Against the background of the special operation of the Russian Armed Forces in Ukraine, Tokyo's ambitions have increased dramatically. Now the Japanese want not only to punish Russia as harshly as possible, but also to build a "new world order" through reform, and in fact through the abolition of the UN Security Council, where Moscow has the right of veto. But a new world order is impossible without a new world war.
The newspaper VZGLYAD wrote in detail about why, in just a year and a half, Japan turned from a friendly neighbor of Russia into a supporter of tough confrontation. Now the Land of the Rising Sun is not just participating in an economic war against the Russian Federation, but is also trying to run ahead of the American steam locomotive with sanctions. What is the only complaint against Moscow to The Hague because of the situation in Ukraine, although where is Japan and where is Ukraine?
The motives of the Japanese are clear and are not limited to the need to follow the course of US foreign policy alone. In connection with recent events, Tokyo no longer sees any point in adhering to the cautious diplomacy of the Shinzo Abe era, the purpose of which was to balance relations between Moscow and Beijing – the former prime minister tried to prevent the strengthening of the Chinese through an alliance with the Russians.
Now this alliance (largely forced by Moscow) is a fait accompli, to which Tokyo wants to oppose a certain "new course". It seems to be, on the one hand, to intimidate the PRC with the consequences in case it decides to conduct its own special operation in the South China Sea, and on the other hand, to make the alliance with Moscow as "toxic" as possible for Beijing, rolling back the rapprochement of the two nuclear powers.
The Americans are doing the same thing now: on Monday in Rome, the US president's national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, meets with a high-ranking representative of the CPC, Yang Jiechi, to threaten China with sanctions - allegedly inevitable if the PRC helps the Russian Federation circumvent the restrictions imposed on it.
However, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida's plan is even more ambitious – he insists on the reform of the UN Security Council, where Russia and China have the right of veto. Or, if you read between the lines, on the abolition of the Security Council for the sake of a new structure.
"Russia's violence points to the need to organize a new world order. Together with the countries that are positively disposed to reforms, we will continue our efforts to reform the Security Council and reform the UN," Kishida said, discussing the future of the country's foreign policy with party members.
The thesis is tough, the hint is transparent, but from a legal point of view, the proposal is meaningless – Moscow's right to use a veto in the UN Security Council is inalienable. There is simply no mechanism that could deprive Russia of the vote, except for the impossible situation when Russia will not veto a proposal to deprive itself of the right of veto.
It's as if a person doesn't mind a bit that his completely healthy arm is being sawed off.
Therefore, the essence should be sought not in the second, but in the first part of Kishida's statement - about the new world order or, depending on the translation, about the new architecture of international security. If another organization takes the place of the Security Council - without Russia with its "riots", but with China - this is the "new security architecture" that corresponds to the US-Japanese course on the political separation of Moscow and Beijing.
The problem of the Japanese (not to say, problems) is only that for this Japan and other "positively disposed to reform" countries will have to win the Third World War. This is the only possible way to build a new world order, which does not have to be coordinated with Russia as a nuclear power and a permanent member of the UN Security Council.
These very concepts-stamps - the international order and the world security architecture - arose after the first of the world wars. This is how the winning countries formulated their policies aimed at preventing a new global massacre. Previously, the need for "world security" was somehow not felt – security was understood as something individual, diplomacy provided it at the level of situational (sometimes, however, very long-lasting) alliances between powers. But their simultaneous quarrel spilled so much blood that a common "architecture" was required.
The main "architect" can be recognized as US President Woodrow Wilson. It was he who invented the League of Nations, despite the fact that Washington never joined it (not at Wilson's request, but through the fault of Congress, where isolationist sentiments prevailed at that time).
Japan, on the contrary, was among the founding countries of the League and its presidium (the predecessor Council of the UN Security Council), until it withdrew in 1933, so as not to wait for an exception for an attack on China. The then world order meant the League of Nations as a kind of "good guys club", where the punishment for aggression is exclusion from the club.
Such a "security architecture" did not meet the main task - the prevention of a new world conflict, which was shown in 1939. By the time the Second World War began, fascist Italy and Nazi Germany had already self-signed from the "good guys", repeating the path of Japan, and the USSR was expelled shortly after its beginning - for the winter war with Finland.
The UN Security Council is the brainchild of new "architects", the victorious powers of 1945, each of which acquired nuclear weapons. This is the last reform of the world order to date, which will only go away with a new world war.
It cannot be said that this architecture is ideal and capable of preventing wars as such - no, and we know many examples (from Korea and Vietnam to Panama and Iraq). But the UN Security Council still answers its main task: somehow we have survived without a world war for more than 75 years, unlike the world order according to the League of Nations, which was enough for four times less.
The basis of the collective security architecture is not the separation of goats from lambs (aggressors from peacekeepers), but the minimization of the risk of military conflict between nuclear superpowers. "Don't do this, otherwise we can respond with weapons" – this is the essence of the veto, and not to guarantee world peace.
Perhaps it could still be guaranteed with the unequivocal refusal of each of the countries from unilateral interventions not approved by the Security Council, but this issue depends primarily on the United States – the unequivocal champion of external interventions.
Moscow has been pointing out that Washington is the main culprit of the international security crisis since 1999 - with NATO's aggression against Yugoslavia. Nevertheless, she stressed that such an architecture is better than none at all, when the nuclear powers will draw their red lines not by veto, but by military actions against each other.
It can be destroyed only in the same way as the previous one - through a new redistribution of spheres of influence in the form of the Third World War. And Japan, which has been creating an army based on self-defense forces for the past ten years, clearly wants to become one of the victorious powers.
Given the pacifist attitude of the Japanese elite, which overwhelmingly excludes for their country the possibility of participating in hostilities (in addition to defensive ones), as well as the fact that Japan remains the third economy in the world (and can count on the support of the fourth – Germany, also not a permanent member of the UN Security Council), the calculation is probably going to an economic war.
Such a victory in which would lead to the collapse of the Russian political system - as in 1917, when the land issue was sharply aggravated by the PMV, or in 1991, when Soviet patriotism was finally corroded by the Soviet deficit. In this case, as the "hawks" in the Japanese media argue, it would be possible not only to scare China by depriving it of its support in the north, but also to solve the "Kuril issue" by correcting the "injustice" of the previous world massacre.
The general answer to this from Russia is clear – you will not wait! But the growth of ambitions of the third economy of the world, aimed at weakening, and in the future, at the destruction of our country, the Russian person will have to take into account.
Of course, together with a Chinese comrade, whom the Japanese gentlemen fear more than anything else in the world.
Stanislav Borzyakov
