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 Military officials meet this week in Hawaii to review bilateral
defense guidelines for the first time in 17 years. Tokyo hopes to
zero in on specific perceived threats, notably China's claims to
Japanese-held islands in the East China Sea, while Washington is
emphasizing broader discussions, officials on both sides say.
Washington takes no position on the sovereignty of the islands,
called the Senkaku by Japan and the Diaoyu by China, but recognizes
that Japan administers them and says they fall under the U.S.-Japan
Security Treaty, which obligates America to come to Japan's defense.
But even as Asia-Pacific security tensions mount, U.S. officials
have made clear they do not want to get pulled into a conflict
between the world's second- and third-biggest economies.
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's government is alarmed at China's rapid
military buildup. Beijing in turn accuses Tokyo of being a regional
threat, citing Abe's more nationalist stance, his reversal of years
of falling military spending and his visit to a shrine that Asian
countries see as glorifying Japan's wartime past.
"Japan wants to prioritize discussions on China and clarify the
respective U.S. and Japanese roles in the event of a 'grey zone'
incident," said a Japanese government official, referring to less
than full-scale, systematic military attacks backed by a state but
still representing a threat to Japan's security.
Tokyo wants Washington to join in drafting scenarios for how the two
allies would respond in specific cases, he said.
But Washington is worried about provoking China by being too
specific, say Japanese officials and experts.
"The United States is certainly ambivalent about this because they
think it would drag them into a confrontation and possibly a
conflict with China," said Narushige Michishita, who was a national
security adviser to the government of Junichiro Koizumi from
2004-2006.
A U.S. defense official rejected the idea that Washington worries
about antagonizing China but stressed that the guideline review is a
broad exercise, including the Korean peninsula and global
contingencies.
"There is a tendency to distil all this back to the Senkaku
islands," the official said. "It's not about any particular
contingency. It's about making the U.S.-Japan alliance more flexible
and responsive to a security environment that's not as black and
white as we were thinking about in 1997."
Singling out China, the official said, is "too simplistic a
narrative".
GREY ZONE
Underlying Tokyo's concerns are worries that Washington might one
day be unable or unwilling to defend Japan, despite President Barack
Obama's strategic "pivot" toward the Asia-Pacific region. This fear
is adding momentum to Abe's drive to beef up Japan's forces while
loosening constitutional limits on military actions overseas.
If Washington does not get involved in specifically addressing the
China threat, "it would undermine the credibility of the alliance
and might end up encouraging China to be bolder," said Michishita, a
professor at the National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies in
Tokyo.
"U.S. policy makers will have to walk a thin line and try to strike
a balance between maintaining credibility and deterrence, and
preventing excessive involvement in the situation."
High on the agenda in Hawaii will be "grey zone" incidents. Japanese
government officials offer such hypothetical examples as a landing
of Chinese special forces disguised as fishermen on the disputed
islands.
When the guidelines were last updated in 1997, North Korea's missile
and nuclear programs were seen as the biggest threat. Japan was less
nervous then about China's military expansion, and issues such as
cyber-warfare barely existed.
The old guidelines "are too binary," said the U.S. official. "We're
either in peacetime or we're on full contingency." This is "far too
inflexible and rigid a framework" for today's threats, the official
said.
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Tokyo's strategic planners have become increasingly concerned about
grey-zone incidents since Sino-Japanese tensions over the tiny
uninhabited islands increased in 2012. Japanese and Chinese vessels
and aircraft regularly play cat-and-mouse in the disputed areas,
with Tokyo often scrambling fighter jets against what it says are
incursions of its air and sea territory.
China's Foreign Minister Wang Yi said on Saturday there was "no room
for compromise" with Japan on questions of history and disputed
territory, "each inch" of which it would defend from its Asian
neighbor. DYSFUNCTIONAL DETERRENCE
The guidelines to update the U.S.-Japanese defense alliance, agreed
to in October, coincides with Abe's push to bolster Japan's military
and ease the constraints of the post-war, pacifist constitution on
the country's armed forces. That includes his plan to lift a
self-imposed ban on giving military aid to an ally under attack.
The update, which the two sides aim to wrap up by the end of the
year, also follows years of Washington urging Japan to take on a
bigger role in the alliance, the core of Tokyo's post-war security
policy.
But American voters are weary of foreign wars after Iraq and
Afghanistan and wary of being entangled in any new conflicts,
experts say.
"U.S. public opinion is more negative toward involvement in foreign
wars than even during the Vietnam War," said former senior Japanese
diplomat Yoshiji Nogami, now president of the Japan Institute of
International Affairs. "If the alliance is firm, then the chance of
(America) being drawn in will be less, but this point is not fully
understood by ordinary Americans."
Japan has its own headaches over grey-zone incidents. Government
officials and many security experts say the authorities must close
loopholes between situations where only Japan's Coast Guard and
police can act and those where the military can be mobilized.
Examples, Abe recently told parliament, could include a foreign
submarine lurking in Japanese waters despite repeated warnings to
surface and identify itself or leave, and aggression against remote
islands to which police or the Coast Guard could not promptly
respond.
"A legal gap like that at a time when the security environment
surrounding our country is getting tougher would render deterrence
... dysfunctional and put the people in grave danger," Abe said. A
panel of Japanese security experts is expected to recommend revising
laws to close that gap.
Washington wants to know how far Japan's military "can expand its
roles, missions and capability," said another Japanese official.
U.S. involvement in grey-zone incidents could include intelligence,
surveillance and reconnaissance, the U.S. official said. The
guideline review will likely focus in part on strengthening
cooperation in those areas, as well as "maritime domain awareness
... early on, possibly in a grey-zone kind of situation," he said.
That would be a more likely outcome than more direct military action
by U.S. forces, said ex-diplomat Nogami.
Where grey-zone tensions are rising, joint intelligence,
surveillance and reconnaissance are vital, he said. "The reason that
is needed is to prevent the grey zone from becoming black."
(Writing by Linda Sieg; editing by William Mallard and Jeremy
Laurence)
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