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Japan seeks wider defence network

By Jonathan Marcus
BBC diplomatic correspondent


Trade, bilateral relations and other economic issues will figure prominently in Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's visit to India.

But underlying his talks with Indian leaders will be the changing geo-strategic map of Asia and the desire of some countries - with Japan a prominent player - to forge a new network of relationships; if not to contain China, then at the very least to create a counter-weight to the region's rising giant.

Over recent years long-standing allies like Japan, the United States, and Australia have been renewing their defence ties.

Japan's military posture has undergone some subtle but significant changes.

Japan's armed forces have shrugged off at least some of the restrictions imposed by their constitutional commitment to a solely defensive role.

This more muscular Japan, prompted in large part by concerns over North Korea's nuclear and missile programmes, is also entertaining the idea of broader defence relationships.

New beginning?

Last May, on the sidelines of a regional meeting in Manila, officials from Australia, Japan and the US met for the first time with India at the table, to pursue a broad strategic dialogue.

Some commentators hailed this as the beginning of a new quadrilateral defence relationship.

But this would be premature. What was being proposed is for the moment something "far less than an alliance", Professor Richard J Samuels, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, told me.

His new book Securing Japan charts the changing course of successive Tokyo governments' defence thinking.

"I'd call all this a probe," he said, "but it is a probe with commitment behind it. There's a lot of interest, especially in Japan and the United States."

He says that "these countries are groping for a new set of defence relationships".

Crisis management

In many ways the security architecture of Asia is significantly under-developed.

There is no equivalent political-military organisation to Nato. And the post-World War II dominance of the US in the Pacific is being challenged by the rise of countries like India and China.

Competition and co-operation is as much economic as military but with trans-national threats like terrorism and piracy, and vital trade routes to protect, defence issues cannot be ignored.

It is interesting that Asia's largest security grouping - the Asean regional forum, which brings together the 26 member states with countries like India, Japan, Australia, Canada, the US and EU - has tried to bolster its crisis management role.

It is establishing a quick-reaction group to respond when trouble threatens; but this is perceived very much in diplomatic rather than military terms.

Such steps can be no substitute for formalised, practical relationships between key military players.

Containing Beijing

But if India is being slowly drawn into something that one day might potentially become a more formal alliance, just who would such an alliance be aimed against?

Clearly China's military modernisation is one crucial factor driving this process. But China's growing economic and diplomatic weight is also important.

All four countries involved, at least in public, are quick to assert that this putative alliance is not aimed at anyone, least of all China.

Indian spokesmen are the most vocal in rejecting any idea of "containing" Beijing.

Nonetheless many analysts see such ties as a means to maintain a multi-polar Asia to balance China's growing dominance.

And military alliance or not, next month India is to host a large-scale naval exercise in the Bay of Bengal with ships from Australia, the US and Japan.

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tony6623

it seems that Japan is even interested in containing china more than US.

Francois

I would rather say that Japan seeks at not being contained by China.

Zeng

Francois,

We are not Defense Professionals and may not be well informed on the international defense issues. You are a Defense Professional. We expect you to be more informed than us. Just put one line of non-informative comment here is really not the way a Defense Professional should do.

Please read comments from other Defense Professionals like xinhui and highsea. Then, you can learn something from them and give us more intelligent and informative comments with data, fact or reference. We can learn something from you too.

Thank you very much.

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I am here for exchanging opinions.

Francois

Well, you might know that we all hear much more hate toward Japan from chinese then the opposite, what do you think?
I have been living for 3 years in Japan, never, I say NEVER I have heard anyone telling me chinese this or that.

Nobody can say the opposite.

So, I can say, Japan is looking at not being contained.
WHat bothers you with this sentence?
It is well known that CHina has that purpose to be leader of Eastern Asia, as it used to be in the old days.

The ying, the yang, and the time is turning, will be back in favor of the great empire of the middle, and the other resting outside, quietly, serving the middle.

Cactus

Mr. Abe is out, Mr. Fukuda is in. Big difference in their approach to China.

Veteran Lawmaker Chosen as Japan's Prime Minister - New York Times

Zeng

Chinese people hate Japan because their government didn't do the same thing as German did to their victims.

I didn't live in Japan as long as you. But I visited Japan for many times and speak Japanese. Have you ever visited Yasukuni shrine around 8/15? Do you like what you see there? If Germany set up a similar place in Berlin to honor Hitler and German war criminals, How would you think about the responses from Nazi's victim as well as your country people in France?

Did you see those WWII Japanese army costumed parade? Do you want to see WWII Nazi's SS costumed parade?

http://www.japanesehistory.de/fotos/Yasukuni/

Japanese war crimes - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Lived in Japan for 3 years, I am sure that you saw those Japanese Right-wing trucks running around the cities. Do you like to see those Right-wing trucks?

As a Defense Professionals, you better do more research if you want make comments on this topic.

As early as in the day that Japan announced their surrender in 1945, Chiang Kai-shek had made a speech to Chinese people that we Chinese don't pursue revenge toward ordinary Japanese people. Over a million Japanese military and civilian personals were sent back to Japan without being put into labor camp. Those who were captured by Soviet red army were sent to labor camps. Lot of them died in Siberia.

In 1970s, Japanese secretly put WWII class A war criminals into Yasukuni shrine. In 1980s, they told the world that they did that.

Koizumi insisted to make official visit to Yasukuni shrine, China was against that and cancelled all the top rank meetings with Japan. When Abe took office and showed good wills to improve the relation, China immediately responded and invited him to visit Beijing. Sino-Japan relation was improving better than the Koizumi era. Now, Mr. Fukuda further expressed good wills to improve relation, China again responded positively. This year, there are official celebrations in China and Japan on establishing diplomatic relations for 35 years. Chinese government will invite ~30,000 Japanese to visit China and Japanese government will invite ~20,000 Chinese to visit Japan for the celebration activities.

If both sides have the good wills, we can live peacefully with each other. Eventually, the hostility between China and Japan will and should fade out as time goes on.

But when the direct victims of the Japanese army were still alive and still not get compensated and when those disgusting images from Yasukuni shrine still show up each year, we can't totally forgive them.

gunnut

That's because China hasn't invaded Japan since the 1200s when the Mongolians did it. If you don't count Mongolians as Chinese, then it would have been longer.

Japan invaded China many times in the last 150 years and killed...not too many...just a few million Chinese, and never bothered to appologized for it. In fact, like what Zing said, they worship their war criminals. Hey, I'm all for worshiping war criminals but I draw the line at guys who committed crimes so heinous that Adolf Hitler himself had to intervene. Maybe that was just a legend, but you get the jist.

Let Mao run Japan for 2 decades and then we'll see.

I agree with that. Japan is not well received by other Asian nations due to its WW2 crimes. Its friends are the US and Australia in Asia. Koreans hate Japanese. Filipinos HATE Japanese. I know that from personal experience. Southeast Asia hates Japan. So the Japanese have a lot of work to do to make sure China doesn't box them out.

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"Only Nixon can go to China." -- Old Vulcan proverb.

Francois

Yes, I have been to Yasukuni, many times.
There is a neat museum of war there, very good!
Yes, there are few black trucks, and I never seen anyone listening to them either!

You are educated to hate Japan, that is it.

Now, there are numerous Philipinos in Japan, and a lot of trade.
Never heard of Phil say something bad about Japan. Not in this part of the world.
China and Koreas are fueling hate for their own agendas.

When I talk to Japanese about China, I always get the same answers: vely good food!

astralis

francois,
okay, even ignoring the whitewash about japanese atrocities against chinese, the museum there claims that the Pacific War was instigated by the americans for putting sanctions on japan and by the west for trying to colonialize asia. noble japan was there trying to protect her fellow asians.

yeah- that's neat.

one need not hate japan to point out that the way the japanese have dealt with their past history is very poor, to say the least. and that their policies (thankfully recently changed for the better) demonstrate their own myopia about how the rest of asia thinks of the japanese.

i have. in fact, some of the most vehement japan-haters i know are filipinos and other southeast asians. i've heard chinese say that they would merrily bomb japan if they had the chance; however, i've not seen them become almost violently sick if the word "japan" is mentioned, and go on to spew an hour or so of vitrol about how they would relish personally burning down the house of every japanese in the world- preferably with the japanese in them. they honestly scare the crap outta me with that degree of hate.



it would be a lot harder for the fire to start if it wasn't for the fact that japan, by its words and actions, help heap sticks and provide the gasoline.

the thing is, many japanese are simply ignorant or unwilling to acknowledge what's happened in the past. thus, they simply do not understand why the rest of asia dislikes them so. because of this, they come to the conclusion that the other states just try to use history as an excuse to beat on japan. there is a grain of truth to this, but it is not the whole story, or anything close to the whole story.

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Never let the future disturb you. You will meet it, if you have to, with the same weapons of reason which today arm you against the present.

-Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

troung

Have you gone there and asked someone what people think about the Japanese. It is from my own experience not very nice. And that is Filipinos in the Philippines. I know people who could tell me which members of their families were murdered and raped by the Japanese and this is 60 years later.

In the 1950s the Philippines was not a safe place for any Japanese to visit.

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To sit down with these men and deal with them as the representatives of an enlightened and civilized people is to deride ones own dignity and to invite the disaster of their treachery - General Matthew Ridgway

gunnut

Do you know why Japanese don't have anything bad to say about others?

1. Their culture tells them to withhold ill words unless absolutely necessary, especially in front of a foreigner
2. They weren't invaded by China, Korea, Phillipines, or Malaya

A lot of Asians today hate Japan not because they were taught to hate Japan, but because they lived through Japanese occupation.

We are not here to try to brainwashing you into hating Japan. We're here to explain to you why Japan isn't well-liked by other Asians.

Francois

Well, I am not coing herein to get that kind of lesson, as I know my history, and the one of this part of the world also.
What I can say is that living in Japan is good, at almost any level.
And I arrived here with the worst fears, all this *** nazis in the streets killing foreigners, racists and all.
Funny, I shouldn't have listened that much to chinese...

Now, I will tell you.
I have some family around Limoge, France, and they might very well been exterminated if the nazis didn't choose that next village (Oradour sur Glane).
Well, this episode of history has never been apologized for by Germans AFAIK.
Now, I can make the difference between the history and the present.
I have no hate for Germans, my education didn't force me to think so, I even almost married one...

Officer of Engineers

Who the hell cares? The hatre between these peoples is real whether you like it or not and the Japanese people is doing NOTHING to reduce this hatre one bit whether you like it or not.

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Chimo

gunnut

We never said Japanese are not orderly or polite. They are very orderly and polite. They are very clean. They take pride in their work. They are very efficient at what they do. Japan is a great place to visit.

However, if you want to be accepted by the Japanese as one of them, that's an entirely different matter. They are quite xenophobic. Ever notice how homogeneous Japan is outside of the major cities where foreigners work for big corporations?

I'm not saying you should or shouldn't hate Germans. But think about this, did Germany admit wrong doing for invading France in WW2? Do they regularly celebrate Hitler, Goering, Himmler, or other prominent Nazi's birthdays and their deeds? That's the difference between Germany and Japan.

Japan could have reduced tension by a lot if they had admitted wrong doing, or even admitted the invasion of various Asian countries, in WW2. They don't even have to start by appologizing. Just admit they started the war in the Pacific and the invasion will be a huge change. Right now, their history text books don't use the word "invasion" by Japan in Asia. They use the word "access" to describe the invasion.