US-JAPAN: Trans-Pacific Allies Step Up Defence Cooperation

By Jim Lobe Reprint | | Print |

Analysis - Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON, Sep 23 1997 (IPS) - In what both countries hailed as “an extremely important milestone,” the United States and Japan Tuesday issued joint guidelines on defence cooperation designed to bolster their 37-year-old security alliance.

In a signing ceremony at the United Nations in New York, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright stressed that the new agreement was not directed against China or any other country. Her Japanese counterpart, Foreign Minister Keizo Obuchi, insisted that both Tokyo and Washington will consult closely with Beijing and other capitals to assure them that the accord is designed only to ensure regional stability.

“We will provide in-depth explanations of the new guidelines to China, Korea and other nations,” he told reporters.

The accord, which took 18 months to finalise, is seen by political observers here as a major advance for U.S. diplomacy in Asia, and especially in the 20-year U.S. quest to persuade Japan to take more responsibility for defending common interests in East Asia.

“This review of defence guidelines, in many respects, is the Asian corollary of NATO expansion,” said Deputy Assistant Defence Secretary for Asian and Pacific Affairs Kurt Campbell. “It is a very important strategic innovation and we believe that it will make the US-Japan security and political partnership relevant for the 21st century.”

The 13-page agreement sets up a framework under which Japan could send minesweepers to clear international waters or supply US military forces with spare parts and fuel in a major crisis involving the United States “in areas surrounding Japan that will have an important influence on Japan’s peace and security.”

The agreement, however, deliberately is vague about specifying these areas, to avoid alarming China and, to a lesser extent, South Korea. Both countries have very bad memories of Japanese military occupation earlier in the century and have long been wary of any beefing up of Tokyo’s military profile.

Japan currently ranks third in defence spending worldwide, after the United States and Russia. In 1995, it spent more than 50 billion dollars on its military – almost twice the amount spent 10 years previously. But given its no-war constitution, which was imposed by Washington after World War II, Japan has generally avoided the question of how, aside from defending the country from invasion, its military might would be used.

This irritated US civilian and military planners who in the late 1970s began pressing Japan, which was piling up huge trade surpluses with the United States, to assume a supporting role for US military forces.

That effort gained increased urgency during the 1990-91 Gulf Crisis, when U.S. troops stationed on Okinawa were the first to be deployed to Saudi Arabia after Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait, and during the 1993-94 nuclear crisis between North and South Korea, where 37,000 U.S. troops are stationed.

The result was intensified consultation between senior civilian and military officials from both countries, culminating in the guidelines signed Tuesday. “You could think of it as political authorisation for the military and the bureaucrats to actually lay down specific response scenarios to a whole host of potential situations,” said Campbell.

Negotiation of the guidelines has been especially controversial in Japan, due to its constitutional curbs on military activity abroad. As a result, both sides have insisted that the accord does not mean that Japan will take on a more active military stance. Instead, officials stress that it merely “clarifies” Tokyo’s role in providing logistical and other support during a major crisis.

While the document is clear about what kinds of contingencies would trigger that support, it remains deliberately ambiguous about where these contingencies might apply. “We’ve carefully avoided specifics about countries,” said one senior administration official.

Particularly sensitive is the issue of whether Taiwan, which China considers a renegade province that eventually must be absorbed by the mainland, could be covered by the new US-Japanese agreement. While Beijing has long insisted it wishes to resolve Taiwan’s re-unification peacefully, it has never renounced the use of force.

Beijing held large-scale missile exercises last year in the Formosa Straits, the waterway separating Taiwan from the mainland. Alarmed by the move, the President Bill Clinton ordered a US aircraft carrier into the area to underline its support for Taiwan. Washington, however, has maintained a policy of “strategic ambiguity” about what it would do if China took direct military action against Taiwan.

Beijing has expressed strong concern about whether the new accord between Washington and Tokyo is aimed at containing China, and could be applied apply if there was any conflict over Taiwan. Chinese fears were heightened last month when Seiroku Kajiyama, then chief spokesman of the government of Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto, insisted that Taiwan was covered by the guidelines.

On a trip to Beijing earlier this month, Hashimoto assured the Chinese that the accord does not explicitly cover Taiwan, a point repeated by Albright Tuesday. “There is nothing country-specific or geographically specific,” she said.

In effect, says Robert Manning, a senior Asia specialist in the George Bush administration, the Japanese are also being deliberately ambiguous about how they would react to a military conflict between China and Taiwan. “We’ve effectively exported our strategic ambiguity policy to Japan,” he told IPS.

In fact, says Manning, “the Japanese increasingly understand that if there was a conflict over Taiwan, and they didn’t help us, the (US-Japanese) alliance won’t have a long life.”