Illustration: Liu Rui/GT

There is no denying that Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's promise of a generous economic stimulus package and his pledge that Futenma will be closed within five years helped seal the recent base deal. On December 24, Abe's cabinet announced to allocate 346 billion yen ($3.3 billion) for Okinawa's economic rejuvenation in 2014, an increase of 15.3 percent from the previous fiscal year, and committed to earmarking an annual budget of at least 300 billion yen till 2021.

Abe's unwonted move was widely viewed as a lucrative bait to coax Okinawa prefectural governor Hirokazu Nakaima to authorize the relocation plan within less than a month. Nakaima reiterated at Naha's council meeting in early December his tough stance that the base should be moved outside the islands.

However, it should also be noted that the agreement came just a day after Abe's Yasukuni pilgrimage, which was not an accident. Abe anticipated the budget allocation plan, as he had calculated that his war shrine visit would infuriate China, South Korea and other countries which once fell victim to Japan's WWII aggression. Therefore he urgently wanted to gain sympathy and support from the US so as not to be isolated by the international community.

Though the move was hailed by US Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel, who called the agreement "the most significant milestone" achieved in the realignment of US forces on Okinawa, the Pentagon made no more than a slight response to the long-stalled impasse.

A Wall Street Journal opinion piece comments that the "Abe camp hoped that the progress on the base issue would temper any negative reaction from Washington." This will likely remain a "hope" forever, because progress on the Okinawa base will hardly offset the concerns about Abe's shrine outing.

The role of the US base in Okinawa is now quite limited given a changing geopolitical scenario and a shrinking military presence in the Asia-Pacific region. As a legacy of the Cold War and an outcome of international power politics, the Futenma air base will no longer play a critical role as a military pillar for the US.

Once a military frontier that served as a supply depot during the Vietnam War (1959-75), the Futenma air base has gradually lost its critical function with the development of military technologies. Consequently Washington just aims at using little effort to maintain the status quo to improve its fighting capacities and thus gain a firmer foothold in this multipolar world.

The Obama administration has fully recognized that the future Asia-Pacific landscape will be dominated by the "new type of great-power relations" between the US and China. Chances that Washington will deepen collaboration with Tokyo to lead Asia are slim.

Now that Tokyo is more a troublemaker than a helper in the eyes of Uncle Sam, the long-standing US-Japan alliance may one day be marginalized by US-China partnership.

It is fair to say that Washington is trying to maintain controllable tensions in Asia Pacific. The White House is reluctant to see close relations among Beijing, Seoul, Tokyo and Southeast Asian nations in case its role in Asia is jeopardized. That could explain why it has instigated trouble occasionally.

But at the same time, the US must ensure that such tensions do not develop into uncontrollable conflicts that will plunge itself into a bitter quagmire. Therefore it is playing the role of an offshore balancer to lever these regional powers, as the British Empire did to Europe during the 19th century.

Washington is engaged in Asia with a parallel policy of short-term opportunism and long-term strategic design. If it expects to wield growing influence upon the region, it must abandon the Cold War mentality that has become an outdated security framework and will no longer serve its present interests.

A wise choice for the US is to join hands with China to establish a new multilateral security framework. Naoto Amaki, a former Japanese diplomat, wrote in an article that it is predicted Washington will probably desert Abe in 2014. Judging from the current situation, his anticipation may come true in the foreseeable future.

The article was compiled by Global Times reporter Wang Xiaonan, based on an interview with Wang Xiangsui, director of the Center for Strategic Studies, Beihang University. wangxiaonan@globaltimes.com.cn