none. Political momentum lies, by default, with the anti-bases movement, composed of leftists, who could never win a majority in a general election, and Okinawans who hate the disdainful way in which they are often treated by mainland Japanese.

A worst-case scenario could leave the Americans trying to sustain military operations in both the Taiwan Straits and Korea from their bases in Japan, while Japan's indecisive politicians hesitate to allow them to do so, and the anti-bases movement tries to hamper the use of those bases.

A recent headline in the Daily Yomiuri raised an as yet unanswered doubt --- "Taiwan Crisis Raises Question: What Kind Of Alliance Do Japan, U.S. have?"

The simple answer is -- nothing as strong as it should be.

Window: The regional stability, which Japan has taken for granted for so long, is now much less certain.