Vol. 77/No. 6      February 18, 2013

“I envisage a strategy whereby Australia, India, Japan, and the US state of Hawaii form a diamond to safeguard the maritime commons stretching from the Indian Ocean region to the western Pacific,” wrote Shinzo Abe in a November article, shortly before he was elected prime minister of Japan.

U.S. defense officials are working with Tokyo to revise guidelines on how their two armies work together as the Japanese government bit by bit clears political obstacles and constitutional restrictions on use of its military, dating back to conditions imposed by Washington following Japan’s defeat in World War II.

Japan currently has the sixth-largest annual military budget in the world, set to increase by 2.2 percent starting in April.

Soon after taking office Abe sent Japanese Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida on a trip to try to cement relations with other U.S.-allied regimes in the region, including in Australia, Brunei, the Philippines and Singapore.

“Japan’s path since the end of World War II has been to firmly protect democracy and basic human rights and stress the rule of law,” Abe claimed, according to Reuters Jan. 15, saying they were “strengthening ties with countries that share such values.”

But one key U.S. ally, the South Korean government, has not been so amenable to the increased Japanese muscle flexing, despite visits from U.S. State Department, Pentagon and White House officials.

In June a planned Japan-South Korea intelligence-sharing pact was scuttled after word leaked out in South Korea, where hatred of Japanese imperialism’s brutal occupation of the country prior to Japan’s defeat in World War II still runs deep.

Washington has been encouraging Tokyo to play more of a role both in containing China, the biggest competitor to Washington’s military and economic might, and isolating North Korea. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton emphasized their “joint commitment” to U.N. sanctions against North Korea at a Jan. 18 press conference in Washington, D.C., with Kishida.

A dispute over islands in the East China Sea administered by Tokyo, known as Senkaku in Japan and Diaoyu in China, is one source of rising tensions between Beijing and Tokyo.

On Jan. 10, after a Chinese transport plane flew near the islands on what Beijing’s Defense Ministry described as a “routine patrol,” Tokyo sent two F-15 fighter jets to tail it. The Chinese military responded with two J-10 fighter planes to “monitor” the Japanese aircraft. According to The Diplomat, an online magazine based in Tokyo, more than 10 Chinese military aircraft were involved in the incident, which ended when the Chinese planes left.

“Although the United States does not take a position on the ultimate sovereignty of the islands, we acknowledge they are under the administration of Japan and we oppose any unilateral actions that would seek to undermine Japanese administration,” Clinton said at the Jan. 18 press conference.

Meanwhile, the Japanese and South Korean governments are disputing control of the Dokdo Islands, which are administered by Seoul.

Adding fuel to the fire, Prime Minister Abe has indicated he wants to “revise” a 1993 apology for forcing thousands of Korean women to be sex slaves for Japanese troops during World War II.  

 
 
Related articles:
Washington, UN Security Council tighten sanctions on North Korea
Australia, UK summit deepens military ties
 
 
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