US Pressures Japan to Cancel Constitution’s Peace-Clause. China and Japan Must Thus Finally Agree Now, to Avoid a War.
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The United States Government is pressing Japan’s Government to revise its 1947 U.S.-created Constitution so as to eliminate its clause (Article 9) that prevents Japan from invading any country. The clause asserts that:
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.
In order 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.
The reason for this change is that Japan could play a decisive role assisting America’s unofficial war against America’s World War II ally China, which country America’s Government wants to turn into a vassal-nation like Japan long has been (ever since 1945).
America especially wants Japan to invade China when and if China invades (so as to retake control over) the “Republic of China”, which is China’s province of Taiwan, which province Japan had conquered from China in 1895, and which province the United States Government in 1945 forced Japan to return to China, as part of Japan’s WW II surrender, which today’s U.S. Government now wants to reverse, so that China can now become captured by America as Japan was captured in 1945.
Only if Taiwan becomes separated from China can America defeat China, which would greatly advance America toward its goal of being the world’s hegemon, the first-ever all-encompassing global empire.
So: America has now 100% reversed its position during WW II, of opposing Japan and supporting China, to instead opposing China and supporting Japan. Removal of the peaceful-nation clause in the U.S.-written Japanese Constitution will be necessary for this purpose.
If America succeeds in restoring Japan’s “right of belligerency,” then here is why Japan would provide crucial assistance to the U.S. regime’s effort to grab Taiwan for the U.S. empire and so to conquer China:
On 9 June 2022, Salman Rafi Sheikh was the first person to make note of the fact that the U.S. imperial regime has instructed both of its two former WW II enemies, Germany and Japan, to re-arm, but, this time for America’s empire, instead of for their own.
(In other words: the U.S. regime’s view is that imperialistic fascism is okay if the empire is America, but NOT if the empire is Germany, or Japan.) He headlined “How Washington is Turning the Pacific into a New Theatre of NATO’s Conflict”, and noted that,
“Japan’s drive to arm itself has an interesting parallel in Europe, where Germany, too, has decided to massively increase its total defence spending to 100 billion euros. With Washington actively supporting these critical changes to establish powerful militaries around its core rival states – Russia and China [respectively] in Europe and Asia – new forms of conflict are likely to emerge, with prospects of major counter alliances on the horizon too.”
He went on to say:
Japan’s increasing defence budget comes on top of the full possibility of “interoperability” between the US and Japanese units, allowing the latter to “practice its forward-deployed attack capabilities.” What is extremely important to note here is that the core purpose of the “interoperability” is not defensive; it is offensive, which means that Japan’s so-called “pacifism” is nothing more than a rhetoric that Tokyo uses – and will continue to use – to mask its rapidly growing military preparedness against Russia and China.
That this process is being actively supported by the US is evident from the Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida’s announcement, on the sidelines of Biden’s Tokyo visit, to “drastically strengthen” its military capabilities.
According to a new economic policy draft released by the Kishida administration, the decision is a response to “attempts to unilaterally change the status quo by forces in East Asia, making regional security increasingly severe.” If this assessment sounds vague, it is by design to camouflage Japan’s rise as a new military power that can rival Russia and China as a US ally.
In fact, it is already acting as a US ally against Russia in the Russia-Ukraine conflict. In April, Japanese officials announced that they will send defence equipment – drones and protective gear – to Ukraine to help the Ukrainian military fight the Russian forces. While Japan’s Self-Defence Forces rules prohibit the transfer of defence products to other countries, Defence Minister Nobuo Kishi justified this transfer as “commercial” and “disused items.” More self-serving justifications will be invented to mask Japan’s so-called “pacifist militarization.”
Further tensions with Russia are likely to follow. In April, around the same time Tokyo announced increasing its budget, the Japanese government also shifted its stance on the Kuril islands.
In its 2022 Diplomatic Bluebook, Japan said that “The Northern Territories are a group of islands Japan has sovereignty over and an integral part of Japan’s territory, but currently they are illegally occupied by Russia.”
This description is a major diplomatic shift insofar as it raises the level of tensions surrounding what was previously disputed territory. Calling Russia an “illegal” occupier shows Japan just subscribing to the western narrative about the Russian “occupation” of Crimea.
In practical terms, by raising the temperature against Russia (and China as well), Japan is transforming itself into a front-line military ally of the US and NATO in this part of the world.
Japan’s militarization under the shadow of US support is also tied to how the US/West is increasingly projecting NATO not as a regional alliance; in fact, recent developments have shown how NATO is arrogating to itself a “global” role. In April, the UK’s foreign minister Liz Truss called for a “global NATO.” She added that NATO must have a “global outlook” to be able “ to pre-empt threats in the Indo-Pacific, working with our allies like Japan and Australia to ensure the Pacific is protected. And we must ensure that democracies like Taiwan are able to defend themselves.”
Japan is, thus, by default a logical extension of NATO’s global i.e., anti-Russia and anti-China, geo-politics. Tokyo’s decision to re-arm itself to acquire offensive capability is, thus, not tied to its own needs but to the ways the US is manufacturing a global anti-Russia and anti-China coalition to defeat them and sustain its own global hegemony.
On Sunday, 21 August 2022, Japan Times bannered “Japan weighs deploying over 1,000 longer-range missiles amid China tensions”, and reported that,
With an eye toward narrowing a cavernous “missile gap” with China, Japan is considering stockpiling more than 1,000 long-range cruise missiles, a report said Sunday, as tensions over Taiwan grow.
The Defense Ministry is looking to deploy its ground-launched Type-12 standoff missiles — and extend their range from around 200 kilometers (124 miles) to more than 1,000 km — mainly to its far-flung southwestern islands and the Kyushu region, the Yomiuri daily reported, citing unidentified government sources.
The envisioned weapons, which would also be ship- and air-launch capable, would put the Chinese and North Korean coasts within striking distance, the report added.
In order to acquire the weapons at an early date, the Defense Ministry could include requests for them when it unveils its initial budget proposal for fiscal 2023, which is expected to be released at the end of this month.
On August 24th, Russia’s RT headlined “Drawing the sword: Is Japan getting ready to move against China? Relations with Beijing are crucial for regional trade, but is Tokyo ready to put it all on the line over Taiwan and Washington’s favor?”, and opined that,
“Japan now makes it publicly known that the continued autonomy of Taiwan is critical to its own survival. Why? Because a reunification of the island with mainland China would result in Beijing gaining maritime dominance around all of Japan’s southwest periphery.”
Furthermore:
“Taiwan, once under the colonial rule of Japan, which annexed it from China, has also increased its pro-Japan sentiment significantly. Taiwan, once under the colonial rule of Japan, which annexed it from China, has also increased its pro-Japan sentiment significantly.”
Wikipedia’s article “China-Japan relations” makes quite clear that the national economies of China and Japan are highly dependent upon each other. Furthermore, if a reader understands that historically the winners of wars have received reparations payments from the war’s losers (who usually were the victim not the aggressor) the article makes quite clear that Japan has consistently been the aggressor and imperialist against China, which suffered enormously from Japan’s aggressions against China, and ended up losing not only those wars but those reparations-payments to the victor, each time (namely, these were China’s payments to Japan):
From late 19th century to early 20th century, one of the many factors contributing to the bankruptcy of the Qing government was Japan’s requirement for large amount of war reparations. China paid huge amounts of silver to Japan under various treaties, including the Sino-Japanese Friendship and Trade Treaty (1871), Treaty of Shimonoseki (1895), the Triple Intervention (1895) and the Boxer Protocol (1901). After the First Sino-Japanese War in 1894–95, the Qing government paid a total of 200,000,000 taels of silver to Japan for reparations.[76]
The Second Sino-Japanese War 1936-1945 also caused huge economic losses to China. However, Chiang Kai-shek waived reparations claims for the war when the ROC concluded the Treaty of Taipei with Japan in 1952. Similarly, when Japan normalized its relations with the PRC in 1972, Mao Zedong waived the claim of war reparations from Japan.[77]
So: because the post-FDR U.S. Government, which has dominated the world since 1945, opposed China and supported Japan, WW II’s victor in that War was the new Truman-created (FDR-rejecting) U.S. imperial regime, which didn’t want its Japanese possession to become subjected to having to pay war-debts for Japan’s barbarisms (such as the Rape of Nanking against Chinese), Japan, yet again, got away with murder — mass-murder, of course — when WW II ended. Japan lucked-out, to become now a vassal-nation in the world’s new imperialistic fascist empire, of America, the U.S. empire; so, China, yet again, ate all its losses, instead of being compensated for any of them. Under the new Truman policy, China was being treated as an enemy, no longer as an ally (as it had been under FDR). This has been the U.S. regime’s policy ever since, and especially recently as that regime now tries to complete its all-inclusive global empire, or “hegemony,” by taking both China and Russia.
However, even Japan will suffer if it joins in America’s war against China. Here is why:
Japan is faced now with choosing between being a possession of Americans, and the U.S. regime’s main enforcer against Asians, in that win-lose global-imperialistic game; or, else, becoming, for the first time, an ally, actually, in an authentic win-win game, along with all other Asian countries, including and led by the largest of them all, China, which already is Japan’s top trading-partner, doing 23.47% of its combined imports and exports, as compared with its #2 trading-partner, America, which is 11.27%, less than half as much as with China. With America, the game would be worse (even IF Japan would win, which is doubtful), and the economic damage to the Japanese people would be immense (especially if China wins in that win-lose game, which outcome would not be unlikely; and, this time, the Japanese people WOULD be paying reparations in addition to their war-losses; so, it would be the most damaging defeat ever for Japan, far worse than WW II).
CONSEQUENTLY, FOR THE WELFARE OF BOTH THE CHINESE AND THE JAPANESE PEOPLE: Negotiators from both countries, plus from each of the region’s OTHER countries, must meet together at a comprehensive East-Asian Conference, to draw up a regional strategy for the coming Asia-dominated Century, repudiating and renouncing ALL empires, and ALL needless win-lose international games.
If this fails to happen (and reasonably soon), then a WW III will likely occur, and it will destroy the entire planet. The U.S. regime is set upon a course of world-conquest, which will end either now peacefully, or else soon with WW III. Japan will make the key decision. (I am expecting it to be for war, because Japan has been an obedient vassal-nation ever since 1945.)
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Investigative historian Eric Zuesse’s new book, AMERICA’S EMPIRE OF EVIL: Hitler’s Posthumous Victory, and Why the Social Sciences Need to Change, is about how America took over the world after World War II in order to enslave it to U.S.-and-allied billionaires. Their cartels extract the world’s wealth by control of not only their ‘news’ media but the social ‘sciences’ — duping the public. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.
Featured image: Japan is moving to remilitarize despite its pacifist constitution. Image: Shutterstock via The Conversation
