Are U.S. Troops in Japan Needed? Reforming the Alliance

Morihiro Hosokawa

From Foreign Affairs, July/August 1998

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Summary:  Americans see the presence of U.S. troops in Japan as a gracious favor. Well, it's time for the Americans to go home.

Morihiro Hosokawa was Prime Minister of Japan from 1992 to 1993.

The gulf separating American and Japanese perceptions of the U.S. troops stationed in Japan could jeopardize the alliance between these two important countries. Many Americans see the presence of U.S. troops in Japan as a gracious favor meant to underpin Japan's security. Most Japanese, while fond of the alliance with the United States, would like to see fewer U.S. troops on their soil. A May 1996 opinion poll in Asahi Shimbun found that 70 percent of the Japanese people supported the alliance with the United States while 67 percent favored a reduction in the number of U.S. military bases. This discriminating public preference is reasonable in today's Asia.

The U.S.-Japan Security Treaty was signed during the Korean War in 1951 at the same time as the San Francisco Peace Treaty, which formally ended the Allied occupation of Japan. The security treaty enabled U.S. troops to remain in Japan and opened Japanese facilities as a staging area and logistics base for American forces in the war being waged on the Korean peninsula. U.S. military bases in Japan were seen as essential to containing communist expansion, especially since the Soviet Union, China, and North Korea were considered a monolithic threat.

Today the international environment has changed as dramatically in East Asia as in Europe. The United States and its allies are no longer squared off against the Soviet Union. Indeed, the Soviet Union is no more. Since its collapse, Russian forces in East Asia have become hollow. A comparison of Japan's 1989 and 1997 white paper on defense shows a more than 50 percent reduction in the number of personnel, surface combat ships, submarines, and warplanes in Asia. Most of Russia's warships are rusting in port, leaving only a few submarines and surface ships in the Pacific fleet operational. According to Japanese military analysts, Russian air force pilots fly no more than 20 to 30 hours of training time a year, making the most basic skills difficult to maintain. In Japan, fighter pilots train a minimum of 150 hours a year.

A clear reversal of fortune on the Korean peninsula between the South and the North also signals a drastic change in the strategic map of northeast Asia. While the industries of the north were destroyed during the Korean War, much of the infrastructure survived; with assistance from the Soviet Union and its Eastern European satellites, North Korean industry substantially recovered. South Korea's industrialization, on the other hand, began only after 1965, when the Basic Treaty between Japan and South Korea opened the way for Japanese capital and technology. During the 1970s, the North was still widely thought superior to the South in industrial and military strength.

Today the situation is reversed. South Korea's GNP is at least 20 times that of the North, and its population of 45 million is twice as large. South Korea's strength relative to its northern neighbor resembles the United States' relative to Mexico. South Korea was recognized by Russia in 1990 and by China two ...

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