Lt. Gen. Eiichiro Fukazawa, Japan Air Self-Defense Force, visits the 1st Air Defense Artillery Regiment in northern Japan.
WASHINGTON: On the eve of the US presidential election, a top State Department official confirmed the US is kicking off “formal negotiations” with Japan over a new cost sharing plan to update how much Japan pays to support 54,000 US troops in the country.
The much-anticipated negotiations come as President Trump has pressured allies like South Korea to drastically increase their support for continued American presence. The president’s former National Security Advisor claims that Trump is demanding $8 billion per year from Toyko, a huge increase from the $1.9 Japan currently pays.
Preliminary meetings between the allies last month saw “a very healthy exchange of views on the mutual contribution that both Japan and the United States make to the alliance,” R. Clarke Cooper, assistant Secretary of State for political-military affairs, told reporters by phone today. Typically, phraseology such as “very healthy exchange” indicates the meeting was tough by diplomatic standards.
The negotiations would have to be wedged between Tuesday’s presidential election in the United States, and the swearing in of the next president on Jan. 20. The current agreement runs out in March 2021, so whoever wins the election will need to push the negotiations forward relatively quickly.
Given the March expiration, and despite the upcoming US election, Cooper said “it’s incumbent upon us and our Japanese counterparts to actually continue to maintain focus on the negotiations now.” That would seem to indicate the Trump Administration fears that if they can’t reach agreement with the Japanese shortly, they will lose valuable leverage. Of course, if Joe Biden wins the election, then the Japanese are likely to wait for the next administration before coming to any agreement.
The $1.9 billion Japan currently pays covers utility fees at US-run installations, labor costs for civilian workers and various expenses related to military exercises and training.
Former National Security Advisor John Bolton wrote in his book “The Room Where it Happened,” that President Trump had demanded Japan to quadruple its contribution to $8 billion annually. Such a drastic increase, at a time when Japan is investing more heavily in its own defense, is a non-starter in Tokyo.
The negotiations come amid a shift in US attention to the Indo-Pacific region, including negotiating new agreements and forging fresh alliances with the countries surrounding China. But the Trump administration has tried to drive hard bargains with longtime allies, including South Korea, to change agreements the president has long railed against as unfair to the United States.
The administration has entered into a variety of agreements recently to boost allies across the Pacific try and bottle up Chinese ambitions, including sharing geospatial intelligence with India and potentially establishing a new base on the island of Palau to provide new airfields and ports for Navy ships in the Philippine Sea.
But the path toward a new American strategy in the region has been often proven rocky when it comes to Trump’s expectations of longtime allies.
Earlier this year, after two years of tough negotiations between Washington and Seoul, the two sides managed to hack out a one-year extension calling for South Korea to pay $926 million, or an 8 percent increase to help support the 28,500 US troops in the country, far less than the $5 billion the White House had sought.
On the other side of the globe, the president ordered the Pentagon to move 12,000 troops out of Germany in July, transferring them elsewhere in Europe or back to the US, due to his anger over Berlin’s failure to meet the goal of spending 2% of its GDP on defense, as agreed to by all NATO members in 2014. The allies have until 2024 to meet that goal.
“We don’t want to be the suckers anymore,” the president said. “So we’re reducing the force because they’re not paying their bills. It’s very simple, they’re delinquent.”
As he has repeatedly, Trump conflated payments to NATO with internal defense spending, which is what the 2% goal refers to.
If the South Korea talks were any indication, the Japan meetings will be difficult. They may result in a short-term extension in which both sides give some ground. Seoul took the one-year deal, and Tokyo, which renegotiates roughly every five years, might do the same if Trump is re-elected. If Joe Biden wins, the future is far less clear.
