Okinawa as a Stepping Stone

It mean that these troops are not really soilders; because if they were, they could just rocket-jump over there.

What most American armchair generals don’t realize is that Japan already spends billions on its military. In raw dollars, Japanese defense spending (nearly $50 billion currently) is on par with China’s, and on a per-soldier basis is far ahead of China. Most analysts con sider Japan’s military to be the most technologically advanced after the US.

Looking at the difficulty the US has occupying nations like Iraq and Afghanistan (nations with no tech and minuscule military budgets), there is no way that China or North Korea could successfully invade and occupy Japanese territory. A nuclear strike would of course be devastating to Japan, but no amount of marine bases can do squat about an incoming ICBM. The only aspect where I see the Japanese military lacking is in will to fight and decisive leadership, though in the face of an actual attack on Japanese soil, that could very easily turn around.

Face it, the US is getting the best deal out of this arrangement by a long shot.

lol everyone knows japan doesn’t recognize depicting people in black face as a bad thing

What is wrong with the lips?
He looks beautiful and proud that way.
Michael Jackson was the last black who wanted to be a white.

Okinawa IS a stepping stone. Indeed, a stepping stone for the Middle East is absurd — that’s what our Eastern European and Central Asian bases are for. Okinawa is a stepping stone to the Korean peninsula, China, and Taiwan.

That’s not to say that we plan on attacking China or North Korea any time soon, but there is a soft cold war right now in Asia that is little talked about (for obvious reasons) between the US and China. China props up North Korea (and tries to keep them in line) because the North shares a huge border with China. If the North and the South were to make friendly, or the the North were to collapse, or the North were to start (and lose) a war, suddenly there would be a huge area of China exposed to US-friendly radar and influence. Additionally, South Korea, Japan (Honshu and Okinawa), Taiwan, and the Philippines serve as our so-called “first island-chain.” That island-chain serves to hold China’s influence to their immediately surrounding land area. Beyond that, though, India, Pakistan, and the US-occupied Afghanistan serve to hold China’s influence to the southwest.

If China wants to expand, right now its options are therefore limited to the North towards Mongolia, though that’s limited eventually by Russia; to the South towards Vietnam, though the Assembly of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN) does not like Chinese hegemony any more than anyone else and is already beginning to form a bloc (because the US isn’t doing anything to help them, which they would like) to keep China from essentially taking them over politically and economically (much like Russia is doing with Eastern Europe); and the final option for Chinese expansion is the Northwest, but China doesn’t have a whole lot of control over that area of their own country, let alone to exert influence outside of their borders (which is, again, problematic because the conservative Muslims’ beliefs don’t exactly resonate with Atheist Chinese Han ideals).

The worry is that if the US loses Taiwan, China will run the entire East China Sea like a lake within its borders in the immediate term, and the whole of South-East Asia will go to China in the long term. The US doesn’t like that, nor do her South-East Asian allies. We prop up Taiwan for this reason (though our Congress and people support them for their flourishing democracy) and remain vague on whether or not we’d help them militarily in a conflict. That way, if China ever thinks about making a move towards Taiwan, they have to gamble whether or not US forces will be there from their Philippines and Okinawa bases in a very short time. Obviously, moving too many troops out of Okinawa to Guam (i.e., not the first island-chain) does not sound very palatable to the US military which has to strategize on how to deal with a war with China over Taiwan on a frequent basis (not that it would ever happen, but a military’s job is to think about and prepare for things like this).

That is the reason why US troops do not withdraw from Asia. It’s not said in the mainstream news a lot for obvious reasons, but if you read about the history of the region and a lot of editorials in newspapers, this is the picture that is universally painted. A shift from a US-led Asia to a China-led Asia may not be a bad thing and may even be natural, but it’s not a pleasant picture to look at right now because honestly, who want to be led by modern China? That’s why the US has been trying ~very~ hard for the past several decades to shape and ease China into a responsible, Western-like world power like Japan, so as to not repeat history and once again have a Western bloc and an Eastern bloc with very, very different morals, ideals, and economic beliefs.

I think you don’t really get the picture behind 9/11..

/facepalm

That’s flat-out wrong.

The US bases are not colonies, and don’t exert ‘force’ around the surrounding areas. If anything they stimulate their respective economies and provide a more diverse population(unfortunately, something Japan is very afraid of in general).

If Japan wants us to leave, they should establish a military. I’m not talking about the farcical JSDF and its respective branches, I’m talking about a REAL standing military.

The US is there, simply put, to stop Japan(a technologically advanced economic superpower) from being overrun by unfriendly entities and to give us a point to interact militarily with eastern Asia. Without the US in Japan, whether you want to believe it or not, Japan COULD NOT defend itself against a serious military incursion.

I’m afraid you’ve got it backwards – it’s a stepping stone for when China invades Japan.

The US will not be invading China, my friend.

The Chinese military, much like the Japanese military before WWII, answers only to the Party and is more or less autonomous. That is a disaster waiting to happen. If a military confrontation between the US and China is truly inevitable, it’ll be because of a Chinese view that it is such. No one wants war, but it does seem like the Chinese military is just itching to use its toys, thus these provocative actions in the last 10 or so years.

The outcome will not be good for anyone if such an even takes place.

what about the US troops who are currently in South Korea?

If anything, Okinawa is a road block instead of a stepping stone. The last thing the US wants is a militarized Japan. The term ally is applied to Japan because that country poses no real risk to US national and economic security as long as the US maintains its military presence.

And frankly, deploying ground troops/ air strikes from Okinawa isn’t as feasible as it was 40 years ago. Warfare has changed drastically since the Korean war. There’s no argument that the Okinawa bases played a role in Vietnam, but the US was fighting stateless guerrillas with rudimentary technology.

With the emerging and continued “threats” of China and North Korea most would think the US would want to diversify the locations of bases as to make Okinawa less of a target. But that would take bases off of Japan and the US would lose funding and a gracious host.

“Doesn’t the cartoonist know that the Imperial household is already burdened by a military base. Hardy Barracks U.S. military facility in Roppongi is just 3 kilometers from the Imperial Palace!!”

LOL!

Since some readers here might not know what Hardy Barracks really is, here is the Google map view of it:

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=tokyo&sll=30.692951,-88.071856&sspn=0.018895,0.027595&ie=UTF8&hq=&hnear=T%C5%8Dky%C5%8D+Metropolis,+Japan&ll=35.66274,139.724802&spn=0.002231,0.005493&t=h&z=18

It literally is a Hotel (the building labeled as “Hardy Barracks” on the map), the building where the staff of the Stars and Stripes newspaper works, a military convenience store (the square-ish building with the white roof on the right) and an empty helipad. That is the entire “military base”.

So now everyone can be in on the joke.