When U.S. President Joe Biden hosts Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida at the White House on April 10, both leaders, facing domestic political challenges at home, will be eager to tout the strength of the U.S.-Japan alliance—and with good reason. U.S.-Japan security cooperation has reached new heights under their stewardship: Japan has increased its defense spending, and the allies have deepened contingency planning and stepped up military exercises.
The two leaders will be tempted to push aside thorny issues, lest any disagreement spoil their image of unity. But urgent problems still hang over the alliance. Despite the rapid progress made over the past three years, the United States and Japan still lack the coordinated decision-making processes and integration required to credibly fight together in the event of a conflict. This is worrisome because any perceived weakness in the alliance risks emboldening China.
To more effectively counter the alliance’s greatest threats, Biden and Kishida should urgently address three hard questions at their upcoming visit: how to modernize allied command-and-control arrangements; whether Japan will permit the deployment of U.S. ground-based long-range strike capabilities on its soil, and if so, under what conditions; and how to posture and redistribute U.S. forces in Japan, especially in Okinawa.
Washington and Tokyo have a limited window to address these issues, and the longer they avoid them, the greater the risk is that deterrence will fail, and the alliance won’t be prepared for a true crisis.
Few decisions are more consequential for a military alliance than those about how to coordinate the deployment and use of allied forces. The U.S.-Japan alliance, however, was never intended to be a warfighting one, so it lacks basic military coordination mechanisms.
For the past 70 years, the alliance has operated with two separate command structures: The United States and Japan each retained their independent chains of command, rather than delegate authority to an overall allied commander. This arrangement worked, as long as Japan remained primarily a base for the United States to stage operations in the region—as was the case in the Korean War—and not an ally on the battlefield.
As China’s military has grown more powerful and assertive and Japan’s own capabilities and role have expanded, this arrangement no longer serves the alliance’s needs. The success of the U.S.-Japan alliance now depends on its ability to conduct combined—not parallel—operations. Updating this outdated structure is the most pressing issue for Biden and Kishida to address. Fortunately, they are expected to announce plans to review command relationships this week. In an ideal world, the United States and Japan would establish a unified command structure, similar to the Combined Forces Command in South Korea, but Japanese domestic legal and political restrictions prevent Japanese troops from serving under U.S. command.
The next-best option, which is reported to be under consideration, would be to more closely integrate the two national commands under a joint task force (JTF) led by the four-star component commander of the U.S. Pacific Fleet, which is based in Hawaii. U.S. Forces Japan (USFJ) is not currently a joint operational command. Instead, its three-star commander serves in an administrative role, overseeing the Status of Forces Agreement with Japan, and has limited authority to conduct operations. But in the proposed option, the JTF would assume operational control over U.S. joint forces during a contingency and coordinate with the Japanese.
The JTF option, however, is no silver bullet for the alliance’s command-and-control woes. For example, with no formal authority to issue orders to Japan’s Ground Self-Defense Force, the JTF commander would only be able to direct the alliance through persuasion—a task made even more difficult from Hawaii. Overlapping allied command structures are not only complicated—they have also often ended in military disaster. In 1940, for example, multiple layers of delegation on the side of the French left their British allies confused about with whom to coordinate, contributing to the rapid military collapse that ended in France’s surrender to Germany.
Biden and Kishida should consider a more streamlined approach, specifically transitioning USFJ into a joint operational command headquarters led by a U.S. four-star commander. This approach would still require the United States and Japan to address questions about whether to co-locate the USFJ with Japan’s future joint operational headquarters and how to organize coordination between them. But it would be a vast improvement from the current model, capable of facilitating information-sharing, timely decision-making, and the effective execution of closely integrated operations.
A more effective framework for making decisions in times of conflict, however, will only pay dividends if the alliance also has a clear concept for how its forces will fight together should the time come. Japan and the United States have been working toward such a combined plan, but they haven’t yet resolved questions about what types of systems U.S. forces will be able to use from Japanese soil, including whether the United States’ ground-launched long-range missiles can be hosted in Japan. This should be the second item on Kishida and Biden’s agenda.
From the U.S. perspective, the primary purpose of a credible ground-based strike capability in Japan is to target Chinese surface vessels and other targets in and around the Taiwan Strait or South and East China seas, and in doing so, deny Beijing any easy military victory across a range of possible regional contingencies. Japan plans to purchase its own ground-based long-range missiles—400 U.S.-made Tomahawks—but intends to use them primarily as part of a counterstrike capability to target the Chinese mainland should Beijing attack the Japanese homeland.
To fill its own operational ambitions, the United States has expressed an interest in deploying U.S.-owned and -operated ground-based Tomahawks, as well as shorter-range precision-strike ballistic missile systems, on Japanese soil. Tokyo, however, has been noncommittal about allowing the United States to do so. Hosting U.S. missiles would make Japan more vulnerable to Chinese retaliation—or even invite a preemptive attack—and increase the chance of civilian harm.
Yet ambiguity about whether Japan will host U.S.-operated missiles sends mixed deterrence signals to China about the ability of allied forces to disrupt and degrade its military operations. Japan and the United States have several options moving forward, but time is of the essence. If they are to be deployed, U.S. missiles will need to be in Japan well before a conflict begins because their transit would be vulnerable to attack or blockade. Even outside of conflict, their deployment during a time of heightened tensions would raise the potential for miscalculation and escalation.
Biden and Kishida may not be able to fully resolve this issue in their upcoming meeting, but they can advance the discussion by defining the timing and location under which such a deployment might be acceptable. They should also weigh near-term alternatives, such as the co-production and shared management of long-range missile systems, or some kind of rotational presence, such as the inclusion of long-range missiles in bilateral military exercises.
The final issue that Kishida and Biden should address is aligning U.S. force posture in Japan more closely with Japan’s own defense posture, particularly in Okinawa. Since the end of World War II, the United States has maintained a large military presence in Okinawa, which is strategically valuable due to its proximity to the Taiwan Strait and South China Sea but also vulnerable because of its distance from mainland Japan.
The United States seeks to build a more survivable and credible force posture in Okinawa, moving ahead with ambitious plans to repurpose a Marine Corps regiment there. These U.S. forces would fight alongside Japanese troops stationed nearby and be equipped with anti-ship missiles and drones, allowing them to rapidly disperse to surrounding islands where they would be harder for China to find and better able to target Chinese ships in critical sea lanes.
But Japanese politics are pushing their own force posture changes. Under a long-standing force realignment plan with Japan, around 9,000 U.S. Marines will move out of Okinawa to other locations, such as Guam, where Japan has paid more than a third of the costs for a new base.
These two initiatives work against each other and create risks that should be addressed. Deploying Marines across Okinawa, even if only during a crisis, will exacerbate tensions with Okinawans who already fear becoming a target of Chinese attacks. These resentments could worsen relations between the U.S. military and Okinawans as well as Okinawa and Tokyo, creating an opening for Chinese disinformation to undermine the alliance and Japan’s domestic cohesion. Moving U.S. forces out of Okinawa to Guam, however, could reduce political tensions but will leave these forces unable to contribute directly to combined operations.
To preserve U.S. force posture in Okinawa while defusing political tensions, Washington and Tokyo should consider converting U.S. bases in Okinawa into combined bases used by both the U.S. military and Japan’s Ground Self-Defense Force, like those at Misawa Air Base and Yokosuka Naval Base in other parts of Japan. This change would further integrate forces for combined operations, avoid the appearance that the U.S. military is an occupation force, and more tangibly convey that the alliance is based on mutually beneficial cooperation.
The U.S.-Japan alliance is a cornerstone of both countries’ security and defense, and it plays an important role in their domestic political debates. To live up to its purpose, however, the alliance needs to get serious about becoming an effective fighting force. Biden and Kishida should use their visit to open these conversations and ensure that the alliance is sufficiently strong and credible to stand up to its most pressing threats.
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