Thirty years after reversion to Japan, the U.S. Marine bases on Okinawa remain a contentious issue. Periodic calls for their reduction or elimination may be good politics, and offer academics and other commentators the satisfaction that they are taking a "progressive" stance on the issue.
But substantially reducing the Marine presence will do little or nothing to improve U.S.-Japan security relations, to revive Okinawa's economy, or to make up for Okinawa's years of second-class treatment by the national government. It will, however, degrade America's Asian security strategy and blur perceptions of its military commitment to the Pacific region.
Okinawa-based Marine forces are somehow seen as less necessary than Japan-based U.S. air and naval forces. Despite evidence to the contrary, air and naval power advocates have long promised single-handed, bloodless victory if given a big enough share of the defense budget. During the Persian Gulf War, a six-week bombing campaign and a naval blockade still required ground troops to eject Iraqi forces from Kuwait. The subsequent decade of naval and aerial blockade enforcing U.N. sanctions has not brought Saddam Hussein to heel. More recently, in Kosovo, only the threat of ground intervention -- after a month of air strikes that were less effective than advertised -- forced a Yugoslav withdrawal.