Posted on 04/23/2006 6:19:34 PM PDT by wjersey
The United States and Japan have struck a bargain over a plan to realign U.S. forces in Japan, with Japan agreeing to pay $6 billion of the $10 billion cost, the Japanese defense chief said Sunday night.
Japanese Defense Minister Fukushiro Nukaga told reporters after his three-hour meeting with Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld that Japan wanted to have an appropriate sharing of costs in transfering 8,000 Marines from Okinawa to the Pacific island of Guam.
Nukaga said that both sides agreed that the Japan-U.S. alliance is important, not only for Japan but also for the region.
The United States had proposed in an earlier round of negotiations that Japan pay $7.5 billion, or 75 percent, of the cost to relocate Marines. Japan had said it would pay about one-third of that amount.
The United States and Japan are discussing the biggest restructuring and streamlining of the U.S. military based in Japan in decades.
An outline of the overall realignment plan was announced in October and was to be finalized by the end of March. However, it bogged down over details.
There was a book written in the late 80's about the US and Japan going to war. Obviously, it din't happen. However, there is a startegic north/south line one could draw down the western Pacific (can't remember the name) that roughly goes down from Guam to the Mariana's and to the Samoas. The Japanese think this is in their realm of interest. If I remember, corrctly, this is where we were in 1898.
Maybe it's back to the future.
?!
What is Guam going to do with 8000 Marines?
Bring them back to the CONUS.
We have need of them here.
This is really going to mess up Representative Murtha's plan to redeploy half of our forces in Iraq to Okinawa. That would be about 70,000 troops, equivalent to four divisions. Maybe he's got this all worked out with Japan. Sure.
Yes, I'm sure the Okinawans are all up in arms about it. This sounds like some real progress to me. The Japanese have their faults, but they're not dummies.
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