Counterpunch
Newsletter
February 05,
2013
U.S. Goading
Japan into Confrontation with China
Will Japan Take the Bait?
by JOHN V.
WALSH
“………..Their defeat
Doth by their own insinuation grow.
‘Tis dangerous when the baser nature comes
Between the pass and fell incensèd points
Of mighty opposites.”
– Hamlet on the deaths of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.
At the height of the 2012 election campaign in late
October, a U.S. delegation tiptoed into Japan and then China with scant media
coverage. It was “unofficial,” but Hillary Clinton gave it her blessing. And it
was headed by two figures high in the imperial firmament, Richard L. Armitage,
who served as Deputy Secretary of State for George W. Bush; and Joseph S. Nye
Jr., a former Pentagon and intelligence official in the Clinton administration
and Dean Emeritus of Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. The delegation
also included James B. Steinberg, who served as the Deputy Secretary of State
in the Obama administration and Stephen J. Hadley, Bush Two’s national security
adviser.
The delegation was billed as an attempt by the U.S.
to defuse tensions between Japan and China over a number of small islands both
claim. But was it? What is the outlook of these influential figures?
Interestingly, Armitage and Nye provide us with a partial answer in a brief
paper published the preceding August by the Center for International and
Strategic Studies (CSIS), entitled “The Japan-U.S. Alliance. Anchoring
Stability in Asia,” the carefully crafted fruit of a CSIS Study Group they
chaired. The strategy
proposed therein, as outlined below, should be very distressing to the Chinese
– as well as to the Japanese and Americans.
The Armitage/Nye paper addresses itself to the
Japanese themselves, the target audience, in the Introduction as follows:
“Together, we face the re-rise of China and its
attendant uncertainties…..
Tier-one nations have significant economic weight, capable
military forces global vision, and demonstrated leadership on international
concerns. Although there are areas in which the United States can better
support the (Japan-U.S.) alliance, we have no doubt of the United States’
continuing tier-one status. For Japan, however, there is a decision to be made.
Does Japan desire to continue to be a tier-one nation, or is she content to
drift into tier-two status? If tier-two status is good enough for the Japanese
people and their government, this report will not be of interest.” (Emphasis,
J.W)
Read that carefully. It is a thinly veiled appeal
to the worst aspects of Japanese militarism and nationalism, which for good
reason are so reviled in East Asia. It is done in the context of the “re-rise’
of China, a phrase that invokes China’s past world supremacy and Japan’s
inferior status at the time. What sort of beast is this disturbing plea
designed to awaken?
Again in the Introduction, the authors make the
military dimensions of their appeal quite specific, writing: “Japan’s
Self-Defense Forces (JSDF)—now the most trusted institution in Japan—are poised
to play a larger role in enhancing Japanese security and reputation if
anachronistic constraints can be eased.” (Emphasis, J.W.) What are these
“anachronistic restraints”? As the authors later make clear, they are embodied
in Article 9 of the Japanese Constitution, written under the tutelage of
MacArthur’s occupying forces. The Article so irksome to Armitage and Nye reads:
“ARTICLE 9. Aspiring sincerely to an international
peace based on justice and order, the Japanese people forever renounce war as a
sovereign right of the nation and the threat or use of force as means of
settling international disputes. (2) To accomplish the aim of the preceding
paragraph, land, sea, and air forces, as well as other war potential, will
never be maintained. The right of belligerency of the state will not be
recognized.”
This is a breathtakingly appealing, pacifist
statement; and there is a brief, worthwhile account of Article 9 here. Article
9 is extremely popular in Japan, and eliminating it from the Constitution would
not be easy, as Armitage and Nye recognize (1). Moreover, Armitage and Nye
concede that Article 9 prohibits collective self-defense, which involves joint
military action by the U.S. and Japan . As they say in their paper:
“The irony, however, is that even under the most
severe conditions requiring the protection of Japan’s interests, our
forces are legally prevented from collectively defending Japan. … Prohibition
of collective self-defense is an impediment to the (U.S.-Japan) alliance.”
(Emphasis, JW. Note that the authors do not say protection of Japan but of
Japan’s “interests.”)
What then is the U.S. to do? Armitage and Nye see a
solution in the joint rescue operations mounted by the Japan Self Defense
Forces (JSDF) and U.S. forces (Operation Tomodachi, meaning “Operation
Friends”) in response to the earthquake, tsunami and Fukushima disaster of
March 11, 2011, known as 3-11 in Japan. There, the joint rescue efforts were
not opposed by those who favor Article 9 and the spirit it embodies. Armitage and Nye suggest that
Operation Tomodachi simply be taken as a precedent to justify future joint
operations. In
other words, the Japanese Constitution is simply to be ignored, pretty much the
tactic that Truman inaugurated in the U.S. to plunge the country into the Korean
war and the tactic Barack Obama has used in interventions like the one in
Libya. Simply ignore the Constitution and its requirement that the U.S.
Congress alone can declare war. This is an example, as if another were needed,
of how our elites view the “rule of law” to which they appeal so often. (And
one wonders whether from the outset Operation Tomodachi was viewed in part in
this way by its architects. How many other U.S. humanitarian missions might
have ancillary covert purposes, one might ask?)
Armitage and Nye also mention that the Yanai
Committee report of 2006 notes that the prime minister could by fiat put aside
the Article IX prohibition, as in antipiracy efforts in Djibouti. But this
report has been seen as an effort to subvert the Japanese Constitution. As
Prof. Craig Martin of Washburn School of Law, an American expert in these
matters, wrote at the time, “the exercise of using an extra-constitutional body
to advance a ‘revision’ of the interpretation of the Constitution, was
illegitimate on a number of levels, the most important being that it was an
end-run around the amendment provisions in the Constitution.” But then that is
precisely what Armitage and Nye are up to.
Article 9 remains popular in Japan although its
popularity has been substantially eroded in recent years. The reasons for this
and the forces behind it deserve some careful examination in light of the U.S.
Empire’s “pivot” to East Asia. But so long as the Japanese Communist Party and
Japanese Socialists remain a force in government and society there is little
chance that Article 9 will be repealed, making the end run necessary if Japan
is to be remilitarized. The very existence of the JDSF in fact can be seen as
illegal under the provisions of Article 9, which is why the JDSF was originally
dubbed a National Police Force. Armitage and Nye sum up the military aspects of
their report in the following recommendation to Japan: “Japan should expand the
scope of her responsibilities to include the defense of Japan and defense with
the United States in regional contingencies. The allies require more robust, shared, and
interoperable ISR (Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance) capabilities
and operations that extend well beyond Japanese territory. It would be a
responsible authorization on the part of Japan to allow U.S. forces and JSDF to
respond in full cooperation throughout the security spectrum of peacetime,
tension, crisis, and war.” (Emphasis, JW.) For diplomats that is
about as specific and concrete as it gets. And it is very troubling since it is
hardly a plan for peace.
The Armitage/Nye paper contains much more. Japan is urged to participate
more fully in forums involving the Philippines, India, Taiwan and the Republic
of Korea (ROK), i.e. South Korea. China is not mentioned in this regard
– not surprisingly. Armitage and Nye know that this is a tough sell for the
citizens of the ROK with vivid memories of Japanese conquest and atrocities in
WWII. But Armitage and Nye hope it can be engineered.
The report also has an economic dimension. The idea
of using India as a battering ram against China, which was popular in the Bush
administration and which was aided by Israel, is not really viable. India is
riven by internal disputes, corruption, religious divisions and a Maoist rebellion
over a large part of its territory. And economically it is wanting. Military
power grows from economic power and so the U.S. needs the aid of a powerful
regional economic power in its drive against China. That is the role of Japan
in the eyes of Armitage and Nye. Thus, to be useful to the U.S., Japan must
restore its economy, now in decline. This is really a tall order since Japan’s
main trading partner and the principle destination for its exports is China.
That became evident in the recent Chinese boycott of Japanese goods as the
dispute over the Diaoyou/Sinkaku island intensified recently, which hurt Japan
greatly but had little effect on the Chinese economy. But again Armitage and
Nye hold out hope. Their solution is for Japan to restore and expand its
nuclear power. (One wonders why the U.S. environmentalists have not spoken out
about that and whether the Japanese environmentalists have knowledge of these
plans for Japan, hatched in the U.S.) In addition Armitage and Nye offer Liquid
Natural Gas (LNG) and other petroleum products from North America as more
largesse to link Japan closer to the U.S. As they write: “The shale gas
revolution in the continental United States and the abundant gas reserves in
Alaska present Japan and the United States with a complementary opportunity:
the United States should begin to export LNG from the lower 48 states by 2015,
and Japan continues to be the world’s largest LNG importer. Since 1969, Japan
has imported relatively small amounts of LNG from Alaska, and interest is
picking up in expanding that trade link, given Japan’s need to increase and
diversify its sources of LNG imports, especially in light of 3-11.” Again one
wonders where the voices of U.S. environmentalists are on this matter.
The idea of Japan outdoing China in East Asia
economically is a pipe dream, with or without the U.S. China has a population
of 1.3 billion and Japan 130 million. To expect Japan to emerge as a serious
challenge to China in the long term is like hoping that in the immediate future
Canada with its 34 million can challenge the U.S. with 315 million. And China
has a vibrant economy, an educated workforce and a culture to be reckoned with,
from which Japan’s emerged and followed until it was “Westernized.”
So what is Japan’s protection to be in the face of
such a large and powerful neighbor? For one thing, Japan certainly has the wherewithal to deter
aggression from any quarter with its advanced technology and its potential for
nuclear weapons development. For another, China has no record of expansionism overseas even going
back to 1400 when it was the world’s premier naval power but never conquered or
established colonies or took slaves. But a large part of Japanese
security lies in an increasing respect for international law with its emphasis
on sovereignty. The concept of sovereignty in international law is the
protection of small nations from the depredations of large ones. And ironically
the principal threat to
the idea of sovereignty comes from the United States and the West with their
pre-emptive wars and “humanitarian” interventions, which trash the classical
concept of sovereignty. Japan should be wary of dealings with such powers and
supporting such ideas.
For Japan to
take the bait and be the cat’s paw for U.S. schemes in East Asia borders on the
insane. And diplomatic exchanges between China and Japan
in recent weeks following the Japanese elections show that many Japanese
recognize this. They and the Chinese seem increasingly willing to work out differences
in a structure of peace. We should hope so – and so should the Japanese. He who
takes the bait is often left holding the bag.
John V.
Walsh can be reached at John.Endwar@gmail.com
|
Thursday, February 7, 2013
Will Japan Take the Bait? by John V. Walsh
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