US-Japan relations to change after quake

The U.S. military has responded rapidly to the aid of the stricken Japanese coastline north of Tokyo. With nearly two thousand people confirmed dead and more than 15,000 unaccounted for, the human dimension of this tragedy is appalling. Nearly 450,000 are homeless and are staying in emergency shelters. U.S. forces are helping to supply needed food, water, blankets and the like. The speed of the U.S. response is due to two interlinked factors: our long-standing security and political relationship with Japan, and the forward basing of tens of thousands of U.S. troops on Japanese soil. Without decades of close U.S.-Japan relations, the type of response that has seen 10 U.S. Navy ships and dozens of aircraft and helicopters aid in relief efforts would be far more difficult to organize.

It is very likely that more aid from the United States will be needed, as the Japanese government is simply overwhelmed by the scale of the disaster. Not only are basic supplies including medicine, food and water needed, but the means of delivering these supplies will help spell the difference between life and greater hardship for the millions of Japanese who now lack the very basic necessities for daily existence. Because of this, Congress may need to appropriate emergency funds to help provide these critical supplies and fund the military operations necessary for delivering them.

{mosads}The Great Tohoku Earthquake, as it is now called in Japan, is a sobering reminder of the role that U.S. military forces play around the globe. Japan is the country perhaps best prepared for natural disasters like earthquakes, but the unforeseen ferocity of this catastrophe resulted almost immediately in the activation of thousands of U.S. troops to help save lives and try to stabilize the rapidly deteriorating situation. Japan does not need our technology, nor does it need our money. It needs our immediate, unreserved military and political support to help the Japanese themselves begin the road to recovery. Right now, U.S. helicopters are helping to ferry Japanese soldiers to tsunami-ravaged areas, while U.S. Air Force cargo planes are bringing search and rescue teams to the country. Just days after the quake, the USS Ronald Reagan sent helicopters on maritime search-and-rescue missions. As military leaders are fond of saying, quantity has a quality all its own; there is no starker proof of that belief than what is happening today in Japan.

Japanese diplomatic officials I have spoken to are enormously grateful for the aid and support of the U.S. military in these early days. Yet there is more we can consider doing, including moving more of our helicopters towards the stricken areas and increasing the number of cargo flights coming from the U.S. with supplies. The U.S. also should help distribute or offer to provide radiation decontamination units and radiation sickness medicines, or at least prepare to do so, if the crisis at the Fukushima nuclear power plant continues to worsen. Finally, it would be a powerful show of support to deploy the hospital ship USNS Mercy to Japanese waters to help deal with the most critical cases or provide basic care for those Japanese who will remain without medical support for weeks, if not months, to come.

At the same time, Washington will have to prepare for a Japan that necessarily will be more focused on domestic affairs for a long time. There has been tension between Tokyo and Washington over the relocation of Marines within Okinawa, and a long-standing American desire for Japan to do more on the world stage. It is all but certain that Japan will turn inward as it deals with the enormity of restoring more than a thousand miles of inundated coastline, burying its dead and rebuilding its lost towns. The fiscal situation in Japan, already dire, is certain to worsen, though recovery funds will pump some stimulus into the economy. But policymakers in the U.S. government should steel themselves for dealing with an ally that will be less able and less willing to play an active global role, one that will likely have to further cut its foreign aid, and one that may well be less able to purchase U.S. Treasuries as it has done in the past.

Japan will certainly recover, and its social fabric will, I believe, emerge strengthened from this tragedy. But it will not be business as usual in the U.S.-Japan alliance for a long time. In some respects, our peoples will be even closer than before, thanks to America’s unstinting help. But our governments may find that there is less they can do together outside Japan, and far more they will have to do inside the country.

Auslin is director of Japan Studies at the American Enterprise Institute.