Defence & Strategic, January 21, 2005
This is just the beginning of a war of nerves of military strategy among the world's three most powerful countries, based on real hardball politics, military hardware and spyware. The theater is the East China Sea, surrounding Taiwan and Okinawa. The actors are Japan, its ally the United States, and an increasingly powerful China that already is an economic powerhouse and is expanding and upgrading its military on the sea, on land and in the air.
This perceived Chinese "threat" - vehemently denied by Beijing - is a factor in the gradual transformation of Japan from a pacifist nation, with pacificism enshrined in the US-imposed constitution, to one that assumes a more powerful role on the world stage - and will not countenance a perceived threat from its formidable neighbor to the west. To handle this seeming "threat", Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi is rushing to change Japan's traditional pacifist military posture - urged on by Washington to play a larger role and expand its military operations in the so-called "arc of instability" stretching from Northeast Asia to the Middle East.
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And just because Russia can do it doesn't mean that the EU should. Since when is shitty policy ok just because some other country does it? At least give me a good reason as to why the EU should be able to sell weapons to China.
