International Affairs

More Trouble in Okinawa

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A crime occurred 12 years ago that seriously damages US-Japanese relations.

Two US Marines and a Navy seaman stationed in Okinawa kidnapped and raped a 12 year old girl in 1995. They were convicted and sentenced to serve time in Japanese jails. I suppose the Marines and Navy had their own version of punishment waiting when the guilty were released from foreign prison.

Rallies were organized to protest the continued US military presence on Japanese soil. Things became particularly tense on Okinawa, where the majority of the US military is based. The governor of the island at the time, Masahide Ota, stated that all US bases should be closed no later than 2015, saying the “Okinawa is ours!”

That all became kind of moot a few years later when North Korea, one of the last of the truly despicable and dangerous Communist regimes on the planet, test fired a missile that soared all the way over Japan to splash down in the sea on the other side.

You didn’t have to be a (heh) rocket scientist to figure this one out. NK wanted the Japanese to know that they could attack their cities at any time, and with impunity.

Suddenly having some American military muscle on hand to counter Communist aggression didn’t seem to be all that bad! Nothing like a remnant of Cold War tensions to clarify who your real buddies were. The most that ever came from all the sturm and drang was an agreement to move the Futenma Marine Corps Air Station to a more remote location, and that hasn’t happened after more than a decade.

Now a similar incident is causing the resurgence of the same old problems. This time around, a single Marine is accused of raping a 14 year old schoolgirl when he gave her a ride home.

The current Prime Minister of Japan, Yasuo Fukuda, has publicly stated that “It has happened over and over again in the past and I take it as a grave case.” He has also said that such sexual crimes ” …can never be forgiven!”

A crime most definitely occurred since the accused Marine admitted to forcing the girl to kiss him, and now it is merely a matter of determining the damage caused and the severity of the punishment. But I’m wondering about the “..happened over and over again in the past…” part of the Prime Minister’s statement. Near as I can tell, he is referring to the 1995 case. Seems a bit overwrought to me to refer to a case that was closed more than a decade ago as something that happened “…over and over again…”, but I suppose it all dovetails neatly into his claim that such crimes can never be forgiven.

So the current Prime Minister is beating the anti-American drum while public sentiment once again turns against a continued American military presence on the islands. Does this mean that the US will be forced to seriously reduce the number of bases and troops on the islands?

Almost certainly not. Now that North Korea has at least extremely crude fission bombs, the threat from the old missile test back in 1998 becomes much more serious. Added to that is the fact that China is upgrading and expanding their own military, which certainly ratchets up the tension even more. Japan doesn’t have the military muscle to protect itself against even one of these potential foes, let alone both. They need the US to act as both a deterrent, and for combat power if relations between Japan and the two Communist states deteriorate.

Japan certainly has the ability to build up their own military to the point that they would not need to rely on the US for their security, and there have already been indications that the government there has been at least laying the groundwork in case such a move becomes necessary. But it usually takes decades of very serious effort to create the world class armed forces that Japan would need, and that doesn’t appear to be happening. Until it does, I just don’t see much changing.

As far as the current crisis is concerned, it seems to be a tempest in a teapot. Japanese politicians will talk trash against the US to bolster their approval ratings, one or two minor concessions will be granted by the US so fas as base location or size is concerned, and a whole lot of not much will happen.

Maybe they will finally get around to moving the Futenma Marine Corps Air Station, but I wouldn’t hold my breath.

(Cross posted at Hell in a Handbasket.)

Obama and the Muslim World

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Jim Miller nails it:

But all these — and many more practical objections — are small considering the grandiose stupidity of his central idea, that our differences with radical Muslims can be worked out in an “honest discussion”. A significant minority in the Muslim world does not want to talk to us, but wants us to submit and, preferably, convert. Most Muslims do not want that, but most Muslims are not our problem. Our strategy must be to separate the radicals from the moderates, not to unite all Muslims to demand things from us.

(See also this post.)

Left and Right both err fundamentally by treating Muslims as monolithic. The Left imagines a harmonious Islam that the West has offended and should now appease. The Right is concerned about a monolithically hostile Islam that the West must defend itself against. In fact there are all kinds of Muslims, many of whom are friendly to the West, many of whom are part of the West. If our leaders don’t understand the important distinctions between Muslims then we will have great difficulty in responding effectively to events in the Muslim world.

Obama’s statements on foreign affairs reveal both foolishness and arrogance. Foolishness because appeasement as a strategy is never effective against committed enemies. Arrogance because it’s not all about us: there is big change underway in the Muslim world, it’s been going on for decades, and while we are now deeply involved and have a lot of power and influence, we didn’t start it. At best we can protect ourselves and help reasonable Muslims to prevail over the killers. But to do that effectively we need to draw clear distinctions between good guys and bad.

Phalanx Gun

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Most of you have seen or read that some Iranian boats buzzed a few of our ships that were steaming in international waters near the Straits of Hormuz. The US ships were a cruiser (USS Port Royal, CG 73), a destroyer (USS Hopper, DDG 70) and a frigate (USS Ingraham, FFG 61).

Here is some raw video of the incident:
 


 

Read more

Quote of the Day

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Once the US squandered its post-Sept. 11 leverage with Pakistan it was left with only bad options for coping with the nuclear-armed jihadist incubating country. And these too, it has ignored in favor of the chimera of democracy and elections.
 
After Sept. 11, President George W. Bush declared war on the forces of global terror and their state sponsors. But as the years have passed since then, he has done more to lose the war than he has to win it simply by ignoring it.
 
Bhutto’s murder is not a sign that elections and democracy frighten al-Qaida and therefore must be pursued. It is a sign that the Taliban and al-Qaida – together with their supporters in the Pakistani military and intelligence services and Pakistani society as a whole – don’t like people who are supported by the US. Her assassination was yet another act of war by the enemies of the West against the West.
 
If democracy and freedom are the US’s ultimate aims in this war, the only way to achieve them is to first fight and win the war. Bhutto – like her Palestinian, Egyptian and Lebanese counterparts – was a sideshow.

–Caroline Glick

Retro-Authoritarianism in Russia

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I’m reposting this here due to the interest in Russian and Soviet affairs among my CB co-bloggers:

TIME magazine, as most are no doubt aware, named Russian President Vladimir Putin as its 2007 “Man of the Year. The editors explained their choice in a way that also attempted to articulate Putin’s stabilitarian “siloviki ideology”:

“But all this has a dark side. To achieve stability, Putin and his administration have dramatically curtailed freedoms. His government has shut down TV stations and newspapers, jailed businessmen whose wealth and influence challenged the Kremlin’s hold on power, defanged opposition political parties and arrested those who confront his rule. Yet this grand bargain-of freedom for security-appeals to his Russian subjects, who had grown cynical over earlier regimes’ promises of the magical fruits of Western-style democracy. Putin’s popularity ratings are routinely around 70%. “He is emerging as an elected emperor, whom many people compare to Peter the Great,” says Dimitri Simes, president of the Nixon Center and a well-connected expert on contemporary Russia.

Putin’s global ambitions seem straightforward. He certainly wants a seat at the table on the big international issues. But more important, he wants free rein inside Russia, without foreign interference, to run the political system as he sees fit, to use whatever force he needs to quiet seething outlying republics, to exert influence over Russia’s former Soviet neighbors. What he’s given up is Yeltsin’s calculation that Russia’s future requires broad acceptance on the West’s terms. That means that on big global issues, says Strobe Talbott, president of the Brookings Institution and former point man on Russia policy for the Clinton Administration, “sometimes Russia will be helpful to Western interests, and sometimes it will be the spoiler.”

Putin’s rule can (and typically has been) analyzed from the perspective of Sovietology and Russian history. Articles feature the usual, superficial, observations that Russians like a strong vozhd (supreme leader) in the tradition of Stalin, Alexander III, Nicholas I, Peter the Great and Ivan the Terrible; that Putin’s regime is a Cheka-KGB front (actually, KGB veterans are among the most competent and least ideological technocrats of the Soviet era officials – who would YOU hire? The guys who ran Soviet agriculture?); that Russians yearn for a return to the Cold War and so on. While there is some truth to these statements regarding the Russian national character and unhappy history, to use them as a fundamental explanation of Russia’s current political system is mostly rubbish. The truth is that Russia’s liberal and democratic parties self-destructed and discredited themselves among Russian voters in the waning years of Yeltsin’s tenure and that Putin enacted a moderately nationalist and anti-oligarchical agenda that catered to the tastes of the vast majority of his countrymen. When Putin centralized power in his hands as a quasi-dictator, he did so in a political vacuum.

This pattern is hardly uniquely Russian. We have seen populist, plebiscitary yet police-state regimes long before Vladimir Putin’s New Russia. Napoleon Bonaparte was the modern innovator, abolishing the decrepit Directorate and constructing a regime that offered a little something for everybody who wanted a glorious France; his cabinet included Jacobin Terrorists, Monarchists, Girondins, aristocracy, bourgeoisie and the chameleon-like Talleyrand. Napleon made use of “new men” and flattered the old nobility even as he created a broad class of “notables” and answered the desire of the French for both greatness and order. Propaganda was used liberally but so too were the police-spies of Fouche to cadge Napoleon’s impressive plebescitary majorities out of the electorate. How different, functionally speaking, is Vladimir Putin? Or for that matter, Hugo Chavez?

We could go back still further to the Caesars – Julius and his canny heir Augustus. Both men understood well that truly revolutionary changes in a political system were most placidly accepted when cloaked in the guise of adhering to old forms and restoring order and normality (it must be said though, that Octavian understood this better than his martial Uncle). After periods of disorder, want or uncertainty there have always been many people who are all too willing to trade liberty for economic security.

Whenever authoritarianism has the added attraction of marshaling competence and cultural values behind its standard, democrats should beware.

ADDENDUM:

Thomas P.M. Barnett – “Putin Positions himself as Russia’s Lee Kwan Yew”

The Guardian – “Putin, the Kremlin power struggle and the $40 bn fortune”

The Russia Blog – “Why Russia Loves Putin”

Michael Barone – “Putin: Odd Choice for Person of the Year”

Cross-posted at Zenpundit