The Japanese are a few years late - but this is very good news.
TOKYO — In what would be a sweeping overhaul of its cold war-era defense strategy, Japan is about to release new military guidelines that would reduce its heavy armored and artillery forces pointed north toward Russia in favor of creating more mobile units that could respond to China’s growing presence near its southernmost islands, Japanese newspapers reported Sunday.Japan is a strong, foundation nation among the democratic block and the more she can fully function as a nation - and that means a fully functional military - the better.
The realignment comes as the United States is making new calls for Japan to increase its military role in eastern Asia in response to recent provocations by North Korea as well as China’s more assertive stance in the region.
The new guidelines also call for acquiring new submarines and fighter jets, the reports said, and creating ground units that can be moved quickly by air in order to defend the southern islands, including disputed islands in the East China Sea that are also claimed by China and Taiwan. These disputed islands are known as the Senkakus in Japanese and the Diaoyu in Chinese.
The last part of that quote could come from 100 years ago - funny how that is.
Next is for her to raise her spending to 2% of GDP. If we could do that - wow.
What I find more interesting is the following.
Progress with our friends across the Pacific. Good ..... good ....
In recent days, Prime Minister Naoto Kan has raised the possibility of changing laws to allow Japanese forces to be sent to the Korean Peninsula to rescue Japanese expatriates in the event of a crisis, and also to search for Japanese known to have been abducted by North Korea in the 1970s and 1980s.Hey, if the French and Germans can get along, then the Koreans and Japanese can .... though that will be tougher methinks.
“We need to slowly move forward with consultations with South Korea about whether they would allow in transport aircraft from the Self-Defense Forces,” he told reporters on Saturday.
In another sign of growing coordination, South Korea’s vice minister of defense, Lee Yong-gul, visited Tokyo late last week for talks with his Japanese counterpart, Kimito Nakae, on increasing bilateral cooperation.
Progress with our friends across the Pacific. Good ..... good ....
25 comments:
Mybe they could take a particulary irritating and annoying clause out. Japan needs to be able to have carriers and ships with Ground attack capability. Lets face its carriers and Battleships these people are obsessed with.
I wonder if they will go for the stealth eagle. Hell id say sell em the F-22 if they still had the line up. One F-22 is worth around a dozen F-35's at around the same cost now LOL.
Its really not that funny is it.........
It will indeed be hard but it seems to be happening. I've noticed a positive change in atitudes towards Korans amongst exchange students over the past decae and also in Japan between my visits in 2007 and this past August.
Despite all the bad blood the two cultures ae very closely related and they certainly have common defense goals now.
Oh, and I've been looking for an explanation of that F-15J camoflage measure for over a year now.Do you have one?
(ARGH....I hate NMCI)
My relatives all fought in World War II (old ones that is). I personally believe that deep down inside those Martial people (Germans and Japanese), the potential lies for another World War. They are strong, industrious, highly intelligent warrior civilizations. I am glad that they are currently on our side, and nothing short of their full capitulation after losing everything could have brought them and us to this point.
With respect towards aligning to Russia or China, I'm totally with you on safe money says China. Russia will continue to be an antagonist--sending Putin Jr. to the contested islands--but beyond that they don't want YET ANOTHER ass kicking at the hands of the JMSDF. That might be a good fullbore friday...a historical examination of the 1910s war between Japan and Russia!
Idolmaster, IIRC. Some sort of Japanese TV show.
NMCI. Best thing to happen to the Navy since Pearl Harbor. :(
The battle of Tsushima, which effectively ended the Russo-Japanese War, was fought in late May 1905. Agree with the Fullbore suggestion - great idea!
If Poland is having regular cooperation with Germany, down to joint Baltic corps HQ with Denmark in for regional cooperation (right in my city!), and there are Leopards bearing red-white checkerboard, then why not Kora and Japan?
Skippy, youre expert here, whats your take?
There is something I found re:Tsushima
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sr5foWKctuI
Actually it is a popular arcade game where you play as a J-pop producer who has all these young Japanese girls who want to be Japanese idols. From there it was turned into an anime and a couple of sequel games were produced.
Part of me thinks that it is the life story of Skippy-san post Shopping Mall USA tour. :-P
Already done ... a few times. Maybe I'll tap in to it for a repeat.
Poles are just Prussians needing a few vowels anyway - right? Oh, Prussian serfs .... though the Prussians (nee Tutonic Knights) were originally vassals of the Polish King ... so ..... ungh. No wonder so many Europeans left for the New World ;)
Something tells me that this more posturing by Japan than anything else. Korea has ab Army 4 times the size of Japan's and that's not even counting their reserves.
Furthermore, Koreans don't necessarily want Japanese military on their soil. The enmity between the two nations is still there-even if is now below the surface and both countries recognize that cooperation is in their mutual interest. If the S.O.'s attitudes are any evidence-Koreans don't like Japanese and vice versa.
The Korea Times has already published an opinion piece condemning the move as unnecessary and Several Japanese ministers are backpedaling from Kan's statement.
Greetings:
Since the recent government-mandated analog-to-digital TV signal conversion, I been receiving and watching some of the Korean Broadcasting System's KBS World programming. This year, there have been several serial dramas dealing with both the North-South conflict and the Korean-Japanese conflict of the past century.
I would mention a couple of things. The Korean-Japanese conflict is centuries old. They have been alternatively going at and putting up with each other for a very long time. There is an element of practicality in their relationship and that seems to be on the rise currently. There may be some level of racial animosity, the Japanese tendency toward supremacy, for instance, but there is also a lot of cultural cross-fertilization going on, too, in terms of movies, TV programming, and music, especially that demon rock 'n' roll. I'm guessing that the divide is closing especially among the younger generations.
The Koreans, as opposed to the Japanese and because of their greater proximity to the North, seem very supportive of their military draft. Even celebrities do their duty, interrupting both their careers and their income streams. The South Korean Marines seem to be especially admired. I saw an hour long program about the training of those Marines and they seemed very motivated not only to perform but to perform better.
Hard work and continuing effort is a recurrent theme in many South Korean programs. But there is also an underlying current of a Confucian disruption after the division of a country and a people that took centuries to become culturally and politically unified. The Southerners seem to see the Northerners not just as fellow members of a culture or society, but as family or blood relations. Several of the serial dramas that I seen involve subplots of "good" Northerners and "evil" Southerners. I have kind of concluded that there is a deep longing in the South for Korea to be re-unified and that this longing mitigates the harshness of their dealings with the North.
I think that the Japanese are being forced to conclude that China is on the march, if not militarily in terms of actual conflict, but in that old Middle Kingdom domination of size kind of way. They're big and getting bigger. They're mean and getting meaner. For them, "No" is never an acceptable answer. If I were living in that part of the world, I would start buying some hardware.
Hi, i just want to say hello to the community
What did I miss? Did Skippy start an air force?
To echo your point-a few years back one of the most popular shows in Japan was a Korean soap opera-Fuyu no Sonata. ( Winter Sonata). The male lead was wildy cheered by Japanese girls at Narita on arrival.
That said-the average Joe salaryman is not on fire to go defend Korea or anyone else. Don't forget the rather large debate they had over sending refueling ships to the Indian Ocean a few years back.
I think that the Japanese are also realizing that their importance and significance to us and the rest of the world relates to their ability to recognize and assist with modern problems and not past ones. The situation with both Korea and China is tricky for them, but I think this statement is meant to emphasize that they are looking at it and recognizing its importance for the rest of the world. They are quite a bit more hamstrung (and rightly so) in proposing anything groundshaking, but they are attempting to acknowledge the importance of what is happening over there and to avoid being seen as a sovereign that is only looking out for its own interests and irrelevant to larger international relations circumstances in the region. Of course all sovereigns are always looking out for their own interests, but it pays to strive toward being perceived as bigger than that.
I wish! 8-)
I bet it would be along the 801 TTS Airbats :P
<span>'then the Koreans and Japanese can ...'</span>
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<span>Well I don't know...</span>
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<span>Was the treatment meted out to the Koreans previous to and during WWII so bad? I know it was run like some colony, but afaik it was nothing compared to what the Japanese did to the Chinese. Did not a lot of Koreans fight alongside the Japanese in WWII, and were not the best Korean generals in the Korean War the ones who attained relatively high positions in the Japanese military?</span>
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<span>For all I know the relationship Japanese/Koreans might be even better than between the Irish and the English. Maybe Skippy-San can elaborate?</span>
Oh sh*t. I should have read the comments first. Sorry, several people answered my question already.
Maybe the master chief found a used rubber in the CO's quarters. Oops, wrong thread...
What is really funny is when I was Iwakuni in summer of 2006, the Japanese Government was for a while were talking about dropping thier restriction on offensive actions to possibly pulling of thier own version of the Operation Opera. Then just before Halloween, that arguement became mute again as the 6 party talks came together. So It will really be interesting to see what will happen here in the next few months if the NORKS start to get weirder then they normally are.
I can't imagine South Koreans wanting Japanese setting foot anywhere on the peninsula. There is some bad blood between Koreans and Japanese.
"<span>There is some bad blood between Koreans and Japanese."</span>
ROK will have none of Japan setting foot on pen, ever. However, that ROK is willing to enter into even a loose alliance that contains Japan, shows the gravity with which both nations view China and what they rightly perceive as its proxy, North Korea.
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