The agreement further says that "a common operational picture shared between US forces and the SDF [Japan's Self-Defense Forces] will strengthen operational coordination."
That common assessment of potential adversaries will be reflected in joint training and jointly devised contingency plans.
The nuts and bolts of the US force realignment, some of which were adopted to accommodate political demands in Japan, include establishing a joint operations center at Yokota Air Base, now a US base, west of Tokyo. Japan's Air Defense Command will move from Fuchu, also west of Tokyo, to Yokota.
The US Army will deploy a corps headquarters at Camp Zama, southwest of Tokyo, where Japan will set up a Central Readiness Force Command for its ground forces.
Bowing to political pressure in Okinawa, the US Marines will move a headquarters and 7,000 marines to Guam, which is US territory in the central Pacific. Some aircraft will be removed from a controversial base at Futenma, and the airfield itself will be redesigned to move runways away from residential areas.
These changes in Japan's military posture have raised cries in China and the two Koreas that Japan is undertaking full-scale rearmament. Cold-eyed scrutiny, however, shows that Japan's military spending is not scheduled to rise, its military forces are not slated to expand and its defense industry remains small.
Richard Halloran is a writer based in Hawaii.
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