US President Joe Biden pats Japan's Prime Minister Fumio Kishida on the back as they walk down the West Wing Colonnade to the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, US, Jan 13, 2023. (JONATHAN ERNST / POOL PHOTO VIA AP)
In the joint statement of the United States and Japan released on Friday, China was mentioned as a country posing challenges with "actions inconsistent with the rules-based international order". With this statement, Japan has further affirmed its status as a hired gun of the US' geopolitical strategy.
The statement reads "the leaders also instructed their ministers to reinforce cooperation on the development and effective employment of Japan's counterstrike and other capabilities".
The tone of the statement strongly suggests that the US has given the nod to Japan's expansion of its military capability as described in the three security and defense documents released by the Japanese government in December, which goes far beyond the bounds of its so-called pacifist Constitution.
Japan is cunningly seizing the chance of changing its role as a shield of the US geopolitical game to that of a spear, even a spearhead, as the excuse to remilitarize. Which will send a chill down the spine of countries in East Asia. An increasingly militarized Japan cannot but remind them of what it did to them that necessitated the constraints imposed by its Constitution.
The irony is that Japan's military expansion with the help of the US is an action inconsistent with the rules-based order in the Asia-Pacific, which both countries claim to uphold.
It has long been the consensus of the entire world that Japan should not be allowed to develop into a military power again. This has been an important foundation for peace in East Asia and the world at large.
Yet right-wing political forces in Japan have long been trying to do this. Behind Japan's willingness to act as a pawn of the US is its ambition of restoring its status as a regional military power. Such ambition coincides with the US' need to find a regional proxy to act on its behalf.
US President Joe Biden and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida declared in the joint statement "the importance of maintaining peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait as an indispensable element of security and prosperity in the international community", which speaks volumes about what role the US hopes Japan can play in its strategy to contain China.
The Taiwan question is China's internal affair, and it is none of the business of any other country how China will realize its national reunification.
Washington should realize that the ambitions of Japan's right-wing forces go far beyond what it wants Japan to do. That is where the source of instability is for East Asia and the world at large.
What East Asian countries and Japanese people need to be reminded of is the danger the rise of Japanese militarism poses to regional and global peace and stability.