The Japanese people should not be worried: The United States won't make short shrift of Japan. Whoever wins the U.S. presidential election in November will never forget the importance of Japan-U.S. relations. But what does "strengthening the alliance" mean?
Besides increasing Okinawa's burden of hosting a heavy U.S. military presence, it will mean an incremental hike in "host nation support," which Tokyo dubs a "sympathy budget," thus adding to the already inflated financial burden that Japanese taxpayers must shoulder. It will also mean the collapse of Japan's national policy to pursue peace through its war-renouncing Constitution, whose supreme idealism has been eroded by America's blatant coercion of Japan into being an integral part of its belligerent defense machine.
I therefore wish that both U.S. election camps, and their mavens, would refrain from saying that the Japan-U.S. alliance will be strengthened regardless of whoever wins the presidency. The candidates should instead lend a helping hand to reduce or eliminate the heavy U.S. military footprint on Japan, especially Okinawa.
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