It was announced today that Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama is resigning his post most likely due to his failure to uphold is promise to remove the US military presence from Okinawa. He did try to address the issue but ultimately decided that the base would stay. It's a reasonable question to consider if he made the decision due to pressure from the US, Japanese security concerns, or concerns specific to conditions on Okinawa itself.
The US Military Presence on Okinawa is very extensive. According to wikipedia there are 14 seperate installations covering 233 sq. km, which is about 18% of the main island. Of the 40,000 US personnel stationed in Japan, around 2/3 are on Okinawa. The overwhelming majority of Okinawans are opposed to the military presence due to environmental and noise concerns, occasional crime by US servicemen, and other such factors. I can hardly blame them... From the numbers above it would seem like you'd be hard pressed to look anywhere without seeing the US military.
Does it make sense to move the military assets? Probably does. The US has interest in military presence in Japan for geographic reasons... Japan commands a lot of the access to the Pacific from the Asian side. Japanese interest lies in the US military presence reducing their own expenditure on defense to an extremely low level. Okinawa also has some interest in the presence, I think, as I'd imagine the troops contribute a fair amount to their economy (though I don't really know that for sure). Finally, all parties should be keenly interested in maintaining one of the world's most important military alliances, so some solution should be found. It seems to me like the military assets should be redistributed to other parts of Japan (or throughout the Pacific Theatre). Based on Okinawa's location, it's probably important maintain an airbase there, but it seems to me like the rest of the bases could go.
I think you'd probably need to see the specific base costs on moving off of Okinawa to the mainland islands of Japan. After all, it is not like there is a whole lot of spare room available for these additional facilities on the mainland. (Not a whole lot of spare room in Japan period!) I'm not sure where the next closest place would be that would meet the need. South Korea is not ideal for obvious reasons, Guam is too far, Philippines already kicked us out etc.
ReplyDeleteAnd of course ending the Marine presence there would be a politically difficult question for OUR commander-in-chief to detail with, for obvious reasons.
I saw a study involving Australia and Singapore, but those are basically out of theatre. I think it's a difficult question, as space generally is limited in Japan though I think some creativity might get you a long way... Hokkaido springs to mind... I was just on a bus all over Awaji Island and Shikoku and saw a fair amount of open space (at least by Japanese standards).
ReplyDeleteAs for cost, perhaps the Japanese would participate. ;)
June 3, 2010 11:24 PM