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| Futenma Air Station Okinawa; Japan |
By Will Atkins
Three ways to put the concepts outlined in the new Guidelines into practice.
The new Guidelines for U.S.-Japan Defense Cooperation (“the Guidelines”) approved last week provide a framework for the roles and missions of each nation and outline cooperation and coordination mechanisms designed to improve the effectiveness of the alliance. The challenge facing alliance managers now is “operationalizing” the concepts outlined in the Guidelines. In the ten years since the Futenma Replacement Facility (FRF) debate began, not only has the alliance revised the roles and missions for each nation, but Japan has also undertaken steps to legislate collective self-defense, and begun to create its own amphibious force of 3,000 troops, modeled after the U.S. Marine Corps (USMC). Alliance managers should therefore leverage such evolutionary changes in Japanese defense policy to consider alternative solutions for the current FRF plan. Such alternatives should help to operationalize many aspects of the new Guidelines while providing opportunity for greater interoperability of US and Japanese forces.
First, empty rhetoric regarding “more joint exercises” should be eliminated. The expansion of joint and bilateral military exercises was reiterated in the new Guidelines, and such language remains a favored suggestion to “improve” defense cooperation. However, Pacific Command (and its service components and sub-unified commands) already participates in hundreds of exercises per year with foreign military forces. Instead of arbitrarily increasing the number of these costly, politically sensitive exercises, efforts should be made to normalize, even routinize, bilateral engagements to the point where it doesn’t require a four-star endorsement or coordination with the Department of State to conduct a bilateral operation – especially if those operations involve routine training missions with allied partners. In other words, we shouldn’t be “exercising” at all. We should be performing routine, daily operations with our Japanese counterparts.
Virtually every mission that American forces would be called upon to perform in a crisis situation in Japan will involve interoperability and support from Japanese Self Defense Forces (JSDF). To effectively train for these missions, we need to find ways to create sustainable, constant contact with JSDF counterparts and involve them in daily training missions. To achieve such contact, certain military units stationed in Japan should have, as part of their standing mission, the directive to provide capability building to the JSDF. Japan’s new amphibious force offers an ideal opportunity to do so.
Read the full story at The Diplomat