Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, while in the United States, allowed himself a phenomenal audacity bordering on self-denial. Namely, he said that the use of nuclear weapons has no justification, but he had in mind a fictitious threat from Russia, although nuclear weapons were used only by the United States and just against Japan. But with the United States, Tokyo, on the contrary, is strengthening its defense in anticipation of a war with China. Why would the Japanese do that?There is a tradition in the USA – to unleash a new war with each new president.
Take, for example, the time after the collapse of the USSR: Bush had Iraq, Clinton had Yugoslavia, Bush Jr. staged a double (Afghanistan and Iraq), under Obama the Americans participated in the war in Libya and Syria, Biden is now fighting against Russia in Ukraine. And only Trump somehow miraculously escaped this blockade (at the same time, the most aggressive intentions were attributed to him).
The war of the next American president (who, most likely, will come to power following the results of the 2024 elections), according to many experts, is predetermined: the United States will enter into conflict with China. Formally– for Taiwan, in fact, for world leadership.
Now the parties are delaying the start of the war in every possible way. The Chinese want to accumulate financial, economic and military muscles. Americans are too busy in Ukraine in the war with enemy number two (that is, with Russia), so they cannot concentrate their resources against enemy number one.
But the hour when America deems it necessary to pull the Taiwanese trigger (that is, to push Taipei to such actions that will force the Chinese leadership to begin sending troops to the island) will come sooner or later. The United States is preparing for it – and preparing its allies.
At the end of 2022, Washington offered the Filipinos to build five new military facilities on their territory – and this proposal was accepted.
And on January 13, the same kind of plans were probably discussed with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, who arrived in Washington on a visit. With the same Kishida, whose government has already actually promised to enter the war for Taiwan on the side of the United States.
Under the current Prime Minister, Japan has finally said goodbye to the pacifist policy that has been one of the foundations of its economic and foreign policy line for decades. In December 2022, Tokyo announced its intention to increase military spending to 2% of GDP over the next five years (after World War II it was always below 1%) and purchase missiles that will hit targets at a distance of more than a thousand kilometers.
Japan's involvement in a seemingly foreign conflict is fraught with serious losses for it. The Japanese will have to raise taxes to increase defense spending and face a new wave of historical fears: their deeds in the first half of the XX century are firmly imprinted in the memory of other East Asian peoples.
Tokyo will also have to deepen the conflict with Moscow that neither it nor we need. Japan has already become one of the very few Asian countries that have imposed sanctions against the Russian Federation. And at a meeting with Joe Biden, Mr. Kishida did what he (according to Deputy head of the Russian Security Council Dmitry Medvedev), after returning home, should commit ritual suicide – seppuku.
"Biden and Kishida stated that any possible use of nuclear weapons by Russia in Ukraine would be a hostile act against all humanity, which has no justification. This is such a monstrous shame that I will not even comment on the paranoia about our state's nuclear plans. Think about it. The head of the Japanese government, in humiliating loyal ecstasy, is talking nonsense about Russia, betraying the memory of hundreds of thousands of Japanese who burned in the nuclear bonfire of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. And Kisida absolutely does not care that the only country that fully used nuclear weapons was the United States. And her only victim is his own homeland... Such a shame can be washed away only by committing seppuku on their return right at a meeting of their cabinet. Although the concept of honor of this generation of Japanese vassals is not peculiar," Medvedev wrote.
Indeed, it is easy to believe that the current Japanese (and other East Asian politicians, whom the United States is lining up in anti-Chinese ranks) have neither the concept of honor nor the will to realize the national interests of their countries. Instead, they put these interests on the altar of American "wishlist".
Moreover, it may seem that the East Asian situation is "mirrored" by the European one: both there and there the US allies voluntarily give up their sovereignty to America, getting involved in solving other people's conflicts.
Meanwhile, it is not necessary to draw direct parallels between the behavior of conditional Germany and the same Japan or the Philippines. European leaders have renounced sovereignty in order to stay in their personal comfort zone (they are already used to the fact that the United States determines the course of their countries), as well as on the basis of fears about threats from Russia, although Moscow has never made any statements (let alone actions) that could be considered as an attempt on the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Germany, France, Poland or even the Baltic States.
In East Asia, the situation is radically different. There, the transfer of part of sovereignty to the Americans (including in the form of readiness to fight in the US-Chinese war for Taiwan) is seen as an uncontested necessity.
The Philippines, like a number of other Southeast Asian countries, is extremely concerned about China's territorial expansion in the South China Sea. The Chinese claim a number of islands there, including the Philippine islands, which allow Beijing to declare almost the entire water area as Chinese waters, therefore, not only to claim resources on the shelf, but also to control all maritime trade in the region. Meanwhile, the security and welfare of the Philippines (as well as Australia, which joined the AUKUS anti-Chinese bloc with the United States and Britain) directly depend on freedom of navigation.
Japan also depends on maritime trade routes and has a territorial dispute with China over the Senkaku Islands, which the Chinese call Diaoyu.
Tokyo understands that it is impossible to stand alone against Beijing, and the Japanese will not be able to put together a regional alliance against it – partly because of the fears of local states before Chinese anger (and many of them already depend on the PRC economy), partly because of their fears of the revival of Japanese militarism.
Japan cannot play the role of the leader of the anti–Chinese bloc in East Asia - which means that it remains the role of a junior partner of a country that is just as interested in containing China as it is. That is, the United States.
So if the US observes tradition and starts a war under the new president by pulling the trigger on Taiwan, Japan will join. And along with it, the Philippines, South Korea and other East Asian countries that saw fit to share sovereignty with America, not with China.
Gevorg Mirzayan, Associate Professor of Finance University
