Japan starts to pivot

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

“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.

Hey, if the French and Germans can get along, then the Koreans and Japanese can .... though that will be tougher methinks.

Progress with our friends across the Pacific. Good ..... good ....