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US-Japan relations Good-Iraqi Instability
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US-Japan relations Good-Iraqi InstabilityRelations Key to Iraqi stabilityCalder 09[Kent E. Calder, Director of the Reischauer Center for East Asian Studies at SAIS, Johns Hopkins University. “Pacific Alliance” 2009 pp138-139 WC]During its mission in Iraq, the SDF hired more than a thousand local people a day, totaling nearly half a million, mainly in Samawah.11 It thereby made another major contribution to a local community suffering from high unemployment. The GSDF even offered on-the-job training in the operation of construction machines. This economic-oriented approach helped elicit local information on potential terrorists' attacks, as those hired were sometimes friends and relatives of terrorists themselves, with incentives influenced by ongoing benefits to their local communities. In addition to the carrot, there was also a bit of a stick, albeit one uniquely postwar Japanese in its hybrid adaptation to both Iraqi wartime conditions and Japanese domestic concerns. In addition to the GSDF's normal armament for overseas deployment of pistols, rifles, and machine guns, it was permitted to arm itselfwith recoilless rifles. GSDF troops likewise carried light antitank munitions and moved in wheeled armored personnel carriers and light armored vehicles, in order to counter the threat of suicide attacks by local insurgents. As a result of these precautions, combined with subtle Dutch, British, and Australian protection, the GSDF was able to accomplish its mission without any loss of life attributable to terrorist attacks. Beginning in February 2004, around two hundred ASDF personnel became engaged in transporting humanitarian and reconstruction supplies via ASDF C-130S from Kuwait into Iraq. The ASDF's original mission statement under the basic plan included airlifting from Kuwait to Baghdad and other Iraqi urban centers. During the GSDF deployment in Samawah, the ASDF concentrated on supplying its GSDF colleagues, via air facilities in Nasiriyah and Basra, but that mission ultimately broadened to ditect support of other allied forces after the GSDF's withdrawal from the country. As of September 10, 2008, the ASDF had transported 640 tons of equipment and supplies.12 The nominal rationale for the steady expansion of offshore SDF activities since 9/11 has been support for the "international community" in general, rather than explicit backing for the United States alone.13 After the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon in 2001, there was some consideration given to framing Japan's response explicitly in terms of the recently revised U.S.-Japan Defense Guidelines. US-Japan relations Good- Missile DefenseJapan-U.S. Relations Leads to Missile DefenseCalder 09[Kent E. Calder, Director of the Reischauer Center for East Asian Studies at SAIS, Johns Hopkins University. “Pacific Alliance” 2009 pp145-147 ]Japan's reasons for intimate cooperation with the United States in the Northeast Asian region have thus strengthened over the past decade, regardless of what the argument for involvement in Iraq—clearly less persuasive from Japans strategic viewpoint—might be. Consolidation of the bilateral U.S.Japan military alliance is rapidly occurring in other areas as well, driven by both technological imperatives and political opportunity. Technologically, the driving force is the rising capability of North Korean and Chinese missile and nuclear capabilities, now demonstrably capable of delivering terror weapons into Japan's heavily populated Kanto plain and Kansai region and possibly capable of hitting some key American and SDF defense facilities as well. These capabilities, demonstrated unmistakably duting the Taiwan missile crisis of 1996 and by the North Korean missile tests of 1998 and 2006 and suggested in reported advances of the North Korean WMD program, have accelerated the urgency, from Tokyo's standpoint, of introducing at least a modified ballistic missile defense (BMD) system. In September 1993, following North Korea's provocative test launches of Nodong-i missiles in May 1990 and May 1993, the United States and Japan established a Theater Missile Defense Working Group.31 In 1994, the two countries undertook a major Bilateral Study on Ballistic Missile Defense (BSBMD) to investigate the technological feasibility of BMD systems. In 1999 Washington and Tokyo inaugurated a joint research program on four key BMD interceptor-missile technologies, including infrared seekers in missile nose cones; the protection of infrared seekers from heat generated in flight; a Kinetic Kill Vehicle for the destruction of ballistic missiles; and a second-stage rocket motor for the related interceptor missile.32 These were all areas in which American and Japanese technical capabilities were well matched to the defense-industrial challenge at hand.33 Despite this vigorous bilateral research program, however, Japan was for some time hesitant to move toward implementation, even after 9/11. Indeed, in December 2002, when JDA Director General Ishiba Shigeru noted, after meeting with U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, an enthusiastic BMD proponent, that Japan was studying BMD "with a view of future development and deployment,"34 he was sharply rebuked by both Prime Minister Koizumi and Chief Cabinet Secretary Fukuda for these comments.35 It was only as the North Korean nuclear crisis began to deepen in 2003 that Japan decided to move more actively toward deployment. In May 2003 Koizumi indicated that Japan might accelerate consideration of its participation in a joint BMD program with the United States. A few months later, in December 2003, Japan announced it would procure an off-the-shelf BMD system from the United States, while also continuing to study the joint development with the United States of future BMD technology. By June 2006 PAC-3 interceptors were deployed at Kadena Air Base in Okinawa to defend that key U.S. facility against opposing missiles. Meanwhile, an X-band radar, a key clemenr in BMD monitoring systems, was operationatized at the ASDF s Shariki base in Aomori Prefecture, near Mi-sawa Air Base. In December 2006, the JDA announced plans to build a new joint-interceptor base at Sasebo in Kyushu,36 close to China and the Taiwan Strait, while in March 2007, PAC-3 interceptors became operational at Iruma Air Base north of Tokyo, in defense of the capital.37 By December 2007, Japan had successfully demonstrated basic operational missile defense capabilities itself. In cooperation with the U.S. Missile Defense Agency the Japanese navy Aegis-equipped destroyer Kongo successfully destroyed a medium-range target missile with the general characteristics of North Koreas Taepo Dong I one hundred miles above the Pacific/58 In buying off-the-shelf technology, much of it likely to be black-boxed, Japan has apparently decided to deepen its technological reliance on the United States, and to integrate its strategies more decisively with Washington. By deploying a navy theaterwide mobile missile defense system highly dependent on information flows originating with the United States, Tokyo is also acquiring a weapon system that is dependent on American cooperation to function properly39 Its self-defense strategies are thus being intimately linked to the U.S.Japan alliance in unprecedented ways. Most important, the technological nature of BMD increasingly means that Japanese policymakers will no longer be able to employ the type of ambiguity found in the revised Defense Guidelines to obscure the full extent of their military support for the United States, as has often been true in the past. The short time frame—normally less than ten minutes—that is needed for a BMD systern to respond to a missile launch means that there will be no time for Japan's political leaders to debate decisions on interceptor launches. They will need to devolve decisions increasingly on joint U.S.-Japan operational commands now being set up, as we shall see, expressly for this purpose. The best they can most probably do is to specify cleat rules of engagement dealing with preplanned scenarios for committing Japan to conflict. BMD systems, like rapid-reaction antiterrorist arrangements, also have important implications for Japan's prohibition on the exercise of the right of collective self-defense, again in the spirit of the peace constitution. If strictly applied, Japan cannot legitimately defend American bases and troops in Japan. Despite the considerable operational complications that it generates for alliance with a foreign country, denial of collective self-defense has interestingly never surfaced, until recently, as a substantial political issue in U.S.-Japan security relations. The Mutual Security Treaty does not, after all, articulate Japan's duty to defend the United States, and Washington had never, prior to 9/11, asked Tokyo's help in defending the United States. Given the fluid current international security environment, in which the United States has come Continues… Directory: file -> view view -> Western Europe after wwii view -> Author study: paul fleischman view -> Qpa1 7ela study Guide view -> Arctic Oil/Gas Neg view -> November 1970 Approximately 150,000-500,000 deaths Bhola Cyclone Bangladesh view -> Grade Level: 6 Unit of Study: Caribbean glce view -> Citation: Duffield, Katy view -> Table of Contents Lesson # view -> Chinese Wind Energy Disad Download 1.27 Mb. Share with your friends:
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