After years of controversy and disagreement, the U.S. and Japan agreed last week to decouple the terms of an agreement to close the U.S. Marines’ Futenma air base in Okinawa, after negotiations over relocating the base elsewhere on the island had reached a stalemate. The 2006 agreement had required the relocation of Marine Corps Air Station Futenma to another site on Okinawa as a precondition for reducing the amount of U.S. troops stationed there. But heavy opposition among residents of Okinawa to hosting a new base, even in a less populated part of the island, had made the issue a […]