Donald Trump has been like a bull in a china shop ever since he took office. First, he withdrew from the environmental Paris Accord. Then, he turned around and pulled the country out of the flawed but successful treaty that put a halt to the Iranian nuclear development. Anything that has had President Barack Obama’s name on it is in danger, but the president’s fatalistic moves go even deeper.
Three friends of POTUS have said that Trump has been thinking aloud about withdrawing the U.S. from its military treaty with Japan, because believes that the treaty was unfair to America.
The problem with this president has been that he has been operating on his decades-old belief system. Plus, he has not understood how this country’s economics, history, foreign policy, and science work. He has had no interest in learning and takes his advice not from his government experts but from TV talk show hosts on the Fox network and Russia’s President Vladimir Putin.
Trump thinks the accord with Japan favors Japan over America, because, should our Asian ally ever be attacked, the U.S. will come to its aid. The 60-year-old treaty was in trade for Japan giving up its military. It has been a good bargain.
The trouble was, that the man who occasionally sits in the Oval Office muses about something, then all of a sudden, he has tried to circumvent Congress and puts his plan in action. Exiting this treat would shake up our entire Asia-Pacific system of security.
Trump has flown back to Japan for the G20 Summit in Osaka, Japan. There, he planned to have a private meeting with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, among others. The Japanese press called the U.S. president “mercurial and unpredictable,” according to The Japan Times:
‘(Abe) who enjoys as good a relationship with the mercurial and unpredictable American president as any foreign leader.’
Still, Trump has been irritating the Japanese with his threats of tariffs on their imported cars made in Japan. He has called out a “threat to national security” then slaps tariffs on our allies.
Apparently, there was still a question of law on whether any U.S. president would be able to withdraw from a ratified treaty unless Congress approved it. Yet, as the Japanese point out:
‘President George W. Bush withdrew from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in 2002 without lawmakers’ consent.’
POTUS has considered Japan’s efforts to remove the Okinawa military base another business deal. He has said he would want Japan to pay for the cost of relocating the base, and his entire relationship with Japan to be “more reciprocal.”
Trump spoke to the Marines and sailors when he was aboard the USS Wasp. The amphibious assault ship was based in Yokosuka, and he visited it in an earlier visit:
‘The U.S.-Japan alliance has never been stronger. 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.’
More recently, Japan purchased the advanced F-35 fighter planes from America and has aircraft carriers now. It has also increased its defense budget to two percent of its GDP (gross domestic product).
Right now, the U.S. has 54,000 members of the military based in Japan for an effective Pacific presence.
The defense treaty between Japan and the United States went into effect in 1951 along with the end of World War II:
 ‘The defense pact, revised in 1960, grants the U.S. the right to base military forces in Japan in exchange for the promise that America will defend the island nation if it’s ever attacked.’
Conservative Heritage Foundation Vice President of Foreign and Defense Policy Studies James Carafano said he doubted the president would act upon his whim, because it was the “cornerstone” of the U.S.-Asia foreign policy:
‘There’s nothing that says we have to abide by treaties for all eternity. I just doubt we will revisit U.S. policy on the U.S.-Japan strategic alliance.’
Trump has also called for an end to the United Nations and Nato, and he actually withdrew from the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement. He even re-named NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement.)
