In the United States, many of us are brushing cookie crumbs off ourselves and surveying rooms filled with wadded up wrapping paper. But in East Asia the news marches on. The decision by the Okinawan Governor to approve the necessary permits for the landfill needed to relocate the Futenma military base to Henoko (stop yawning) only sounds boring. It’s actually a pivotal decision showing that Japan is doubling-down on the alliance.

Indeed, had things gone differently, this could have been a major Japanese domestic political crisis —  if Gov. Nakaima had refused to issue the permits and Tokyo had gone over his head to change the law. It could have also been a serious crisis in the US-Japan alliance — Washington invested 14 years of negotiating the relocation agreement, and navigated the choppy DPJ waters that nearly sank it (see my article in this Mansfield Foundation report).

Instead, today’s announcement shows that both the US and Japan are committed to creating a sustainable US military presence on Okinawa. Notably, Japan’s willingness to pay real domestic political costs reflects that the Japanese believe themselves to be facing a very worrying security environment indeed.