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Yukio Hatoyama is putting an election ahead of the US alliance, says former Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Joel Starr.2010/04/28 07:16

Biography of Joel E. Starr


深読みすればまたしても普天間決着先送りし、参院選で普天間を問うシナリオまで浮上。

安全保障よりも選挙が勝るこの政権。優先順位を完全に間違えている。

いよいよ奈落の底が見えてきた。


<関連記事引用>

Politics Strains US-Japan Ties
April 27, 2010
By Joel E. Starr
http://the-diplomat.com/2010/04/27/politics-strains-us-japan-ties/

Yukio Hatoyama is putting an election ahead of the US alliance, says former Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Joel Starr.

This year marks the 50th anniversary of the US-Japan Treaty of Mutual Security and Cooperation. Yet, rather than engaging in a celebration and reaffirmation of shared values and alliance missions, our leaders find themselves preoccupied with uncertainty—an uncertainty driven by shifting political calculations in Japan rather than changes to the global or regional security environment.

Supporters of the US-Japan alliance in the US Congress are surprised and more than a little disappointed to find such an important relationship seemingly being called into question. This concern has motivated recent visits to Japan by Members of Congress and their staff for consultations, including my own trip there.

But sadly, I came away from those meetings with an unsettling feeling that the administration of Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama is playing politics with the 2006 US-Japanese agreement that moves US Marines on Okinawa in an effort to ensure that his party, the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ), will gain seats in the upcoming House of Councillors elections slated for mid-July. While this conclusion may not be surprising, what was surprising to me were the numerous unofficial pleas I received from Japanese officials and scholars to pressure the Hatoyama government to honour the 2006 agreement. In addition, our military leadership expressed clear concern about the Hatoyama administration’s ‘mixed signals.’

While we have great respect for the democratic process and the considered views of our ally, on the question of our agreement on the disposition of forces in Okinawa, the facts are not in dispute. After 13 years, through both the Clinton and Bush administrations, and multiple governments in Japan, negotiations were successfully concluded in 2006 to realign and expand our mutual security alliance with Japan beyond its existing framework. A key feature of this new arrangement includes relocating the US Marine’s Futenma Air Station from the crowded city of Ginowan to Camp Schwab, in the less populated part of northern Okinawa. This realignment of US forces in Japan also includes the redeployment of the III Marine Expeditionary Force, which includes 8,000 US personnel and their dependents (when at full capacity), to new facilities in Guam, and will lead to the return of thousands of acres of land to the Japanese. This move will reduce the number of US Marines on Okinawa by nearly half, and Japanese and US officials settled on Camp Schwab because of its far less populated and congested location.


However, it’s also a fact that in July 2010, half of Japan’s Upper House seats will be up for election. The DPJ controls that chamber of the Diet by virtue of its alliance with two smaller parties, the left-of-centre Social Democratic Party and the populist/conservative People’s New Party. And in the run-up to this election, I’m far from alone in believing that politics is intruding into the national security decision-making process of the current Japanese leadership.

Granted, the historic August 2009 DPJ victory ended more than five decades of uninterrupted rule by the Liberal Democratic Party in post-war Japan. And the new administration is inexperienced in governing and suspicious of close to two generations of career Civil and Foreign Service employees who served under the LDP for close to a half a century. These reasons alone, however, don’t explain why Japan would not want to honour the 2006 agreement in whole or part.

Hatoyama has in the past made statements suggesting that US troops in Japan either be significantly reduced or withdrawn altogether, though he backed away from these statements once he was elected and confirmed the centrality of the alliance to Japan’s security. The present government has also put forward a vision of a Japan that is more ‘normal,’ in that it is more assertive and independent on the international stage. Members of the Hatoyama government have been quoted as supporting increased contributions in personnel and materiel to international security operations, but to do so only in missions that are authorized by the UN Security Council.

But these are non sequitur responses for the real reason I believe Hatoyama is withholding a decision on Futenma: to obtain the votes of those Okinawans and a vocal minority of other Japanese who are opposed to US troops on Japanese soil.

There are reports this week that Foreign Minister Katsuya Okada presented US Ambassador John V. Roos with a proposal to settle the dispute. However, the fact that the Hatoyama government has twice put off giving a definitive response, on whether it will honour Japan’s security commitments relating to Futenma, leaves no doubt in my mind that a final decision will be further delayed until after the July 2010 Upper House elections. But even if the election brings a greater majority to the DPJ, the present government will find itself bound up by implicit domestic and expedient political campaign promises that fundamentally alter our 50-year national security relationship.

Indeed, my suspicions were confirmed in a telling exchange with State Secretary Koichi Takemasa, one of the few political appointees at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Takemasa remarked that he had just met with the US Pacific Commander and his Pentagon colleagues in Guam a few days before, and ‘they told us of the importance of the deterrence power of US forces in the region.’

But Takemasa added no comment of agreement to reinforce the statement. After an awkward pause, I left him with a military truism about the ‘tyranny of time’ on the battlefield that Senator James Inhofe has also used in an East Asian security context. I said, ‘Mr. Secretary, it takes two hours to fly from Japan to North Korea; it takes six hours to fly from Guam to North Korea.’ Takemasa looked at me, said nothing, and entertained the next questioner.

Joel E. Starr serves as Counsel and Legislative Assistant to U.S. Senator James M. Inhofe of Oklahoma, and the Ranking Member of the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on East Asian and Pacific Affairs. Mr. Starr was Deputy Assistant Secretary of State from 2007-09, and is a Major in the US Army Reserve Judge Advocate General’s Corps.


窮余の現行案修正=決着先送りの思惑も-普天間
http://www.jiji.com/jc/c?g=pol_30&rel=j7&k=2010042701006

 米軍普天間飛行場(沖縄県宜野湾市)移設問題の5月末の決着期限を目前に控え、鳩山内閣がたどり着いたのは、現行計画の修正と鹿児島県・徳之島への移転を組み合わせる案だった。現行計画が「最善」とする米側を話し合いのテーブルに着かせることで、決着時期の先送りを狙う「窮余の策」と言える。

 「現行計画に戻りたいが、鳩山由紀夫首相が埋め立ては駄目だと言っている」。防衛省幹部は27日、現行計画を修正する案が急浮上した理由をこう説明した。

 キャンプ・シュワブ沿岸部(沖縄県名護市)に移設する現行計画を基本に、工法を「埋め立て方式」から「くい打ち桟橋方式」に変更するのが修正案のミソだ。政権内で浮上した国内の移設候補地が、地元の反発に遭って次々と後景に遠のく中で、米側も協議に乗ってきそうな案を提示し、「何らかの決着を付けたい」(政府関係者)というのが本音だ。

 くい打ち方式は、過去に日米両政府間でも検討されたことがある。しかし、海上での工事が反対運動の影響を受けやすい上、「埋め立てと比べると地元業者にカネが落ちない」などの理由から見送られた経緯がある。27日の参院外交防衛委員会でも、コスト高や高波の影響をどう防ぐかという課題を指摘する声が上がった。

 首相は昨年の衆院選で、移設先について「最低でも県外」と繰り返した。徳之島にもヘリ部隊の一部を移転することで、首相はこれまでの言動との整合性を取る狙いとみられるが、徳之島移転案には、米側が難色を示しているほか、地元の反発も根強い。

 社民党の福島瑞穂党首(消費者・少子化担当相)も「現行案あるいは現行案の修正では全く駄目だ」と明言しており、首相らの対応次第では、同党が政権離脱を選択する可能性もある。「現行計画とさして変わらない決着なら、首相は辞任に値する」。与党内からはこうした声も漏れる。(2010/04/27-21:12)


霞が関ウオッチャー:普天間問題で副外相 黒衣に徹する
http://mainichi.jp/select/seiji/news/20100421ddm005010015000c.html

 「普天間があって、(官邸から)やたらなことをしゃべるな、と」。17日午後、武正公一副外相が地元さいたま市浦和区の市民会館で開いた講演会。支持者から「もっと動きが報道で取り上げられるよう仕掛けるべきだ」とただされ、武正氏はそう応じた。

 米軍普天間飛行場(沖縄県宜野湾市)の移設問題は、鳩山政権の命運を左右する最大の懸案となった。武正氏は野党時代、「県外、国外移設」構想の基になった「党沖縄ビジョン」のとりまとめ役。当時、党代表の鳩山由紀夫首相が「県外、国外」と訴えたことが今、大きく響いている。

 政権交代で武正氏は、政府・与党の「沖縄基地問題検討委員会」のメンバーとなった。しかし「官邸主導」を掲げる鳩山政権で、委員会運営は委員長・平野博文官房長官の独壇場に。武正氏は議論の中身を語ることさえ封じられた。

 そんな武正氏が「副大臣の実績」としてさりげなくアピールするのが、09年10月に始めた省独自の事業仕分けだ。「言われてやるんじゃなく、他省庁の見本にならなくてはだめ」。渋る役人を説き伏せ、在外公館職員の在勤手当を前年度の約8%、23・4億円削り、国際交流基金342億円の国庫返納を決めた。

 普天間問題は岡田克也外相とルース駐日米大使に交渉ルートが一本化され、外務省に注目が集まりつつある。だが武正氏は「副大臣はアピールより実務」とだんまりを決め込み、黒衣に徹する。【吉永康朗】


<画像引用>

Biography of Joel E. Starr
http://www.state.gov/s/h/111007.htm