Sunday, Nov. 15, 2009

Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama and U.S. President Barack Obama held a summit and a joint news conference Friday in Tokyo, their second meeting following their first in September on the fringes of the United Nations General Assembly meetings. They reaffirmed that the Japan-U.S. alliance is the basis for stability and prosperity in the Asia-Pacific region and agreed to "deepen" the alliance.

Both Mr. Hatoyama and Mr. Obama avoided delving very far into the contentious issue of the relocation of the U.S. Marine Corps' Futenma air facility based on Okinawa. Instead they focused on bilateral cooperation on global issues such as nuclear disarmament and climate change. The Futenma issue is the biggest problem at the moment facing Japan and the United States, and cannot be left unattended. Both Japan and the U.S. apparently tried to prevent differences between the two nations over this difficult issue from wrecking their summit.

Although a resolution of the Futenma issue was put off, the two leaders' agreement to cooperate on nuclear disarmament and climate change should not be underestimated. For Japan, which suffered from atomic bombings in 1945, the agreement to strive for a world without nuclear weapons is significant. A Foreign Ministry official noted that Japan-U.S. bilateral cooperation toward nuclear disarmament was unthinkable in the past.

Both leaders agreed to set up a joint ministerial-level working group to find a solution to the Futenma issue at an early date. Not much time is left, since both Japan and the U.S. have budget deadlines linked to the realignment of U.S. forces in Japan. Mr. Hatoyama should quickly pick an alternative site for the Futenma function. Just postponing the solution without a clear idea will damage bilateral ties.

Mr. Obama's statement that the 2006 bilateral accord to move the Futenma function to Camp Schwab should be the basis of a solution puts pressure on Mr. Hatoyama. But the U.S. should understand that Mr. Hatoyama's Democratic Party of Japan promised during the Lower House election campaign to find a new site for Futenma outside Okinawa, or even outside Japan. Both Japan and the U.S. should bear in mind that an irreconcilable rift over the Futenma issue would cost both nations a lot.

Japan and the U.S. called on nuclear weapons states to respect the principles of "transparency, verifiability and irreversibility" in the process of nuclear disarmament, and both agreed to commit to "the early entry into force" of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty and to an early conclusion of a Fissile Material Cutoff Treaty. They also called on North Korea to "return immediately" to the six-party talks for "the irreversible and verifiable denuclearization of Korean Peninsula," and agreed to work for the success of the Nuclear Security Summit and the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty Review Conference in 2010.

It is hoped that the two countries' cooperation will give impetus to global efforts toward nuclear disarmament, although the path is not easy. Mr. Obama hinted that he will visit the atomic-bombed city of Hiroshima in the future, saying that "it's something that would be meaningful to me." This is a courageous act on the part of a U.S. president considering the prevalent view in the U.S. that atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were justified.

Mr. Hatoyama and Mr. Obama also reaffirmed that "shifting to low-carbon growth is indispensable to the health of our planet and will play a central role in reviving the global economy." They agreed that it is "vital that we achieve a successful outcome" at the U.N. Climate Change Conference in December in Copenhagen. At home, though, Mr. Obama faces resistance to his efforts to cut emissions. Mr. Hatoyama, for his part, should quickly work out the details of his pledge to cut Japan's reductions 25 percent from 1990 levels by 2020 and persuade industries to accept his plan.

Mr. Obama thanked Japan for its decision to use $5 billion for civilian aid to Afghanistan over the next five years — in place of the Maritime Self-Defense Force's fueling mission in the Indian Ocean. While this is meaningful, Japan may face difficulty in carrying out the plan due to the unstable situation in that country.

Shortly before taking power, Mr. Hatoyama said the East Asian region is "Japan's basic sphere of being," raising suspicions in the U.S. that he was anti-American. As if to dispel this suspicion, he said the basis of his idea of an East Asia Community is the Japan-U.S. alliance, and called for a bigger U.S. presence in Asia. The two leaders agreed to begin a year of consultations to review the alliance, as 2010 marks the 50th anniversary of the signing of the current Japan-U.S. Security Treaty. Japan can make the special bilateral relationship mutually trustworthy without becoming subservient to the U.S..

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