japan

CSIS Event: The Spear and the Shield

https://www.csis.org/events/spear-and-shield-japans-defense-strategy-trajectory

What is Japan’s security policy, especially in the wake of threats and concerns from Russia, North Korea and China? The CSIS held an event discussing the policy, and these are my personal notes of the meeting:

Introductions, as always. Members of CSIS, as well as a member of the Japanese lower and upper house respectively. First member is Itsunori Onodera, member of the lower house, Minister of Defense under Abe. Part of group which submitted NS documents to the Japanese diet. Second member is Masahisa Sato, elected in 2007 and a commander of the JSDF deployment to Iraq. Minister of Foreign Affairs under Abe.

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History and Historiography Review: The Mikado’s Empire

I’m always pretty fascinated by histories written in the pre-Modern era, which I generally define as book written before the Second World War. Certain modern individuals would call such works “problematic”, but I find them interesting both as a way to learn things from the actual book as well as a chance to learn about what the writer himself of that era finds to be interesting or not.

The Mikado’s Empire, written by William Elliot Griffis as seen in the above picture, is a perfect example of why I like books of that era. The book was originally written in 1883 by Griffis, who came to Japan from the United States to teach them science in their modernization efforts. There are additional addendums written in 1886, 1890, 1894, as well as a final chapter on the first Sino-Japanese War.

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On Japanese pacifism: the problem of those freeriding on American security.

A Department of Defense report released last Thursday discussed China’s continuing efforts to modernize its military. It noted that China is preparing not just for contingencies in its traditional problem with Taiwan, but in the South and East China Sea, where it has territorial disputes with Vietnam, the Philippines, and Japan. The report particularly noted the modernization of the Chinese Air Force, calling it “unprecedented in history” and also mentioned that the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Navy conducted its largest naval exercise at the Philippine Sea. Chinese President Xi Jiping and Barrack Obama did affirm that their two countries should work together to expand cooperation and dialogue, but naturally such Chinese military modernization must provoke concern in the eyes of Washington. And if Washington is worried across the Pacific Ocean, surely nearby Asian countries like the Philippines, Vietnam, South Korea, and Japan are also starting to prepare for China’s military rise, correct?

No, not really.

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Brookings Lecture: Banri Kaieda and Perspectives on Japanese politics.

Today at the Brookings Institution, the president of the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ), Banri Kaieda gave a brief lecture on Japanese politics and the DPJ’s perspective on the US-Japan alliance.  The Democratic Party of Japan is the main opposition in Japan as opposed to the more conservative Liberal Democratic Party(LDP), though I would strongly note that “liberal” and “conservative” do not always mean the same thing in foreign countries that they do in the United States.  For example, Kaieda expressed his strong support for the Trans-Pacific Partnership free trade agreement, and it was in fact the DPJ who initiated the first steps to see Japan join back when they were in power from 2009-2012.

Here is a transcript of the speech which was passed out afterwards.

Afterwards, Mr. Kaieda answered a brief Q&A session.  A couple things that I noted to be of particular interest during this session.

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Shale Oil success: Commerical production begins in Japan.

It should be noted that this is nowhere as big as the shale oil discoveries in Britain or Poland.  While David Cameron has declared that Britain’s shale oil could power the country for fifty years, the energy company Japex has estimated that it will be able to extract only around 100 million barrels of shale in Akita prefecture where the Ayukawa field is located- to put this in perspective, Japan imports around 4.5 million barrels per day. Still, Japan’s dependence on oil and LNG, both of which have continued to increase over the past half-decade especially due to the decline in nuclear power, means that it certainly does not hurt.  It is Japan’s continued search for oil which has put it in conflict with China – for that is what so much of the controversy over the Senkaku islands is really about, namely the possibility of undersea mineral and oil reserves.

That said, it should be noted on the nuclear front that while Japan may have closed down most ( though not all, as I discussed earlier) of its nuclear plants, it apparently has no problems exporting its nuclear plants to Turkey and the United Arab Emirates.  I could disparage Japan for hypocrisy, especially since Turkey is a region which has suffered devastating earthquakes over the years, but a promotion away from carbon-based energy is never a bad thing.

Panel Review: The Center for Strategic and Intl Studies on Obama’s Asian Trip

Next week, President Obama will embark on an Asian tour which will include stops in Japan, South Korea, Malaysia, and the Philippines. Yesterday at the Dirksen Senate Office Building, the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) held a panel discussing what Obama’s visit means for the US-Japan alliance, the key lynchpin to American policy in East Asia. There was plenty for the four panel members to discuss.

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Japan to hand over weapons-grade plutonium to the US.

Asahi Shimbun link

I touched on the problems of Japanese nuclear security in an earlier post, but one thing I did not discuss was that Japan already has a large stockpile of plutonium and uranium, not only stored in Japan itself, but in France and Britain.  This plutonium was supplied to Japan by the United States during the Cold War, and it appears that Japan will be handing them back.

This is without a doubt a very good thing.  Just as an Iranian nuclear bomb is bad for global peace as it could spark a nuclear arms race in the Middle East, a Japanese nuke would be a possible spark towards creating a arms race in the even more vital East Asia.  North Korea is already dangerous enough – South Korea, which doesn’t particularly trust the United States to begin with, having nukes on their own would do nothing for the sake of stability.  It should be noted, however, that despite this transfer, Japan has without a doubt the scientific and technological know-how to make a nuclear bomb within a time frame of 6 months to 2 years should it so desire, but there is really nothing which can be done about that.

A Discussion on Nationalism: The myth of the failure of Japan to apologize.

Just today, it has been announced that Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe will be meeting with South Korean President Park Geun-hye.  It will be the first time the two have met even though Park was elected into her office over a year ago.  The reason has been the continued controversial nationalistic debates between Japan, South Korea, and China, related to Japan’s war crimes in the period leading up to the Pacific War.

So often, whenever discussions about this appear, the immediate reaction I have to see in America is to blame Japan.  “Why don’t they apologize?”  “Why do they still publish those textbooks which deny everything?”  “Are they planning to repeat what they did 70 years ago?”  And so on, and so on.  But like so much of international politics, it is not that simple.  It is not a case of “South Korea right, Japan wrong.”  It is not a case of “Japan right, South Korea wrong.”  But since so much of this discussion tends to lean towards the former, I want to balance it out and give a defense of Japanese actions and how they have in fact, sincerely attempted to repent for their actions since the Imperial era.

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Nuclear Japan, Wikileaks, and Terrorism

When the Fukushima Disaster struck Japan over three years ago, there was a national call to end nuclear power in the country.  In response, practically every reactor in the country was shut down and that spelled an end to the peaceful nuclear ambitions of Japan – a country which had used nuclear power to produce approximately 25% of its power.  Right?

Not quite.  For in October 2014, Japan will begin operating a new $22 billion plutonium production plant.  And on top of the surprising fact that Japan has not given up nuclear power completely, the Rokkasho Nuclear Fuel Reprocessing Facility is a plutonium breeder reactor.  Breeder reactors are capable of producing additional plutonium which could be used for further Japanese nuclear plants, but Japan for now is not planning to build more nuclear plants.  But the plutonium used by Japanese plants is capable of being used for nuclear weapons – and while Japan currently has utterly no interest in creating nuclear weapons, the fact is that the new breeder reactor will be capable of churning out 96 tons of plutonium metal in the next dozen years.

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