JAPAN: U.S. Bases Complicate Ties, Foreign Policy — Diplomat
By Tim Shorrock
WASHINGTON, Oct 8 — The heavy U.S. military presence in Okinawa was "unnecessary after the Vietnam War" and should have been re-examined by the United States and Japan when the island was formally returned to Japanese control in 1972, a leading Japanese diplomat says.
Today, as a result of this, "there is too much concentration" of U.S. forces on Okinawa, said Ambassador Owada Hisahi, an adviser to the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs and president of the Japan Institute of International Affairs. "That is not desirable."
By failing to confront this issue, Japan has "put the whole burden" of the U.S. bases on its soil on the island of Okinawa, and "that's resented by Okinawans," he said.
Owada is a 25-year veteran of Japanese diplomacy who has served in senior positions at the United Nations and the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development.
His comments, during a presentation on Oct. 7 on Japan's foreign policy sponsored by the Sasakawa Peace Foundation here, were a rare attempt by a Japanese diplomat to address with candour the complex issue of Okinawa and Japan's Cold War relationship with the United States.
Owada was responding to a question from a U.S. State Department official about bilateral military relations. The U.S.-Japan Security Treaty, he said, was created during the Cold War but was "basically an attempt to create a peaceful Japan" and defend Japan against attack.
With the days of a "bipolar world" in the past, Japan's Self Defence Forces could still play a "very important potential role in peacekeeping in the Far East," he said, particularly in a global coalition sanctioned by the United Nations.
He warned against attempts by the United States to act unilaterally against Iraq without the full sanction of the United Nations. "There is a danger of global unilateralist values being determined by the United States without the support of the rest of the world," he said.
Owada expressed concern that the United States might take unilateral action under the self-defence clause of the United Nations, noting that imperial Japan justified its invasion of Manchuria as self-defence.
"A pre-emptive strike without any immediate danger is not justified," he said. "It is absolutely essential for major powers to cooperate in the maintenance of international order. When members don't cooperate, the system collapses."
During the question and answer session, Dr H John Ikenberry, a professor at Georgetown University who works with the Sasakawa Peace Foundation in its seminar series here, said some of Owada's remarks were "off the record"
The event, however, was advertised as a public event in brochures published by the foundation and on the foundation's website. It was not clear which of Owada's remarks were supposed to be public and which ones were "off the record".
In his talk, Owada argued that Japan is just beginning to emerge as a player on the world scene after living in what he called the "dream world" and "psychological cocoon" of the Cold War, when the parametres of Japan's relations with other countries were set almost entirely by its bilateral security treaty with the United States.
During that time, he said, "material prosperity was the only thing to believe in" in Japan.
Japan's "smug and comfortable" existence "came abruptly to a halt with the demise of the Cold War," Owada said. "Japan was thrown out into the reality of the world without any sense or orientation."
But in recent years, Owada said, Japan has started to chart its own foreign policy course by sending peacekeeping forces to East Timor and Afghanistan and playing a "decisive role" in the peace process in Cambodia.
He also noted Japan's role in promoting Chinese and North Korean dialogue with the Association of South-east Asian Nations (ASEAN) Regional Forum, an informal network of Asia-Pacific countries that meet annually on security issues.
Without saying where Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's diplomacy with North Korea might lead after his historic visit to Pyongyang in September -- Owada noted the differences with the past, when Japanese initiatives toward North Korea were led by "politicians operating with ulterior motives or naivete".
Koizumi's meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Il, he said, came about largely because of the "very firm policy (towards the North) implemented by the Bush administration".
Owada took note of the rising nationalism in Japan, which has emerged in controversies about the visits of government leaders to a national shrine where war dead and war criminals are buried.
Partly because of the Cold War, "Japanese have not really done enough" to reflect on its wartime past when "the whole nation was involved in this madness," he said. "If we don't face up to that role, we can't play a very constructive role" in the United Nations and other international agencies.
Owada, who teaches at Waseda University, said he has been encouraged by youthful Japanese who see the need for Japan to play a more visible role in international affairs.
The era of globalisation, while creating economic difficulties, has forced Japan to open up to the world and end the "closed circuits" in its economy that made it difficult for foreign competitors to penetrate Japanese business groups known as 'keiretsu'.
"You can't maintain closed circuits and compete in the world economy," he said. (IPS/2002)
