To combat the spread of international communism jointly, Japan and Germany
signed an Anti-Comintern Pact on November 25, 1936. Italy joined the pact in
1937.
The Tripartite Treaty signed by Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy and
Imperial Japan on September 27, 1940, in Berlin is known as the Axis Alliance
based on the concept of a Rome-Berlin Axis put forth by Italian dictator Benito
Mussolini in 1936. The alliance was subsequently joined by Hungary, Romania,
Slovakia and Bulgaria. The Nationalist government in China under the Kuomintang
had been advised by German military experts. This relationship came to an
abrupt end in 1936 after the Axis Alliance as China and Japan were at war.
In August 1939, Germany broke the terms of the Anti-Comintern Pact when it
signed the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, a non-aggression agreement between the
Soviet Union and Germany. On September 25, 1940, German foreign minister
Joachim von Ribbentrop sent a telegram to Soviet foreign minister Vyacheslav
Molotov stating that Germany, Italy and Japan were about to sign a military
alliance but claiming that this alliance was directed not at the Soviet Union
but toward potential US hostility.
The telegram read: "Its exclusive purpose is to bring the elements pressing for
America's entry into the war to their senses by conclusively demonstrating to
them if they enter the present struggle they will automatically have to deal
with the three great powers as adversaries." As Germany saw it, the purpose was
deterrence, not aggression, against the United States.
The Anti-Comintern Pact was officially reactivated in 1941 when Germany
launched Operation Barbarossa against the Soviet Union on June 22. On November
25, the pact was renewed for another five years with Germany, Japan, Italy,
Hungary, Spain, Bulgaria, Croatia, Denmark, Finland, Romania, Slovakia, the
puppet state of Manchukuo and the puppet Nanjing government of Wang Jingwei in
Japanese-occupied China, and the Provincial Government of Free India, a shadow
government in Japanese-occupied India led by Subhas Chandra Bose, a militant
Indian nationalist who opposed Mahatma Gandhi's passive resistance to British
imperialism. All over Japanese-occupied Southeast Asia, from Indonesia to
Vietnam to the Philippines, all nationalists who resisted Japanese aggression
were "communists".
In September 1940, Japan, as a charter member of the Axis Alliance, coerced the
Vichy government of defeated France into turning northern Indochina over to
Japan. From Japan's perspective, it was a natural demand from a victorious ally
to a defeated adversary. The US, through its special relationship with British
and French imperialism, retaliated against Japanese expansion into French
Southeast Asia by imposing trade sanctions prohibiting the export of steel,
scrap iron, and aviation gasoline to Japan from the allegedly neutral and
free-trading United States.
In April 1941, Japan signed a neutrality treaty with the USSR as insurance
against possible attack from the north if it were to come into conflict with
British and US interests while expanding toward Southeast Asia. Similar to the
German-Soviet non-aggression pact, the USSR entered a neutrality treaty with
Japan to avoid being involved in intra-capitalist conflicts and to neutralize
potential British-Japanese convergence against the USSR. The Japan-USSR
neutrality treaty lasted until August 8, 1945, when the USSR declared war on
Japan two days after the US dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima.
Two months after the signing of the Japan-USSR Neutrality Treaty, when Germany
invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941, Japanese leaders considered breaking the
treaty and joining their German ally from the east. A statement by Ribbentrop
on the declaration of war on the Soviet Union issued in Berlin on June 22,
1941, began with the following paragraphs:
When in the summer of 1939
the Reich government, motivated by a desire to achieve adjustment of interests
between Germany and the USSR, approached the Soviet government, they were aware
of the fact that it was no easy matter to reach an understanding with a state
that on one hand claimed to belong to a community of individual nations with
rights and duties resulting therefrom, yet on the other hand was ruled by a
party that, as a section of the Comintern, was striving to bring about world
revolution - in other words, the very dissolution of these individual nations.
The German government, putting aside their serious misgivings occasioned by
this fundamental difference between political aims of Germany and Soviet Russia
and by the sharp contrast between diametrically opposed conceptions of National
Socialism and Bolshevism, made the attempt.
They were guided by the idea that the elimination of the possibility of war,
which would result from an understanding between Germany and Russia, and
safeguarding of the vital necessities of the two people, between whom friendly
relations had always existed, would offer the best guarantee against further
spreading of the communist doctrine of international Jewry over Europe.
War against the spread of internationalism Ribbentrop was invoking the threat of international communism against the
Westphalia order of nation-states as a pretext for war. The same pretext was
invoked by the US to launch to Cold War. Yet the post-Cold War aim of US
foreign policy adopts similar expansionist internationalism to "enlarge
democracy" to justify regime changes around the world, challenging the
Westphalia world order of nation-states. Such an internationalist approach will
again lead to world war.
Making one of the most fateful decisions of World War II if not the 20th
century, Japan chose to stay out of the European war by not attacking the
Soviet Union and instead to intensify its regional push toward the southeast
for much-needed strategic material to overcome US sanctions. Japan had
calculated that Germany would quickly defeat the USSR without Japanese help, as
it did France, since Japan had defeated Czarist Russia in the Russo-Japanese
War of 1904-05. And Japanese occupation of eastern China faced more threat from
the direction of the Pacific. Both Germany and Japan underestimated the
positive effect of the communist leadership on Russia.
On July 23, 1941, Japan occupied southern Indochina. Two days later, the US,
Britain and the Netherlands, the three financial powers in the West, froze
Japanese assets, making it impossible for Japan to purchase oil, which would
within three months cripple its military as well as its economy. This act of
financial war led Japan to attack Pearl Harbor in the US Pacific island
territory of Hawaii on December 7, 1941, to try to destroy the US Pacific Fleet
and create a situation with which, Tokyo hoped, to force a compromising peace
on the United States. Japan calculated that Germany would be forced by the
terms of the Axis Alliance to declare war on the United States and US
preoccupation with Europe would give Japan a free hand in expanding and
consolidating its hold on Asia.
That was exactly what happened up until the defeat of Germany. Japan's answer
to Berlin's call for Tokyo to contribute to the Axis Alliance by attacking the
USSR was that a Pacific front would achieve the same result - to weaken Allied
war efforts in Europe.
German leader Adolf Hitler admired and respected the British and considered
them to share many of the superior Aryan qualities and values possessed by
Germanic peoples, as evidenced by the Germanic lineage of the British royalty.
In Mein Kampf he argued that to achieve its foreign-policy objectives,
Germany would have to form an alliance with Aryan Britain. No sacrifice was too
great if it was a necessary means of gaining England's friendship, Hitler
wrote.
As soon as he gained power, Hitler repeatedly told visiting British
politicians, diplomats and Nazi sympathizers that he appreciated British
understanding that the terms of the Treaty of Versailles were too harsh for a
permanent peace. He was assured by many Britons in high places that Britain was
unlikely to declare war if Germany were to violate some of the more
unreasonable aspects of the treaty.
British conservatives told Hitler that traditional British antagonism against
Russia had been accentuated by that nation's having come under communism and
the revolution's regicide of the House of Romanov, which was related by blood
to Queen Victoria. Britain and Germany had a common phobia about a Europe
dominated by the USSR in terms of both geopolitics and ideology.
Before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, US president Franklin D Roosevelt
had declared his country neutral in the European conflict. Personally hostile
to Hitler's Nazi philosophy, FDR was well aware of the strong isolationist
sentiments and the pro-German feelings of a large ethnic-German population in
the United States. However, Roosevelt did all he could to let Britain receive
US supplies and loans to enable it to continue fighting the war after the fall
of France.
Hitler knew Germany would eventually come into conflict with the United States.
He wanted to complete German control of Europe so that any future fight with
the US would be between equals, and not in Europe but on the North American
continent. German submarines were ordered to avoid attacking ships with US
passengers crossing the Atlantic to avoid provoking the US. He also tried to
persuade his Japanese ally to war against the Soviet Union and not threaten US
or British interests in Asia until after the USSR had been defeated. A German
attack on the USSR to oppose international communism would give the US an
ideological incentive not to interfere in Europe.
Hitler surprised by Pearl Harbor
Hitler was flabbergasted by Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor, which prematurely
dragged the US into the war in Europe. Hitler, who had previously called the
Japanese "honorary Aryans", the precursor of apartheid's categorization of
Japanese as "honorary whites", was reported to have complained that "this is
what happens what your allies are not Anglo-Saxons".
Hitler was also reported to have told friendly British diplomats before the war
that he would gladly send a few divisions to the Far East to help Britain
contain the "yellow race".
Racial contradictions in the Axis Alliance prevented coordinated unity between
Germany and Japan. Berlin was more surprised by Japan's "surprise attack" on
Pearl Harbor than Washington was. Hitler had expected Japan to attack
Singapore, not Pearl Harbor.
Fascist racism and the yellow race
Artur Silgailis, chief of staff of Inspection General of the Latvian Legion,
the Latvian Waffen-SS, in his book Latvian Legion (James Bender
Publishing, 1986, pp 348-349), describes a conversation he had with Heinrich
Himmler, head of the SS (Schutzstaffel, or "Protective Echelon") and the
second-most-powerful man in Nazi Germany.
According to Silgailis, Himmler said: "After the unification of all the German
nations into one family ... to include, in the family, all the Roman nations
whose living space is favored by nature with a milder climate ... I am
convinced that after the unification, the Roman nations will be able to
persevere as the Germans ... This enlarged family of the white race will then
have the mission to include the Slavic nations into the family also because
they too are of the white race ... it is only with such a unification of the
white race that the Western culture could be saved from the yellow race ..."
The composition of the Waffen-SS ("Armed SS"), an all-volunteer ideological
military unit, testified to the popularity of Nazism all over Europe outside of
Germany. Of the 1 million men who served in the Waffen-SS during the course of
the war, 60%, or 600,000 men, were non-German volunteers from other European
countries. Non-German volunteers came from the Netherlands, Belgium, Finland,
France, Denmark, Norway, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Ukraine, Byelorussia (now
Belarus), Spain, Italy, Hungary, Yugoslavia and even a very small group of
British volunteers, known as the Legion of St George.
The foreign Waffen-SS units were all deployed on the eastern front, first
because they had specifically volunteered to fight communism, and second so
that they would never be asked to fight their native countrymen. All but a few
thousand of the 20,000 French Waffen-SS volunteers, organized into a division
called Legion Charlemagne, were killed in the Battle of Berlin in 1945. They
were diehard ideologues rather than opportunists, since by 1945 fascism was
visibly a lost cause.
Japanese attack helped Roosevelt enter war
President Roosevelt declared war on Japan on December 9, 1941, two days after
the Pearl Harbor attack, but did not mention Germany in his "Day of Infamy"
speech before Congress. It was still possible for Hitler to postpone the war
with the US, but he was forced to preserve the Axis Alliance by honoring German
obligations to Japan. Thus on December 11, Germany declared war on the United
States. It was a major strategic error based on Hitler's miscalculation that
the US would deal with Japan first and Europe after.
Roosevelt had other ideas. Several witnesses have commented on FDR's
determination to bring the US into the war in Europe before the Pearl Harbor
attack. According to US General Alfred C Wedermeyer:
Franklin D
Roosevelt, the professed exponent of democracy, was as successful as any
dictator in keeping the Congress and the public in the dark about his secret
commitments in relation to Great Britain, commitments which scoffed at the wish
and will of the voters, who had re-elected Roosevelt only because he had
assured them that he would keep us out of the war. In fact, there are few more
shameless examples of cynical disregard of the people's will than those which
came to light in Roosevelt's personal correspondence with [British prime
minister Winston] Churchill, revealed in Churchill's books. This correspondence
and Churchill's own description of his conversations with [Roosevelt adviser]
Harry Hopkins, whom he described as 'mainstay and goader' of the American
president, prove beyond doubt that Roosevelt, already in January 1941, had
concluded a secret alliance with Great Britain, which pledged America to war.
P H Nicoll, in England's War against Germany, wrote: "Clare Boothe-Luce
shocked many people by saying at the Republican Party Congress in 1944 that
Roosevelt 'had lied us [the USA] into the war'. However, after this statement
proved to be correct, the Roosevelt followers ceased to deny it, but praised it
by claiming he was 'forced to lie' to save his country and then England and
'the world'." (Clare Boothe-Luce was a writer and activist who became a
Republican congresswoman in 1942.)
Without a German declaration of war on the United States, Roosevelt might still
face an uphill fight in overcoming US isolationism. After the Pearl Harbor
attack, the US would have to retaliate against the Japanese, but there was
still no compelling reason to get involved in the war in Europe, which would in
fact delay punitive action against Japan. The German declaration of war solved
the problem for Roosevelt. It linked Pearl Harbor with the Axis Alliance.
Immediately after the Japanese attack, Wedermeyer at the War Plans Department
formulated a "Victory Program", which would largely determine how and where US
forces would fight World War II. The plan was presented to Roosevelt in
mid-December 1941. This policy became known as "Europe First" despite the fact
the Germany did not attack the US.
The Europe First policy called for seizing a foothold in Western Europe by
landing a vastly superior force on the European shore at the earliest possible
date after the Atlantic was cleared of German U-boats. Wedermeyer calculated
that US troops would have to outnumber the Wehrmacht by 3-1 to make the plan a
success. His conclusions were at odds with Britain's war plans, which were
focused on defending the far-flung empire outside of Europe and let the Soviets
fight the Germans on the eastern front to soften them up before opening up a
Western Front.
The campaign to save the British Empire
In September 1940, as the British feared, Italian forces from Libya launched an
invasion into British-held Egypt to try to capture the Suez Canal.
Unfortunately, or fortunately for Britain, Italian fascism, while vigorous in
theory, was wanting in efficiency. The Italians suffered a disastrous defeat
from Britain's Operation Compass counter-attack. To help its Italian ally in
North Africa, Germany sent the Deutsches Afrikakorps commanded by General Erwin
Rommel, whom the defeated British referred to in awe as the Desert Fox.
The North Africa Campaign did not have anything to do with defending democracy
or freedom. It was to defend British imperialism from fascist expansion. The
campaign was a strategic error on the part of the Axis Alliance and failed to
achieve its objective of cutting the British Empire two disconnected halves.
German lost 200,000 precious troops and materiel in North Africa that could
have been better used against the USSR.
Many African-Arab nationalists, such as Gamal Abdel Nasser and Anwar al-Sadat,
were openly sympathetic to the Axis powers as rivals of British imperialism and
were jailed by the British colonial authorities during the war. Similarly,
after World War II, nationalists in all collapsing European empires around the
globe developed sympathy for communism as a resistance to postwar
neo-imperialism.
The British advance failed to drive the Italians out of North Africa, partly
because of a failure to gain full Arab support. As British forces reached Al
Argheila, Churchill ordered the advance halted to divert troops to try, without
success, to defend Greece from German invasion, giving the German Afrikakorps
time to reach Tripoli and launch Operation Sonnenblume, which turned British
forces' victory into a rout.
In mid-1942, the Allies were met with defeat everywhere. In the first half of
the year, German U-boats sank 3.25 million tons of shipping in the Atlantic
carried by 465 freighters. In North Africa, Rommel smashed British defenses,
threatening the Suez Canal, stopping just 55 kilometers from Alexandria, Egypt,
only because of a shortage of supplies. In Russia, the German 6th Army captured
Stalingrad, with plans to head through the Caucasus for the Middle East
oilfields and eventually link up with the Afrikakorps to cut England off from
its empire. The Allies held Gibraltar, the approach from the Atlantic to the
Mediterranean; Malta, the strategic fortress for the control of the
Mediterranean; and Egypt, with its Suez Canal that linked the British Empire.
The Axis controlled France, Italy, Yugoslavia, Greece, and most of North
Africa.
British Malta prevented German victory
Because of the relatively short range of World War II aircraft, Malta's
strategic airfield was crucial to the British holding the Mediterranean, but
food and oil supply by sea had to get past German and Italian bombers. After
Malta was restocked with British planes launched from aircraft carriers of the
Royal Navy, the 250,000 Maltese and 20,000 British defenders were still
dependent on imported food and oil and other war supplies delivered by US
freighters and tankers.
In 1942, after fierce sea and air battles with heavy losses on both sides, the
British managed to hang on to Malta with the help of US tankers and used it as
an effective base to disrupt and eventually halt German resupply for the
Afrikakorps. Rommel's spectacular offensive was eventually halted at the small
rail stop of El Alamein, 240km from Cairo. British air attacks from bases in
Malta on overextended German supply lines forced the Afrikakorps to retreat
westward back toward Libya and Tunisia.
On October 23, British forces newly put under the command of Brigadier-General
Bernard Law Montgomery, well supplied from Alexandria, opened an offensive
against the Afrikakorps at El Alamein. The British 8th Army under Montgomery,
with superiority in men of 2:1, and an even greater superiority in materials,
launched the decisive push against the Axis forces. After 12 days of violent
fighting and heavy losses on both sides, the British drove toward Libya and
eventually Tunisia.
The Africa Campaign was a predictive microcosm of the war, a testimonial to the
doctrine that wars are won by logistics. The US, with its unthreatened military
supply base, would win the war as a matter of time.
Many Maltese nationalists were hostile to British occupation, a fact found all
over the British Empire.
When Malta was granted self-government without independence in 1921, Enrico
Mizzi formed the Partito Democratico Nazionalista and was elected to the
Legislative Assembly. In 1924 he became minister of agriculture and posts and
in 1932 was appointed minister of industry and commerce and subsequently
minister of education. His patriotism became cause for concern to the British
colonial government during World War II and in 1942 he was interned and
deported to Uganda, where he remained for the duration of the war. As a result,
Mizzi was unable to take his democratically elected seat in the then Council of
Government, making a mockery of World War II as a war to defend democracy.
Dom Mintoff, future postwar prime minister of independent Malta, was a product
of England's elitist Oxford University and a friend of Labour Party radicals.
But it was liberal Lord Louis Mountbatten, cousin of King George VI, who
advanced Mintoff's political career. Mintoff's father, a seaman cook, ran the
pantry at Castille Palace in Valletta, where Mountbatten, then flag officer
heading the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's (NATO's) Mediterranean fleet,
had his office, and Mountbatten took a liking to the younger Mintoff and
recommended him to a Rhodes scholarship to Oxford to prepare him as a future
leader friendly to Britain.
Later, through Dom Mintoff, Mountbatten promoted a scheme for Malta to seek
full integration with Britain, a political initiative that had parallels with
secularized Muslim Turkey's current fantasy about being a full equal member of
the Christian European Union. The project was eventually abandoned as another
of Mountbatten's unworkable liberal fantasies, much like the integration of
India and Pakistan as one nation out of British India. The experience made
Mintoff realize that liberal colonialism was still colonialism, with the result
of his leading Malta to the left after the war.
Under the long and forceful leadership of Dom Mintoff, the leftist Malta Labour
Party government turned an independent Malta into a strong adherent of the
Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) in the Cold War. It strengthened cultural and trade
links with Malta's North African neighbors, notably oil-rich Libya, and also
with the People's Republic of China and North Korea, shunned as evil outcasts
by the US-dominated West.
On assuming office in 1971, Mintoff renegotiated British/NATO agreements,
mandating the dismantlement of the NATO military base within seven years during
which the base could not be used against Arab states. Mintoff also negotiated a
treaty of friendship and close economic cooperation with premier Zhou Enlai in
China in April 1972, making Malta a member of the NAM.
El Alamein: The end of the beginning
The German strategic goal of capturing the Suez Canal to sever communication
between the British Isles and the British Empire in the Far East and to link up
German forces thrusting south from southern Russia with those in North Africa
was thwarted by the defeat at El Alamein, the first victorious battle in World
War II by a British-led force over the German Wehrmacht.
Germany lost 200,000 of its best troops in North Africa and achieved no
strategic advantage. Those troops would have been better used in defending
Italy. Winston Churchill used El Alamein to boost sagging British morale with
his mastery of language: "This is not the end; it is not even the beginning of
the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning."
Whatever it was, it was not the end of British colonialism, not even the
beginning of the end, but perhaps the end of the beginning of neo-imperialism.
In a since-released secret postwar report to Labour prime minister Clement
Attlee, who replaced Conservative Churchill by popular vote immediately after
VE (Victory in Europe) Day, Montgomery, as chief of the Imperial Defense Staff
(1946-48), Britain's heroic soldier in defense of democracy, opposed British
Labour policy of encouraging self-government in black Africa. The African, he
concluded after a two-month fact-finding tour of 11 African countries in late
1947, "is a complete savage and is quite incapable of developing the country
himself". He did not elaborate on why, after a century of British colonial
rule, the African remained a "complete savage".
Montgomery recommended a sweeping plan to turn much of sub-Saharan Africa into
a British-controlled bulwark against communism that would be aligned with
white-ruled South Africa, which at that time was still dominated by Britain.
Montgomery and Rommel, heroes of colonialism and fascism, had two things in
common: both were congenital racists and pathological anti-communists.
US needed the USSR to defeat Germany
In World War II, the United States, even with twice the population of Germany,
had difficulty assembling and training the necessary military force, estimated
to be up to 9 million troops, to prevail over the German Wehrmacht and also
simultaneously to fight a major war against the Japanese. Thus Soviet
resistance to German expansion in Europe was as vital as keeping Britain from
capitulating to Nazi might.
It is another geopolitical peculiarity that the US-Soviet alliance permitted
Japanese-Soviet neutrality toward each other to continue all through the war
despite the fact that US entrance into the war was precipitated by Japanese
attack on US territory. Prior to the successful testing of the atomic bomb, the
US was looking to the Soviets to fight Japan to reduce anticipated US
casualties in Asia, as the Soviets did in Europe.
The strategy of "Europe First" was based on the view that once Germany
consolidated its hold on Europe, the US alone might not be able to win the war
against Germany as a superpower. German diplomatic inroads into Central and
South America, where strong anti-US feelings had been smoldering for more than
a century, could lead to future German bases whence attacks on the US could be
launched.
In the summer of 1940 when Britain was facing Germany alone, Roosevelt demanded
assurances from Churchill that if the British government should seek peace with
Germany, the Royal Navy would be sent to Canada to prevent it from falling into
German hands to threaten US control of the Atlantic. Churchill refused, using
the Vichy France argument that he had rejected only weeks earlier, that the
British navy would be a crucial pawn in any peace negotiations with Germany.
The real purpose of Churchill's hardline position was to deprive the US of the
option of abandoning Britain, the penalty of which would be the loss of US
command of the Atlantic, let alone Europe.
On August 14, 1941, some fours months before the Japanese attack on Pearl
Harbor, the United States, not yet at war, issued jointly with a Britain
already at war with Germany the Atlantic Charter, which set out a postwar world
vision as an unspoken condition for a pending US alliance with Britain. Among
other provisions, the Atlantic Charter emphasized British commitment to postwar
international cooperation, including support for US efforts to form a United
Nations based on the principle of self-determination for former colonies. Six
months later, in February 1942, barely two months after the Pearl Harbor
attack, under the Lend-Lease Agreement, Britain agreed to a postwar
multilateral payments system based on the US dollar in exchange for US
commitment to help Britain financially during and after the war. After the war,
under Harry Truman, self-determination was preempted by anti-communism.
Yet at the insistence of the US financial elite, US aid was only granted in
return for the surrender of British bases in the Western Hemisphere to US
control, on the sale at reduced prices of British-owned companies and
investments in the US, Canada and Latin America, the virtual seizure of South
African gold production by US warships, restrictions on British exports and,
finally, the removal of the pound sterling as a reserve currency and the
lifting of empirewide trade controls that could have been used to rebuild the
British prewar economic empire after the war.
Britain was saved from having to sue for peace with Hitler by US intervention.
After the Dunkirk troop evacuation of May-June 1940, Britain had the choice of
losing the war to Germany or to the United States. Since then, Britain has been
forced to play the role of a subservient ally, but one that subtly turned the
US into a postwar reincarnation of the British Empire with a greatly eclipsed
Britain as top water boy for the US-led neo-imperialist team.
Japan-Soviet neutrality a geopolitical peculiarity
In World War II, a glaring geopolitical peculiarity was that Japan, a founding
member of the alliance of Axis powers, maintained a neutrality treaty with the
major enemy of the Axis alliance all through the war. Had Japan attacked the
USSR through Siberia instead of attacking the US at Pearl Harbor, Roosevelt
might not have been able to go to war in Europe, as US public opinion at the
time was quite divided about getting involved in another foreign war in Europe
only two decades after World War I. War with Japan was a total surprise to the
US population even if it was not to the US government.
Conservatives in the United States, with Churchill's blessing, might even have
forced the US government to lift its sanctions against Japan if Tokyo had moved
against the USSR in the name of anti-communism instead of threatening
British/US imperialist interests in Southeast Asia in an intra-imperialist
conflict. After all, Japanese imperialism, modeled after British imperialism,
while having begun in China, came into conflict with Western imperialism in
Asia first by defeating Czarist Russia in 1904.
The Russo-Japanese War of 1904-05, which began with a Japanese naval attack on
Port Arthur, a Russian enclave on China's Liaodong Peninsula, was the result of
Japanese and Russian competition to develop "spheres of influence" in East Asia
in the age of imperialism, mainly at the expense of China. Japan had won a war
against the crumbling Chinese Empire in 1894-95 and imposed an unequal treaty
on the Qing dynastic government, demanding from China heavy war indemnities,
the island of Formosa, and Port Arthur with its hinterland.
Port Arthur was named after William C Arthur of the British navy. It is known
in Chinese as Lushunkou, and is situated on the southern tip of the city of
Dalian in Liaoning province. The European powers, while having no objection to
the principle of war indemnities, sided with Russian interests in Port Arthur
to win a Russian concession in Europe. Germany and France applied diplomatic
pressure on Japan, with the result that Japan was obliged to relinquish Port
Arthur in favor of Russia. Two years later, China was coerced into leasing Port
Arthur to Russia, together with the entire Liaodong Peninsula, for an ice-free
Russian naval base in the Far East to supplement Vladivostok.
The Boxer Uprising of 1900, the Chinese name for which is Yihetuan Qiyi
(Righteous Harmony Brigade), was an extremist xenophobic movement against
Western imperialism. The decrepit court of the Qing Dynasty, dominated by the
self-indulging, reactionary Dowager Empress (Cixi Taihou, 1838-1908) encouraged
it as an alternative chauvinistic instrument to relieve pressure for
modernization and reform in domestic politics. Yihetuan, promoted personally by
the empress, was a populist counterweight to abort the budding "100 Days"
elitist reform movement of 1898, led by conservative reformist Kang Youwei
(1858-1927) around the young monarch, the weak Emperor Guangxu (reigned
1875-1908). The reform movement was a belated and defensive attempt to resist
foreign aggression through modernization. The model was the Meiji Reform of
Japan of 30 years earlier.
The members of Yihetuan, in a burst of chauvinistic frenzy, rejected the use of
modern and therefore foreign firearms in favor of traditional broadswords. They
relied on protection against enemy bullets from Taoist amulets, their faith in
which would remain unshaken in the face of undeniable empirical evidence
provided by hundreds of thousands of falling comrades shot by Western gunfire.
The term Boxer, for unarmed fighters, was coined by bewildered Europeans whose
modern pragmatism filled them with a superficial superiority complex, justified
on narrow grounds, over an ancient culture that stubbornly clung to the
irrational power of faith in defiance of reason.
The Boxer Uprising led a coalition of eight powers, mostly European but also
including Japan, to send an expeditionary force to punish Chinese "barbarism".
When the fighting ended, Russian troops had occupied Manchuria with a promise
to withdraw by 1903, but failed to do so, wishing to hold on to it as a
springboard for further expansion into China. Japan and Russia clashed over
competing interests in Korea, which led to Japan forming an alliance with
Britain. The terms stated that if Japan went to war in the Far East and a third
power entered the fight against Japan, Britain would come to the aid of the
Japanese. If this treaty had held at the time of the attack on Pearl Harbor,
Britain would have been drawn into war with the United States.
Russia and Britain were hostile competitors in the Great Game in Central Asia
and in Tibet. The Russo-Japanese War marked the first time in modern history
that a major European power was defeated by an Asian nation, whose navy was
trained by Britain and its army by Germany. The Russo-Japanese War greatly
damaged the prestige of the Russian imperial house and set the stage for the
Russian Revolution.
British neutrality in Sino-Japanese War
Up until Japanese expansion into Southeast Asia, Britain tried to maintain
cordial relations with Japan. It disallowed anti-Japanese agitation by Chinese
nationalists in the British colony of Hong Kong, where the British ruled with
an iron fist adjacent to Japanese-occupied southern China. It also forbade aid
shipments funded by overseas Chinese to China through Hong Kong. The European
war did not change British policy on Japan, as the British hoped Japan would
invade the Soviet Union.
Without the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, there would have been no US
intervention in Europe, and then there would have been no Allied landing in
Normandy and no western front for Germany. The USSR might not have been able to
survive a two-front war with both Germany and Japan. A Germany with a
single-front Wehrmacht and a formidable Japanese army supplied from occupied
China would have been highly problematic for the USSR. If Germany had defeated
the USSR, Britain would most likely have capitulated and Germany would have
become the superpower of all Europe.
Thus in an ironic twist of events, the USSR - and world communism - was saved
by a strategic error on the part of fascist Japan. Mao Zedong reportedly said
to Japanese prime minister Kakuei Tanaka in their first meeting in 1973 that if
Japan had not invaded China and Southeast Asia, communism might not have
prevailed in China.
The Cairo Declaration
The Cairo Declaration issued by China, the United States and Great Britain on
December 1, 1943, stated: "It is the purpose of the three great Allies [USSR
was not yet at war with Japan] that Japan shall be stripped of all the islands
in the Pacific which she has seized or occupied since the beginning of the
First World War in 1914, and that all the territories Japan has stolen from the
Chinese, such as Manchuria, Formosa [Taiwan] and the Pescadores [Penghu], shall
be restored to China." The Potsdam Proclamation signed by China, the US and
Britain on July 26, 1945 (subsequently adhered to by the Soviet Union),
reiterated: "The terms of the Cairo Declaration shall be carried out."
On August 15, 1945, Japan declared unconditional surrender. The instrument of
Japan's surrender stipulated that "Japan hereby accepts the provisions in the
declaration issued by the heads of the Governments of the United States, China
and Great Britain on July 26, 1945, at Potsdam, and subsequently adhered to by
the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics". Potsdam defined Allied occupation of
the Japanese Empire as the USSR being responsible for North Korea, Sakhalin,
and the Kuril Islands, while the US and the British Empire would have the
responsibility for Japan, South Korea and Japan's remaining possessions in
Oceania. Only the lack of a Soviet Pacific Fleet prevented Soviet troops from
landing in Japan to partition it into two states, a communist north and a
capitalist south, as in the case of Germany, Korea and Vietnam.
After World War II, the Soviet Union refused to send a delegation to San
Francisco to sign the peace treaty with Japan while the Korean conflict was
still in progress. As a result, the USSR and Japan, the two nations that did
not actually fight each other, remained in a state of war that began less than
a month before World War II ended and without diplomatic relations until the
USSR and Japan began working on a draft peace agreement and the restoration of
diplomatic relations in spring of 1955, a full decade after the war.
Bilateral relations were finally restored in the autumn of 1956. However, a
declaration was signed in lieu of a peace agreement. Soviet leader Nikita
Khrushchev suggested that Japan shut down US military bases in exchange for the
return of two of the South Kuril Islands. The US opposed the offer, while Japan
demanded the transfer of all four islands. The ownership of the islands is
still in dispute, no maritime border has been set yet, and no peace agreement
has been signed.
Japan's postwar territorial disputes In violation of terms of the Cairo Declaration, Japan has also introduced
postwar territorial disputes with South Korea and China.
With South Korea the dispute is with regard to islets known in Japan as
Takeshima and which Koreans call Dokdo. Control over the islets means control
over fishing grounds and possible undersea energy resources. With China the
dispute concerns Okinotori, an uninhabited coral reef the size of a tennis
court that is 75 millimeters above water at high tide. Okinotori, 1,770
kilometers south of Tokyo, is described as a "bunch of rocks" by China, whose
interest in the area is based on its strategic position. US naval forces based
on Guam need to pass through this area to approach Taiwan.
According to Article 121 of the United Nations Council on Law of the Sea
(UNCLS), an island is a naturally formed area of land, surrounded by water,
which is above water at high tide. Rocks that cannot sustain human habitation
or economic life of their own shall have no exclusive economic zone or
continental shelf. Tokyo Governor Shintaro Ishihara, known for his outspoken
ultra-chauvinistic views, wants to increase economic activity on the rocky
Okinotori islands. Japan in June 2005 installed radar, a heliport and an
official address plaque, "1 Okinotori Island, Ogasawara Village, Tokyo", China
urges handling the relevant issues through friendly consultation.
The Cairo Declaration notwithstanding, Japan has also introduced postwar
territorial disputes over a chain of islands in the East China Sea with
important gas resources near key international shipping routes, known as
Diaoyutai in China and Senkaku in Japan. Located about 400km west of Okinawa,
Diaoyutai is claimed by both Beijing and Taipei as Chinese territory. The
waters surrounding the islands are suspected of being oil-rich.
Professor Kiyoshi Inoue of Kyoto University wrote in an article in the February
1972 issue of Historical Research:
The islands which are being called
the Senkaku Islands in Japan and to which the Japanese government claims title
have historically been definitely China's territory.
As the victor in the 1894-95 war with Qing China, Japan seized these islands
along with Taiwan and the Penghu Islands and incorporated them into Okinawa
prefecture as Japanese territory. The Cairo Declaration jointly issued by
China, the United States and Britain during World War II stipulates the return
to China by Japan of all the territory she had stolen from China during and
after the Japan-Qing China war, including Taiwan and Manchuria. The Potsdam
Proclamation issued by the Allies stipulates that Japan must carry out the
clauses of the Cairo Declaration.
These islands have been automatically reverted to China as its territory just
as Taiwan has been automatically returned to China from the time Japan
unconditionally accepted the Cairo Declaration (December 1, 1943) and the
Potsdam Declaration concerning Conquered Countries (August 2, 1945) and
surrendered to the Allies including China. It follows that these islands are
territory of the People's Republic of China, the only internationally
recognized authority over all of China.
But in collusion with US imperialism, the reactionary rulers and militarist
forces of Japan are making a clamor that the Senkaku Islands are Japanese
territory in an attempt to drag the Japanese people into the militarist,
anti-China whirlwind. This big whirlwind is sure to become fiercer after the
return to Japan of the so-called "administrative right over Okinawa" by the US
armed forces on May 15 this year.
We who are truly striving for the independence of the Japanese nation,
Japan-China friendship and peace in Asia must smash in good time this big
conspiracy of the US-Japanese reactionaries.
Japan on North
Korean non-proliferation On the Korean non-proliferation issue, Japan has been the most obdurate
participant of the six-nation talks, demanding that all the North Korean
nuclear reactors be shut down.
Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi threatened to boycott the 60th
anniversary of the European victory in World War II held in Moscow to protest
Russian stance on the still-unsigned peace agreement. Koizumi's militarist
activities, symbolized by his visits to the Yasukuni Shrine, where the most
hideous World War II criminals are revered as sacred heroes, and Japan's
revisionism on the record of its aggression and atrocities in Asia under
Japanese occupation, sparked public anger and resentment in China on both sides
of the Taiwan Strait, and in Korea, both North and South, as well as all other
Asian nations. Japan also insists on a preemptive-strike option on North Korean
missile sites.
A new draft of the Japanese constitution provides for the formation of a
full-fledged "Defense Army" of 60,000 troops; that number could be increased to
375,000 in times of war repelling foreign aggression, not just on Japanese soil
but wherever interests claimed by Japan are located, with the authority to
participate in collective defense alliances. Active monitoring of China and
North Korea is part of a new Japanese military doctrine. Under the proposed
constitutional provisions, Japan could legally export missile components to the
US, canceling the arms-export ban effective in Japan since 1967. Japan's
electricity is largely produced by nuclear power, giving Japan the nuclear
technologies to produce atomic weapons on short notice.
Echoing Israel's geopolitical game of securing US support by playing the role
of a counterbalance against communism during the Cold War and against Islamic
terrorist threats after the Cold War, Japan aims to emerge as a regional
military power in the name of counterbalancing a rising China in the region. It
may well be another Japanese geopolitical miscalculation that will spark dire
consequences. From the point of view of China, the Koreas and other Asian
nations, US presence in Asia is tolerated only on the condition of checking any
revival of Japanese militarism.
US forces around the world
The United States has maintained the largest permanent force in peacetime
beyond its home longer than any other empire in history. These troop
arrangements are largely the result of post-World War II arrangements and Cold
War exigencies.
Fear of a massive land invasion of Western Europe from the Soviet Union
prompted the US to place large numbers of ground forces there to defend it. US
forces in Korea and Japan have been in place for a rapid response to a North
Korean or Chinese threat for the past 50 years. The current occupation of Iraq
takes about 130,000 troops, plus another 130,000 in the Persian Gulf.
The Nixon Doctrine stated that Asian nations should strengthen their own
defense capabilities and not depend on the US for their security. After the
Vietnam War, the Nixon Doctrine reflected a desire to reduce US force
commitments to Asia. Some 20,000 US troops of the 7th Division were withdrawn
from South Korea by March 1971 as part of a strategy under US president Richard
Nixon of opening to China.
President Jimmy Carter planned to reduce US troop levels in Korea, pledging
during his campaign that US forces in Korea would be completely withdrawn in
stages over four to five years. Major-General John Singlaub, then chief of
staff of the 8th Army, protested to Congress against Carter's withdrawal plan.
The effort was abandoned in 1979 after only 3,600 troops had been withdrawn.
The US Congress adopted the Nunn-Warner Amendment to the 1989 Defense
Appropriation Bill, which mandated a reduction in US troop strength in Korea
from 43,000 to 36,000 by the end of calendar year 1991. In early 1990 the
administration of president George H W Bush announced plans to cut 7,000 of the
42,500 US troops in Korea over two and a half years. At that time, the US had
11,600 air force personnel and 31,600 army personnel in Korea. As a result, the
2nd Infantry Division's 3rd Brigade was withdrawn from Korea in 1992 and
deactivated.
South Korea, having refused to sign the Armistice Agreement of the Korea War
because of the personal intransigence of Syngman Rhee, is technically in a
continuing state of civil war with North Korea. For security, Seoul forged a
mutual defense pact with Washington to keep the 37,000 troops there, the
largest US contingent in Asia after Japan, which has 45,000 troops in 39 bases.
The defense treaty with South Korea has kept the US, by proxy, technically at
war with North Korea for almost six decades, beyond the original US "police
action" mandate.
The US-Japan Security Treaty was also signed during the Korean War in 1951, at
the same time as the San Francisco Peace Treaty that formally ended the Allied
occupation of Japan. The security treaty with Japan enabled US troops to remain
in Japan and use Japanese facilities as staging areas and logistics bases in
the war then being waged on the Korean Peninsula and later in the Vietnam War
and other future wars in Asia. The US-Japan Security Treaty is the technical
reason Japan is paranoid about North Korean nuclear proliferation. As a
frontline offensive base for US forces, Japan would be a legitimate target in a
war in East Asia.
US military bases in Japan were seen as essential to containing communist
expansion in Asia during the Cold War, especially since the Soviet Union, China
and North Korea were mistakenly viewed by the United States as a monolithic
threat unaffected by geopolitical contradictions. Throughout the Cold War, the
US deployed more than 500,000 troops outside its borders, not counting troops
directly engaged in shooting wars, such as in Korea and Vietnam. Even now,
after the end of the Cold War, the US military "forward-deploys" almost 450,000
troops in foreign bases, with large numbers in Europe (112,000), East Asia
(82,000) and the Middle East (240,000).
The US failed to prevail in the two major wars it has fought in Asia since
World War II, in Korea and Vietnam. Instead, these two wars did enormous damage
to US social cohesion, caused sharp curtailment in domestic liberty, degraded
public trust in government and created cynicism on professed US national
values.
US Forces Korea
The United States currently has some 37,000 troops in US Forces Korea (USFK)
based in South Korea under an agreement dating back to the Korean War 50 years
ago. The US is planning a major realignment of its forces in East Asia but says
it remains fully committed to the defense of South Korea. The withdrawal of
4,000 troops would significantly weaken the strength of the 2nd Infantry
Division - the main US fighting force in South Korea. The division currently
has 14,000 soldiers stationed near the border with North Korea.
The US announced plans in May 2004 to shift 3,600 troops from South Korea to
Iraq, the first time the United States had reduced its armed forces in South
Korea since the end of the Cold War. On June 7, 2004, a US delegation, led by
assistant secretary of defense Richard Lawless, met with South Korean officials
and reportedly proposed withdrawing up to one-third of the 37,000 US troops in
South Korea. The two-day talks also covered plans to move about 7,000 US troops
from their bases near the border with North Korea to a new military camp well
south of Seoul.
On October 6, 2004, the US Department of Defense announced that after several
months of close consultations, the United States and the Republic of Korea had
reached final agreement regarding the June 2004 US proposal to redeploy 12,500
of its troops from Korea.
Prior to 2004, there were normally about 37,500 military personnel stationed in
the USFK Area of Responsibility (AOR), including an air force of 225 planes.
The number of troops deployed in the area does not normally fluctuate. With the
2nd Brigade Combat Team deployed to Iraq in August 2004, the total number of
USFK troops declined by 5,000, to a total of 32,500 military personnel.
US Forces Japan
US Forces Japan (USFJ), with army, air force, navy and Marine Corps elements,
consists of about 47,000 military personnel, 52,000 dependants, 5,500
Department of Defense civilian employees and 23,500 Japanese workers. There are
roughly 350 aircraft from the US Air Force, navy and marines in the USFJ AOR.
North Korea's missile test launches came at a time when the number of US troop
levels in South Korea and other nearby Asian nations were declining and the
Pentagon had been focusing more on alleged potential threats from China, which
it aimed to counter with the power-projection capability of a beefed up 7th
Fleet, as the US aimed to avoid a land war with China.
As for US military strength in East Asia, the plan is to break down large Cold
War-era bases around the world, bring tens of thousands of uniformed personnel
back to the United States and move some troops closer to potential hot spots so
they can more quickly respond to conflicts. At the same time, saying it has an
eye on surges in China's defense spending, the Pentagon is strengthening its
Asia-Pacific force.
Unlike South Korea, which has always been on a war footing, US force
restructuring in Japan involves US acceptance of a revival of Japanese
militarism, with serious geopolitical consequences. While US troop reduction in
South Korea faces a government in Seoul that is increasingly friendly to both
China and its Northern brother in an effort to avoid military conflict,
particularly on Korean soil, US troop reduction in Japan opens the Pandora's
box of a revival of Japanese militarism with ambitions to exploit regional
instability to recover territories lost after World War II.
Japan echoes Pentagon's 'China threat' theory
Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Aso, who is a contender for premiership after
Koizumi steps down this month, has echoed the Pentagon's "China threat" theory.
The annual Self-Defense White Paper released by Japan cites China's rising
military strength as the main reason Japan has increased its military spending
at double-digit rates for the past 17 consecutive years.
The Japan-US "2+2" (US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Secretary of
Defense Donald Rumsfeld plus Japan's then minister for foreign affairs Nobutaka
Machimura and Minister of State for Defense and Director General of the Defense
Agency Yoshinori Ohno) Joint Statement of February 19, 2005, confirms US-Japan
cooperation on global security issues beyond Asia to include Afghanistan, Iraq
and the broader Middle East. The two pairs of ministers committed the two
countries to promotion of non-proliferation, particularly through the
Proliferation Security Initiative, a proactive global effort that aims to stop
shipments of weapons of mass destruction, their delivery systems, and related
materials worldwide first announced by US President George W Bush on May 31,
2003.
The Joint Statement confirms Japan's acceptance of ballistic missile defense
(BMD), Japan's new National Defense Program Guidelines (NDPG) emphasizing
Japan's capability to respond effectively to new threats and diverse
contingencies, Japan's active engagement to improve the international security
environment, and the importance of the Japan-US alliance.
As a central component of its broad defense-transformation effort, the US is in
the process of reorienting and strengthening its global defense posture to
provide it with appropriate, strategy-driven capabilities in an uncertain
security environment. The Joint Statement confirms the need to continue
examining the roles, missions, and capabilities of Japan's Self-Defense Forces
(SDF) and the US Armed Forces required for responding effectively to diverse
challenges in a well-coordinated manner. This examination will take into
account recent achievements and developments such as Japan's NDPG and new
legislation to deal with contingencies, as well as the expanded agreement on
mutual logistical support and progress in BMD cooperation. The "2+2 Ministers"
of the two countries also emphasized the importance of enhancing
interoperability between US and Japanese forces.
The Joint Statement also declares a common strategic goal to push China toward
increased transparency in military spending. Yet Japan's own official
defense-spending data are purposely opaque. They do not reflect
defense-contractor output values and capital investment. Despite the appearance
of a market economy, the Japanese economic system is still very much a state
enterprise that has been aptly described as Japan Inc.
In the past half-century, China's total gross domestic product (GDP) rose
172-fold from a very low base and Japan's 80-fold from a relatively high base
in nominal local-currency terms. During the same period, China's military
spending increased 32-fold and Japan's 47-fold. China's population of 1.3
billion is 10 times Japan's 127 million. In 2005, Japanese military expenditure
was US$44.3 billion, or $350 per person, while China's was $81.5 billion, or
$63 per person. The increase in China's military spending is 45% less than
Japan's notwithstanding China's faster growth rate than Japan's.
China's annual military spending rate in the two decades from 1985 to 2004 was
13.4%, and Japan's yearly military spending increase for the two decades from
1961 and 1980 stood at 14%. This was despite the fact that Japan's security has
been guaranteed by the US, thus relieving it from much military expenditure.
The ratio of China's military spending to its GDP has been falling, reaching
4.3% in 2005. The ratio of military spending to financial expenditure in China
has also fallen, from 34.2% in 1953 to 18% in 1973 and to 7.7% in 2003. Japan
sees the Taiwan Strait and East China Sea regions as areas of possible conflict
with China.
US-Japan security cooperation on regional arms buildups, including theater
missile defense systems for Japan and Taiwan, means that the Taiwan issue is
not one of a simple "renegade province" in Chinese domestic politics, but a
focal point around which Sino-Japanese and Sino-US antagonism and, ultimately,
that of the entire region could evolve. For example, Australia, which is
increasingly aware of its future as being tied to peace and cooperation with
its Asian neighbors, is doing its level best to avoid being dragged by
belligerent US policy into otherwise avoidable conflict with China. The
US-Japan alliance does not reinforce regional security but instead risks
creating unnecessary global instability.
As part of a worldwide realignment of US forces, the Pentagon is drawing down
troops at some decades-old installations in Asia, and the region's allies are
taking more responsibility for their own defense. The US plans to compensate by
building up the power-projection capability of the Pacific Fleet. This is why
North Korea says its missile program is for self-defense against a US threat
from the sea.
On September 17, 2002, Koizumi visited Pyongyang and held talks with North
Korean leader Kim Jong-il. After the meeting, Koizumi told the press
unilaterally: "We confirmed that we would resolve the missile issue through
dialogue, and Chairman Kim Jong-il stated that he would freeze all missile
launchings without any time limit." There was no mention of the conditions
behind the alleged understanding or even misunderstanding. Since it was not a
joint press conference, what Koizumi said was merely his understanding, which
might not have been Kim's understanding.
Under Koizumi, Japan, with US backing, has adopted a far more aggressive role
in the region and deliberately stirred up antagonism toward China and North
Korea as a way for reviving Japanese militarism. The North Korean missile
crisis is a useful pretext for furthering this agenda. Japan is already
involved in the joint development of an anti-ballistic-missile system with the
United States. The US has indicated that it plans to speed up the deployment of
advanced Patriot interceptor missiles on US bases in Japan for the first time.
US promotes trilateral cooperation against China
Admiral William "Fox" Fallon, head of US Pacific Command, testified before the
Senate Armed Services Committee this March that "trilateral military
cooperation" among the US, Japan and South Korea aims to deal not only with
North Korea but also with China and terrorist threats in Asia. Fallon indicated
that US forces want the three countries jointly to "deal with China's
increasing military power, North Korea's possible collapse and reunification of
the two Koreas, unconventional regional threats, including terrorism risks in
Southeast Asia, and other regional matters".
But the trilateral process, as well as bilateral defense talks between Japan
and South Korea, has stalled because of lingering territorial disputes and
historical antagonism between Tokyo and Seoul stemming from Japan's 1910-45
colonial occupation of the Korean Peninsula and to the recent revival of
Japanese militarism. Washington aims to keep Japan and South Korea as allies
against China and North Korea, especially hoping to prevent Seoul from leaning
toward Beijing out of similarity in disputes with Japan.
Yet Seoul's approach to Korean unification conflicts with US policy on North
Korea. South Korea is not at all keen on preemptive strikes on the North and
views nuclear capability for a united Korea as not necessarily an undesirable
development. The natural economic and cultural ties between Korea and China are
undeniable. Anti-China hysteria is increasingly not shared outside of the US.
Beyond anti-communism fixation, there is little that the US can argue to
dissuade South Koreans from reuniting with their brothers in the North or from
forming closer ties with China.
Fallon's congressional testimony came after the US Defense Department issued
its 2006 Quadrennial Defense Review in February, singling out China as having
the "greatest" potential to militarily compete with the US among emerging and
major powers. In the QDR, which set the United States' defense strategy and
military posture for the next 20 years, the Pentagon called for a "greater"
military presence in the Pacific Ocean and vowed to boost military integration
with allies to deter hostility from emerging and major powers.
Japan and the US agreed last October to step up integration and joint
operations between the SDF and US forces as part of their broad accord on
realigning the US military presence in Japan. Yet other than Japan and Britain,
US unilateralism has dampened the enthusiasm of Cold War allies of the United
States to support its policies of global transformation.
Fallon praised Koizumi as having demonstrated "exceptional leadership" in
guiding the SDF through "significant change", such as sending ground troops to
Iraq and refueling vessels to the Indian Ocean to help the US-led
anti-terrorism operations in Afghanistan. "These actions clearly show the
willingness and capability of the government of Japan to deploy the SDF
regionally and globally in support of security and humanitarian operations,"
Fallon said.
But such actions are viewed in most of Asia as signs of emerging Japanese
belligerence. The only thing that remains unchanged about Japan's force
structure is the name of "Self-Defense Force". Such "exceptional leadership" is
viewed as dangerous adventurism by many in Asia.
Seoul and Washington agreed early this year on "strategic flexibility" of US
armed forces in South Korea, paving the way for US forces there to engage in
missions outside the Korean Peninsula. But the accord led to controversy in
South Korea as it could lead the nation to get involved in regional conflicts
that the US could be engaged in, including a possible conflict with China over
Taiwan. Fallon said, "We welcome [South] Korea's adoption of a more regional
view of security and stability ... in light of the changing security
environment, including unconventional threats, China's military modernization
and the potential for reconciliation between the Koreas." Seoul is less
sanguine about the congruence of US and Korean geopolitical interests.
Such is the geopolitical dynamic surrounding the Korean non-proliferation and
missile-test issue. All the noise out of Washington about and "axis of evil"
and the "defense of democracy" is just propaganda. It is as convincing to the
people of Korea, Asia, South America and Africa as the Nazis' noise about
racial superiority and the right to living space for Aryan nations. Just as the
Nazis allowed the Japanese to be "honorary Aryans" and South African apartheid
allowed them to be "honorary whites", the US now allows the Japanese to be
"honorary democrats" despite Japan's postwar one-party system of token
democracy. Democracy has permitted some governments of otherwise peaceful
people to be seized by extremists and militarists who use war on evil as a
pretext to dominate the world.
On what basis does the United States assert the sacred privilege to declare
nations that hold values divergent from those held by the US as evil and not
deserving of self-defense and survival? There are those in the US
foreign-policy and security establishment who view US involvement in any
military conflict in Asia, particularly with China, as unnecessarily
counterproductive and as serious a misstep for US geopolitical interests as the
Third Reich's invasion of the USSR was for Germany's geopolitical interests.
But such rational voices are muffled in the neo-con-controlled militarist Bush
administration.
Next: Korean nationalist Kim Il-sung and China
Henry C K Liu is chairman of a New York-based private investment
group. His website is HenryCKLiu.com.
