Foreign Correspondence

[Amaunet]

U.S. to use Taiwan Strait as base for US-Japan bilateral military cooperation


This is very good, it skims some of the steps being taken that will spawn the most catastrophic war in history.

-Am

Whereas the current bilateral defense guidelines do not explicitly mention the Taiwan Strait as a playground for US-Japan bilateral military cooperation, the revised guidelines are expected to do just that. So far, the geographical scope of possible US-Japan military cooperation in Asia has been referred to as "areas surrounding Japan even if all interested parties, including China, agreed a long time [ago] that Taiwan and the Taiwan Straits are very much part of that vague geographical concept.



Japan shows some muscle
By Axel Berkofsky

Jun 21, 2005

Japan's defense planners are clearly on a roll. Initiatives, alone or with the US, to boost Japan's security policy profile and capabilities have been so numerous that commentators and analysts are beginning to have trouble seeing the forest for the trees. But let's give it a shot anyway.

The country's defense planners and hawks have put in a lot of overtime since last December, when Japan's revised National Defense Program Outline was implemented. The new guidelines, greeted at the time with only very limited enthusiasm in China and South Korea, replace Japan's 1995 defense guidelines, ease its decade-long ban to export weapons and weapons technology, and, among others, authorize Japan's military to fight a "potential terrorist threat" inside and outside the country. They also call for an increase of Japanese contributions to international peacekeeping missions and speedy progress developing a US-Japan missile defense system protecting Japan from North Korean ballistic missile attacks.

As expected, the part of the guidelines that called China a "potential threat" to Japan's security infuriated Beijing, which for its part instantly urged the Japanese government to publish the defense guidelines minus the "China threat" section. Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi of course did no such thing and decided to hold talks with the US on joint strategies to care for security in the Taiwan Strait instead.

And there is more. The December 2004 defense guidelines also called for a review of the US-Japan defense guidelines and, through them, for the strengthening of bilateral military cooperation in East Asia to fight regional and global evil-doers.

Tokyo and Washington got down to business without further ado and formally announced in May they would revise their so-called US-Japan Guidelines for Defense Cooperation, implemented in 1997.

Whereas the current bilateral defense guidelines do not explicitly mention the Taiwan Strait as a playground for US-Japan bilateral military cooperation, the revised guidelines are expected to do just that. So far, the geographical scope of possible US-Japan military cooperation in Asia has been referred to as "areas surrounding Japan even if all interested parties, including China, agreed a long time [ago] that Taiwan and the Taiwan Straits are very much part of that vague geographical concept".

There is still little clarity, however, on when exactly Washington and Tokyo will put their plans to upgrade their alliance on paper. Although both countries are optimistic that a joint statement elaborating on details for the revision of the guidelines could still be published by the end of June, it now seems likely that the hawks in both Washington and Tokyo might have to hold back for a few additional months.

Already there is talk about postponing the joint statement until this autumn, even if the US seems keen on getting a Japanese commitment in writing to help keep China and its growing military influence in check sooner rather than later.

That the US has asked Japan to become militarily (even) more assertive right now seems to show that the Pentagon and controversial Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld have rediscovered China as a military threat. Rumsfeld and his associates have over the last several weeks voiced their "concerns" on numerous occasions about China's growing military expenditures, its saber-rattling tactics toward Taiwan and Beijing's plans to shop for European high-tech military equipment once the European Union lifts its weapons embargo imposed after the Tiananmen massacre in 1989. (Although no final decision has been made, the EU is eager to lift its 15-year-old arms embargo on China, much to the displeasure of the US.)

Japan, too, worries about its increasingly assertive neighbor but seems to want more from the upgrade of the alliance with the US than scaring China.

The upgraded alliance, Tokyo hopes, will also be accompanied by a reduction ("realignment" in diplomatic lingo) of US troops stationed in Japan. That, however, is pretty much off the agenda as far as the US is concerned, at least judging by the rhetoric coming out of the Pentagon. The 47,000 US troops in Japan are there to stay and will only be reduced when we say so, has been the message coming from the Pentagon over recent months.

Tokyo as it turns out this time will not cave in that easily and thinks it has another trump card up its sleeve. Last month the government also announced plans to shorten the duration of bilateral agreements with the US on sharing the costs of hosting US forces in Japan. Whereas currently Japan and the US negotiate a new pact every five years, Tokyo wants to reduce the term to two years, possibly allowing Japan to negotiate cuts in financial support every two years.

The current Special Measures Agreement between Tokyo and Washington will expire in March 2006 and the US has already indicated that Japan might be asked to come up with even more cash after the planned realignment of US forces in Japan. The agreement covers Japanese government support for labor, utilities and training relocation costs incurred by US forces in Japan. Bottom line: shortening the bilateral agreement and further reducing the cash flow from Japan are non-starters as far as Washington is concerned. The US$5 billion Tokyo spends yearly on US forces protecting Japanese citizens from North Korea and international terrorists is money well spent, according to Washington.

The US is also keen to boost "interoperability" between US and Japanese armed forces when it revises the bilateral defense guidelines. Japan, however, is slightly less enthusiastic about interoperability as it could go along with joint US-Japan commando structures in the case of a regional contingency. "Joint commando", Tokyo fears, will be a synonym for "US commando", authorizing trigger-happy US generals to order Japanese military to join the fighting in the Taiwan Strait or elsewhere.

Political realities and Japan's infamously slow decision-making process aside, the revision of the guidelines, Washington and Tokyo hope, will be in place by the end of 2006. Drawing up revised contingency plans (one for North Korea, one for the Taiwan Strait and probably several others for the rest of the region), however, can easily take another couple of years.

And then there are Japan's plans to shoot down incoming North Korean missiles. The country's Defense Agency appears to be in a rush and plans to install a new sensor system to detect, track (and eventually) shoot down ballistic missiles in no time. The so-called Advanced Infrared Ballistic Missile Optical Sensor System will be installed on aircraft later this month to monitor missile launches 24 hours a day, seven days a week with high altitude, unmanned reconnaissance planes equipped with the flashy new system.

But "monitoring" only will not be good enough forever, Japan's Defense Agency chief Yoshinori Ono has said. Japan, the outspoken Ono announced recently, will enter joint development of a state-of-the-art missile defense system the with the US as early as fiscal 2006. And even now Japan only wants the best to defend itself from incoming rogue missiles (North Korean).

Tokyo has only recently agreed to buy a US-made missile defense system (the sea-based Standard Missile 3, SM3) with a defense capability of several hundreds of kilometers. The system to be jointly developed with the Pentagon would have about double that range defense agency officials cheer. To avoid legal problems (read: to make legal what is illegal under Japan's constitution) the government last December issued a statement that placed joint development and production of missile defense systems outside of Japan's long-standing ban to export weapons and weapons technology.

Both governments, reportedly in preparation for the development of the missile defense system, are also planning to establish a joint operations center at Yokota Air Base in Tokyo. Through US early-warning satellites, Japan's armed forces will receive information on "suspicious" activities at North Korean missiles sites at the same time as the US military, and not 10 minutes later. This is especially helpful for the defense of Japanese territory as it takes less than 10 minutes for North Korean missiles to reach Tokyo.

Back on planet Earth in the meantime, Tokyo and Washington have agreed to carry out their first joint interception test for a sea-based missile shield next March in Hawaii. If things go well, an interceptor missile will shoot down a mock target over paradise island. To create the legal basis in Japan for intercepting the real thing, Japan's House of Representatives recently passed a bill to revise Japan's Self-Defense Forces Law in order to authorize the armed forces to intercept incoming missiles with a missile defense system.

The bill, however, still needs to pass parliament's Upper House to become law, thereby authorizing the military to deploy Standard Missile 3 interceptors on vessels and ground-based Patriot Advanced Capability 2 interceptors. The military, of course, is eager and warns that North Korea has deployed up to 200 Rodong missiles capable of reaching Japanese territory in less than 10 minutes. China, too, the conservative newspaper Yomiuri Shimbun and other alarmist commentators warn continuously, has already deployed more than 100 intermediate-range missiles capable of reaching Japan and everywhere else in Asia.

"Threatened" by a US-Japan missile defense system, China for its part will probably feel once again "obliged" to increase the number of missiles it has targeted at Taiwan, even if Tokyo and Washington point out in parrot-style that the system is purely defensive.

All the action on Japan's defense and security front is music to the ears of the country's defense hawks. They have long believed Japan needs to arm itself as much as possible to be able to turn to credible saber-rattling tactics should North Korea (or anybody else) in the region decide to launch a few rogue missiles toward downtown Tokyo.

Japan's recent far-away-from-home missions in the Indian Ocean and Iraq, helping the US to fight an ill-fated war against terrorism, have freed Japan's armed forces from its long-standing "laughingstock image" for good, the military has said.

And sure enough, China isn't laughing either.

Dr Axel Berkofsky is senior policy analyst at the Brussels-based European Policy Center (EPC). The views expressed here are his own.

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Japan/GF21Dh03.html