Abe, Mattis reaffirm ties on defense

At the outset of the meeting, Mattis told Abe that “we stand firmly, 100 percent for” the alliance with Japan in light of the military threat from North Korea.

“I want to make certain that Article 5 of our mutual defense treaty is understood to be real to us today, as it was a year ago, five years ago” and ten years from now as well, Mattis told Abe.

Article 5 of the Japan-U.S. security treaty obliges Japan and the United States to jointly defend a Japan-administered area should it be attacked by a third country.

In April 2014 former U.S. President Barack Obama assured Tokyo that Article 5 applies to the disputed Senkaku Islands in the East China Sea.

Japan has endeavored to have the Trump administration reaffirm that commitment to deter any military attempt by China to seize the uninhabited islets, which Japan recently nationalized. According to NHK, Mattis reassured Abe that Article 5 applies to the Senkakus. He made the same reassurances during a chat with Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida later in the day, Kishida said.

The retired four-star marine general is the first senior official from the Trump administration to make an overseas diplomatic trip.

“I highly value the fact that Japan and East Asia was one of the first destinations of your visit as secretary of defense,” Abe told Mattis through a translator.

“It is a testament to your administration’s emphasis on the Japan-U.S. alliance as well as the security relationship,” Abe said as reporters watched. The meeting was then closed to journalists.

Observers think that Trump, as he repeatedly said during his presidential campaign, may pressure Tokyo to shoulder more of the cost of keeping U.S. military forces in Japan and increase its defense budget.

But a foreign ministry official confirmed that the issue of host nation support was never brought up at the meetings. Abe and Mattis agreed that the stable deployment of the U.S. forces in Japan is crucial, the official said.

The official also said that Mattis did not discuss Japan’s defense budget, adding that both men agreed there was a need for Japan to beef up its defensive capabilities amid escalating tensions in the region.

Japan now spends less than 1 percent of its gross domestic product on defense, and some U.S. hawks have argued Tokyo should pay more for its own protection.

Mattis, who met South Korean Defense Minister Han Min-koo earlier in the day, visited Seoul and Tokyo to ease growing concerns about the heavy-handed posturing Trump advocated during his campaign.

In Seoul, Mattis said that “America’s commitments to defending our allies and to upholding our extended deterrence guarantees remain ironclad.”

“Any attack on the United States, or our allies, will be defeated, and any use of nuclear weapons would be met with a response that would be effective and overwhelming,” Mattis was quoted as saying.

Japan has long relied on the U.S. nuclear umbrella, which protects Japan with a pledge to retaliate on behalf of an ally if an enemy country attacks it with a nuclear weapon.

According to the South Korea’s Yonhap news agency, Mattis and Han also agreed to deploy the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system in South Korea by the end of fiscal 2017, as previously scheduled.

Seoul and Washington have agreed to deploy the U.S. anti-missile defense system, but Beijing is strongly opposed to it.

The long-range, early-warning radar system will cover much of China’s coastal areas, apparently one of the reasons Beijing is so strongly opposed to the plan.

On Saturday, Mattis is set to meet his Japanese counterpart Tomomi Inada.

Mattis’ visit precedes Abe’s Feb. 10 summit with Trump in Washington, where the prime minister plans to propose an economic cooperation package that will reportedly generate 700,000 U.S. jobs and help create a $450 billion (¥50 trillion) market.

 

Not everyone who knows Mattis well in the U.S. shares that view, but he clearly was an instant hit in Asia.

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was effusive in his endorsement as the two shook hands Friday before a phalanx of domestic and international news reporters and cameras.

“I was very encouraged,” Abe said, “to see someone like you who has substantial experience, both in the military and in security, defense and diplomacy, taking this office.”

Mattis won easy confirmation by the Senate just hours after President Donald Trump’s swearing in on Jan. 20. But some had questioned the wisdom of breaking a long American tradition of picking defense secretaries with primarily civilian backgrounds.

In fact it has been more than a tradition. There is a legal prohibition on appointing a defense secretary who has not been out of uniform for at least seven years. Mattis retired from a 41-year career in the Marine Corps in 2013. Congress had to pass a bill making a one-time exception for Mattis, who was widely praised as a thoughtful, level-headed leader.

The only other time in history that such an exception was made was for George C. Marshall, the former Army chief of staff who had served as secretary of state before President Harry Truman picked him as defense secretary in September 1950, at a crucial point in the just-started Korean War.

Abe noted that Mattis’s military career included a stint on Okinawa, which the U.S. returned to Japanese control in 1972 based on an agreement signed a year earlier to end the postwar period of U.S. military control.

“So I believe that you are quite familiar with the situation surrounding Japan,” he said.

In Seoul, where civilian control of the military has a mixed history, Mattis’ counterpart, Han Min-koo, portrayed him as a kindred spirit. Han told reporters he knew why they were able to forge a bond in their very first meeting.

“I believe this was possible because we both served as active-duty servicemen for 40-plus years,” Han said.

Mattis was not shy, either, about highlighting his military background. In Tokyo he recalled training in Okinawa and elsewhere in Japan as a newly minted lieutenant in 1972. He said he made Japanese acquaintances that have lasted a lifetime.

Asia is hardly Mattis’ forte, however. He spent the bulk of his career focused on the Middle East, including combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan. He also served as NATO supreme allied commander transformation, focused on Europe, from 2007 to 2009.

In picking Mattis, 66, to lead the Pentagon, Trump seemed enamored of the general’s popular nickname, “Mad Dog,” as if this served as a warning to the world not to mess with America.

Mattis, however, insists that the nickname was a media invention that he does not embrace. He certainly came across as anything but “mad” or rabid on his visits to Japan and South Korea. He was a picture of sober restraint at his public appearances, including a news conference Saturday in Tokyo.

He expressed caution on Iran, saying its adventurism did not mean the U.S. should send more military forces to the Middle East. And he called for diplomacy to address China’s militarization of disputed islands and land formations in the South China Sea.

Even some of his biggest admirers have questioned, however, whether he is the right man for Trump’s Pentagon. One such skeptic is Erin Simpson, a noted defense strategist who wrote about a prospective Secretary Mattis last fall, before he had been selected.

“Not only does the role of secretary of defense not play to Mattis’ strengths,” she wrote, “but success in that role would compromise much of what we admire most in him: his bluntness, clarity and single-minded focus on war fighting. The secretary’s job is by necessity much more political than all that.”