THE new Japanese government and the United States are in a position to move forward and implement a controversial accord on the status of an immensely unpopular U.S. air base in the Okinawa prefecture. This was a self-assured declaration on June 5 by U.S. Defence Secretary Robert Gates at the ninth Asia Security Summit, organised in Singapore by the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS).
Speaking later during a separate session of the summit, also known as Shangri-La Dialogue after the name of the hotel venue, Japanese Defence Minister Toshimi Kitazawa did not dispute Gates' assertion.
Kitazawa had flown to Singapore just a few hours after Naoto Kan won parliamentary approval in Tokyo to succeed Yukio Hatoyama as Prime Minister. Briefly referring to the Okinawa issue, Kitazawa noted that the prime ministerial change occurred in the context of popular sentiments over the continued U.S. military presence in Okinawa.
A relevant issue, not raised or addressed at the Singapore summit, is the political basis of U.S. optimism about the durability of the June 2 accord, a virtual reaffirmation of the 2006 road map for security cooperation with Japan into the future. The diplomatic logic, of course, is that the June 2 accord, like the 2006 road map, is a compact between two sovereign states and not any two governments. This does skirt the question whether Hatoyama's resignation, in the face of popular protest over the very same accord, will not negate its political applicability.
However, conventional wisdom has it that the U.S.-Japan alliance is central to Kan's original world view as well. In any case, those in favour of the alliance, in both these countries, think that Kan, known for better decisiveness and pragmatism than Hatoyama, cannot ignore Japan's existential dependence on the U.S. in a region where China is beginning to assert itself as a potential or possible superpower.
Unsurprisingly, Gates told the Singapore summit that the U.S. would keep its nuclear umbrellas for its allies in good shape. This was in no way negated by his parallel assurance to the Chinese that Washington does not consider China as an enemy. At the same time, Ma Xiaotian, a top-ranking general of the Chinese People's Liberation Army, said in a different session of the summit that we have not participated in any nuclear arms race and will never do that in the future.
Nuclear concerns were among the talking points at the conference after South Korea's President Lee Myung-bak said, in his inaugural remarks, that Seoul and Washington would respond suitably to North Korea's perceived destruction of a South Korean warship in March.
And, in this milieu of discourse and debate, India was asked unusual questions about the activities of its Maoist militants. This prompted National Security Adviser Shiv Shankar Menon to assure the participants that they don't need to worry about left-wing extremism affecting the security of our nuclear assets.
Responding to a post-summit question from this correspondent, IISS Director-General John Chipman and IISS expert Mark Fitzpatrick indicated that the institute was commissioning a professional study of the ways towards a world without nuclear weapons.
P. S. SuryanarayanaCOMMents
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