Congress Puts A Marker Down: End The Japanese Default On Burden-Sharing

Today, a bipartisan group of seventy members of the House of Representatives — led by Rep. Charles D. Schumer (D-NY) — called upon the Bush Administration to demand an immediate end to Japan’s nine-year-long balk on Tokyo’s commitment to defend its airspace and sea-lanes out to 1,000 nautical miles. This issue should, as a consequence, be a central topic in the meeting currently scheduled for Saturday between President Bush and Japanese Prime Minister Toshiki Kaifu in New York.

The full extent of Japan’s impending default on its May 1981 commitment to bear more of the costs for its own defense was revealed by the Center for Security Policy in a paper entitled Japan’s Next Five-Year Defense Plan: Whither the 1,000-Mile Mission Commitment? (No. 90-86, 6 September 1990). The Center’s concerns are reflected in the congressional letter of 27 September to Secretary of State James Baker:

The cornerstone of air and sea defense is an advanced early warning and command and control capability, a function which only Airborne Early Warning and Control System (AWACS) aircraft backed up by a sufficient fleet of airborne refueling tankers can provide. Defense experts on both sides of the Pacific agree that comprehensive coverage of the vast area Japan has agreed to defend requires between 12 to 14 AWACS planes and at least 20 tankers….

 

To this point, however, the Japanese have not acquired a single AWACS or tanker aircraft. Moreover, in Tokyo’s draft five-year Medium-Term Defense Plan — to be finalized imminentlyfour AWACS and no aerial refueling tankers whatsoever. — Japan envisions the purchase of only

“The Bush Administration must not allow the Japanese to defer this vital procurement decision yet again, obliging the United States to continue unnecessarily to bear the lion’s share of the burden for Japan’s defense,” said Frank J. Gaffney, Jr., the Center’s director. “To do otherwise would not only waste precious U.S. taxpayer resources; it also needlessly continues an undesirable constraint on America’s flexibility to redeploy its own AWACS and tanker assets to future hot-spots around the world, like the Persian Gulf.”

The Center expects that, in the absence of real and urgent progress by Japan toward fulfilling its commitment to the 1,000 mile mission, Tokyo’s default will become a crisis in bilateral relations on a par with — if not worse than — last year’s controversy over the FSX fighter program.

A copy of the Schumer letter is attached. Japan’s Next Five-Year Defense Plan may be obtained by contacting the Center.