Link Turn – Japan – Guam Move Expensive

Link Turn – Japan – Guam Move Expensive

After weeks of stalled negotiations, Japan has agreed to pay almost 60% of the cost of transferring thousands of US marines from Okinawa to Guam in a move designed to reduce the US's military burden on one of its closest allies. Japan's defence minister, Fukushiro Nukaga, announced the deal after more than three hours of talks in Washington on Sunday with the US defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld. "I had not expected that such an agreement was possible," Mr Nukaga told reporters. "Japan and the United States were still wide apart on the issue and I thought 'It won't go anywhere unless I directly meet Mr Rumsfeld for talks aimed at a breakthrough.'" Under the agreement, which is part of Washington's plans to realign its forces around the world, Japan will pay $6.1bn (£3.4bn) towards the $10bn it is expected to cost to move 8,000 marines and their families to Guam, a US territory located roughly midway between Japan and Australia. Japan will pay $2.8bn in grants, with the remainder coming in various loans. Japan had refused US demands to pay 75% of the total while it struggles to rein in its huge public debt. Many Japanese also blame the bases for causing pollution, accidents and crime. Mr Rumsfeld said he and Mr Nukaga "have come to an understanding that we both feel is in the best interests of our two countries". Okinawa comprises a fraction of Japan's total area, but is home to around half of the 50,000 US troops stationed in the country. "One big goal of this realignment was to reduce the burden on the people of Okinawa, and our thought is to carry this out as quickly as possible," Shinzo Abe, a Japanese government spokesman, told reporters. "Our burden was unavoidable in order to speed up the process."

TOKYO - HOPING to give new momentum to a plan to rework the deployment of US troops in the Pacific, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton signed an agreement Tuesday with Japan that will move 8,000 Marines off the southern Japanese island of Okinawa to the US territory of Guam. The framework of the transfer had already been agreed on in 2006, but several major points remain to be worked out, including the location of a base to replace Okinawa's Futenma air station, a major hub for the Marines there. Officials on both sides have agreed to relocate the operations of the base to another, less crowded part of Okinawa, but local opposition has stalled progress. 'This agreement reflects the commitment we have to modernise our military posture in the Pacific,' Mrs Clinton said. 'It reinforces the core of our alliance - the mission to defend Japan against attack and to deter any attack by all necessary means.' Japan's Foreign Minister Hirofumi Nakasone also hailed the agreement. 'We believe this Guam agreement shows the strength of our alliance,' he said. 'We agreed to work toward the implementation of the 2006 pact in a manner that does not compromise readiness or capability.' There are currently about 13,000 Marines stationed on Okinawa, and 23,000 US troops there overall. They are part of about 50,000 US troops deployed in Japan under a post-World War II mutual security pact. The cost of the realignment plan has generated intense debate in Japan. Guam's transformation is expected to cost at least US$15 billion (S$23 billion) and put some of the US military's highest-profile assets within the fences of a vastly improved network of bases. In the pact signed on Tuesday, Japan agreed to give Washington $2.8 billion for the transfer costs, though its contribution is expected to go higher.

No Link – Japan Bases are Inexpensive

Comparatively – keeping troops in Japan is cheaper than having them in the US
Onishsi No Date (Kenichi, writer for the Newsletter for a Multicultural Japan, http://www.tabunka.org/newsletter/canjapan.html)

Let me give you some information on U.S. bases in Japan. U.S. bases in Japan number 94, when only those bases for U.S. use are counted, and their aggregate size is over 316 square kilometers. Besides these, there are 42 bases of the Japanese Self-Defense Forces which are designated for common use with the U.S. forces as needed. This means that a total of 136 bases are available for the U.S. forces in Japan. The bases for the U.S. use have somewhat decreased, but common use bases have substantially increased so that the aggregate size is 1.9 times greater than that of 20 years ago. The U.S. Department of Defense's East Asia Strategy Report, published in February 1995, regards Japan as supplying "by far the most generous host nation support of any of our allies." As U.S. administration officials point out, "it is actually less expensive to the American taxpayer to maintain our forces forward deployed than in the United States."

No Link – Troop Reductions are Expensive

Short term costs of troop withdrawals are expensive
Eaglen 9 (Mackenzie, Heritage Foundation's Research Fellow for National Security Studies, 4/30, http://www.speroforum.com/a/19140/Obamas-military-budget-to-decrease-over-10-years)

Congress must also consider several other billpayers knocking at the Pentagon's door that are certain to consume any potential real growth in the Obama defense budget--even before the details are available in May. In the same floor speech earlier this week, Senator Inhofe highlighted the difference in war funding requests for 2009 by Presidents Bush and Obama. Congress approved $65.9 billion in emergency supplemental funds for the first part of FY 2009, yet President Obama's supplemental request of $75.5 billion for defense needs is supposed to pay for invoices that actually run much higher. This six-month supplemental for the second half of FY 2009 is supposed to fund ongoing operations, a significant 21,000-troop increase in Afghanistan, and the expensive beginning of a withdrawal from Iraq. While it may appear to be cheaper to take troops out of Iraq, in the short-term it actually costs much more to get military servicemembers and their gear out. Senator Inhofe also discussed a recent General Accountability Office report that characterizes the cost to redeploy significant force levels from Iraq as a "massive and expensive effort" with rising near-term costs.[2] The report states the cost of equipment repairs and replacements--along with closing and turning over 283 military installations in Iraq--and finally moving troops and equipment home "will likely be significant." Senator Inhofe and others are rightly sounding an alarm bell that defense spending on current warfighting operations is decreasing in FY 2009 by $10.7 billion.

Withdrawal is a long, expensive process
Scahill 9 (Jeremy, Puffin Foundation Writing Fellow at the Nation Institute, 3/30, http://www.globalpolicy.org/component/content/article/168/35899.html)

First, there's the money. "Although reducing troops would appear to lower costs, GAO has seen from previous operations … that costs could rise in the near term," according to the 56-page report, which is titled "Iraq: Key Issues for Congressional Oversight." In addition to the massive funds required to move tens of thousands of troops, the GAO points out that the Army estimates "it would cost $12 billion to $13 billion a year for at least two years after the operation ends to repair, replace and rebuild the equipment used in Iraq." The cost of closing U.S. bases will also "likely be significant;" even after military units leave Iraq, the Pentagon will need to invest in training and equipment to return these units to levels capable of performing "full spectrum operations." (The GAO report does not even mention the costs of providing much-needed medical and mental health services to veterans.) The Obama administration is likely to portray the costs of "withdrawing" from Iraq as a painful necessity made inevitable by the Bush administration. But there are already calls for Obama to not allocate any new funds for such an operation. Retired Army Col. Ann Wright, a veteran diplomat who reopened the U.S. embassy in Kabul after Sept. 11 (and, while in the military, worked on plans for an Iraq invasion), says, "Everyone in the Department of Defense -- military and civilian -- knows well the expense of going to war and the expense of bringing troops back to the United States.

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