Resignation offers US new chance on Japan
WASHINGTON — The resignation of Japan’s prime minister offers President Barack Obama a chance for a fresh start, with some asking if the US administration was too obstinate in the face of change in the key ally. With his poll numbers tumbling and elections approaching, Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama quit Wednesday just nine months after the center-left leader broke a half-century of nearly interrupted rule by Japan’s conservatives. While Japanese premiers have notoriously short shelf-lives, Hatoyama’s fall was all the more dramatic because it was tied to one issue — his promise, then failure, to change a plan on an unpopular US military base on Okinawa island. “I think this is an opportunity, frankly, on both sides to quietly sit back and evaluate what needs to happen,” said Sheila Smith, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. Smith said that both Japan and the United States shared some of the blame for the deterioration in relations between the two nations, which forged an alliance after World War II. But Steven Clemons, director of the American strategy program at the New America Foundation, said that the Obama team had been tone deaf as Japan enters a critical phase of debating its role in the world. Hatoyama’s Democratic Party of Japan took office with a pledge to develop a “more equal” relationship with the United States, while maintaining the alliance. Clemons said the United States developed an “obsession” with preserving the previous agreement on the Futenma air base rather than seeing the dispute as a symbol of a deeper identity issue for Japan, Clemons said. “I think there will be some very real ramifications,” Clemons said. “The bottom line underneath all of this is increasing resentment by the average Japanese,” he said. Source: The Daily Tribune URL: http://www.tribuneonline.org/commentary/20100604com3.html |
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