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America's 'unsinkable aircraft
carriers'
By Purnendra Jain and John
Bruni
ADELAIDE - At the height of the Cold War
in the early 1980s, Yasuhiro Nakasone, then prime
minister of Japan, reaffirming his country's strong
commitment to its supreme ally the United States against
Soviet threats, declared that Japan would serve as an
"unsinkable aircraft carrier" in the Pacific. Now that
the lone superpower is once again facing security
threats and waging a war against the so-called "axis of
evil", it requires an unwavering commitment to its
purpose and direction from its allies. It is indeed very
fortunate to have received that commitment, not from one
but from two of its most trusted allies in the Pacific.
Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi of Japan and his
Australian counterpart John Howard, both conservative
and strongly committed to the US, have offered all
possible assistance to US President George W Bush.
Not only did both Japan and Australia provide
support against the "war on terror" in Afghanistan, they
also stood resolutely by the side of their master at a
time when at least two major US allies in continental
Europe openly declared their opposition to the US's
unilateral action in Iraq. Indeed, Australia dispatched
its army as part of the allied forces to invade Iraq.
Constrained by its "peace constitution" and other legal
limitations, Japan could not contribute militarily, but
it did provide logistics and other support. It is likely
that Japan will share a large proportion of the cost of
reconstructing postwar Iraq. Koizumi is trying to pass
an emergency legislation that will allow Self-Defense
Force personnel to be sent to Iraq to help build the
country.
Two other developments make Japan and
Australia most trusted allies of the US. First, in Japan
there is a growing push toward amending the constitution
to allow Japan to contribute militarily in war and
conflict situations, a long-standing desire of the US.
Koizumi represents the aspirations of both the US and a
new generation of Japanese politicians and civil
servants who want Japan to become a "normal state".
Nakasone pushed this idea strongly and publicly
in the 1980s and Ichiro Ozawa, a former ruling-party
heavyweight and now leader of a small political party,
articulated this idea most forcefully in his book
Blueprint for a New Japan: The Rethinking of a
Nation, published in 1994.
It appears that
Japan is steadily preparing to drop its long-held ideal
of a "peace constitution" and "civilian state" to
embrace the concept of a "normal state" and play a
military role. Global terrorism and North Korea's
nuclear brinkmanship together with China's rising
economic and military power are creating conditions
where Japan's conservative agenda is likely to move
forward.
Second, while this development in Japan
would please policymakers both in the Pentagon and White
House, a recent comment from Howard in relation to
transferring some US troops from other parts of the
Asia-Pacific to Down Under will be music to the ears of
the Bush administration. Howard said late last week that
he would consider a request to base US forces in
Australia if it were raised in the "proper fashion".
Howard's statement fits very well within the US proposal
for a thorough reorientation of its global military
basing policy.
The US has already announced
plans on withdrawing most of its considerable military
presence in Saudi Arabia, centered on the Prince Sultan
air base, in favor of a northward shift into
newly-occupied Iraq. It is hoped that this move will do
a number of things. Most important, it will fulfill one
of al-Qaeda's principal war aims, which is that US
military forces no longer are on the sacred ground of
Saudi Arabia - home of two of Islam's most holy cities,
Mecca and Medina. It is anticipated that this will
remove a major touchstone for international Islamic
radicalism aimed at the US. The other, almost equally
important aim of redeploying US troops and aircraft to
post-Saddam Iraq is that the US can more adequately
ensure the security of its key Middle Eastern ally,
Israel, against the machinations of Syria and Iran,
which are supporters of anti-Israeli terrorist groups
such as Hezbollah. This is an essential prerequisite for
Tel Aviv's support for the road map for peace.
At the Asia Security Conference in Singapore
last weekend, US Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul
Wolfowitz confirmed that the "fundamental point" of
press speculation as raised in the Los Angeles Times
about reconfiguring US troops in Asia was largely
correct. A new regional basing policy will shift US
military assets from traditional forward staging posts
such as the Korean Peninsula's 38th Parallel to other
less vulnerable areas better suited to the emerging
geostrategic environment aimed at containing North Korea
on the one hand, and heading off the threat posed by
regional Islamic terrorist groups on the other.
Already there are signs that the US is exploring
new basing options such as the possible redeployment of
up to 15,000 marines and some air force tactical
aircraft to Australia. While there has not been a formal
request put forward by the Bush administration to the
Australian government, it is clear that Howard would be
open to considering it. Given the prime minister's
record of giving the "green light" to US requests for
military support in recent years - Afghanistan 2001,
Iraq 2003 - it seems more than likely that Howard would
not reject such a request, no matter what domestic
political fallout would ensue from Australia's weak
opposition parties, were this possibility to eventuate.
But the question that needs to be asked is: What
price security? With Japan acting as America's
undisputed strategic bulwark in Northeast Asia against a
mercurial and potentially nuclear-armed North Korea, and
Australia acting as America's undisputed strategic
bulwark in Southeast Asia against a network of committed
Islamists stretching from Indonesia, Malaysia and
Thailand to the Philippines, will both Japan and
Australia, acting as America's unsinkable aircraft
carriers in the Western Pacific, really be more secure?
Or will these countries, by dovetailing into new US
geostrategic requirements be simply throwing caution to
the wind by exposing themselves as inviting targets to
enemies of the US?
Furthermore, can one truly
assume that sheltering under the US strategic umbrella
today in order to maintain the regional balance of power
is the same as it was under the old Cold War and
immediate post-Cold War paradigms - especially when the
current US government is actively engaged in remaking
its role in the world and, as a consequence, remaking
the world?
Purnendra Jain is a
professor in the Center for Asian Studies at Adelaide
University in Australia. John Bruni is a visiting
research fellow in the Center for Asian Studies.
(Copyright 2003 Asia Times Online Co, Ltd. All
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