Japan Might Challenge China Sooner Than Expected

Authored by Andrew Korybko via Substack,

It was recently assessed that “Japan Will Play A Much Greater Role In Advancing The American Agenda In Asia”, which its new ultra-nationalist Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi has wasted no time in doing.

Her first move in this direction was telling parliament that “If there are battleships and the use of force (by China against Taiwan), no matter how you think about it, it could constitute a survival-threatening situation.”

That lingo refers to a legal term for activating the use of Japan’s “Self-Defense Forces” (SDF).

Although she didn’t elaborate, her controversial logic is presumably that China’s post-war control over Taiwan’s semiconductor industry (provided that it survives the conflict) could lead to it coercing Japan into unilateral strategic concessions, the possibility of which fuels fears of Chinese hegemony over Asia. Takaichi then evaded answering whether her government will abide by Japan’s three non-nuclear principles of no possession of nuclear weapons, no production thereof, and no hosting of others’.

The US’ nuclear submarine deal with South Korea, which was assessed here as making it an informal member of AUKUS, was followed by reports that Japan might clinch its own with the US. In that event, the maritime SDF would pose an even more formidable threat to the People’s Liberation Army-Navy than it already does, which the analysis hyperlinked to at the beginning of this one assessed to already pose a challenge to Russia per the opinion of Putin’s senior aide and leading naval specialist Nikolai Patrushev.

Recalling Japan’s close defense ties with the Philippines, both of which are the US’ mutual defense allies and between whom lies Taiwan, it’s clear that Japan is being empowered by the US to re-establish part of its lost regional sphere of influence in order to contain China on the Asian front of the New Cold War. This parallels the US’ empowerment of Poland for containing Russia on the European front of the New Cold War through the partial re-establishment its own lost regional sphere of influence.

The larger trend is that the US is inciting security dilemmas along the periphery of what can now be described as the Sino-Russo Entente, correspondingly through its mutual defense allies in Japan and Poland who are in turn part of Asia’s NATO-like AUKUS+ and NATO, for dividing-and-ruling Eurasia. Interestingly, just like Japan is now flirting with nuclear weapons, so too did Poland recently reaffirm that it wants to host French nukes and one day even develop its own. The US is expected to back these plans.

Trump 2.0 is therefore fine-tuning the Biden Administration’s “dual containment” of the Sino-Russo Entente, as Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov described the US-led West’s policy as being, to which end it’s focusing more on “Leading From Behind” in order to optimize “burden-sharing”.

The emerging result is a “return to history” in the sense of former regional leaders restoring their lost spheres of influence with US support and all that entails for worsening tensions with the Sino-Russo Entente.

China will never forget the Japanese genocide of its people during World War II while Russia commemorates the expulsion of the Poles from Moscow in 1612 every year on National Unity Day. Neither of these historical traumas are repeatable nowadays due to their nuclear deterrents, but the revival of their historical rivals certainly unsettles them, though it also unites their people in the face of these US-backed threats as the New Cold War continues to intensify with no end in sight.