FAIRBANKS DAILY NEWS MINER - October 3, 1998

Japan No Longer Sits at the Top of U.S. Defense Interests

by Steven C. Clemons

Wars have been history's most obvious form of punctuation, marking eruptions between rival nations as well as the ebb and flow of power within the global system. The last great war--if, after seeing Steven Spielberg's "Saving Private Ryan," one can still stomach such a term--was World War II, but certainly the hot conflicts in Korea and Vietnam, as well as proxy struggles in the Middle East, Angola and Afghanistan, reflected the deadly tension between U.S. and Soviet interests.

Japan played an important role in this rivalry. During the Cold War, Japan was, in America's East Asia strategic plan, a critically valuable U.S. satellite. The reward for Japanese compliance with U.S. strategic objectives in East Asia was wealth through trade and commerce; the price, the loss of full sovereignty and the burden of hosting American troops and weapons on its soil.

History has now consumed the Soviet order. And even though war has not punctuated this historical transition, other crises and adjustments are under way. Currency and financial market upheaval, the collapse of regional consumption, and the impoverishment of a significant portion of the Asia-Pacific population are, in part, evidence of significant adjustment in America's priorities and slippage in the social contract between the United States and these affected nations. Asian allies mean less to an American public that no longer needs to worry about the Soviet threat.

What these economic trends foreshadow are coming adjustments in other areas of America's Cold War architecture, particularly in the defense-security arena. It is time that Japan began to think more clearly about a transition away from servitude to U.S. defense planners and toward strategies and structures that will engender real, rather than the pretense of, regional security.

Since the demise of the Soviet "evil empire," the Pentagon has diligently manufactured new, alternative threats to justify its enormous budget and powerful arsenal. The recent failed launch of a satellite by North Korea has Pentagon defense planners and weapons contractors strutting with glee. This failing Stalinist nation has learned that nuclear programs and rocket launches, even if crudely assembled and unsuccessful, buy international prestige, respect, and negotiating leverage.

Threat escalation in the United States can reach absurd levels, particularly when pork barrel politics are involved. For example, Sen. Ted Stevens (R-AK), the powerful chairman of the U.S. Senate Appropriations Committee, and Rep. Don Young (R-AK), are now pounding their desks on the floor of the U.S. Congress calling for robust funding of ballistic missile defense and its deployment in Alaska. These politicians argue that North Korea's recent rocket launch proves that they can now hit U.S. soil in the Aleutian Islands, and all Americans should be quaking in fear. Despite the fact North Korea may indeed pose certain kinds of threats, one must assume that this communist throwback nation would most likely target Seoul, or even the cluster of 41 U.S. installations on the small island of Okinawa before trying to hit something on the Aleutian Islands if it in fact targets any of these areas, since a real missile attack would certainly lead to North Korea's virtual annihilation.

I am not minimizing real threats in the world, particularly given recent terrorist atrocities in Africa. But the Cold War logic of the United States defending Japan, a nation to which it has been going into debt on average of $50 billion a year, was always difficult to understand. However, in an era devoid of superpower rivalry, one may question the sense of maintaining such huge defense deployments at high cost halfway around the world.

While the Pentagon may struggle vigorously to maintain its bases, beaches and golf courses in Asia, it is investing its resources ineffectively and failing to prepare for next-generation sources of instability.

Most of the U.S. military presence in Japan and South Korea is made up of army and marine divisions of 18- to 20-year-old men who are just entering their most "crime-prone years," as one U.S. Marine General shared with me during a recent visit to Okinawa. The rape of a 12-year-old girl in Okinawa by three Marine and Navy personnel only highlighted the many other crimes, including rapes, murder and petty theft that the

U.S. presence in Japan and South Korea have generated. But beyond this, U.S. military flight exercises, munitions tests and appetite for land use have generated extremely crowded living conditions for local citizens and together with disruptive noise problems, have frustrated rational economic development schemes that Okinawan citizens need if they are ever to improve their standard of living.

Local impact problems caused by the U.S. troop presence is high, but the defense returns are low. If North Korean problems are eventually resolved, there are few other high-level targets that would justify U.S. use of ground troops, particularly in an era of technological military development that relied on smart weapons and remote, technologically-based intelligence management. Would the United States consider using ground troops against China? One can only hope that defense planners are too smart for this.

It is clear that the U.S. public is already sending a signal, as evidenced in the regional economic crisis, that Asian allies are less important than before. And the time may be approaching when the Pentagon and those in Japan's political elite who are defending America's Cold War setup find that there is no public support for ground troop deployment and diminishing support for U.S. air and naval bases as well.

Former Prime Minister Morihiro Hosokawa, heir to an aristocratic line that has helped rule Japan for 600 years, has called for no less in recent speeches and articles. Hosokawa believes that it is time for Japan and the United States to begin considering a military alliance in Asia that does not include U.S. forces in Japan. Others have called for removal of ground troops and a new emphasis on U.S. air and naval capabilities in the region.

No matter what arrangements eventually evolve between the United States and Japan, those who ignore the lessons that the East Asia crisis holds about this historical transition in Cold War architecture do so at their peril.