A few days before the vote in the Diet, the U.S. naval command announced that in September it will send a destroyer to the Sea of Japan equipped with the Aegis radar and missile system, a key component of the missile shield.

The governments of China and north Korea have condemned these moves, rejecting claims by U.S. and Japanese officials that the missile system is “purely defensive.”

By 2005 the U.S. Navy plans to deploy 10 sea-based missile interceptors on Aegis-equipped destroyers in East Asian seas, including the waters around Japan.

Washington has also gained agreement from the governments of Australia and Taiwan to be part of the radar and missile ring. Meanwhile, talks are under way with the government of India, which has already committed scientists to the research effort.

Comprised of the radar and satellite network, sea-based missiles, and the land-based Patriots, such a shield would advance the goal of U.S. and allied forces to be able to launch strikes without fear of retaliatory attacks from north Korea, China, or Russia.

The Asian-based shield, projected to be fully operational by 2007, is part of the more ambitious drive by the U.S. rulers to develop a first-strike nuclear capacity using a detection and interception system based on land, at sea, and in space. It is also part of the accelerating moves by the rulers of Japan to rebuild their military and increasingly deploy their forces abroad.

Using the $1 billion budgeted annually, the Japanese government of Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi projects purchasing 16 of the Patriot missiles over the next decade and outfitting its four Aegis destroyers with a Standard Missile-3.

The sea- and land-stationed batteries of weapons would give the Japanese armed forces two cracks at incoming missiles. To track and target them, the New York Times reported, “Japan would rely on intelligence from United States satellites, but it also plans to construct a land-based radar network and a command and control system.” According to United Press International, U.S. officials have demanded full access to the radar data. If they are denied that, they say, they want a green light to construct their own radar station on Japanese soil.

Howard Baker, the U.S. ambassador to Japan, claimed the missile system “is inherently incapable of offensive operation. It is purely defensive.” Beijing and Pyongyang, which know they are the targets of such military moves, rebutted such claims. The government of Indonesia also expressed concern, saying the decision of the Australian government to enter the system posed the threat of an arms race.

On March 31 the Pentagon announced its decision to sell Taiwan $1.78 billion in radar equipment to detect ballistic missiles. Beijing protested, saying it sent the “wrong message,” and warned against U.S. sales of “advanced weapons” to Taiwan. Washington has backed the Taiwanese government against Beijing since the victory of the Chinese Revolution in 1949.

For its part, Moscow stated in February that it was developing a missile capable of evading the radar and other detection and interception devices.

Officials of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (north Korea) called Washington’s planned September deployment near its coasts of a destroyer equipped with the Aegis air defense system “the most outright hostile act against the DPRK [and] a part of its unchallenged attempt to dominate the Asia-Pacific region.”

In recent weeks the U.S. and south Korean forces have conducted large-scale military exercises targeting the DPRK. In mid-March, the newspaper of the governing Workers Party of Korea, Rodong Sinmum, condemned Washington and Seoul for its Foal Eagle military maneuvers. “The United States often talks about dialogue and peaceful settlement of the nuclear issue, but it seeks to stage a test war reminiscent of a full-scale war aimed to invade north Korea by force,” it stated. The annual exercises, which began March 22, involved south Korean forces alongside 42,000 U.S. troops, including the 37,000 soldiers permanently stationed in south Korea.

A couple of weeks later U.S. military officials announced that 160 U.S. military police in south Korea had taken part in a special one-day “antiterrorist” exercise targeting the DPRK. According to an April 6 report by Agence France-Presse, the drill envisaged fighting with special operations forces from the north. The exercises “included house-to-house combat against a fictitious North Korean platoon leader dubbed ‘Kim Murderman,’” AFP reported.

Rodong Sinmum said Washington’s hostile stance made it impossible to reach any agreement coming out of the talks held in China February 25-28 between Pyongyang and Washington, and also involving Tokyo, Seoul, Beijing, and Moscow. “If the six-way talks are to be continued, an atmosphere favorable for them should be created before anything else,” the north Korean paper said.

At the talks, reported a spokesperson for the DPRK’s foreign ministry, U.S. officials insisted that north Korea abandon its nuclear program in a “verifiable and irreversible manner” before other measures could be discussed. DPRK representatives called on Washington and its south Korean ally to “denuclearize the Korean peninsula.” The negotiations ended in stalemate.  
 
Tokyo threatens to bar DPRK ferry
Maintaining the pressure on north Korea to renounce its nuclear programs and make other concessions to imperialist powers, the coalition government in Japan submitted legislation April 6 that would allow it to bar north Korean boats from Japanese ports. Officials in Tokyo admitted the measure targets the sole north Korean passenger ferry traveling between the two countries.

The officials claim the ferry—which carries goods and money to the DPRK, and north Korean seafood and mushrooms back the other way—is used to smuggle missile parts into the north. AP reported that north Korean residents in Japan protested, “denouncing the legislation as ‘inhumane’ because it severs a vital link between the residents and their families in the North.”

The bill follows legislation in February that empowers Tokyo to slap wide-ranging economic sanctions on the north Korean workers state, including a ban on remittances by family members in Japan.

In addition to its involvement in the U.S.-sponsored “missile shield,” Tokyo is taking other steps to break constitutional restrictions, dating from its defeat by U.S. imperialism in World War II, on the use of its military forces. The most significant move to date is its commitment of 500 troops to the U.S.-commanded occupation forces in Iraq, where they have so far undertaken tasks of “renovating local schools and repairing roads,” according to the Japan Times.

On April 8, after two Japanese aid workers and a journalist were captured and held hostage, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yasuo Fukuda said the government saw “no reason” to withdraw its troops from Iraq.

Like other imperialist powers, the Japanese rulers have used the “global war on terrorism” as a cover for steps to restructure its military in order to more effectively defend their interests around the world. Under a new National Defense Program Outline to be unveiled this year, wrote Reuters correspondent Teruaki Ueno March 19, “Japan will realign its troops and overhaul its armaments to respond more quickly to terrorist, guerrilla and missile attacks involving nuclear and biochemical arms.

The program calls for a small increase in the 145,000-strong full-time ground force, a 30 percent reduction in tanks and artillery pieces, and cutbacks in the air force.

Lance Gatling, a Tokyo-based “defense expert,” told Ueno that “the watchword of late has been ‘get prepared to do without more fighters, warships and tanks’ because the focus of the Defense Agency is going toward long-range surveillance, intelligence and reconnaissance assets”—a reference to the Aegis destroyers and other components of the missile shield.  
 
 
Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home