| |
US turns up missile defense pressure on
Japan
By Axel Berkofsky
"We
are not pressing Japan to do anything. It is not the way
we deal with our allies," US Undersecretary of Defense
Douglas Feith said during a recent visit to Tokyo to
gauge whether Japan will fully support US plans to
develop a regional missile defense system for East Asia.
The agenda for US-Japan bilateral talks on
security over the past months and years, however,
suggest otherwise and many in Japan believe that Feith's
showing up in Tokyo was indeed meant to help Japan make
up its mind on missile defense. Despite Feith's promises
to go soft on the US junior alliance partner, US
requests to share its "obsession" with Theater Missile
Defense (TMD) are once again on the agenda, critics in
Japan fear.
It appears that Japan's Defense
Agency Director General Shigeru Ishiba doesn't really
mind, as a few days before Feith flew into Tokyo he
reminded his fellow Japanese that North Korea has
already deployed roughly 100 ballistic missiles capable
of reaching major Japanese cities. "Missile defense is
indispensable for Japan's security," he said. Ishiba's
statement confirmed once again that his agency, unlike
his government, is in sync with the Pentagon, which
complains that Japan's enthusiasm for missile defense is
very limited at best.
Japan has conducted joint
research with the United States to develop a regional
missile defense system after North Korea's firing of a
missile that flew over Japanese territory in August
1998. Japan's defense establishment and conservative
media have been worried about a North Korean missile
attack ever since, and in August 1999, the US and Japan
signed a bilateral accord to jointly conduct research on
the missile system.
The Japanese government,
however, insists that a final decision on whether to
move beyond research and on to the development phase is
not to be expected before 2003 or 2004 - if the system
turns out to be technically feasible at all. Costs for
the joint research were estimated to be US$500 million
for the first five to six years and although both
countries agreed to share the bill equally, Japan's
financial contribution so far has been a modest $55
million.
It seems that the US is on Japan's
case, urging it to give the go-ahead for the development
phase of the system while it reminds Japan's
policy-makers that the missile defense program is
nothing less than a "key test case" for future security
cooperation between the two countries.
"Business
as usual," said a political commentator in Japan,
claiming that US-Japan bilateral talks and pressuring
Japan in defense matters has already become pretty much
the same thing. "Japan's policy-makers have got used to
the US dictating its security policy agenda, while
policy-makers in Washington are all too familiar with
Japan being as vague as possible when military issues
are on the agenda," he said.
When Japan will be
ready to move on to the development phase of the system
is not clear, as - depending on who is front of the
cameras - it could be a "couple of years" or "very
soon".
The sooner the better as far as Japan's
military is concerned. Recent North Korean threats to
end its freeze on testing its missiles over East Asia
might indeed speed up the country's decision-making
progress. "TMD is the logical answer to the increased
number of Chinese ballistic missiles aimed at Taiwan and
North Korean missiles threatening Japanese territory,"
said a high-ranking Japanese military officer, who
thinks that the "time has finally come to punish North
Korea's nuclear blackmail".
For now, Japan and
the US plan to further discuss the missile defense
program in a meeting to be held in December. Also on the
agenda is the mobile Navy Theater-Wide Defense (NTWD)
system, which could be deployed on US and Japanese
high-tech Aegis warships. Japan is currently studying
NTWD sensor technology that uses infrared rays, as well
as lightweight and low-cost rockets. The system is
designed to intercept missiles during their ascent by
taking advantage of the mobility of naval vessels.
For its part, the Japanese navy has already
fallen in love with the system and wants to deploy it on
vessels as soon as possible. "Nobody can compete with
the US-Japan alliance if TMD is deployed on Aegis
ships," said a high-ranking military officer, indicating
that not even China would dare to mess with its missiles
if the system was in place.
Japanese critics, on
the other hand, claim that going ahead with missile
defense will accelerate the ongoing arms race in East
Asia and encourage China to build up its arsenal. "Not
only does TMD cost a huge sum of money, but it also
triggers an arms race that could seriously affect
Japan's security policy. We must not repeat the same
folly of the Cold War," wrote Kiichi Fujiwara, professor
at the faculty of law at Tokyo University, to counter
American rhetoric that missile defense will eventually
cause China to reduce the number of its own missiles.
Reports that China is trying to increase the
number of its short-range missiles directed at Taiwan
suggest that the opposite might be the case.
The
US and Japan, however, remain unimpressed, usually
claiming that the arms race in East Asia takes place
anyway - with or without TMD. "Although TMD may be
destabilizing in the short run, it will turn out to be
stabilizing in the long run as soon as China identifies
the 'benefits' of missile defense for East Asian
security," said a scholar at Japan's National Defense
Academy.
China has yet to recognize the benefits
of a system that could neutralize its limited ballistic
missile capabilities that it uses to deter Tiawan from
declaring independence. Occasional Pentagon announcments
that Taiwan may get TMD cause a stir in China, which
sees its plans to reunite Taiwan with the mainland in
jeopardy every time missile defense is mentioned.
Expanding the TMD umbrella over Taiwan is indeed
the "worst-case scenario for Chinese plans to reunite
China and Taiwan with military force", wrote Yoichi
Funabashi, columnist for the Japanese daily Asahi
Shimbun. "In Taiwan, the T in TMD already stands for
Taiwan," he recently wrote, indicating that Taipei is
more than ready to invest in missile defense now that a
couple of hundred Chinese missiles are pointing at the
island's major cities. If a worthless Chinese missile
arsenal is bad news for Beijing, speculation about a
US-Japan-Taiwan trilateral alliance might even be worse.
While the US usually brushes away these fears as
"baseless speculations", China is worried that missile
defense with Taiwanese participation could lay the basis
of a US-led military alliance directed at China.
Japan's defense establishment, on the other
hand, does not apparently spend too much time worrying
about the strategic implications of missile defense.
Japan and Taiwan have long been referred to as "silent
partners" in Japanese defense circles and huddling up
with Taiwan is "only natural" should Chinese missiles
start flying over the Taiwan Strait.
Even if
East Asian security reality turns out to be less
dramatic than this, Japan's navy, as some hard-core
defense hawks hope, might still want to pursue plans to
conduct naval military maneuvers with Taiwan one day, to
make sure that the sea lanes in the Taiwan Strait and
beyond remain safe should the going get rough.
Missile defense or patrolling Asian waters
alongside potential military allies: whatever it may be,
at least Japan's military has something to look forward
to.
(©2002 Asia Times Online Co, Ltd. All rights
reserved. Please contact content@atimes.com
for information on our sales and syndication policies.)
|
| |
|
(Oct 12, '02)
|
|
 |
|
