(Bloomberg) -- President Donald Trump has recently mused to confidants about withdrawing from a longstanding defense treaty with Japan, according to three people familiar with the matter, in his latest complaint about what he sees as unfair U.S. security pacts.Trump regards the accord as too one-sided
-- President Donald Trump has recently mused to confidants about withdrawing from a longstanding defense treaty with Japan, according to three people familiar with the matter, in his latest complaint about what he sees as unfair U.S. security pacts.
Exiting the pact would jeopardize a postwar alliance that has helped guarantee security in the Asia Pacific, laying the foundation for the region’s economic rise. Under the terms of its surrender in World War II, Japan agreed to a pacifist constitution in which it renounced the right to wage war. Yet as with many U.S. allies, there are growing tensions between the countries over Trump’s attitude toward trade. The president has said he may enact tariffs on imports of foreign cars, calling them a threat to national security -- an allegation called preposterous by automakers and many U.S. lawmakers.
“The U.S.-Japan alliance has never been stronger,” Trump told sailors and Marines last month aboard the USS Wasp, an amphibious assault ship at the naval base in Yokosuka, shared by the U.S. and Japan’s Self-Defense Forces. “This remarkable port is the only one in the world where an American naval fleet and an allied naval fleet headquartered side by side, a testament to the ironclad partnership between U.S. and Japanese forces,” he said.
For decades after the war, Japan refrained from developing offensive capabilities such as long-range bombers, aircraft carriers and nuclear weapons. But Abe, a relatively hawkish leader, believes his nation should take a more robust role in its own defense. He pushed through a controversial interpretation of the constitution to allow Japanese forces to come to the aid of allies.
While the president did not refer to the base by name in his recent conversations, there has been a running dispute surrounding Marine Corps Air Station Futenma on Okinawa. The American presence has been controversial for more than two decades, since three servicemen raped a 12-year-old Okinawan girl in 1995. Local people still attribute the presence of the base to higher rates of crime and accidents in the area, according to the Council on Foreign Relations.
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