Yesterday U.S. President Joe Biden and Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga met at the White House to hold a joint press conference reaffirming and expanding bilateral relations between the two nations. A statement was released after the press event which has raised the ire of China.
Both the press conference and the statement addressed a multitude of issues from economic to security to environmental to cyber concerns, but what caught the attention of many, especially Chinese, observers is this sentence: “The United States restated its unwavering support for Japan’s defense under the U.S.-Japan Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security, using its full range of capabilities, including nuclear.” The treaty marks its seventieth anniversary this year, first having been signed during the height of the Cold War, as the war in Korea raged, in 1951.
The statement, titled U.S.-Japan Global Partnership for a New Era – also reaffirmed the two nations’ understanding that Article 5 of that pact – “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 in accordance with its constitutional provisions and processes” – would apply to China and Japan’s dispute over what Japan and the U.S. refer to as the Senkaku Islands, but China knows as the Diaoyu Islands in the East China Sea. (Japan is also embroiled in a dispute with Russia over the Kuril Islands, which Japan, and occasionally the U.S. State Department, refer to as Japan’s Northern Territories.) The two leaders pledged to intensify military cooperation “across all domains, including cyber and space, and to bolster extended deterrence.”
At yesterday’s press conference Biden said: “Prime Minister Suga and I affirmed our ironclad support for US/Japanese Alliance, and for our shared security. We [are] committed to working together to take on the challenges from China and issues like the East China Sea, the South China Sea, as well as North Korea.”
Suga spoke in the same vein: “We also had serious talks on China’s influence over the peace and prosperity of the Indo-Pacific and the world at large. We agreed to oppose any attempts to change the status quo by force or coercion in the East and South China Seas and intimidation of others in the region.”
In all, the two heads of state criticized China for its behavior in and toward five regions: the East China Sea, the South China Sea, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Xinjiang. China considers the last three as its territory as it does the Diaoyu Islands in the East China Sea. Yesterday is the first time since 1969 that U.S. and Japanese leaders have jointly criticized China over Taiwan.
A spokesman for the Chinese embassy in Washington said that Biden’s and Suga’s statements went “far beyond the scope of normal development of bilateral relations.”
The Chinese government-supported Global Times today spoke even more bluntly to the issue in an unsigned editorial:
“Has Japan forgotten how many times it inflicted devastation on China? Has China ever truly harmed Japan and can Japan cite an example? The tiny Diaoyu Islands are just a territorial dispute between China and Japan, and in Asia there are many similar disputes. But Japan takes the dispute as a strategic level issue and hypes it up every day. What’s the point of it?
“The US-Japan alliance could evolve into an axis that can bring fatal disruption to Asia-Pacific peace, just like the Germany-Italy-Japan axis alliance before and during the WWII. The core intention of the US is to maintain its hegemony and contain China’s development through violating international laws and rules. The arbitrary act of the US could eventually end the peace in Asia-Pacific. And Japan is positioning itself as the top Asian accomplice of the US’ vicious policy.”
The editorial mentioned the use of what is now the official byword of the U.S. and its allies around the world, especially NATO – rules-based international order – saying that interstate relations should be governed by norms established by the United Nations “rather than those defined by the US and Japan.” It also returned to the World War II analogy, reminding Japan that it should be more careful in building military alliances with powers outside the region after its ill-fated experience with the Germany-Italy-Japan Tripartite Pact of eighty years ago.
The newly-installed administration of Joe Biden has the dangerous distinction of being the first since that of Lyndon Johnson to pursue Cold War-style confrontation toward China and Russia at the same time.
Rick Rozoff has been involved in anti-war and anti-interventionist work in various capacities for forty years. He lives in Chicago, Illinois. He is the manager of Stop NATO. This originally appeared at Anti-Bellum.
Oh Boy.
I just asked my wife if there were companies still making bomb shelters………………
Poor choice of words, China is far more sofiscated, a lot is said between the lines, these words make it far more likely Nukes will be used in any sort of conflict, but I guess it is far to late to pledge to not be first to use them, ironic Japan would allow first strike threat use on their behalf spoken by the very nation that Nuked them
Has the whole world suffered some hysterical breakdown, or just the nuclear bomb states aligned with & including the USA. THREATENING NUCLEAR BRINKSMANSHIP OVER SOME UNPOPULATED REEFS ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE PLANET SEEMS INSANE….!!!!!!
But don’t forget the likelyhood of vast oil & gas reserves driving the seemingly overblown rhetoric. What else could possibly have created this uncalledfor madness? Except Ole Joe’s and Hunters thirst for the big, not so honest payoffs
It IS insane. But WHO threatens whom with nuclear war? hint, not China.
Japan must feel embarrassed because of Biden.
Pissed off more likely for dragging the dreaded, in Japan, use of nukes onto the already ground zeroed Japan. What comes around can be returned. The Japan public does NOT want any part in any nuclear games of chicken or showdowns. I believe the mere mention of such is a political death sentence.
Japan maybe be America’s last friend, meaning they do not need an annual $Billion in Aid to say nice things.
Biden: the next time it will be more than Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
“using its full range of capabilities, including nuclear.”
In the good old days “full range of capabilities” or “all options are on the table” were code for our usage of nukes. I guess we decided to take the pretense out of it by adding the “including nuclear”. My, how we have progressed as a nation.
………”The newly-installed administration of Joe Biden has the dangerous
distinction of being the first since that of Lyndon Johnson to pursue
Cold War-style confrontation toward China and Russia at the same time.”……..I couldn’t agree more Mr.Rozoff.
The government of Japan ought to ignore this pressure because the SARS-CoV-2 epidemic in that country is out of control now.
There’s no surer way to get dragged into war than to give out war guarantees to nations around the world.
US is a gangster state running a protection racket scheme just like a Mafiosi. 1. Sell billions of dollars worth of useless arms to its vassals , 2. The vassals also pay billions to stage US bases and troops on their territories.
Sadly Japan hasn’t learnt its lesson from WW2- asking to be nuked again.
The great world nations
for all their
self praise and idlolations
are
simply
nothing
but gangs
in neighborhoods
in any city
everywhere
America threatened nuclear war for decades at the PRC. Exists no direct threat to the USA from that side of the world. China was scared of America’s military – yet the table is reset. They can do serious harm. Asia fix your own problems.
Ironic willing to defend the very nation by nuke you once nuked…
how many times have yalls called biden “china joe”.
idiots.
RR writes, “ China considers the last three (Taiwan, HK, Xinjiang) as its territory as it does the Diaoyu Islands in the East China Sea.”
Not quite accurate. Taiwan is internationally recognized as part of One Chin and has been since Nixon and Carter; HK was taken from China by the Brits by force as a staging area to market opium in China and returned to China over 20 years ago; Xinjiang has been part of China long before the 1949 Revolution. Let us not gloss over the facts.
The US supported Chang Kai Check to retreat to Formosa and to fortify the island. Chang ruled with an iron fist in military law, and received funds and weapons from the US. In essence, Chang was the US puppet, and thus TW was carved away from China by the US. Since 1949, PR China has advocated a peaceful return of TW, and still advocates this, but will fight for TW when pushed into a fight. If Biden continues his idiocy and tries to increase weapons sales, the time for a fight may come sooner than murcans expect.
“and thus TW was carved away from China by the US”
In order for Taiwan to be “carved away” from China, it would have had to have been part of China in the first place. In fact, it had never been part of China, it had only been intermittently conquered/ruled by China, and as of it coming under Chiang’s control it hadn’t even been rule BY China for the previous half century. The case for the Beijing regime having some natural right to rule Taiwan isn’t nearly as good as the case for the Madrid regime having some natural right to rule Cuba or the US regime having some natural right to rule the Philippines.
U don’t know Taiwan’s history. Taiwan had been part of China long before 1895, when Japan beat China in a war and took Taiwan. However when Japan lost in WWII in 1945, the winning powers(U.S., Britain, China, USSR) agreed to return Taiwan to China. The then Chinese govt headed by Chiang KaiShek regained Chinese sovereignty over Taiwan. In 1949 Chiang lost the civil war to Mao and fled to China’s island province, Taiwan. Mao and Chiang’s govts both claim to represent China, but most of the world (including U.S. and U.N.) recognize mainland China(People’s Republic of China) as China. Anyway there is no ambiguity that Taiwan is part of China. Mainland China(PRC) can, of course, reunite the country anytime it wants.
Yes, I do know Taiwan’s history.
No, Taiwan had not been “part of China” long before 1895. In fact, it has never, at any point, been “part of China” at all. It had been partially colonized by both China and European countries at different times prior to 1895, but it had its own indigenous non-Han non-Chinese population which was only practically eradicated under Japanese colonization, not Chinese colonization. The claim that Taiwan is “part of China” is no different than the claim that Cuba is “part of Spain” just because a Madrid regime happened to rule it as a colony for a little while.
Your “never, at any point, been part of China at all” bar is set at an absurd height. It would be considered extreme even by Taiwan separatist standards. Your assertion that the apparent failure of Han Taiwanese to “practically eradicate” their non-Han neighbors constitutes proof that China treated the island as a foreign colony is quite astonishing coming from an Antiwar author. Are you suggesting that Taiwan could only have become part of China if the latter had carried out systematic genocide (something that the Japanese were apparently better at than the Chinese)?
Setting aside the fact that East Asians conceptualized sovereignty differently than the Europeans before the latter began colonizing the neighborhood, Cuba was a Spanish colonial possession because Madrid never claimed it to be anything else. No one in their right mind had ever argued that Cuba was part of the Spanish homeland. This was hardly the case with Taiwan! Imperial China ruled Taiwan as a de jure province before ceding it to Japan as a war trophy. Chiang’s ROC restored the island’s provincial status when Japan was forced by the Allies to relinquish its war loots in 1945. The ambiguity of Taiwan’s sovereign status is political, not historical; it’s an artifact of the Cold War, enforced through US military might, with grudging (though increasingly untenable) consent by both PRC and ROC, not the result of a sudden change in the objective reading of the island’s historical past.
It is verifiably true that Taiwan has not “always” been part of China, as some Chinese nationalists would like to believe, because China as a national construct predates Taiwan’s integration within that identity by millennia. However, to argue that Taiwan has “never” been part of China is even more (willfully) ahistorical. If this claim is used as a pro-independence argument, it could only weaken the position it aims to serve. At the absolute minimum, Taiwan had been “part of China” the same way that Hawaii has been “part of the US”, and Okinawa has been “part of Japan” (colonization followed by integration), to say nothing of the rest of the world where lines had been arbitrarily drawn on a map. Unless you are prepared to argue that Hawaii and Okinawa are still colonies to this day, dismissing a few centuries worth of Taiwanese history with a wave of your mighty hand does not turn your opinion into fact!
Everyone has his/her blind spots; libertarian anti-war writers with otherwise 20/20 vision are no exception. Having followed your writings here over a long time, I would respectfully submit that you are not as informed or objective on this topic as you seem to believe. Of course, my opinion is necessarily subjective; it’s entirely possible that the blind spot is all mine and not yours, but the fact that your views here are aligned with those being cultivated by the War Party should at least give you pause? Yours is an influential voice that carries more weight than those of random nobodies like me. Given the role and reach of this platform, it would be extremely disappointing if your rumination, based on questionable evidence or agenda-driven historical distortions, ends up helping to advance the cause of those whose destructive impulses you seek to scrutinize and contain. There are enough Ahmed Chalabis and Judy Millers out there to start fires and create havoc on their own without your help!
Noticing that Taiwan has never been “part of China,” and that specifically it has never been part of the “China” conceived as the domain of the current Chinese regime, is not a “pro-independence” argument. It’s just an acknowledgement of irrefutable historical fact.
That’s not to say that the US’s rulers should be involved in the disputes between the current rulers of China and the current rulers of Taiwan. They shouldn’t be. History doesn’t have to be mangled to reach that conclusion.
The US shouldn’t be involved in Syria, either, but that doesn’t mean I have to pretend that Assad is some kind of deeply humanitarian philosophical democrat just because he holds a fake “election” every few years, either.
I cannot vision US military personnel turning the keys while knowing they are the ones who will begin the nuclear war. Will they understand it will be them who incinerates millions including possibly their own families. Only a madman would start a nuclear war and only a total idiot would obey. Oh cripes! DC is now under the control of psychopaths and military personnel are still considered as useful idiots.
China can take Taiwan at any time of its choosing. The US has then to decide if an all-out war is worth an island of no real significance to the US other than ego. Japan has no real interest in Taiwan, so why enter a fight for it? China has no interest to fight or occupy Japan. BUT, if Japan were to enter a fight with the US over Taiwan, then only God could save Japan from complete obliteration. If the US were to attack China mainland, hello all-out nuclear war, and goodbye humans on this planet. The US may be able to destroy the world 10x over, but China can do 2x over. 1x over is enough, no? Biden is an outright idiot to make such comments and stoke a fire in a boiler that may explode out of control near instantly.
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China shouldn’t be surprised at Biden’s threats as the US had threatened China with nuclear bombardment long before China had any nuclear bomb. It was such threats that prompted Mao to say that even if every Chinese had only a bowl of gruel to eat daily China must still develop nuclear weapons. Secondly, US threats are very real because it is the only country in the world to use the bombs, and on civilians too. The Japanese can believe Biden because they were the first victims of two such US nuclear bombs. So Suga must be very happy to have such a friend – or master.
China shouldn’t be surprised at Biden’s threats as the US had threatened China with nuclear bombardment long before China had any nuclear bomb. It was such threats that prompted Mao to say that even if every Chinese had only a bowl of gruel to eat daily China must still develop nuclear weapons. Secondly, US threats are very real because it is the only country in the world to use the bombs, and on civilians too. The Japanese can believe Biden because they were the first victims of two such US nuclear bombs. So Suga must be very happy to have such a friend – or master.
I would recommend fast forward a military alliance between Russia and China, as has already been contemplated for 2022. It would highly likely scare of the warmongers on Russias Western borders and in the Arctic and keep Western warships out of the South China Sea.