US seeks to house missiles in the Pacific. Some allies don't want them
WASHINGTON - The governor of a Japanese territory where the Pentagon is thinking about basing missiles capable of threatening China has a message for the United States: Not on my island.
"I firmly oppose the idea," said Gov. Denny Tamaki, the governor of Okinawa, in an email to the Los Angeles Times.
Officials in other Asian countries are also signaling they don't want them.
But Pentagon planners aren't backing down after the Trump administration withdrew last year from a 33-year-old arms control treaty that barred U.S. land-based intermediate range missiles in Asia.
Senior officials now say that putting hundreds of American missiles with non-nuclear warheads in Asia would quickly and cheaply shift the balance of power in the western Pacific back in the United States' favor amid growing Pentagon concern that China's own expanding arsenal of
