Japan questions security of partnership with U.S.

TOKYO - When President Bill Clinton signed a 1994 agreement promising to “respect” the territorial integrity of Ukraine if it gave up its nuclear weapons, there was little thought then of how that obscure diplomatic pact - called the Budapest Memorandum - stood to affect the long-running defense partnership between the United States and Japan.

But now, as U.S. officials have distanced themselves from the Budapest Memorandum in light of Russia’s takeover of Crimea, calling promises made in Budapest “nonbinding,” the United States is being forced at the same time to make reassurances in Asia. Japanese officials, a senior U.S. military official said, “keep asking, ‘Are you going to do the same thing to us when something happens?’”

For Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, who arrived in Tokyo on Saturday for two days of talks with Japan’s leaders, including Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, America’s long-standing promise to protect Japan against hostile nations - namely China and North Korea - has suddenly come under the microscope. The U.S. response to the Russian takeover of Crimea, which President Barack Obama has condemned while at the same time ruling out U.S. military action, has caused deep concern among Japanese officials.

“The Crimea is a game-changer,” said Kunihiko Miyake, a former adviser to Abe who is now research director at the Canon Institute for Global Studies in Tokyo. “This is not fire on a distant shore for us. What is happening is another attempt by a rising power to change the status quo.” He pointed as an example to China’s challenge to Japanese control of the Senkaku Islands, the uninhabited rocks in the East China Sea that Beijing claims under the name the Diaoyu Islands.

One Japanese official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said, “We are just looking for a commitment from the American side.”

Obama administration officials say they stand by the U.S. commitment to protect Japan, while refraining from explicitly stating that the U.S. would intervene militarily in the Senkaku dispute.

“There is no indication or weakness on the part of the United States as to our complete and absolute commitment to the security of Japan,” Hagel said, speaking to reporters aboard his flight to Japan.

“We will make that again clear over the next two weeks,” he added, referring to his meetings with the Japanese as well as Obama’s planned trip to the region later this month.

Hagel said it is understandable that countries are concerned by the unfolding events in Ukraine.

“It’s a pretty predictable, I think, reaction, not just of nations of this area and this region but all over the world,” Hagel said.

Hagel said Russia was paying a cost by being economically isolated through sanctions because it violated international norms.

Upon landing at Yokota Air Base just outside Tokyo to speak to a group of American and Japanese troops, Hagel said he was in Japan for a fourth time since taking his current post, reaffirming America’s “continued commitment to our partnership, our friendship and our treaty obligations.”

“We are serious about that,” he said.

Hagel’s trip to Japan came after three days of meetings in Hawaii with defense ministers from Southeast Asian nations. He will later travel to China, where he said he looks forward to talks about expanding military cooperation as well as the chance to air differences on territorial disputes.

A Defense Department official traveling with Hagel pointed Saturday to the mutual security treaty between the United States and Japan as proof that the United States will protect Japan if necessary. “There is absolutely no wavering,” he said.

In October, the U.S. and Japan agreed to broad plans to expand their defense alliance, including plans to position a second early-warning radar in Japan by the end of this year. There is one in northern Japan, and the second one would be designed to provide better missile-defense coverage in the event of a North Korean attack.

Also, the U.S. will deploy two additional ballistic missile defense destroyers to Japan by 2017 as part of an effort to bolster protection from North Korean missile threats, Hagel said today after a meeting with Japanese Defense Minister Itsunori Onodera.

Hagel said the two ships are in response to North Korea’s “pattern of provocative and destabilizing actions, including missile launches”that violate United Nations resolutions.

The announcement of the deployments of additional destroyers to Japan came as tensions with North Korea intensified again, with Pyongyang continuing to threaten additional missile and nuclear tests.

Additionally, the U.S. will begin sending long-range Global Hawk surveillance drones to Japan this month for rotational deployments, and they are intended to help step up surveillance around the Senkaku Islands.

In another symbolic gesture of support for Japan, the U.S. decided not to send a warship to participate in a Chinese naval parade as part of the Western Pacific Naval Symposium because the Japanese were not invited. U.S. military leaders, including the Navy’s top officer, Adm. Jonathan Greenert, will attend the symposium and see the ship review.

In unusually forceful remarks about China, Hagel today called the Asian nation a “great power” and said that when he travels to China later this week he will tell its officials that they must have respect for their neighbors.

“With this power comes new and wider responsibilities as to how you use that power” and how to employ military might, Hagel said, adding that he looks forward to an honest, straightforward dialogue with the Chinese.

Last year, China set off a trans-Pacific uproar when it declared that an “air defense identification zone” gave it the right to identify and possibly take military action against aircraft near the islands. Japan refused to recognize China’s claim, and the United States has been ignoring China by sending military planes into the zone unannounced, even as the Obama administration advised U.S. commercial airlines to comply with China’s demand and notify Beijing in advance of flights.

The chief of staff of the Japanese military’s joint staff, Gen. Shigeru Iwasaki, met Thursday with Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, in Washington to discuss security concerns. The two men “addressed geopolitical trends in the Asia-Pacific region and the need to strengthen the alliance’s deterrence and response capability,” the Pentagon said after the meeting.

U.S. officials say there is a wealth of difference between Ukraine and Japan, and between Crimea and the Senkaku Islands. They also say there is a big difference between the Budapest Memorandum and the mutual security treaty with Japan that was signed in 1952 and has redefined American-Japanese relations in the 62 years since.

The treaty, which also provides for the continued presence of U.S. military bases in Japan, establishes that any attack against Japan will require the United States to respond. The Budapest Memorandum, by contrast, simply refers to security assurances for Ukraine that are not defined and have been widely interpreted as less than a military guarantee of intervention.

Still, some Japanese analysts said the U.S. response to the Crimea crisis has not inspired confidence. They expressed fears that the Obama administration’s trumpeted strategic refocus on Asia, which was welcomed there, weaken as the United States commits more forces to counterbalance Russia in eastern Europe.

“The Crimea makes us feel uneasy about whether the United States has not only the resolve but the strength to stop China,” said Satoru Nagao, an expert on security issues at Gakushuin University in Tokyo. “Between the Pentagon budget cuts and the need to put more forces in Europe, can the United States still offer a credible deterrence?”

Specifically, some analysts said they feared China might feel emboldened to try something similar in the disputed islands because of the U.S. response to the Crimea dispute.

So far, Japanese policymakers have refrained from openly criticizing the United States.

“Japanese diplomats absolutely won’t say this in public for fear of hurting the alliance,” said Akio Takahata, a professor of security issues at Hakuoh University near Tokyo, “but they will air their concerns behind closed doors, for sure.”

Japanese experts said Hagel, as well as Obama when he visits Tokyo later this month, might be pressed for not only verbal assurances, but also some sort of symbolic action to show that the United States would handle a crisis in the East China Sea differently from the one in Crimea. Some analysts and former policymakers were blunt in saying that a failure to go to Japan’s aid in a clash over the islands could spell the end of the two nations’ postwar alliance.

Information for this article was contributed by Helene Cooper and Martin Fackler of The New York Times; by Lolita C. Baldor of The Associated Press; and by Gopal Ratnam and Chisaki Watanabe of Bloomberg News.