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Iraq and Okinawa: First the bad
news
By Axel Berkofsky
Last
weekend, Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi and
US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld met in Tokyo to
exchange bad news. Japan is not dispatching any of its
promised troops to Iraq any time soon, and Okinawans
will have to continue putting up with almost 30,000 US
troops stationed on their island.
Deploying
troops to Iraq, however, is "still on", Koizumi told the
press after the meeting with Rumsfeld. "Probably some
time next year," he added, indicating that the attack on
Italian military police in southern Iraq this month will
not hinder Japan from being a loyal US ally forever.
Rumsfeld, for his part, like many recent US
government officials before him, "understood" Japanese
dissatisfaction with the heavy US military presence on
Okinawa, claiming that his government is still on the
case to reduce the burden.
In reality, however,
neither sending Japanese troops to Iraq nor reducing the
number of US troops stationed on Okinawa is on the
agenda, at least in the foreseeable future. Japan is
unlikely to deploy troops until Iraq becomes the
Switzerland of the Middle East, and the US military will
remain on Okinawa as long as the United States continues
to believe in the island's "strategic importance in the
fight against international terrorism".
And if
occasional leaks from the Pentagon are anything to go
by, the US is not planning to reduce its troops on
Okinawa, but has started thinking out loud about
reinforcing its military presence on the island instead.
Bad news yet again for the Okinawans, who never really
trusted that their government was overly interested in
seeing a reduction of the US military on the island.
Although crimes committed by US troops have
intensified protests from Okinawans demanding the
removal of US forces from their island, the Japanese
government has mainly limited itself to half-hearted
promises to reduce the burden of military presence in
consultation with the United States. Years of sporadic
bilateral consultations on the Okinawa issue, however,
have produced no results and occasional references to
the economic benefits of the military presence on
Okinawa's ailing economy don't help much to appease the
Okinawans.
And like its inhabitants, Koizumi -
at least officially - wants fewer troops on Okinawa and
informed Rumsfeld that the "reduction of the burden on
Okinawa is a big issue for my cabinet". Rumsfeld,
however, currently occupied with work on global
redeployment plans for the US military, decided not to
comment on the Okinawa issue and spoke of "concepts and
ideas for redeployment of US troops" instead.
"The US is not at a stage of making proposals or
anything like that," he said, taking the issue off the
bilateral agenda once again.
Koizumi let him off
the hook and instead gave Rumsfeld the opportunity to
witness the protests first hand while visiting US Marine
bases on Okinawa. Protesters gathered in front the US
military base advised Rumsfeld and the US to "go home"
while calling for an end to the occupation of Iraq (and
Okinawa, as some banners read).
Under pressure
from the public and the political opposition to bring
mulilateralism back on to Japan's security-policy
agenda, Koizumi was determined to score on his home
turf, even mentioning the United Nations in Rumsfeld's
presence. He urged Washington to let the UN play a
greater role in reconstructing Iraq, "giving as many
nations the possibility to understand the US cause and
its goodwill", as he put it.
Senior Japanese
Foreign Ministry officials, seemingly cautious about
administering bad news to the US in small doses, advised
the prime minister to tell Rumsfeld that Japan has not
changed its plans in principle and will send troops to
Iraq "as soon as possible".
Although Koizumi
ignored that advice, the Japanese media agreed that he
performed well, ensuring that the meeting did not turn
into the usual US-Japan question-and-answer session for
a change. Koizumi, as the Japan Times reported, did most
of the talking throughout the 50-minute meeting and gave
Rumsfeld very little time to touch on the issue of
Japanese troop deployment to Iraq. Koizumi's strategy
paid off: Rumsfeld bit his tongue and limited himself to
thanking the prime minister for supporting the war
against Iraq.
In line with Koizumi's familiar
"on again, off again" schedule for a military mission in
Iraq, the prime minister claimed that "Japan will
continue to do the utmost within the scope of its
capabilities". However, "The security situation in
Iraq," he added, "leaves no room for optimism."
Indeed, Japan's utmost priority, at least for
the time being, is to come up with the US$5 billion it
promised to help rebuild Iraq at the Madrid Iraq donor
conference in October. But this pledge of support is
simply Japanese checkbook diplomacy all over again,
complain defense hawks in Japan who say that sending
troops to Iraq is the only thing that would secure Tokyo
a place on Bush's list of best friends in the long run.
These hawks hope that Japan's recent dispatch of
another fact-finding team to southern Iraq is yet
another start down the road to deployment. However,
commentators suspect that the deployment of Defense
Agency officials and military officers, charged with
surveying the security situation in southern Iraq, is
"tactical" and not meant to test the ground for a
Japanese mission.
Rather than anticipating a
green light for a Japanese mission in Iraq, Koizumi
merely wants another bad-news report to put Iraq on the
back burner for good, it is believed.
Allegations and speculations aside, the
fact-finding team left Japan on Saturday and will meet
troops from the Netherlands and US officials from the
Coalition Provisional Authority in Samawah, southern
Iraq. While the Japanese officials and officers are
charged with the challenging task of finding out exactly
how Japan's "pacifist" soldiers (up to a 1,000 troops if
ever deployed) can contribute to reconstructing Iraq,
the US officials in Samawah are not overly enthusiastic
about accommodating yet another Japanese fact-finding
team, the Japan Times reported.
Two Japanese
fact-finding teams were sent to Iraq earlier this year
and both missions concluded that guerrilla and suicide
attacks would hinder Japanese military from repairing
bridges and hospitals in the country at present.
The Japanese military meanwhile - as usual a few
steps ahead of reality - is still preparing itself for
deployment to Iraq and is prepared to use "deadly force
against those suspected of having committed terrorist
acts, after taking necessary steps such as issuing a
call to stop or threatening action". According to the
Yomiuri Shimbun, Japan's biggest daily newspaper, the
Defense Agency has already drafted an outline of the
"rules of engagement" for Japanese military deployed to
Iraq, which will allegedly prepare the troops to deal
with guerilla and suicide attacks.
As part of
such "preparedness", the paper discovered, the military
is studying a plan to build zigzag roads leading to the
Japanese military base in order to keep suicide
attackers from crashing explosives-laden vehicles into
the base. If the terrorists comply with Japanese
alterations to the local transport infrastructure and
the military proves itself to be half as good as Koizumi
on zigzag and U-turn tactics, Japanese troops might
indeed be ready for Iraq before too long.
(Copyright 2003 Asia Times Online Co, Ltd. All
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