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Updated Monday, November 16, 2009 10:24 am TWN, By Joe Hung, Special to The China Post

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Obama's first meet with Hatoyama

Japan under Hatoyama needs to create a more equal partnership. While he reaffirms Japan's military alliance with the United States as the cornerstone of his foreign policy, the new prime minister is calling for an end to Tokyo's overdependence on Washington and is trying to reorient his country toward a resurgent Asia with a peacefully rising China at its center. In other words, Hatoyama does not want Japan to always follow so closely behind the United States.

That is easier said than done. Washington accepted Tokyo's pledge of US$5 billion in aid to Afghanistan which is linked to its decision to end the Japanese refueling mission in the Indian Ocean, a concession to “underscore Japan's prominent role” in the international arena, which, however, is resented in a country that has the world's highest national debt. Should the country fail to get out of its economic doldrums, the people may turn against the Democratic Party of Japan in next year's upper house election. An LDP win will create a stalemate in the Diet like the one that preceded Aso's rout at the hands of Hatoyama in last August.

Another thorny issue will crop up soon. Hatoyama wants to reduce the subsidy Japan pays for the deployment of American troops. As a matter of fact, it is a chronic issue, which Uncle Sam used to — and could afford to — shrug off, but Hatoyama means business this time around. There is going to be serious and divisive haggling between Tokyo and Washington, and the result is unlikely to satisfy either.

Still another is the renewal of the mutual defense treaty between Japan and the United States in June next year. The treaty, the anchor of Japan's foreign and defense policies, was ratified by the Diet while Nobusuke Kishi was prime minister.

The ratification was rammed through by the LDP though the opposition Socialist Party of Japan boycotted it. President Dwight D. Eisenhower was scheduled to witness it after he paid a brief state visit to Taipei. Ike had to cancel the Tokyo visit after the Zengakuren had staged the largest-ever anti-American protest rally and after the ratification, Kishi resigned as prime minister.

Whether Washington will concede Tokyo an equal footing in concluding a new mutual defense treaty is open to doubt. The chances are that Uncle Sam wouldn't.

The United States, mired in the quagmire of Iraq and Afghanistan as it is, is attaching more importance to the Group of 20 than to the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation and an emerging new Asian bloc dominated by the People's Republic. Or Hatoyama may lose credence by then if the opposition takes control over the upper house and create a split Diet that will hamper his government.

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