Japan, US deepen alliance directed at China

The Japan-U.S. alliance, which has long been directed overtly or covertly at China and became somewhat confused and vague after the end of the Cold War, has finally made its strategic goals clear.

Japan and the United States are in formal negotiations once again revising the Guidelines for Japan-U.S. Defense Cooperation, which was last revised in 1997, based on a joint declaration on security cooperation issued during Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda's visit to the United States earlier this year.

When tensions across the Taiwan Strait heightened in 1996, Japan and the United States began reexamining their alliance, and revised the Guidelines for Japan-U.S. Defense Cooperation formulated in 1978.

The two countries revised the guidelines again in 1997, and incorporated "situations in areas that surround Japan" into the scope of their defense treaty. "Areas surrounding Japan" appear to refer to the Korean peninsula and Taiwan Strait, and are in fact directed against China. The ambiguity in the notion of "situations in areas surrounding Japan" has "saved" the Japan-U.S. alliance, and saved the United States the trouble of withdrawing from East Asia.

Since the beginning of the 21st century, the rise of China has gradually turned into a fixed trend, and it is a strategic "threat" to the United States' military presence in Asia. Therefore, Japan made a new-edition National Defense Program Outline according to the United States' instruction, taking its "southwestern islands" as the new target of defense and clearly pointing out that China is a concern of regional and international communities.

The United States also launched a "New Asia Pacific Strategy" and declared that it would return to Asia. All of these will be the main contents of the newly-modified Guidelines for Japan-U.S. Defense Cooperation and the two countries' joint declaration. From then on, they will be able to discuss issues about China in public instead of secretly.

However, although they take strict precautions against China militarily, they still depend on China economically. While Japan and United States are strengthening their partnership and regarding China as a strategic opponent, they are still not able to change the situation that they need China in the economic area.

Therefore, the mode featuring cooperating with China economically and confronting China militarily designed by "strategists" of the two countries is actually unpractical, unreasonable and unkind.