Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic

by Chalmers Johnson

  Nonetheless, the Bush administration had clearly not given much thought to how to sell its plans for “global force repositioning” to Japan. In their monthly meetings with Japanese defense officials, Pentagon subordinates began by talking about making Japan into a “frontline base” or an “East Asian Britain.” These trial balloons so alarmed the Japanese that they asked for further discussions to be delayed until after the July 2004 elections for the upper house of the Diet. While the United States complied, the Japanese press reported that “the Pentagon is irritated by Japan’s unenthusiastic response to U.S. plans.”69

  From July 15 to 17, 2004, the two sides met in San Francisco, where American negotiators introduced some of their concrete proposals. The United States would replace the air force lieutenant general who normally commanded U.S. Forces Japan (USFJ) with an army four-star general, and move USFJ headquarters from Yokota Air Force Base to Camp Zama, the elegant old army base south of Tokyo (and site of the prewar Japanese military academy). All army, navy, air force, and marine troops stationed in Japan would be placed under the general, who would also replace the army commander in Korea—his headquarters would be abolished—giving the new commander authority to direct all American military operations in the Pacific and Indian Oceans. His only superior officer would be the PACOM commander in Hawaii. The Thirteenth Air Force headquarters in Guam would be merged with that of the U.S. Fifth Air Force at Yokota, near Tokyo, while the headquarters of the army’s First Corps, stationed at Fort Lewis, Washington, would be moved to Zama, closer to possible imperial policing duties. The idea behind these changes was to have American troops “forward based” but not in potential areas of conflict, as in Korea.70

  The Pentagon has many other plans for Japan, including replacing the forty-five-year-old aircraft carrier USS Kitty Hawk, currently homeported at the old Japanese naval base of Yokosuka, with the USS George Washington, a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, despite Japan’s well-known “nuclear allergy.”71 The United States, in short, is planning to turn Japan into the “control tower” of U.S.-enforced security in Asia.72

  For the Japanese, such changes are intensely controversial, unleashing powerful grassroots protests not just in Okinawa but in many Japanese prefectures, particularly Kanagawa, which includes Prime Minister Koizumi’s own electoral district. From the autumn of 2004 through 2005, the United States and Japan engaged in acrimonious negotiations, while Richard Lawless, the chief American negotiator, berated the Japanese for their “false kabuki”—a reference to the allegedly slow pace of traditional Japanese theater.73 The most important issue at stake, however, is not base realignment but the Japan-U.S. Security Treaty itself.

  When the treaty was first drawn up in the aftermath of World War II, the intent on both sides was not just to protect Japan in case of international conflict but to keep Japan, then seen as the scourge of Asia, disarmed. As a result the treaty is deeply one-sided. In return for bases in Japan, the United States pledges to defend the country; Japan, however, does not assume any comparable responsibilities toward the defense of the United States. Moreover, according to the treaty, the bases in Japan are to be used for “the security of Japan and the maintenance of international peace and security in the Far East,” not to shore up and police the U.S. global empire. Article 9 of Japan’s American-drafted constitution explicitly states that Japan will not maintain any offensive military capability or resort to war in its international relations. In fact, however, other than nuclear arms, virtually all of Japan’s postwar pacifism is, some fifty-plus years after Article 9 was written, a fiction. According to one source, Japan, with 139 warships, now has the second most powerful navy on the planet.74 Its army, navy, and air force has a total of 239,000 officers and men, deploys 452 combat aircraft, and is financed by a budget roughly equal to China’s military expenditures. Despite its low profile, Japan is a growing military powerhouse and its conservative leaders have increasingly wanted to stretch the country’s martial legs and the boundaries of Article 9. Deployment of a fairly large contingent of soldiers to Iraq gave Prime Minister Koizumi the chance to overcome the old constraints and precedents on Japanese “offensive” operations. When the Bush administration “persuaded” him to send troops to Iraq, Koizumi finessed the constitutionality of his action by insisting that the troops would only be engaged in peaceful reconstruction and not take part in warfare.

  Large sections of the Japanese public remain devoted to Article 9, even if only as a statement of an ideal. They do not want to be dragged into America’s “preventive wars” as a result of the Security Treaty.75 The political left in Japan, although in decline, argues that the military realignments in Japan are changing the nature of the treaty from defense to war.76 Some influential politicians on the right, which is dominant, see the basing changes the Pentagon now favors as challenges to Japan’s sovereignty.

  The U.S. at first tried to argue that since Japan depends on oil from the Middle East, its security should not technically be restricted to the “Far East” and that support for the broader American mission in Iraq and elsewhere under the rubric of the war on terror is therefore not in conflict with the Security Treaty. This formulation convinced no one, particularly since many Japanese believe that U.S. policy in the Middle East actually threatens their fuel supply. To finesse this issue, the United States decided to call Zama a “forward operational headquarters” and pledged that it will not do “global control” from there, although it certainly will. This linguistic hairsplitting temporarily resolved the legal difficulties, but the population around Camp Zama—an upscale residential area—remains adamantly opposed to enlarging the base. The Japanese government ultimately agreed to an upgraded military command at Camp Zama, but before that came about, the acrimonious dispute concerning the relocation of Futenma Air Base within Okinawa had to be resolved.77

  In 2005, after protesters had stopped even survey work for the airfield on the coral reef, the Japanese government proposed building it on land within the little-used Camp Schwab.78 The United States rejected this recommendation. Japan then proposed building half of the airport in Camp Schwab and half on pilings extending into the ocean. The United States rejected this as well, suggesting among other things that it would be too noisy for the troops barracked at the base. At this point, the talks broke down.79

  The two sides never seriously discussed the most obvious solution— simply closing Futenma and moving what few functions it still performs into existing locations elsewhere in Japan or to Guam or Hawaii. Lawless rejected this out of hand on grounds that the United States has to maintain a “deterrent capability” in Okinawa, particularly to restrain China, and his view was seconded by the U.S. consul general in Okinawa.80 The idea that China might be “deterred” by an understrength American marine division on a distant island is, of course, absurd, not to mention that during 2004 and 2005 significant numbers of the marines based in Okinawa were actually in Iraq.

  After intense negotiations, on October 29, 2005, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, the Japanese Defense Agency chief, and the minister of foreign affairs finally signed an “Interim Agreement.”81 It included setting up the army’s command headquarters at Camp Zama and moving Futenma to the ecologically delicate coastal area of Henoko within Camp Schwab. (There was no agreement on joint civil-military use nor on the fifteen-year limit demanded by the Okinawans.) The United States promised that if everything goes as agreed, it would transfer several thousand marines, mostly headquarters and staff personnel, from Okinawa to Guam over a six-year period. Until the new airport is completed—an estimated decade in the future—Futenma remains open and a threat to surrounding communities.

  Rumsfeld seems not to have understood a fundamental feature of Japanese politics. The Japanese people are riven about their defense relationship with the United States. They like being protected by the United States against possible threats from China and North Korea, but they do not like having foreign troops living anywher
e near them. Over the past half century of alliance, the Japanese government has cynically dealt with this problem by using Okinawa as the dumping ground for the overwhelming majority of U.S. forces based in Japan. From the perspective of the Liberal Democratic Party, which has ruled Japan since 1955, Okinawan anger is a small price to pay so long as the troops are physically removed from daily contact with the politically more influential population on the main islands.

  By deciding to shift bases around Japan like so many chess pieces, Rumsfeld disturbed this Japanese political arrangement for living with the American military. While the defense secretary has gotten the Koizumi government to agree to his proposals, his actions may sooner or later turn the endemic antibase protests of Okinawa into a feature of mainstream Japanese life. Many of the affected communities in the base repositioning scheme are, for the first time, expressing their solidarity with Okinawa. The officials say they will take their cue from whatever the Okinawan pre-fectural government espouses; Okinawa’s initial reaction was to reject the Interim Agreement in favor of moving Futenma Air Base entirely out of Japan.82 On these developments, Masaaki Gabe wrote, “Historians in the future may note that the bilateral alliance between Japan and the United States gradually declined after it peaked in November 2005. In the ongoing talks between the Japanese and U.S. governments over the realignment of U.S. forces in Japan, the Japanese government neglected to seek public support. An alliance that is not supported by the people is fragile.... The interim report has encountered a deep-seated backlash from Okinawa and Kanagawa prefectures.... If the U.S. troops do not have the support of the local base-hosting communities, the troops will probably have to withdraw from their bases.”83

  To resolve this impasse, at least for the time being, the Japanese government resorted to the old tried-and-true practice of bribery. It offered huge amounts of central government money to Okinawa and other affected communities if they would go along with what the U.S. and Japanese governments had already agreed to do. Prime Minister Koizumi made clear that acceptance of the planned reorganization of American forces—even if it amounted to a de facto rewriting of the Japan-U.S. Security Treaty—was settled national policy and could not be further modified. In view of this stance, most of the localities, despite some ambiguous responses, caved in. On May 30, 2006, the cabinet formally approved the planned realignment of U.S. forces in Japan.

  The terms of the May 30 decision are extraordinary. They include an agreement by the United States to remove some 8,000 marines from Okinawa and relocate them to new facilities to be built on the American island of Guam. Secretary Rumsfeld estimates that this transfer will cost some $10.3 billion and take at least six years to accomplish. Astonishingly enough, the Japanese government agreed to pay $6.1 billion—a highly unusual decision in that the funds will be used to build quarters for American forces and their families on American territory. In addition, Japan will construct a new seaside airport within Camp Schwab in northern Okinawa for the troops and aircraft now based at Futenma. Japan will also accept a new army command center to be located at Camp Zama and a nuclear aircraft carrier to replace the conventional one homeported at Yokosuka.

  Article 4 of the cabinet decision says, “[These accords] are among the government’s most critical policy measures to ensure bilateral security arrangements in order for Japan to maintain its peace and security.... The government will consider the wishes of local public entities to be additionally burdened in implementing the realignment-related steps. In return for their great contributions to Japan’s peace and national security, the government will implement economic stimulus packages, including measures for the development of local communities.”84

  This may work. It has in the past. But the complex negotiations failed even to address the Japanese-American disagreements over the SOFA and Japan’s criminal justice procedures. Meanwhile, American servicemen continue to make sensational headlines in the Japanese press. In early July 2005, a drunken air force staff sergeant molested a ten-year-old Okinawan girl on her way to Sunday school. He at first claimed to be innocent, but then the police found a photo of the girl’s nude torso on his cell phone. In November, a Japanese court sentenced him to eighteen months in prison, suspended for four years. On November 2, 2005, six marines from Okinawa who had been dispatched to the Philippines to “train” Filipino soldiers in antiterrorist tactics allegedly raped a Filipina student outside the former U.S. naval base at Subic Bay. The mayor of Okinawa City commented, “No matter how many times we ask the U.S. military to strengthen discipline, such incidents are repeated.” In June 2006, a court in Kanagawa prefecture sentenced a twenty-two-year-old crew member of the USS Kitty Hawk to life in prison for robbing and beating to death a fifty-six-year-old woman outside the railroad station in Yokosuka.85

  The Koizumi government and its right-wing supporters, eager to come out of the military closet and into the world as a rearmed major power, acceded to various unpalatable U.S. basing decisions despite popular opposition. They did so because their perceptions of the security situation and their desire not to be marginalized by China overrode any difficulties that living with American military forces pose for citizens of their country. They ignored the facts that they themselves were responsible for much of the deterioration in their relations with China and that America’s doctrine of preemptive war threatened to draw them into conflicts not of their choosing. Far from bringing stability to international relations in East Asia, the United States and Japan are contributing to heightened tensions with China and North Korea. How long this increasingly fragile situation can be perpetuated is an open question.

  6

  Space: The Ultimate Imperialist Project

  Our vision calls for prompt global strike space systems with the capability to directly apply force from or through space against terrestrial targets.

  —AIR FORCE SPACE COMMAND,

  Strategic Master Plan, Federal Year 2004 and Beyond

  Space offers attractive options not only for missile defense but for a broad range of interrelated civil and military missions. It truly is the ultimate high ground. We are exploring concepts and technologies for space-based intercepts.

  —PAUL WOLFOWITZ,

  deputy secretary of defense, October 2002

  Whoever has the capability to control space will likewise possess the capability to exert control of the surface of the Earth.

  —GENERAL THOMAS D. WHITE,

  air force chief of staff, November 29,1957

  On March 23, 1983, in a speech promoting greater defense spending against the Soviet Union, President Ronald Reagan challenged the “scientific community”—”those who gave us nuclear weapons”—and Americans in general to launch a huge research and development (R&D) effort to create an impermeable antimissile shield in space. He would call this endeavor the Strategic Defense Initiative, or SDI, and, in his vision, it would employ new high-concept technologies such as chemical lasers in space and on Earth to make nuclear weapons forever “impotent and obsolete.”1

  The proposal was meant in part to deflect a large-scale antinuclear movement that had developed in the United States and that had, the previous June, put almost a million protesters on the streets of New York. It was promptly attacked by these same critics and derisively labeled “Star Wars” (after director George Lucas’s space opera). However, Reagan proved why he was known as the “Teflon president.” He promptly appropriated the term. (“If you’ll pardon my stealing a film line—the Force is with us.”) And so a vast military-industrial undertaking to conquer and militarize space began into which billions of dollars have since been poured.2

  As it happened, Reagan’s impenetrable shield in space was a mere fantasy and, over the years, all that remains in practicable terms is a fabulously expensive, ground-based, minimalist antiballistic missile system. A series of futuristic conceptions, still in various stages of research and, in some cases, actual development, is aimed not at protecting the American people from a nuclear attack by an
other country but at the future control of the planet from space and the militarization of the heavens. These new devices included not only antisatellite satellites but weaponry in space that could be fired at Earth.

  On the air force’s developmental drawing boards, for instance, are ideas that would once have been found only in science fiction novels, including the aptly nicknamed “Rods from God,” officially known as “Hypervelocity Rod Bundles.” These are meant, according to reporter Tim Weiner of the New York Times, “to hurl cylinders of tungsten, titanium, or uranium from the edge of space to destroy targets on the ground, striking at speeds of about 7,200 miles an hour with the force of a small nuclear weapon.”3 Another futuristic weapons program, according to Weiner, “would bounce laser beams off mirrors hung from space satellites or huge high-altitude blimps, redirecting the lethal rays down to targets around the world.”

  Far closer to actual deployment is the CAV, or Common Aero Vehicle. According to Walter Pincus of the Washington Post, it will be “an unmanned maneuverable spacecraft that would travel at five times the speed of sound and could carry 1,000 pounds of munitions, intelligence sensors, or other payloads.”4 Part of Donald Rumsfeld’s planned “Global Strike Force,” it theoretically could hit any target on Earth with a massive dose of conventional munitions on a half hour’s notice and the first generation of such weapons is now scheduled to be ready in 2010.

  Although, as far as we know, the Bush administration has not officially issued a presidential directive that would allow the deployment of U.S. weaponry in space, Weiner reports that the air force has been pushing hard for such a directive. Whether made official or not, the militarization of space has clearly been on the secret agenda for some time. Somewhere between boondoggle and imperial venture, the program to conquer the “high frontier” is also essentially a program for creating the equivalent of bases in space where, once the issue of militarization is settled, no SOFAs would be necessary. There would be no foreign governments to negotiate with, pay off, or placate; no issues of crime and justice to sort out. Best of all, the weaponizing of space enables us to project power anywhere in the world from secure bases of operation. It is, by definition, the global high ground.