The U.S.
and Japan reached agreement
Thursday on a long-stalled plan to move troops off the island
of Okinawa, a key part of the Obama
administration's strategy to intensify its focus on Asia,
and disperse American troops around the region.
The new plan would move
some 9,000 Marines off Okinawa, stationing about 5,000 of them on Guam and
moving the remainder to Australia
or Hawaii, U.S. defense officials said. There
are now about 18,000 Marines in Okinawa.
U.S. Defense Secretary
Leon Panetta praised the agreement and said implementing the agreement would
improve the "vital alliance" between the U.S.
and Japan.
"I look forward to
deepening that friendship and strengthening our partnership as, together, we
address security challenges in the region," he said.
Officials and analysts
in Washington said the deal would help normalize the security relationship
between the U.S. and Japan, allowing the countries to discuss more critical
strategic issues—including missile defense and the modernization of China's
military—rather than how to replace the base on Okinawa, which is unpopular
locally.
"I think this is a
big deal," said Andrew Hoehn, a senior vice president of the RAND Corp., a
research institute with close ties to the military. "This has been a major
impediment in the U.S.-Japan relationship for many years. This was getting in
the way of moving ahead."
Since 2006, the U.S. and Japan
have had a plan to move Marines out of their base at Futenma, and relocate them
to another, more rural, part of Okinawa. But
the plan has been held up by environmental concerns and local opposition.
By presenting concrete
plans for reducing U.S.
military presence, Japanese officials hope the new agreement will ease stubborn
local opposition. Flip-flopping in Tokyo's base
policy since the centrist Democratic Party of Japan took power in 2009 has
upset residents and officials on the southern island—the host to three-quarters
of all U.S. bases in Japan.
"We wanted to bring
forward easing of the burden on Okinawa,"
Japanese foreign minister Koichiro Gemba told reporters. "We were able to
come up with a plan that includes return of the land, one that's
forward-looking and concrete."
The disagreement has
already cost the tenure of one prime minister and remains one of the biggest
policy headaches for Tokyo.
Under the new agreement, the U.S.
will begin returning many of its existing facilities in densely-populated areas
in the central and southern Okinawa.
But some experts doubt
new steps would be enough to solve the logjam. The local city and prefectural
assemblies are firmly opposed to the new facility. Hirokazu Nakaima, Okinawa's governor whose support is essential for
starting construction, has also insisted the plan won't move forward without
consent from the residents. Offers of generous economic development assistance—
enough to win over the locals in the past—have done little to change their
minds. Weak and unstable leadership in Tokyo
is also a concern. Japan
has had six prime ministers in the past six years.
Under the new agreement,
the U.S. can begin to move
Marines to Guam even without a replacement
facility for Futenma. Japan
has also pledged to help pay for portions of the Futenma facility until
permission is granted to expand the Marines facilities at Camp Schwab.
Japan will also pay $3.1
billion of the $8.6 billion cost of expanding military facilities in Guam and
developing training ranges in the waters off the island and in the Northern Mariana Islands. That is similar to the $2.8
billion Japan
had earlier promised to spend.
U.S. defense officials said that they hope Japan will use the training ranges with the U.S., and that
the two nations can conduct exercises there. Japan's participation in the
training facilities must still be approved by its government.
The Obama administration
and military officials are in the process of trying to disperse U.S. forces around the Western Pacific, so that
the U.S.
can respond quickly to different contingences and crisis. Avoiding
concentration of U.S.
forces and landing facilities also avoids vulnerability to a handful of
knockout strikes.
In part, the new
emphasis on Asia is meant to reassure American allies in the face of an
aggressive Chinese military buildup and North Korean hostility that the U.S. intends to
defend their interests and protect the current international order.
The deal was originally
set to be announced on Wednesday, but last minute objections from members of
the U.S. Senate held up the deal. Senior members of the Armed Services
Committee have raised questions about the cost of moving Marines to Guam.
In a joint statement
released Thursday evening in Washington,
Sens. Carl Levin (D., Mich), John McCain (R., Ariz.) and Jim Webb (D., Va.)
said they appreciated the willingness of the Obama administration to adjust the
language in portions of the agreement.
The senators said they
have many questions, but said they intended to work with the administration and
the government of Japan
to achieve a "a mutually beneficial, militarily effective, and fiscally
sustainable agreement."
Worried that the logjam
would persist, Mr. Webb, working with a Japanese ruling-party lawmaker, had
recently proposed a temporary solution to move the functions of the Futenma
base to another existing base nearby in Okinawa
but it failed to get traction. The plan to build a new base in a scenic hamlet
of Henoko has been under discussion since the 1990s, even though the local
opposition intensified in the past two years.
"To the extent
Japanese government wants to sustain those forces inside Japanese territory, we
ought to think about a broader plan to make them sustainable for the next
decade or more, rather than spending 16 years arguing over one single
base," says Sheila Smith, senior fellow for Japan studies at the Council
on Foreign Relations." We need a different basic foundation for revamping
U,.S. presence in Japan."