When he took office, US President Barack Obama moved quickly to show his commitment to Japan. He welcomed its then-prime minister as his first White House guest and Hillary Clinton made the Asian ally her first destination as US secretary of state.
What a difference a year makes.
When Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama visited Washington last week for a summit on nuclear security, his face-time with Obama consisted of approaching him at a dinner when the president asked guests to enjoy the food before discussions.
PHOTO: EPA
Diplomats said the 10-minute encounter consisted mostly of Hatoyama telling Obama that he was still making a decision on the Futenma air base, which some of the prime minister’s left-leaning supporters want off Okinawa.
US officials have publicly said they are willing to consider Hatoyama’s ideas. Privately, many are exasperated that Japan has not put any concrete proposal on the table on a dispute that has been building for months.
Still, advocates for the half-century alliance have voiced alarm that tensions are becoming so visible. Nuclear security is an issue close to Japan’s heart and Obama found the time to meet 13 other leaders on the summit sidelines, including Chinese President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤).
“I found it absolutely shocking that the two countries couldn’t find a way to arrange a meeting,” said George Packard, president of the US-Japan Foundation.
US Senator Jim Webb, who heads the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on East Asia, said that while it was understandable to focus on a rising China, it was vital to keep emphasizing the importance of the alliance with Japan.
The strategy is “kind of like birth control. If you cease taking the proper precautions, the possibility of an incident is elevated,” said Webb, a member of Obama’s Democratic Party from Virginia.
The US stations 47,000 troops in Japan, part of an alliance reached after World War II when Tokyo was stripped of its right to maintain a military.
Hatoyama, whose coalition swept out the long-entrenched conservatives in elections in August last year, pledged in his campaign to review a 2006 agreement in which the US would move 8,000 troops to Guam.
Under the deal, the Futenma air base would shift from an urban area, where it has long been a source of grievance, to a quiet part of Okinawa.
Some of Hatoyama’s supporters, however, want the base out of Okinawa entirely. Hatoyama has pledged to make a decision by the end of next month.
Weston Konishi, a Japan expert at the Mansfield Foundation think tank, said that while US officials have not always been delicate on the Futenma issue, the Hatoyama government also had itself to blame for “self-marginalization.”
“American officials are well aware that things move at a glacial pace in Japan and that’s why they gave some slack to the new government after they took power, but there have been some very mixed signals that have emanated from Tokyo that have frustrated the American side,” Konishi said. “I think the president and some policymakers have now in a way written Japan off — not on everything, but the leadership coming from Tokyo on a number of key global issues has been mixed.”
Hatoyama has insisted that the US alliance remains the “bedrock” for Japan’s security, but Packard, a former assistant to the US ambassador in Japan, said it was not realistic to expect the alliance to continue unchanged forever.
The original treaty was negotiated between “a victor and an occupied nation, not between two sovereign states, and every Japanese voter knows that,” Packard said.
Some Japanese view the Status of Forces Agreement, under which the US is under no obligation to hand over troops suspected of wrongdoing, as “an extension of the extraterritorial arrangements that characterized Western imperialism in Asia in the 19th century,” Packard said.
“It is only natural that a new generation of Japanese who did not live through the Cold War will increasingly question why they should put up with foreign troops in bases on their soil,” Packard said. “The US has reduced its military footprint in South Korea, Germany and the Philippines, and it should not be surprising that a new generation of Japanese is growing restive.”
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
Armed with 4,000 eggs and a truckload of sugar and cream, French pastry chefs on Wednesday completed a 121.8m-long strawberry cake that they have claimed is the world’s longest ever made. Youssef El Gatou brought together 20 chefs to make the 1.2 tonne masterpiece that took a week to complete and was set out on tables in an ice rink in the Paris suburb town of Argenteuil for residents to inspect. The effort overtook a 100.48m-long strawberry cake made in the Italian town of San Mauro Torinese in 2019. El Gatou’s cake also used 350kg of strawberries, 150kg of sugar and 415kg of
RSS