Japan–U.S. Leadership Conference: Next Year Will Show Results of Alliance Deepening

To lose the apparent opportunity presented by the 50th anniversary of the reform of the Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security between the United States and Japan would be regrettable. The announcement of the joint document will be deferred until next year, and its contents will be completed by that time.

Prime Minister Kan and U.S. President Obama had a discussion in Yokohama, and next spring Prime Minister Kan will visit America, his visit coinciding with the announcement of the joint document regarding the U.S.–Japan alliance.

Last November, then-Prime Minister Hatoyama and the president were on the brink of deciding to begin work on the deepening of the alliance, and the official announcement of the joint document regarding this presidential visit had been kept in mind.

However, as focus has been straying to the problem of the relocation of U.S. armed forces at Futenma Airfield, the work of deepening the alliance is lagging, and the opportunity for a decision in the joint document has been lost. This origin is solely from the Democratic administration’s inexperience, in which Prime Minister Hatoyama played a role, and moreover, it is clumsy diplomacy.

Even after the Japan–U.S. agreement was settled in May, there has been no progress on the Futenma problem, because the Kan administration lacks the means.

The administration is based on the results of the Okinawa prefectural gubernatorial election. In order for the Japan–U.S. agreement to relocate the base to Nago City in Henoko to progress, it must proceed with persuading the locals at full speed.

At the leadership summit, Prime Minister Kan dispatched a Japan Self-Defense Force medical officer to Afghanistan and declared his idea for proactively considering coaching national armed forces medical officers.

At the conference, the president emphasized this about China: “Within international rules, performing appropriate roles, speech and conduct are essential,”* and Prime Minister Kan agreed.

Prime Minister Kan also offered thanks for the American position supporting Japan’s viewpoint on such issues as the Chinese fishing boat collision incident in the Senkaku Islands and about Russian President Medvedev’s visit to the Northern Territories.

The fishing boat collision incident and the Russian president’s visit to Kunashir Island exposed the haphazard Kan diplomacy’s brittleness. The entire revamping of Japan’s diplomacy, using as a standard the Japan–U.S. alliance, is urgent business, but Japan cannot make do with unilaterally relying on only America.

How to face the neighboring country of China, which has transformed into a major power, can be said to be a perpetual theme in Japanese diplomacy.

China has, in a typical move of being mid-range, adhered to international standards in every field in politics, economics and military affairs, and seems to initiate taking action in duties of corresponding with national powers. For that reason, it is important that in order for any kind of plan to be effective, Japan should continue its strategic interaction with America.

Japan proposes concrete ideas and is also assertively establishing links with related countries, with the exception of America. Such proactive accumulation of effort is tied to the reshaping of Japanese diplomacy.

*Editor’s note: This quote, though accurately translated, could not be verified.