May 4, 2014
Our allies, friends, and adversaries have measured POTUS Obama and his White House and they see weakness, vacillation, and a country in retreat and disengaged — under this POTUS. RCP
Will The U.S. Really Protect Us In An Emergency?
From the standpoint of someone who’s covered international politics for many years, there appears to be an overlap between the relationship between Japan and the U.S. in recent years and the relationship between Western Europe and the U.S. during the Cold War. The question, “Will the U.S. really protect us in the case of an emergency?” being asked by Japan is the same sort of skepticism held by Western Europe at one time in the past.
During his visit to Japan, U.S. President Barack Obama stated that the U.S. was obligated to defend the Senkaku Islands under the Japan-U.S. security treaty, a promise that was also included in the joint statement issued by the two countries. It’s a significant development that an arrangement that had thus far been confirmed at the ministerial level was reaffirmed by the heads of government. But it remains to be seen how the security treaty will specifically be applied.
I’ve been struck by the many commonalities between the Obama administration and the administration of President Jimmy Carter between 1977 and 1981. There’s the weight given to morality in approaching international politics, the idealism, the indecision … Obama takes a passive approach toward military action, having learned the lessons of his predecessor’s military intervention in Iraq. Carter, too, responded negatively to the idea of using military force, having witnessed what happened with the Vietnam War.
It was during the Carter administration that doubts about the U.S. fulfilling its promise to provide protection arose in Western Europe. The Soviet Union had begun to deploy SS-20 medium-range ballistic missiles in the latter half of the 1970s, and while Western Europe was within range of the missiles, the continental U.S. was not, thus Carter expressed little interest. Moreover, the U.S. and the Soviet Union were holding the second round of Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT) on arms control at the time.
Then chancellor of West Germany Helmut Schmidt revealed the distrust he felt toward President Carter in a memoir, saying that the U.S. refused to commit to SS-20 missile dismantlement out of fears that it would break down its bilateral talks with the Soviet Union, and didn’t even put the issue on the negotiating table.
Western European leaders visited Washington D.C. to reiterate the threat of SS-20 missiles, and the U.S. finally began to respond in January 1979. In December that year, the U.S. and Western European countries announced that unless the Soviet Union dismantled its SS-20s within a given period, the U.S. would deploy similar nuclear missiles in Western Europe. By getting the U.S. directly involved in its defense, Western Europe had managed to secure American responsibility for fulfilling it. Indeed, because the Soviet Union did not abide by the ultimatum, the U.S. deployed the missiles.
With China presenting a major market that could bring great benefits to the U.S., there’s a massive gap between Obama’s view of China’s threat and those held by countries in Asia. That gap may have narrowed somewhat during Obama’s Asian tour, but the question, “Will the U.S. really protect us?” is likely to come up from time to time not only in Japan, but in Southeast Asian nations as well. (By Megumi Nishikawa, Contributing Writer)
May 02, 2014(Mainichi Japan)
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