RPI: Japan Must Face Up To China

[FrankRep]

Japan Must Face Up To China


Ron Paul Institute
July 28, 2013


World War II has never really ended for Japan. Sixty-eight years after the battleship US “Missouri” sailed into Tokyo Bay to receive the surrender of the Japanese Empire, Japan still behaves like a meek, defeated nation rather than one of the world’s great powers – and great peoples.

Economically, Japan is a giant, albeit a staggering one. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s Liberal Democratic Party just secured full control of both houses of Japan’s parliament. Abe’s “three-arrow” reform program has injected new life in Japan’s formerly stagnant $5 trillion economy industry and driven down the over-valued yen.

But military, Japan remains a midget. Its so-called Self-Defense Forces were designed to stop a Soviet amphibious invasion of the northern islands. Japan’s US-written pacifist constitution prohibits all offensive military operations or exports of arms and military equipment.

The 1960 US-Japan Security Treaty laid the foundation of relations between Washington and Tokyo. The US in effect pledged to defend Japan against all comers; amusingly, Japan pledged to help defend the US – but banned from sending military forces abroad. The key to the treaty was the establishment of permanent US air, land, and sea bases in Japan. They remain, half a century later.

Japan thus became a giant US aircraft carrier from which it dominates highly strategic North Asia. In exchange, Japanese industry was given open access to the US market, thus laying the base of Japan’s economic upsurge of the 1960’s. South Korea enjoyed a similar deal.

This cozy arrangement is now being challenged by the rapid rise of China’s military and economic power. Just this week, a Chinese military aircraft that overflew waters near Japan’s Okinawa, provoked an uproar in Japan.

Full Story:
http://ronpaulinstitute.org/archives...-to-china.aspx

[thoughtomator]

Japan needs to face up to Fukushima. China is the least of its problems.

[eleganz]

The RPI logo on the website is very low quality, someone get on illustrator and make them a new one!

Does Ron personally write all of the publications?

[Occam's Banana]

Does Ron personally write all of the publications?

No. In fact, he doesn't even write most of them. (Eric Margolis wrote this one.)

[fr33]

I don't like the anti-Japan notion the article seems to lead with and carry to the end. Japan was taken hostage and has been used as a pawn. Granted, it was very profitable for the pawn, but how to measure the cost of atomic bombs and what is owed......