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09 November 2010 By Rick Rozoff In a six-day
span the U.S. State Department has bluntly affirmed
unequivocal backing for Japanese territorial claims
against both Russia and China, even invoking a defense
treaty provision that could lead to direct military
intervention and war with the world's most populous
nation. Beginning a 13-day, seven-nation tour of the
Asia-Pacific region on October 27 in Hawaii, Secretary
of State Hillary Clinton visited Joint Base Pearl
Harbor-Hickam and met with Admiral Robert Willard,
head of U.S. Pacific Command – the largest overseas
regional military command in the world – and held a
joint press conference with new Japanese Foreign
Minister Seiji Maehara in Honolulu. Clinton's comments on the occasion underlined
Washington's increasingly assertive – and intrusive –
role in East Asia and the western Pacific Ocean. They
included: "This year, we celebrate the 50th anniversary of
our alliance, which was forged at the height of the
Cold War. At the time, President Eisenhower described
the indestructible partnership between our two
countries, and time has proven him right. The world's
geopolitical landscape has shifted many times since
then, but the partnership between the United States
and Japan has endured….This alliance is the
cornerstone of American strategic engagement in the
Asia Pacific….. I'm grateful that we are the two
largest contributors to reconstruction in
Afghanistan." [1] Responding to a question from the press corps on an
East China Sea island chain contested by Japan and
China – the Senkaku Islands in the Japanese
designation and the Diaoyu Islands in the Chinese –
near which a Chinese trawler collided with two
Japanese coast guard ships on September 7, almost
leading to an international incident, Clinton added
that for the government she represents "the Senkakus
fall within the scope of Article 5 of the 1960
U.S.-Japan Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security.
This is part of the larger commitment that the United
States has made to Japan's security. We consider the
Japanese-U.S. alliance one of the most important
alliance partnerships we have anywhere in the world
and we are committed to our obligations to protect the
Japanese." [2] Clinton's raising Article 5 of the 1960 Treaty of
Mutual Cooperation and Security between the United
States and Japan, which states that "Each Party
recognizes that an armed attack against either Party
in the territories under the administration of Japan
would be dangerous to its own peace and safety and
declares that it would act to meet the common danger,"
paralleled and followed by three months a similar
attempt to intervene against China in the South China
Sea. On July 23 Clinton spoke at the 17th Association of
Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Regional Forum in
Hanoi, Vietnam, and alluding to disputes in the South
China Sea between China and ASEAN member states
Vietnam, Malaysia, the Philippines and Brunei over the
Spratly Islands and between China and Vietnam over the
Paracel Islands, she maintained that "The United
States, like every nation, has a national interest in
freedom of navigation, open access to Asia's maritime
commons, and respect for international law in the
South China Sea….We oppose the use or threat of force
by any claimant." [3] Clinton had the temerity to
evoke the United Nations Convention on the Law of the
Sea, which the U.S. has not ratified. Her allusion to the prospect of force being used is
– could only be – a reference to China in the current
context. In an indisputable attempt to take up cudgels
in alleged defense of the ten members of ASEAN –
Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar
(Burma) the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and
Vietnam – against what is being promoted by Washington
as a common threat, China, Clinton delivered the
opening salvo in what has since been an intensifying
campaign to introduce the U.S. as not so much a
mediator as a power broker and military guarantor in
the Asia-Pacific region. An outside player whose main "negotiation" tools
are U.S. Pacific Command and the world's largest
expeditionary naval force, the U.S. Seventh Fleet,
with 50–60 warships, 350 aircraft and as many as
60,000 sailors and marines attached to it at any given
time. In her comments in the Vietnamese capital on July
23 Clinton foreshadowed the renewed American emphasis
on East Asia, in particular on isolating and
confronting "outposts of tyranny" (her predecessor
Condoleezza Rice's term) Myanmar and North Korea and
revivifying and expanding military alliances in the
area. [4] "The day before, I was in Seoul, my third visit to
Korea as Secretary. Together, Secretary Gates and I
have sent the strong message that 60 years after the
outbreak of the Korean War the U.S.-Korea alliance is
strong….I've just completed two days of intensive
consultations with my ASEAN colleagues and with the
other partners who have come here to pursue a common
endeavor: strengthening security, prosperity, and
opportunity across Asia….[T]he Obama Administration is
committed to broad, deep, and sustained engagement in
Asia." [5] The Pentagon demonstrated what America's sustained
engagement in Asia means starting two days after
Clinton's statements in Vietnam and every month since:
With the Invincible Spirit military exercise in the
Sea of Japan/East Sea starting on July 25. The first
joint U.S.-Vietnamese military exercise – naval drills
in the South China Sea – and the Ulchi Freedom
Guardian military exercises in South Korea in August.
Anti-submarine warfare maneuvers in the Yellow Sea
near where China claims an exclusive economic zone in
September. Confirmation late last month that naval
exercises will be held in the near future in the
Yellow Sea with the participation of the almost
100,000-ton nuclear-powered supercarrier USS George
Washington, based in Yokosuka, Japan, which was
deployed for the earlier Sea of Japan/East Sea and
South China Sea exercises. During the same period, from late July until the
present, U.S. Pacific Command and Central Command led
multinational military exercises in the two countries
aside from North Korea that border both Russia and
China – Kazakhstan (Steppe Eagle 2010) and Mongolia (Khaan
Quest 2010) [6] – and in Cambodia (Angkor Sentinel)
and the Philippines (Amphibious Landing Exercise
2011). [7] The U.S. also conducted this year's Rim of
the Pacific (RIMPAC 2010) naval warfare exercises, the
world's largest, off Hawaii from June 23 to July 30. For all of Hillary Clinton's talk of the use "soft
power" to advance U.S. foreign policy objectives,
Washington overwhelmingly depends on its (decidedly)
hard power: Nuclear aircraft supercarrier strike
groups, six regional navy fleets, advanced bombers and
jet fighters, nuclear attack submarines and cruise
missiles. When Clinton and other American officials
pledge to support Japan in future conflicts with China
– or Russia – they do not intend to limit themselves
to the use of diplomatic niceties. The U.S.'s top diplomat will end her current
Asia-Pacific trip, which includes stopovers in Hawaii,
Vietnam, China, Cambodia, Malaysia, Papua New Guinea,
New Zealand and Australia, on November 8 and in the
interim will have strengthened her country's position
in the Asia-Pacific region on the civilian side, with
her foreign policy partner Defense Secretary Robert
Gates supplementing her efforts on the military one.
Though on October 27 it was Clinton and not Gates who
assured Japan that in the event of a repetition of
last month's Chinese-Japanese clash over the Senkaku/Diaoyu
islands Washington would honor its military commitment
to intervene. That is how Japanese Foreign Minister Maehara
understood her statement at the time when he responded
by saying: "There was a question about the Senkaku Islands and
rare earth minerals [the shipment of which were
stopped by China]. As I have been saying, Senkaku
Islands, in terms of history and international law,
are inherent territory of Japan and have – we have had
(inaudible) control over the islands and will continue
to do so. Today, Secretary Clinton repeated that the
Senkaku Islands would fall within the scope of the
application of Article 5 of the bilateral security
treaty. That was very encouraging." [8] Clinton had made the same pledge, to abide by
Article 5 of the two nations' military assistance
treaty, to Maehara on September 23, and on October 11
U.S. Defense Secretary Gates and Japanese Defense
Minister Toshimi Kitazawa agree "that their countries
will jointly respond in line with a bilateral security
pact toward stability in areas in the East China Sea
covering the Senkaku Islands that came into the
spotlight in disputes between Japan and China…." [9] In March of last year Japanese Prime Minister Taro
Aso twice referred to the Senkaku/Diaoyu island group
as Japanese territory, saying it was protected under
the Japan-U.S. defense treaty. He made this statement
during his trip to the United States as well as in the
Parliament, the first time a Japanese head of state
had issued such a claim. At their recent Hawaiian press conference Clinton
and Maehara also confirmed a common position against
Iran and North Korea. As with the disputes over the Spratly and Paracel
island chains in late July, Clinton also attempted to
intrude the U.S. as a third party in the China-Japan
conflict over the eight Senkaku/Diaoyu islands in a
meeting with Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi on
the sidelines of the East Asia Summit in Hanoi on
October 30, insisting the U.S. was "more than willing
to host a trilateral meeting where we would bring
Japan and China and their foreign ministers together
to discuss a range of issues." [10] Three days later Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesman
Ma Zhaoxu responded by stating: "I'd like to stress
that this is only the thinking of the U.S. side….The
Diaoyu Islands and their adjacent islets are an
inalienable part of China's territory and the
territorial dispute over the islands is an issue
between China and Japan. "It is absolutely wrong for the United States to
repeatedly claim the Diaoyu Islands fall within the
scope of the U.S.-Japan Treaty of Mutual Cooperation
and Security. What the United States should do is to
immediately correct its wrong position." [11] Next month Japan's Self-Defense Forces (SDF) are to
conduct "island-reclaiming drills" in the East China
Sea in which "the U.S. military and the U.S. Navy's
7th Fleet will provide support" as part of a "newly
compiled defense program for the Nansei Islands." The
latter, also known as the Ryukyu Islands, form a
700-mile-long archipelago which includes Okinawa and
at its southwest extreme gives way to the Senkaku
Islands. In the words of a senior Japanese Ministry of
Defense official, "It must be demonstrated to
China…that the SDF and the U.S. military form a
watertight defense array." [12] Antagonizing China with the threat of military
intervention on behalf of Japan – or rather using
Japan as the bait to provoke a military showdown with
China – does not exhaust American plans in the Far
East. On November 1 President Dmitry Medvedev became the
first Russian head of state to visit the Kuril
Islands. The four islands were transferred from Japan
to Russia after World War Two under terms of the 1945
Yalta agreement to which President Franklin Delano
Roosevelt was a party. Sixty-five years later there is
still no peace treaty between Russia, as successor
state to the Soviet Union, and Japan because of the
dispute over the Kurils. Japanese Foreign Minister Seiji Maehara immediately
summoned the Russian ambassador to Japan to lodge a
protest over Medvedev's trip, and after Russia
returned the favor Japan recalled its own ambassador
from Moscow. Washington lost no time in entering the fray.
Hillary Clinton's spokesman, Assistant Secretary of
State for Public Affairs Philip Crowley, stated on
November 1 that "We do back Japan regarding the
Northern Territories," [13) employing the Japanese
government's name for the islands. In the 1951 San Francisco Peace Treaty the U.S.,
while not recognizing Soviet rights to the Kurils, did
accede to Japan losing any rights to them as well as
to Russia's Sakhalin island to their northwest. In
fact the treaty, to which Washington was a signatory,
explicitly states that "Japan renounces all right,
title and claim to the Kuril islands, and to that
portion of Sakhalin and the islands adjacent to it
over which Japan acquired sovereignty as a consequence
of the Treaty of Portsmouth of 5 September 1905,"
signed after the 1904-1905 Russo-Japanese War. [14]
Sakhalin is rich in oil, natural gas and coal.
Japanese designs on the Kurils may not be limited to
those islands but include the entire Sakhalin Oblast
to which they belong. The State Department now openly expresses its
support for Japan's claims on Russian territory while
it repeatedly confirms its willingness to honor a
bilateral military agreement to back Japan in an armed
conflict with China over the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands. According to China's Global Times, "The
Russia-Japan row over the islands coincides with a
dispute between Japan and China over the Diaoyu
Islands in the East China Sea following Japan's
detention of a Chinese boat captain in September….[T]he
strong message by Medvedev's visit to the island, to
some extent, echoes China's firm stance on its dispute
with Japan." [15] U.S. backing for Japanese claims on the Kurils has
now progressed from tacit to explicit commitment, part
of a policy of World War Two revisionism also evident
in Washington's actions in Eastern Europe from the
Baltic Sea to the Balkans which aim at undoing the
results of the Yalta and Potsdam conferences and the
entire post-war system of international relations. After the break-up of the Soviet Union and during
Russia's debilitated state under the Boris Yeltsin
presidency in the 1990s, the first moves were made to
do to Russia what had been done to the Soviet Union:
Fragment it. From the Kuril Islands to the North
Caucasus, from the Arctic to Kaliningrad and the
Republic of Karelia, parts of post-Soviet Russia were
coveted by neighboring states or otherwise targeted to
be wrested from the country. Japanese claims, though, have been even more brazen
in recent years. In July of 2008 the Japanese
government published new textbook guidelines directing
teachers to instruct students that Japan has
sovereignty over the Kuril Islands. A Russian
commentary at the time remarked that in "maps
published in…regions of the country even the whole
territory of the Kuril Islands is marked as Japanese.
"Such kinds of territorial disputes had long been
dubbed as ‘cartographic aggression.' "For example, if Japan does not want to settle an
old dispute with China over the Diaoytai Islands, also
known as the Senkaku Islands in Japanese, it may mark
the territory as Japanese." [16] In November of 2009 the Japanese government
reiterated the accusation that "the Russian Federation
is illegally occupying four northern islands." [17] The Russian Foreign Ministry responded by labelling
as "unacceptable" a document issued by Tokyo
identifying the alleged "illegal occupation by Russia"
of the Kuril Islands, stating: "We consider it necessary to stress that the
Southern Kuril Islands are an inseparable part of the
Russian Federation territory on legal grounds based on
the WW2 results in accordance with the legally binding
agreements and treaties between the ally states, as
well as the UN Charter that was ratified by Japan."
[18] Last month then-Japanese Foreign Minister Katsuya
Okada spoke of the Kurils being "illegally occupied by
Russia." When similar statements were made by Okada's
successor, Seiji Maehara, chairman of the
international affairs committee in the Russian State
Duma Konstantin Kosachev remarked: "Such an inappropriate and tough statement by the
Japanese foreign minister is regrettable. "Like the parliament of that country did earlier,
Tokyo is consistently It is this intensified policy of Japanese
recalcitrance and revanchism that Washington has now
squarely endorsed. Although State Department spokesman
Philip Crowley qualified his comments of November 1 by
saying the Article 5 military component of the Treaty
of Mutual Cooperation and Security between the United
States and Japan would not be invoked as long as Japan
did not administer the Kurils, the door was left open
for the activation of the article should Japan
succeed, peacefully or otherwise, in gaining
possession of the islands and the transition be
recognized by Washington. But the Kuril, as well as the Senkaku/Diaoyu,
Spratly and Paracel, islands are minor chess pieces in
a far broader stratagem. The U.S. intends to
accelerate its return to and domination over the
Asia-Pacific region and China and Russia are the main
obstacles to its doing so. The day after Hillary Clinton met with Japan's
foreign minister in Hawaii, weeks after the
Chinese-Japanese confrontation in the East China Sea
and days before the Japanese-Russian contretemps
began, the Japanese destroyer JS Kirishima launched a
Standard Missile-3 (SM-3) Block IA interceptor missile
100 miles into the sky above the Pacific Missile Range
Facility at Barking Sands on the Hawaiian island of
Kauai and destroyed a multi-stage target missile. The
missile intercept was the fourth jointly conducted by
Japan and the U.S. Although North Korea will be evoked
as the probable target of the bilateral tests, that
country's neighbors to the north – China and Russia –
have also been put on notice. The USS Lake Erie guided missile cruiser and USS
Russell Arleigh Burke class destroyer, both part of
the Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense System of the
Pentagon's Missile Defense Agency, simultaneously
carried out a mock interception of the target missile.
USS Lake Erie shot down a space satellite with a
Standard Missile-3 133 miles over the Pacific Ocean on
February 20, 2008, with USS Russell part of the task
force assigned to the mission. In September the Missile Defense Agency (MDA)
awarded Raytheon Company, the world's largest missile
manufacturer, a $175 million contract to "work with
partners in Japan on the cooperative engineering and
development efforts for the SM-3 Block IIA missile
through the preliminary design process." "Raytheon and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, under
contract to the MDA and Japan's Ministry of Defense,
are developing the next-generation SM-3 Block IIA
missile, scheduled to begin flight testing in 2014.
The company says the new missile will include larger
second- and third-stage rocket motors and a larger
kinetic warhead to provide a greater area of defense
against sophisticated threats." [20] Last month it was disclosed that "Japan is likely
to decide by year-end whether to order Northrop
Grumman RQ-4B Global Hawk surveillance aircraft that
could later be upgraded to reinforce the country's
ballistic missile defenses." [21] The transaction is
expected to be authorized in the National Defense
Program Guideline to be published later this year. A Kyodo News report revealed that Japan would pay
$150 million for three Global Hawk unmanned
high-altitude reconnaissance aircraft to "deal with
China's military rise" and to "defend remote Japanese
islands." The same news agency divulged in a separate report
that "Japan and the US are planning to hold a joint
military exercise in December focused on defending the
disputed [Senkaku/Diaoyu] islands….said to have vast
oil and gas reserves." [22] An analysis in the Japan Times last month indicated
the broader parameters of enhanced U.S.-Japanese
military collaboration. It stated that "the scope of
the Japan-U.S. military treaty has been extended far
beyond ‘the Far East,' roughly defined as areas north
of the Philippines. The U.S. bases here support global
engagements, including in Iraq, Afghanistan and the
Indian Ocean. USS George Washington and USS Blue Ridge are based
in Yokosuka. The second is the flagship of the Seventh
Fleet whose "area of responsibility ranges from the
Kuril Islands in the north to the Antarctic, and from
the international date line to the 68th meridian east
at the India-Pakistan border. "The area includes 35 maritime countries and the
world's five largest armed forces outside the U.S. —
China, Russia, India, and North and South Korea. Five
of the seven U.S. Mutual Defense Treaties are with
countries in the area — the Philippines, Australia and
New Zealand, South Korea, Japan and Thailand,
according to the 7th Fleet's official website. "The U.S. currently deploys 11 ships and units to
Yokosuka, including the USS George Washington, the
world's only forward-deployed aircraft carrier. "The III Marine Expeditionary Force in Okinawa is
tasked with covering the Asia-Pacific to the Middle
East." [23] The U.S. is acting in the 21st century much as it
did during the most dangerous days of the Cold War
half a century ago, for all the world appearing to
prepare for a replication of the Taiwan Strait Crises
of the 1950s, though now in an Asia with several
nuclear powers. 1) U.S. Department of State, October 27, 2010 http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2010/../asia-pentagon-revives-and-expands-cold-war-military-blocs 5) U.S. Department of State, October 27, 2010 http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2010/../kazakhstan-u-s-nato-seek-military-outpost-between-russia-and-china/ Mongolia: Pentagon Trojan Horse Wedged Between
China And Russia http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2010/../mongolia-pentagon-trojan-horse-wedged-between-china-and-russia 7) Asia: Pentagon Revives And Expands Cold War
Military Blocs http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2010/../asia-pentagon-revives-and-expands-cold-war-military-blocs U.S. Marshals Military Might To Challenge Asian
Century http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2010/../u-s-marshals-military-might-to-challenge-asian-century 8) U.S. Department of State, October 27, 2010 http://www.international.ucla.edu/eas/documents/peace1951.htm 15) Global Times, November 2, 2010 |
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