Japan Aff Michigan



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AT: Non-War Capabilities


Non-war-fighting tasks are irrelevant to the base and are no reason to sustain trrops.

Bandow 98 - senior fellow at Cato Instituion and special assistant to Reagan (9/1/98, Doug, “Okinawa: Liberating Washington's East Asian Military Colony” Policy Analysis no. 314)

Next, the Marines point to new, non-war-fighting tasks. They state, "Our missions span the operation continuum from disaster relief and humanitarian assistance through non-combat evacuation and peacekeeping."63 Some of those tasks are of dubious benefit--especially American involvement in UN peacekeeping or nation building.64 Others may diminish the Marine Corps' ability to carry out its most important task (humanitarian operations, for exam- ple, tend to degrade war-fighting capabilities). Even those tasks with value--rescuing American civilians from an imploding country, for instance--do not warrant the cost, to both the United States and Okinawa, of the existing force and base structure. The American presence on the island during the Cold War could at least be defended as serving a serious end: the defense of East Asia against a hegemonic totalitarian threat. Being ready to help Japan in the event of another Kobe-magnitude earthquake, which the Marines point to as an example of a worthwhile noncombat mission, or to extract American businessmen who have voluntarily ventured into nations with volatile political environments, is far less important. Moreover, such tasks have little to do with Okinawa. Observes Miki, "When we go to the U.S., people say, 'we are trying to protect you, why do you complain?' But today the 3rd MEF has virtually nothing to do with defending the Okinawans. It is one thing to impose U.S. military installations on a reluctant population when Washington is actually protecting those people. It is quite another to perpetuate that burden to advance purely American interests. (Without embarrassment, the Marine Corps says that "hosting the U.S. Marine Corps [in Okinawa] is by no accident."66 That is true--Washington simply placed the bases where it desired in an occupied province of a defeated nation.)

AT: Economic Benefits



The economic benefits of presence is Okinawa are outweighed by it’s subsequent damage to the economy and the environment.

Bandow 98 - senior fellow at Cato Instituion and special assistant to Reagan (9/1/98, Doug, “Okinawa: Liberating Washington's East Asian Military Colony” Policy Analysis no. 314)

Finally, the Marines cite the financial benefits received by Okinawa. Indeed, they have produced a slick brochure touting the money that the Marine Corps infuses into the community, including more than $4.5 million that "local Okinawa moving companies will earn" moving service- men and their families from Okinawan to base housing.67 (The Air Force has generated cheaper advertising for its community service and environmental activities. Although some islanders obviously do benefit, more of them suffer from the loss of alternative economic opportunities. The number of Okinawans employed on the bases has fallen from 40,000 to 8,200 since 1972; the share of the prefectural product generated from the military bases has dropped from 16 percent to 5 percent over the same period. There seems little doubt that Okinawans, who enjoy a per capita income just 70 percent of that of other Japanese, could put the portion of their island now occu- pied by U.S. facilities to better use. Koji Taira, a professor at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, calls the 20 percent (base share of island land area) minus the 5 percent (base share of island economy) a 15 percent "deadweight loss. But even that number, he argues, understates the true social and environmental costs borne by the residents of Okinawa because of the American bases. The 15 percent loss does not include the pres- sure on land rents in the rest of Okinawa due to the withdrawal of 20 percent of the area from civilian use; inconveniences to civil air trans- portation due to restrictions on the use of air space; closures of port facilities and waters to civilian shipping, fishing, or recreational activities because of naval and other military requirements; deadly effects of toxic wastes of the bases seeping into the soil or running off into the sea; deafening noises of bombers, fight- ers, and helicopters which physically damage young school children and disrupt their learning processes; accidents in the air and on the roads caused by U.S. military aircraft and vehicles; destruction of nature by live-ammunition artillery exercises, which also deny civilian access to highways in the exercise areas; crimes committed by off-duty service personnel against civilians and their properties; and on, almost ad infinitum. In any case, economic benefits for Okinawa offer no reason for the United States to station troops there. A false patriotism has long been the last refuge of the scoundrel seeking to justify economic privileges. Now salaries and rental payments seem to be the last refuge of the scoundrel seeking to justify outdated military commit- ments. Of course, the ultimate decisionmakers are the politicians, not the military officers. Gen. Frank Libutti, commander of the 3rd MEF, recently told the Daily Yomiuri newspaper, "Any further reductions of forces on Okinawa would hurt our ability to provide peace, stability and prosperity to the entire Asia-Pacific region. He is right in the sense that if the U.S. and Japanese govern- ments expect the Marines to police all of East Asia, then the Marines need to be stationed close by, and the most obvious location is Okinawa. But with the end of the Cold War, there is no reason to expect the Marines to play such a role. And many Okinawans understand that the root of Washington's military presence is the belief that Washington should run the world. Moriteru Arasaki expresses the hope that "the American people will try to change U.S. government policy."
Economic costs outweigh the necessity of U.S. presence in Okinawa.

Hosokawa, 98 – the 79th Prime Minister of Japan from August 9, 1993 to April 28, 1994. Leader of the first non-Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) government since 1955. (July-August 1998 , Morihiro, “Are U.S. troops in Japan needed? Reforming the alliance.” Foreign Affairs 77.n4 pp2(4)

As the common threat presented by the Cold War diminishes, it is natural for the Japanese people to be skeptical of the U.S. military presence. The American military bases cost Japan $4 billion annually. If for-gone rent and other revenues are included, Japan's annual burden jumps to $5 billion, at a time when the Japanese government faces a serious financial crisis. In terms of cost-sharing, Japan bears the largest burden among U.S. allies for maintaining U.S. forces, with Germany and South Korea paying $60 million and $290 million, respectively. By a 1995 Special Measures Agreement, Japan is committed through the year 2000 to pay the salaries of 24,000 civilian employees at the bases, the utility costs, including energy, water, and communications, and most of the construction expenses. This burden to Japanese taxpayers hangs like a darkening cloud over the future of the alliance. Japan should honor the 1995 agreement but put America on notice that it will not renew the agreement in 2000. It is the business of statesmen, not bureaucrats or generals, to plan for the future. The U.S. military presence in Japan should fade with this century's end. The time has come for the leaders of Japan and the United States to discuss an alliance fit for the next century.
Job services for realignment function as an economic stimulus for the region- prefer this evidence, its comparative

Huss 10/5 (Kari Huus, Reporter, MSNBC Oct . 5, 2009, Jobs vs. bottom line in mega military project, http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/33129102/ns/us_news-military//)
“It may cost more in the short term, but all that money is coming back into the U.S. economy, either reducing (poverty) in Guam, or back in continental U.S.” said Rector. To reject it, he says, would be “penny wise and pound foolish.” Gary Hiles, economist for Guam's Department of Labor agrees that bringing in U.S. workers at higher wages would cause some hiccups in the local economy. But he notes that there are advantages to hiring Americans over foreigners to do the work on U.S. bases: “National security is one of them. The (higher) quality of workmanship is another.” And paying higher wages also would bolster the local economy, he says, more so than hiring foreign workers who typically send much of their earnings out of the country — and generate additional tax revenue for badly needed infrastructure upgrades. “I think the U.S. workers would buy and rent cars, go to restaurants and hotels and barbershops — a whole array of things that (foreign) workers in barracks don’t do,” Hiles said. “The additional investment to make Guam jobs attractive to U.S. citizens may well be a cost effective economic stimulus policy in putting unemployed U.S. construction workers back to work,” he added. “Certainly, construction work could be done at lower cost on the U.S. bases on Guam by primarily importing temporary foreign labor from Asian countries, just as it could be done cheaper on U.S. bases in Hawaii, California or any other state. ... But is that the policy that the federal government wishes to pursue?”


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