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Another NYT article: Japan Cools to America

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/12/world/asia/12prexy.html?ref=asia

November 12, 2009

Japan Cools to America as It Prepares for Obama Visit

By HELENE COOPER

WASHINGTON — President Obama will arrive in Tokyo on Friday, at a time when America’s relations with Japan are at their most contentious since the trade wars of the 1990s — and back then, the fights were over luxury cars and semiconductors, not over whether the two countries should re-examine their half-century-old strategic relationship.

When Japan’s Democratic Party came to power in September, ending 50 years of largely one-party government, Obama administration officials put on an outwardly positive face, congratulating the newcomers. But quietly, some American officials expressed fears that the blunt criticism that the Japanese had directed at the United States during the political campaign would translate to a more contentious relationship.

Within weeks, those fears started to play out. The new Japanese government said the country would withdraw from an eight-year-old mission in the Indian Ocean to refuel warships supporting American efforts in Afghanistan.

The government also announced that it planned to revisit a 2006 agreement to relocate a Marine airfield on Okinawa to a less populated part of the island, and to move thousands of Marines from Okinawa to Guam.

And Japanese government officials have suddenly lost their shyness about publicly sparring with American officials, as evident in a dispute in September between Japan’s ambassador to the United States, Ichiro Fujisaki, and the Pentagon.

Meanwhile, Japan’s new prime minister, Yukio Hatoyama, has called for a more equal relationship with the United States, and his government wants a review of the status of forces agreement, which protects American troops from Japanese legal prosecution. Japanese citizens, and Okinawans in particular, have demanded such a review for years.

When Mr. Hatoyama met Mr. Obama in New York during the United Nations General Assembly in September, the conditions seemed ripe for a kiss-and-make-up session. At their initial meeting, Mr. Obama congratulated Mr. Hatoyama “for running an extraordinary campaign” and complimented his party for “leading dramatic change in Japan.”

Mr. Hatoyama responded with the usual diplomatic niceties, telling reporters after the meeting that “I told President Obama that the Japan-U.S. alliance will continue to be the central pillar, key pillar of the security of Japan and Japanese foreign policy.”

But there were also a few awkward moments. Mr. Hatoyama and his wife, Miyuki, were the last to arrive at a leaders’ dinner at the Phipps Conservatory on the margins of the Group of 20 economic summit meeting in Pittsburgh later that week in September. Mr. Obama and his wife, Michelle, had been greeting arriving guests for almost two hours. “I’m sorry we were late,” Mrs. Hatoyama apologized.

A few days later, after the Obamas and the Hatoyamas flew to Copenhagen to lobby the International Olympic Committee for the 2016 Olympics, Tokyo beat out Chicago in the first round of voting, then was bumped as Rio de Janeiro took the prize.

But all of that paled in comparison with the uproar that erupted in Japan after Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates visited Tokyo in October. Mr. Gates, known for speaking bluntly, pressed Mr. Hatoyama and Japanese military officials to keep their commitment on the military agreements.

“It is time to move on,” Mr. Gates said, calling Japanese proposals to reopen the base issue “counterproductive.” Then, adding insult to injury in the eyes of Japanese commentators, Mr. Gates turned down invitations to attend a welcoming ceremony at the Defense Ministry and to dine with officials there.

In the weeks since, in advance of Mr. Obama’s visit, both countries have taken pains to tone down the rancor. The Japanese government has sent several high-level officials, including members of Parliament, to Washington to take the political temperature. Besides meeting with Obama administration officials, the Japanese representatives have spoken with members of research and policy groups based in Washington, particularly experts on foreign policy issues related to Japan.

“The feelers they’ve been putting out is, ‘Please don’t push us to make a decision because if you do, you’ll hear what you don’t want to hear,’ ” said Andrew L. Oros, a professor at Washington College and the author of “Normalizing Japan: Politics, Identity and the Evolution of Security Practice.”

Japan’s new government is “trying to backtrack from some of their campaign rhetoric, but it’s too soon,” Mr. Oros said.

“This was a historic election,” he added. “They overturned 50 years of conservative rule. They can’t do everything at once.”

Indeed, the new government is under political pressure at home. More than 20,000 Okinawa residents held a protest rally against the base last week, and residents have been vociferous in letting the government know that they expect it to keep its campaign promises.

Administration officials said they had no intention of letting the relationship slide. Mr. Obama will be “looking to build his relationship and his personal ties with the new D.P.J. government there,” Jeffrey A. Bader, Mr. Obama’s senior director for East Asian affairs, told reporters on Monday, using the initials for the Democratic Party of Japan. “This government is looking for a more equal partnership with the United States. We are prepared to move in that direction.”

But the United States, while tamping down the tone of the discussion, is still pressing Japan, particularly on the Okinawa base issue. Mr. Obama, in an interview on Tuesday with NHK television of Japan, said Japan must honor the agreement.

While “it’s perfectly appropriate for the new government to want to re-examine how to move forward,” Mr. Obama told NHK, he added that he was “confident that once that review is completed that they will conclude that the alliance we have, the basing arrangements that have been discussed, all those things serve the interest of Japan and they will continue.”

In an effort to defuse tensions and perhaps make up for saying it would not refuel the Indian Ocean warships, Japan said Tuesday that it would sharply increase its nonmilitary aid to Afghanistan, pledging $5 billion for a variety of projects that include building schools and highways, training police officers, clearing land mines, and rehabilitating former Taliban fighters.

But even if the military squabble is eventually resolved, Japan’s economic relationship with the United States is being altered. China has now surpassed the United States as Japan’s major trading partner, a switch that economists expect to continue as China’s economy grows.

“Japan sees its future more within Asia,” said Eswar S. Prasad, an Asia specialist and professor at Cornell University. “They feel that they owe a lot less to the U.S. right now. U.S. economic policy is hurting them in a lot of ways, particularly with the decline in the value of the dollar versus the yen.”

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NYT article about Okinawan opposition to U.S. bases

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/12/world/asia/12okinawa.html?_r=1

Okinawans Grow Impatient With Dashed Hopes on U.S. Base

By MARTIN FACKLER

Published: November 11, 2009

GINOWAN, Japan — Okinawans like Zenji Shimada, who have spent most of their lives under the thudding of helicopters from a busy American air base, are accustomed to disappointment. Decades of complaints about the base here and others on the island have gone largely unheeded, and a painstakingly negotiated plan to move the Marines from populated areas remains years from completion.

 

Many Okinawans oppose the American air base now in the city of Ginowan, as well as plans to move it to Henoko, where ribbons expressed their stance.

This summer was no different. Hopes stirred by the election of a new Democratic Party government were quickly dashed after members of the administration of the incoming prime minister, Yukio Hatoyama, backed away from the party’s pre-election promises to move the base off the island.

“We feel like Mr. Hatoyama has been jerking us around,” said Mr. Shimada, 69, a Protestant pastor who joined a lawsuit against the base.

When President Obama visits Tokyo on Friday as part of a weeklong tour of Asia, the base issue is perhaps the most prominent of several he will face as the countries’ long-close relations enter a new period of uncertainty. While Mr. Hatoyama has affirmed that the military alliance with the United States remains the cornerstone of Japanese foreign policy, he has also called for ending Japan’s “overdependence” on Washington and reorienting his nation toward a resurgent Asia.

“Japan-American relations have entered a new stage that people don’t really understand yet,” said Masaaki Gabe, a professor of international relations at Okinawa’s University of the Ryukyus. “Japan feels a lot of uncertainty about the future in Asia, but it also feels like it doesn’t have to follow quite so closely behind the United States.”

As the two nations search for a new balance, the fate of the base, the sprawling United States Marine Corps Air Station Futenma, has taken on heightened significance. Futenma has occupied the center of Ginowan, a city of 92,000, since it was built on land seized in the closing days of World War II.

It was this base, with its busy runway lying adjacent to homes and a university and its flight paths running directly over crowded neighborhoods, that Washington initially agreed to move in 1996 after a public outcry over the rape of a 12-year-old schoolgirl by three American servicemen.

Washington wants to proceed with a 2006 agreement to move the Marines to a less heavily populated part of Okinawa by 2014. But Mr. Hatoyama’s party is now backtracking, saying it may seek to renegotiate the deal. Mr. Hatoyama has postponed making a formal decision until after local Okinawan elections in January.

The airfield still operates in this densely populated city, 13 years after the initial deal, because of bureaucratic foot-dragging and Tokyo’s inability to find another community to take the Marines. Public clamor for the base’s removal surged again after a Marine cargo helicopter crashed in 2004 in a fireball on the neighboring campus of Okinawa International University, injuring three crew members.

Today, the university has turned the crash site into a small shrine by preserving a burned tree trunk and a concrete wall cleaved by the falling helicopter’s propeller.

For many Okinawans, Futenma has become the most visible symbol of an unfair burden placed on the island, home to about two-thirds of the 37,000 shore-based United States military personnel in Japan. On Sunday, 21,000 protesters gathered in Ginowan to demand that Mr. Hatoyama fulfill his party’s earlier promises to move the base off Okinawa.

“Our fight against the injustice of these bases has been going on ever since the Battle of Okinawa” in World War II, said Ginowan’s mayor, Yoichi Iha, one of the protest’s organizers. “The backlash will also be huge if the Democratic government reneges on its promises.”

His sentiments, and those of many here, are written in English across the roof of its city hall, for American aviators to see: “Don’t Fly Over Our City!” Mr. Iha said he was demanding the base’s removal from the island because he did not want to shift his city’s burden onto another Okinawan community.

Indeed, the 2006 deal to move the Marines to a V-shaped airfield to be constructed near the fishing village of Henoko only angered many Okinawans, who see the continued American presence as a symbol of Tokyo’s neglect of the island, which was part of the independent Ryukyu Kingdom before annexation by Japan in the 1870s.

Okinawans said they felt betrayed last month when a Democratic leader, Foreign Minister Katsuya Okada, seemed to reverse his party’s longstanding promise to move the base off Okinawa, saying such a move would be too time-consuming. Mr. Okada said that instead he wanted to consider moving the Marines to a larger United States Air Force base on Okinawa, a plan that both nations had already rejected.

Anger here also runs high at the Obama administration after Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates’s visit to Tokyo in October to press for the existing deal for a move to Henoko. When Mr. Gates warned that any changes might undo a broader agreement with Washington to move about 8,000 Marines to Guam, he was criticized in the Japanese news media as a bully.

Officially, the White House has said it wants to give the new government time to assess its predecessor’s policies. But there have been concerns in Washington and Tokyo, voiced last week in an editorial by the conservative Yomiuri Shimbun, Japan’s largest daily newspaper, that what it called Mr. Hatoyama’s indecision was eroding trust between the allies.

Not all Ginowan residents are against the base. Manami Onaga, 40, who helps manage a 1950s-theme diner selling hamburgers and tacos outside Futenma’s main gate, said the Marines brought Ginowan needed jobs and money. Okinawa had Japan’s lowest per capita annual income in 2006, less than half of Tokyo’s $45,000, according to the Cabinet Office.

But more seem to agree with Mr. Shimada, the pastor.

“Obama promised change, and that’s what we want,” Mr. Shimada said. “We want him to recognize the problems that his country’s military is inflicting on us.”

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Gavan McCormack: “Yet Another ‘Battle of Okinawa'”

This Op Ed published in the Japan Times is critical of the “colonial” nature of the so-called Guam Treaty which provides for the relocation of U.S. Marines from Okinawa to Guam, commits Japan to foot most of the bill, allows the expansion of the military base at Henoko, Okinawa, and overrides many of Japan’s own environmental protection laws.  The author misses one big point in his analysis, however.  The Guam Treaty is colonial for its treatment of the indigenous  Chamoru of Guam as much as its disregard for the native Okinawans.

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http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/eo20091111a2.html

Wednesday, Nov. 11, 2009

Yet another ‘Battle of Okinawa’

By GAVAN McCORMACK

Special to The Japan Times

CANBERRA — Elections in August gave Japan a new government, headed by Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama. In electing him and his Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ), the Japanese people, like the American people less than a year earlier, were opting for change. Remarkably, however, what followed on the part of President Barack Obama’s United States has been a campaign of unrelenting pressure to block any such change.

The core issue has been the disposition of American military presence in Okinawa and the U.S. insistence that Hatoyama honor an agreement known as the Guam Treaty. Under the Guam agreement of February 2009, adopted as a treaty under special legislation in May, 8,000 U.S. Marines were to be relocated from Okinawa to Guam, and the U.S. Marine base at Futenma was to be transferred to Henoko in Nago City in northern Okinawa, where Japan would build a new base. Japan would also pay $6.09 billion toward the Guam transfer cost.

The Guam Treaty was one of the first acts of a popular “reforming” U.S. administration, and one of the last of a Japanese regime in fatal decline. It set in unusually clear relief the relationship between the world’s No. 1 and No. 2 economic powers. It was worthy of close attention because the agreement was unequal, unconstitutional, illegal, redundant, colonial and deceitful.

It was unequal because it obliged the government of Japan to construct one new base and to contribute a substantial sum toward constructing another for the U.S. while the American side merely offered an ambiguous pledge to withdraw a number of troops and reserved the right, under Article 8, to vary the agreement at will.

It was unconstitutional since under Article 95 of the Japanese Constitution any law applicable only to one local public entity requires the consent of the majority of the voters of that district and the Okinawan wishes were clearly ignored in the Guam Treaty. The Diet simply rode roughshod over Okinawa.

Since the treaty took precedence over domestic law, it also had the effect of downgrading, in effect vitiating, the requirements of Japan’s environmental protection laws. Any serious and internationally credible environmental impact assessment (EIA) would surely conclude that a massive military construction project was incompatible with the delicate coral and forest environment of the Oura Bay area, but it was taken for granted that Japan’s EIA would be a mere formality and the treaty further undermined the procedure.

The treaty was also redundant. It simply reiterated major sections of earlier agreements (of 2005 and 2006) on which there had been little or no progress. It merely added compulsive force to those agreements and tied the hands of any successor government.

The agreement/treaty was essentially colonial, with the “natives” (Okinawans) to be guided and exploited, but not consulted. The Guam Treaty showed the Obama administration to be maintaining Bush diplomacy: paternalistic, interventionist, antidemocratic and intolerant of Japan’s search for an independent foreign policy.

Finally, the treaty was characterized by what in Japanese is known as “gomakashi” — trickery and lies dressed in the rhetoric of principle and mutuality. Although reported as a U.S. concession to Japan (“troop withdrawal”), it was plainly designed to increase the Japanese contribution to the alliance by substituting a new, high-tech and greatly expanded base at Henoko for the inconvenient, dangerous and obsolescent Futenma. The figure of 8,000 marines to be withdrawn also turned out, under questions in the Diet, to be also false. The more likely figure was less than 3,000.

While working to tie Japan’s hands by the deals with the collapsing Aso administration, the U.S. knew well that the (then) opposition Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ)’s position was clear: No new base should be built within Okinawa, Futenma should simply be returned.

Drumbeats of concern, warning, friendly advice from Washington — that Hatoyama and the DPJ had better not take such pledges seriously, much less actually try to carry them out, and that any attempt to vary the Guam agreement would be seen as anti-American — rose steadily, culminating in the October Tokyo visit by U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who delivered an ultimatum: The Guam agreement had to be implemented.

The intimidation had an effect. Defense Secretary Toshimi Kitazawa suggested that there probably was, after all, no real alternative to construction at Henoko. Foreign Minister Katsuya Okada also began to waver. Weeks after the election victory he had said, “If Japan just follows what the U.S. says, then I think as a sovereign nation that is very pathetic.” And: “The will of the people of Okinawa and the will of the people of Japan was expressed in the elections . . . I don’t think we will act simply by accepting what the U.S tells us. . . .” After the Gates statement, however, he suggested that the Futenma functions might after all be transferred within Okinawa, even though he declined to endorse the Henoko project, proposing instead they be merged with those of the large Kadena U.S. Air Force Base nearby.

The prefecture’s Ryukyu Shimpo newspaper, in a passionate editorial, lamented the incapacity of the new Hatoyama government to counter the “intimidatory diplomacy” of Gates and Adm. Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and decried the drift back toward “acceptance of the status quo of following the U.S.”

Nearly four decades have passed since Okinawa reverted from the U.S. to Japan, yet U.S. bases still take up one-fifth of the land surface of its main island. Nowhere is more overwhelmed than the city of Ginowan, reluctant host for the U.S. Marine Corps’ Futenma Air Station. The U.S. and Japan agreed in 1996 that Futenma would be returned, but made return conditional on a replacement, which also would have to be built in Okinawa. Thirteen years on, there the matter still stands.

The “Futenma Replacement Facility,” the subject of such intense diplomatic contention today, is one that has grown from a modest “helipad,” as it was referred to in 1996 to a removable, offshore structure with a 2,500-meter runway, and then in 2006 to its current version: dual-1,800 meter runways plus a deep sea naval port and a chain of helipads — a comprehensive air, land and sea base. Time and again, the project was blocked by popular opposition, but time and again the Japanese government renewed and expanded it.

Yet opinion in the prefecture has, if anything, hardened. An October Ryukyu Shimpo/Mainichi Shimbun poll showed that 70 percent of Okinawans opposed relocation within the prefecture and a mere 5 percent favored the Henoko design endorsed by the Guam Treaty and demanded by Washington. In the August national elections, DPJ candidates who promised they would never allow construction of a new base swept the polls in Okinawa, crushing the representatives of the compliant “old regime.”

Both prefectural newspapers, the majority in Okinawa’s Parliament, and 80 percent of Okinawan government mayors are also opposed, believing any Futenma base substitute should be constructed either elsewhere in Japan or overseas.

There has never been such a postwar confrontation between the U.S. and Japan. With the last shots of Washington’s diplomatic barrage exploding around him and Obama’s visit imminent, Hatoyama continues to study his options. If he rejects the U.S. demands, a major diplomatic crisis is bound to erupt. If he swallows them, he provokes a domestic political crisis and drives Okinawa to despair. Yet choose he must.

Gavan McCormack is an emeritus professor at Australia National University in Canberra. Japan Focus (japanfocus.org) will post an unabridged version of this article.

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Homeland Security Hawai’i style: “above all, protect our visitors”

The Asia Pacific Homeland Security Summit is taking place in Honolulu.   It is one of the venues through which the homeland security-military-industrial complex has tried to exploit emerging markets for military/intelligence/security technologies and services.   Ed Texeira, head of Hawai’i Civil Defense, was quoted in the news report as saying “We’ve never said Hawaii was really a safe place, but in Hawaii we are doing all we can with taxpayer investments and Homeland Security funding to shore up our capabilities to protect Hawaii and, above all, protect our visitors.”

Above all, protect our visitors?!   It figures.  The greatest attention and latest technological gadgetry have always gone to protecting visitors and the military “above all”, meaning above Native Hawaiians, the residents or the ‘aina (land).  But then again, we always knew that Hawai’i was a mohai (sacrifice) for empire.

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North, South Korean ships exchange gunfire

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/11/10/AR2009111000392.html?wpisrc=newsletter

North, South Korean ships exchange gunfire

NAVAL CLASH FIRST IN 7 YEARS Tensions rise ahead of Obama visit to region

By Blaine Harden

Washington Post Foreign Service

Wednesday, November 11, 2009

TOKYO — A brief naval skirmish erupted Tuesday between North and South Korea, raising tension in Northeast Asia as President Obama prepares this week for a visit to the region.

The North and the South blamed each other for the exchange of gunfire — the first such clash in seven years. South Korean officials said a badly damaged North Korean patrol ship retreated in flames after crossing into South Korean waters.

It was not clear whether there were any injuries or deaths aboard the North Korean vessel. North Korea issued a statement that blamed the South for “grave armed provocation,” saying that ships from South Korea crossed into the North’s territory.

There were no reports of South Korean casualties.

North Korea has complained for decades about the sea border, known as the Northern Limit Line, which was drawn by the U.S. military at the end of the Korean War in 1953. There have been two previous skirmishes in the region, with North Korea’s aging naval ships taking a pounding from South Korea’s far more modern and better-armed vessels.

The Tuesday incident appeared unlikely to break the momentum of recent moves by North Korea to improve relations with the South and the United States, which had further deteriorated this year after the North tested a nuclear device, launched a flurry of missiles and repeatedly threatened “all-out war.”

Still, in Washington, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs warned North Korea that “we hope that there will be no further actions in the Yellow Sea that could be seen as an escalation.”

On Monday, administration officials said Obama has decided to send a special envoy to Pyongyang for direct talks on the North’s nuclear weapons program

No date has been set, but it would be the first one-on-one talks since Obama took office in January.

Obama is expected to visit Seoul next week, as part of a 10-day Asia trip.

South Korean Defense Minister Kim Tae-young told lawmakers in Seoul on Tuesday that “no additional moves” by the North Korean military were detected after the naval skirmish.

Earlier clashes along the western sea border, even when they resulted in many casualties on the North Korean side, have not had a long-term destabilizing effect on North-South relations.

Those relations have improved markedly since August, when North Korea seemed to shift from a pattern of confrontation to one of consultation with the South about economic programs. Visits between families long separated by the Korean War have resumed, and South Korea has said it would restart a limited program of food aid for the North.

Analysts in Seoul told reporters that North Korea may have started the skirmish to ensure that Obama does not ignore Pyongyang during his first visit to the region as president.

According to the South Korean military, a North Korean patrol boat crossed the sea border shortly before noon, ignored several warning shots from nearby South Korean naval vessels and fired its guns at a patrol boat from the South.

Ships from the two countries were about two miles apart when they exchanged fire, said Rear Adm. Lee Ki-shik, according to Yonhap, a South Korean news agency.

The North’s official Korean Central News Agency said that the South sent a “group of warships” across the border to stage an attack but that one of the North’s patrol boats “lost no time to deal a prompt retaliatory blow at the provokers.”

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Inouye rewarded by lobbyist for his support of the F-22

There is an interesting parallel between recent AP articles about Senator Inouye’s earmarks going to major contributors to his campaign and his support for the F-22 fighter jet.   Tony Podesta, one of Washington’s top lobbyists, who lobbied for funding for the F-22, held fundraisers for three of only four Democrats who voted to continue funding for the F-22 despite threats of a veto by the President.  In the Huffington Post article “Tony Podesta: Turning Change Into Dollars“, Aurthur Delaney writes:

The president threatened to veto a defense spending bill unless lawmakers stripped $1.75 billion in funding for unneeded F-22 fighter jets. In July, the Senate voted 58 to 40 to kill the funding after an intense industry lobbying effort.

Despite the veto threat, fourteen Democrats voted to keep funding the F-22. In the springtime, the Podestas set up fundraisers for three of them: Patty Murray (Wash.), Dianne Feinstein (Calif.), and Daniel Inouye (Hawaii). The Feinstein fundraiser was canceled, however, after the invitation listing Feinstein’s committees as the different courses of a meal was made public. (Guests who made contributions between $1,000 and $2,500 could order up Feintstein’s “Select Committee on Intelligence for the first course” and “your choice of Appropriations, Judiciary or Rules committees” for other courses.)

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“The Good Soldier” opens Veteran’s Day November 11

The Good Soldier

http://thegoodsoldier.com/index.html

Jimmy_Massey_North_Carolina

Directed by Lexy Lovell and Michael Uys (DGA, Los Angeles Film Critics, and Peabody Award winners for Riding the Rails)

The Good Soldier follows the journeys of five combat veterans from different generations of American wars as they sign up, go into battle, and eventually change their minds about what it means to be a good soldier.

Here’s what Jason Albert of the Onion has to say:

“It’s hard to imagine watching a more affecting movie than The Good Soldier … because it may be as affecting a movie as I’ve ever seen. It took one seemingly simple question—What makes a good soldier?—and reduced the answer to its essence. That being, the ability to kill other human beings. Using the voices of veterans from WWII, Vietnam, the Gulf War, and Iraq, each gave this exact same answer, and they all spoke not only of their guilt and regret, but also of how at some point during their time in the military they needed to kill. Their reasons were different, but the training that gave them the skills and permission was not. I found it both hard to watch and hard to turn away from, and I know I’ll never look at the words ‘collateral damage’ in the same way again. Really powerful stuff.”

Music by JJ Grey and Mofro, CSNY, Nine Inch Nails, Big Bill Broonzy, Edwin Starr, Carly Comando, Muslimgauze, and Jimmie Lunceford.

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Another article on the 8th Army HQ remaining in Korea

http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/nation/2009/11/205_55022.html

11-06-2009 18:04

8th US Army to Remain in Korea

By Jung Sung-ki

Staff Reporter

The Eighth U.S. Army (EUSA) will remain in South Korea even after Korean commanders take over wartime operational control (OPCON) of its forces from the U.S. military in 2012, the U.S. Forces Korea (USFK) announced Friday.

The United States will inaugurate a new theater command ― Korea Command (KORCOM) ― but the date of establishment has not been set, it said in a press release.

The confirmation came after it was reported that KORCOM will be set up next June to replace the ROK-U.S. Combined Forces Command (CFC) in line with the 2012 OPCON transition.

“As part of OPCON transition, the U.S. military will establish a new headquarters currently called Korea Command for planning purposes,” the USFK said. “The date for the establishment of KORCOM has not been set. KORCOM will be a sub-unified command and have the same relationship to Pacific Command (in Hawaii) that USFK has now.”

It said EUSA’s transformation, to include planned moves to the Pyeongtaek area, “confirms the United States’ commitment to a strong ROK-U.S. alliance and the defense of the Korean people.”

Whether or not to relocate the EUSA headquarters in Seoul to other regions, such as Hawaii where the Pacific Command is located, has been controversial because of the command’s symbolic status on the Korean Peninsula.

Established in 1944 in Memphis, Tenn., EUSA became the spearhead for the United Nations Command (UNC) to halt aggression by North Korea during the 1950-53 Korean War, and ultimately assumed overall responsibility for conducting ground operations on the peninsula under the command of a four-star American general.

But the army command’s roles and missions have been significantly reduced since the establishment of the CFC, which takes charge of wartime operations on the peninsula, in 1978.

Since then, a three-star general has taken charge of EUSA, while the CFC has been headed by a four-star general, who concurrently serves as chief of the UNC and U.S. Forces Korea (USFK).

Currently, EUSA’s missions are limited to administrative or personnel affairs. The 150-strong command is in charge of providing forces to the CFC commander and undertaking combat support operations, such as reception, staging, onward movement and integration missions, in the event of an emergency.

Earlier this year, CFC Commander Gen. Walter Sharp reportedly said he had suggested to his superiors at the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Command that the EUSA stay in South Korea even after the 2012 transition at the request of South Korean military leaders, who fear such a move would trigger a sense of insecurity among Korean citizens.

After several years of negotiations, Seoul and Washington agreed in 2007 that Seoul would execute independent operational control of its armed forces during wartime beginning April 17, 2012. The U.S. military would primarily provide naval and air support.

The two sides agreed to disband the CFC and run separate theater commands. A South Korean-U.S. “military cooperation center,” a body for combat operations, will be set up to help facilitate joint operations.

The center will comprise about 10 standing and non-standing organizations.

But South Korean conservative groups regard the command changes as a U.S. move to reduce its security commitment to South Korea.

They argue the smaller role of the USFK amid lingering threats posed by Pyongyang could tip the military balance on the peninsula.

gallantjung@koreatimes.co.kr

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U.S. 8th Army headquarters will stay in Korea

http://www.koreaherald.co.kr/NEWKHSITE/data/html_dir/2009/11/07/200911070015.asp

U.S. Army headquarters to stay

The U.S. military in Korea has scrapped an idea to relocate its key Army headquarters to Hawaii, in a move to reaffirm its commitment to the defense of South Korea, a military source said yesterday.

“I understand that the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff and the U.S. Army have accepted the proposal by the U.S. Forces Korea that the 8th Army headquarters should remain in Korea as a symbol of (U.S. military commitment) to the defense of the peninsula,” said the source.

The United States has been mulling over moving the 8th Army headquarters to Hawaii by 2012, when the wartime operational control of the Korean military is handed over to Seoul.

As part of the transformation of its military posture worldwide, Washington has been planning to move the 8th Army headquarters and reshape its body to a new unit named Operation Command Post-Korea.

The South Korean Defense Ministry and the Joint Chiefs of Staff have asked the U.S. military not to relocate the army headquarters.

“The continuing presence of the 8th Army headquarters in South Korea can mean smooth cooperation between Korea and the United States during wartime. As a result, the troop deployment time in case of contingencies can also be reduced,” a military official said.

In February, USFK commander Gen. Walter Sharp indicated he intended to scrap the relocation plan. At a meeting with Korean lawmakers, Sharp said he had suggested to U.S. Army staff that they should retain the 8th U.S. Army headquarters and that his proposal is likely to be accepted.

Experts say that by having the headquarters remain on the peninsula, the U.S. military can avoid triggering misunderstandings that the relocation of the administrative and supporting unit, consisting of some 150 staffers, could weaken the long-standing military alliance between Seoul and Washington.

The 8th Army headquarters is likely to offer administrative support to a new top U.S. military command, called KORCOM, which will replace the current USFK after the operational control turnover in April 2012

KORCOM, which will oversee the 8th Army headquarters and the 2nd Infantry Division, is expected to be created in Pyeongtaek next June.

The 8th Army fought for South Korea during the 1950-53 Korean War. It has been stationed on the peninsula since 1955 as a main deterrent against North Korea.

(sshluck@heraldm.com)

By Song Sang-ho

Posted on

More money for war, but not for education

With Hawai’i about to undergo its third furlough day, which has been catastrophic for public schools, the military is asking more money for war.   Time to refund education and defund the war!

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http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/05/world/05military.html?_r=1&th&emc=th

Pentagon Expected to Request More War Funding

By ELISABETH BUMILLER

Published: November 4, 2009

WASHINGTON — The nation’s top military officer said Wednesday that he expected the Pentagon to ask Congress in the next few months for emergency financing to support the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, even though President Obama has pledged to end the Bush administration practice of paying for the conflicts with so-called supplemental funds that are outside the normal Defense Department budget.

The financing would be on top of the $130 billion that Congress authorized for the wars just last month.

The military officer, Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, did not say how much additional money would be needed, but one figure in circulation within the Pentagon and among outside defense budget analysts is $50 billion.

Representative John Murtha, the Pennsylvania Democrat who is chairman of the House appropriations defense subcommittee, cited $40 billion last week as a hypothetical amount for the supplemental financing request. The number represented a standard calculation of $1 billion for every 1,000 troops deployed.

Defense officials said the final request would depend on the number of additional troops Mr. Obama decided to send to Afghanistan. Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the top NATO commander in Afghanistan, has asked for 40,000 more troops on top of the 68,000 American troops already there.

The request is likely to ignite objections from Democrats on Capitol Hill who are increasingly alarmed about the eight-year-old war in Afghanistan, and it could become a vehicle for a battle between Mr. Obama and his liberal Democratic base.

At the National Press Club on Wednesday, Admiral Mullen said he anticipated the need for more money for the wars in the coming year beyond the $130 billion authorized for the 2010 fiscal year, which runs from Oct. 1, 2009, until Sept. 30, 2010. He was responding to a questioner who asked, “Assuming that U.S. troop levels in Afghanistan increase, do you expect that the Defense Department will submit an emergency supplemental funding request during the coming months?”

Admiral Mullen replied: “From what I can see, I certainly think there will be some requirement. I just don’t know exactly what it will be yet.”

Admiral Mullen’s spokesman, Capt. John Kirby, said afterward that although the admiral wanted to move away from supplemental defense financing, there might be “a need for another supplemental on the unique and current demands of dynamic operations in two theaters of war.”

The White House had little comment on Admiral Mullen’s remarks. “The president’s budget provides a full-year funding for anticipated costs in Iraq and Afghanistan, and he has made clear his intent to fund these wars through the normal budgeting process,” Tommy Vietor, a White House spokesman, said in an e-mail message. “No decisions have been made about additional costs related to new resource requests from the Department of Defense.”

Although the size of any request would depend on the number of extra forces sent, Defense Department officials say they are likely to need more money even without a buildup. Robert F. Hale, the Pentagon comptroller, recently told staff members of the House Appropriations Committee that it would be hard to get through September 2010 with $130 billion, regardless of a troop increase, said a Congressional staff member who did not want to be identified as discussing internal matters. Mr. Hale declined to comment.

In March, Mr. Hale told the House Budget Committee that $130 billion would be enough for the year and that he did not expect to ask for more. But he did caution that “there may be significant unforeseen developments or changes in wartime strategy or tactics that cannot be addressed with existing resources.”

Mr. Obama did include the $130 billion for the wars as part of his regular $668 billion defense budget this year, the first time that has happened since 2001. President George W. Bush regularly financed the wars with emergency requests that usually came after the Pentagon budget was introduced.

In April, before the current Pentagon budget was passed, the Obama administration asked Congress for approval of an emergency $83.4 billion to pay for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan through Sept. 30. The administration said the money was needed because legislation passed during the Bush administration provided only enough money to pay for the wars through midyear.

Robert Gibbs, the White House press secretary, said at the time that the request was unavoidable and that it would be the last outside the normal budget process.

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