Category Archives: Foreign Policy

Isolating Japan

The White House announcement last month that the United States would abandon its position in Syria dumbfounded many of the world’s foreign policy practitioners including, it seemed, the entire executive branch of the U.S. Government. The subsequent attempt to react to the sequence of events it unleashed will undoubtedly have a chilling effect on U.S. allies around the world, especially those that are more or less dependent upon American security guarantees. In light of what appears to be a unilateral abandonment of a longstanding U.S. policy without warning or any appreciable coordination with allies, leaders around the world are almost certainly reviewing options for their defense. For them, reassessing the reliability of America’s commitment to their security will surely become a national security priority.

Vicious Cycle

Japan is arguably the most important of America’s nervous allies. With a post-war constitution that prohibits the maintenance of armed forces, Japan is particularly vulnerable to isolation due to a dramatic U.S. policy shift affecting security in Asia. This fact is presumably not lost on Prime Minister Shinzo Abe whose party has for years played at the margins of the Japanese Constitution’s Article 9 prohibition of military forces. The foundation of his party’s efforts sits at the heart of 70 years of Japanese politics but after the American pullout of Syria last month, Abe’s argument, that Japan must be less reliant on the United States for security, must seem strikingly tangible.

Japan exists in a difficult and dangerous part of the world. Apart from the immense and growing power of China, Tokyo faces renewed Russian challenges to disputed islands, festering animosity with the Republic of Korea, and a nuclear-armed North Korea that is suddenly receiving a great deal of coddling from Washington. The alarming apathy of the Trump Administration to America’s traditional role of keeping all this in balance is surely making Abe’s case. President Trump’s oft-stated desire to “get U.S. troops out of Asia” simply highlights that much of the shifting situation is due to his disinterest in the status quo ante. Though a few within the Administration have tried to make the case that America’s alliances are investments in its prosperity and security, all seem to have failed to convince him. While Japan’s moves to spend more on its own defense predate Trump, they will surely serve to confirm the President’s point of view…at least to some.


Apathy toward the traditional American role as marriage counselor between Seoul and Tokyo will likely have an unfortunate effect on cooperation between them.


The Cost of Peace

At the precise moment Japan is taking small steps toward a more independent defense policy, Korea is undergoing a political sea change. Though South Korean President Moon Jae In doesn’t speak about it publicly, there is evidence Seoul is greatly concerned about the trajectory of U.S. diplomacy with the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK). Though he is largely responsible for the rapid warming of inter-Korean relations that enabled the Singapore Summit between Kim Jong Un and President Trump in June 2018, Moon likely made these moves in hopes of steering the process. Instead he found himself locked out of the room in Singapore. From that moment it was clear the cost of the breakthrough was the abandonment of 70 years of U.S. support of Seoul as the only legitimate government of the Korean people.

Sharing legitimacy with Kim Jong Un is a terrible position for the South Korean leader to be in; particularly since it comes as the result of a decision made in Washington rather than in Seoul. The decision also solidifies the Japanese urge to re-arm which in turn, heightens South Korean insecurity. The lethal combination of Japanese and South Korean hedging with Trumpian apathy toward the traditional American role as marriage counselor between Seoul and Tokyo, will likely have an unfortunate effect on cooperation between them.

Isolating Japan

The sins of Imperial Japan in the 19th and early 20th centuries serve as an inhibitor to cooperation with Korea. For this reason, the United States played a critical stabilizing role in the region as the broker of alliance politics between them. If, for example, Korea could not or would not work with the Japanese directly, they could at least collaborate multilaterally. At times when even this was not possible, each could work bilaterally with the U.S. towards common objectives determined by Washington. This approach, sometimes called “multilateral bilateralism” is not ideal but the United States uses it successfully in Southeast Asia.

In Northeast Asia where the stakes are higher, this approach requires a firm and flexible American hand. That consistency and the concentration it demands seem a distant memory now. Just yesterday, 14 November, Secretary of Defense Esper landed in Seoul with a demand the South Koreans pay an additional USD $5 billion to cover the cost of U.S. troops stationed there. The surprise 400% increase is a seemingly arbitrary number proposed by President Trump himself. and one sure to exacerbate Seoul’s insecurity. With the costs of alliance skyrocketing and its benefits decreasing, the unilateral abandonment of a Syrian ally in combat half a world away will surely echo in the ears of Moon Jae In and Shinzo Abe as they consider options for the future of their national defense.

We can already see the beginnings of Japan’s isolation in the form of worsening trade relations between Seoul and Tokyo, the abandonment of an intelligence sharing agreement between them, and Sino-Russian moves this summer to exacerbate a dispute over Takeshima/Dok Do. Though these examples predate the dramatic American retreat in Syria, we can safely assume Beijing and Moscow will view Washington’s lack of reliability as a golden opportunity to isolate Japan and use South Korean fears to break apart the mechanisms of U.S. influence in the region. Once a bulwark of stability, the self-inflicted decline of American leadership in Northeast Asia will present isolating Japan as a feasible and acceptable course of action for China and Russia to pursue.


Lino Miani, CEO Navisio Global LLC

Lino Miani is a retired US Army Special Forces officer, author of The Sulu Arms Market, and CEO of Navisio Global LLC.

Water Wars

On October 11th, the Nobel Prize Committee announced its decision to award the 2019 Peace Prize to Ethiopia’s charismatic Prime Minister, Abiy Ahmed Ali for his efforts to “resolve the border conflict with neighboring Eritrea.” After 30 years of insurgency and 21 years of war, Ethiopia may finally have peace with its breakaway neighbor, a conflict that cost tens of thousands of lives. With the Nobel Prize announcement, the young and energetic former Army Lieutenant Colonel joined 99 of history’s most treasured peacemakers. Eleven days later, he promised he would mobilize millions of soldiers to fight Egypt if that country sought to prevent completion of the Great Ethiopian Renaissance Dam.

The spectacle of a Nobel Laureate threatening war, even a defensive one, over water rights may seem like an anachronism but it is not. Water wars are the future of conflict in many parts of the world and the distribution and intensity of that conflict is intertwined with history, climate change, population growth, and of course geography. In East Africa perhaps most of all. The Nile River is the longest in the world. Its waters flow through 11 countries and provide water to 250 million Africans on its way to Alexandria, Egypt where it flows into the Mediterranean Sea. That geographic fact has determined the rise and fall of empires from the time of the Pharaohs, through the rule of Alexander the Great and later the Ottomans. Its course shaped European colonialism on the continent and is the source of a great deal of tension between source and consumer countries today. Despite this, riparian states like Ethiopia say Nile waters are not distributed fairly.

Africa’s Water Tower

Ethiopia is a vast country that sits on a mountainous plateau. It is the source for 84% of the water in the greater Nile river system upon which so many millions depend. The country’s mountainous geography and unique political history are the reason Ethiopia is the only country in Africa that was never fully colonized by Europeans. Despite this, Ethiopia remains poorly developed and water-stressed. Successive regimes in Addis Ababa viewed dam-building as a birthright solution to Ethiopia’s water and power needs but were blocked by vigorous opposition from more powerful governments down stream. No longer it seems. Increasing pressure to dam the Blue Nile led to the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam project. Announced in 2011, it will be the largest dam in Africa when it is finally complete next year.

Egypt sees the Renaissance Dam as a threat to its security. So does Sudan. Both have promised to defend their rights to Nile waters. This is not hyperbole. Ninety-five percent of Egypt’s 99 million citizens live within 20 kilometers of the river and receive 90% their water from it. Any reduction of Nile waters is quite literally a limitation on the viability of Egyptian society and industry. Thus far, both Egypt and Sudan base their claims to Nile water on the 1929 Nile Waters Agreement and the 1959 Egypt-Sudan Agreement which guarantee 66% of Nile waters to Egypt and 22% to Sudan. Designed to allocate Nile waters between British colonies in East Africa and the Anglo-Egyptian Condominium, those treaties included no provisions for Ethiopia or the other riparian states that subsequently achieved independence. More importantly, the 1929 agreement gave Egypt veto power over construction of dams upstream.

Unsurprisingly, Ethiopians reject this arrangement on the basis that they were never a party to the agreement. More recently, they have been working with other upstream countries — Uganda, Rwanda, and Kenya — as a bloc to pursue a more inclusive agreement that is nonetheless sensitive to Egyptian concerns. As part of that effort, Addis Ababa offered to release 30 billion cubic meters from the dam annually, a total they claim is the maximum they can release while filling the reservoir. Egypt however, is not satisfied with this number and wants 40 billion cubic meters instead, a discharge rate that would increase the time required to grow the reservoir from 5-6 years to 7-9 years. For the time being, Sudan is comfortable with 30 billion and was brokering a mutually acceptable quantity until those talks broke down last week over drought provisions.

Diplomatic Timeline of Nile Water Utilization

Water Talks

Where the talks go from here is a matter of growing concern in the region and beyond. The dam will be complete sometime in 2022, a decision point in Egyptian calculations and the reason the Egyptian Foreign Minister said the dam “will have negative consequences for stability in the region” if Egypt’s concerns are not addressed. Recognizing the danger of a conflict that could engulf all of East Africa, the United States and Russia have both offered to mediate but even the question of their respective roles remains a matter of some disagreement between the parties.

The controversy of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam demonstrates that water wars are no longer a topic limited only to science fiction. They are indeed a real and growing concern that erodes existing mechanisms of diplomacy and international security at the exact moment global warming, population growth, environmental degradation, and great power competition are changing the dynamics of supply and demand between source and consumer countries. Though resource wars are not new, the explosive results of water wars, like the one that could happen on the Nile, will carry these conflicts far beyond their parched origins to areas less vulnerable to water conflict. Responding preventatively must be an international diplomatic priority today so it does not become an international military one tomorrow.


Lino Miani, CEO Navisio Global LLC

Lino Miani is a retired US Army Special Forces officer, author of The Sulu Arms Market, and CEO of Navisio Global LLC.

American Basing in Asia: Taking the Cow by the Horns

Last month, the new Commandant of the United States Marine Corps, General David Berger released his initial planning guidance. In it, Berger takes on the tough issues and makes trade-offs, offering up for slaughter one institutional sacred cow after another and makes a case for a renewed focus on increasing Marine Corps integration with the U.S. Navy. However, one grizzled steer somehow escaped the knife: the antiquated forward basing construct in the Western Pacific. While not purely a Marine Corps issue, the legacy American basing construct for Okinawa, Japan, and other locations in and around the so-called first and second island chains, no longer makes sense for reasons including security, public relations, and perhaps most importantly, naval integration.

The Sacred Cow

Strategic American bases in Okinawa, and to a growing extent on the American territory of Guam, are increasingly within the targeting envelope of the long-range precision strike weaponry of potential regional adversaries. Though this is a strategic military problem, tens of thousands of American military dependents stationed there will become a massive operational liability during conflict and greatly complicate the diplomatic calculus when rockets start flying. In that event, the Marines in Okinawa will get on ships and planes and go to fight, but commanders will face a difficult choice about how much of those transportation assets to devote to evacuating thousands of noncombatant American citizens that remain. In the moment of crisis, no commander wants to choose between supporting force generation for combat operations and saving noncombatants from long-range weapons raining down on military infrastructure. Drawing down the bases and sending dependents home prevents future commanders from having to make that horrible choice.

A drawdown also partially addresses the uncomfortable fact that American troops in Okinawa have largely worn out their welcome. A quick scan of Google search results for “Okinawa” reveals at least one report of “Americans acting badly” from within the last week’s news. The friction points with the local constabulary typically involve alcohol use among the 18 to 25-year-old male demographic – the primary population of American servicemembers assigned to the island – and can run the gamut from garden-variety bar fights to driving under the influence to sexual assault and murder. You’ll also notice stories describing the controversy surrounding the basing realignment program in the region. The twenty-year-old plan to move the Marine Corps’ Futenma airfield from the densely urban area of Ginowan City to a more remote location in the northern portion of the island requires the construction of tarmac out into the ocean in two directions. Environmental activists, concerned about the destruction of marine life, are now allied with the entrenched anti-base portion of the Okinawan population. They protest the construction site routinely, blocking progress and prolonging the dispute ongoing since 1996 with no end in sight.

The time is now to move beyond the failed constructs of the past to something that accounts for the shortcomings in security, public relations, and naval integration inherent in the existing disposition of U.S. forces in Asia.

Together, these dynamics present a no-win information environment for the Marine Corps in Okinawa. Moving Futenma doesn’t suddenly fix the Marines’ public relations issues, and every day the bases stay there, the problem gets worse. The Okinawan people, as kind and tolerant as they are, have already lived with literally decades of abuses at the hands (and fists) of America’s uniformed “ambassadors.” If the shoe were on the other foot, Americans would never tolerate the same sort of neo-colonialism in their back yards. Moreover, the offense has the advantage in war and will maintain it for the foreseeable future. There will not be a technological solution, no deployment of a super-THAAD air defense capability to Okinawa just in the nick of time to vouchsafe the well-being of non-combatants there. The proliferation of missile technology in the region means aggressors will find it easier and cheaper to field ever-increasing numbers of more accurate weaponry. Keeping the Marines in Okinawa hurts the American image, evacuating U.S. civilians while Okinawans fend for themselves makes that image even worse.

Marine Corps equities are not the only ones involved with this basing problem. Okinawa hosts facilities run by all the services – it is a “joint” island. However, the Marine Corps maintains the lion’s share of them and must be the first mover. Recognizing this, General Berger’s planning guidance did not allow basing to escape unscathed, but his criticism did not go nearly far enough. Regarding bases, he states: “Our installation infrastructure is untenable. We are encumbered by 19,000 buildings, some of which are beyond the scope of repair and should instead be considered for demolition.” Though referring to a global problem, General Berger should start by looking at buildings on bases in Okinawa. Instead of constructing new schools for dependents and headquarters facilities, the Marine Corps should go in the other direction with the aim of returning bases in Okinawa to their Japanese hosts at the soonest time practicable.

Basing: A Grizzled Steer

It is time to rip off the band-aid and get the Marines out of the metaphorical fighting hole in Okinawa from which they cannot possibly win today’s fights, let alone those of the future. Doing so creatively can nest directly underneath the naval integration priority contained in the Commandant’s planning guidance. Co-locating the Marine three-star headquarters for Japan –currently in Okinawa – with its Navy counterpart in Yokosuka will go a long way towards greater naval integration at the numbered fleet-Marine expeditionary force level whether in garrison or deployed. This works at the tactical level as well. The 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit, one of the Marine Corps’seven standing rapid response task forces, is also currently located in Okinawa while the amphibious ships it deploys on are based far to the north in Sasebo. By aggregating both tactical commands in Sasebo, co-located staffs can develop habitual working relationships even before they get underway as an amphibious ready group. Doing so not only reassures allies and deters potential adversaries, it demonstrates a firm commitment to the integration of Marine Corps warfighting capability with the U.S. Navy in the first island chain. increases readiness at a lower cost and better postures both integrated naval organizations for rapid deployment and employment throughout the region.

The time is now to move beyond the failed constructs of the past to something that accounts for the shortcomings in security, public relations, and naval integration inherent in the existing disposition of U.S. forces in Asia. Though post-war basing in Asia served American foreign policy broadly, keeping that grizzled steer alive sometimes came at the expense of operational readiness. As changes in technology and politics conspire against the 20th-century calculus of American bases however, strategic military risk is beginning to outweigh the diplomatic benefits of the U.S. force posture there. It remains to be seen if, Commandant Berger will take the opportunity of his upcoming trip to the region to take that sacred cow by the horns and lead her to the 21st-century slaughter.


Gary SampsonGary J. Sampson is a U.S. Marine Corps officer currently assigned to the Joint Staff. A 2009 Olmsted Foundation Scholar, he has spent 4.5 years in assignments on Okinawa. He is also a doctoral candidate at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University and a 2019-20 Public Intellectuals Program Fellow with the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations.

The views expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the United States Marine Corps, Department of the Navy, or Department of Defense.