Politics & Power Quote by Howard Baker

Baker’s sentence is a masterclass in statesmanly caution: it promises scrutiny while quietly refusing ownership. The verb choice, "examine", signals process, not outcome. He stacks bureaucratic nouns - "language of the treaty itself", "SOFA", "interim and further arrangements" - to move the conversation from outrage to paperwork, where urgency tends to evaporate into committees and clauses. Even the timeline marker "since 1995" functions as a pressure valve: yes, something happened, and yes, responses followed, but now it is all safely historicized as a chain of arrangements rather than a live moral crisis.

The context matters. Baker was sent as Washington’s emissary to Okinawa after the 1995 rape of a local schoolgirl by U.S. servicemen, a flashpoint that intensified anger over the U.S.-Japan Status of Forces Agreement. By foregrounding "the concerns of the Government of Japan", he nods to Tokyo’s sovereignty without conceding that Okinawans are the ones bearing the daily costs of basing - crime, accidents, land use, and a persistent sense of occupation by invitation. It’s a diplomatic sleight of hand: address the ally-state, not the restive locality.

Then the line that does the real work: "Those are decisions I cannot make". Baker frames himself as honest, even humble, but the subtext is jurisdictional insulation. He signals empathy and openness while tethering any real change to distant authorities and entrenched defense priorities. The intent isn’t to renegotiate SOFA in the room; it’s to keep the alliance stable, cool the temperature, and buy time - the most underrated tool in foreign policy.