US-Japan-Philippines-China Tension To Benefit Anglo-US-Japanese Arms Traders
By Countercurrents.org
18 December 2013
Countercurrents.org
With a US warning to China the US is increasingly getting engaged in tension in the region surrounding China-Japan-the Philippines while Japan plans to increase its armaments. The increasing tension is going to benefit Anglo-US arms manufacturers.
Media reports said:
US Secretary of State John Kerry, during a two-day visit to Manila, warned China on December 17, 2013 against any move to declare an air defense zone in the South China Sea, as he affirmed defense ties with long-time ally the Philippines.
Kerry criticized China for its declaration last month of an Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ) in the East China Sea including over disputed islands.
He warned Beijing against any similar move in the South China Sea.
Kerry announced Washington’s $40 million aid to help the Philippines strengthen its sea defense capabilities.
The two sides are also in the final stages of hammering out a deal allowing more US troops, aircraft and ships to pass through the Philippines, where the last US bases closed in 1992.
"Today, I raised our deep concerns about China's announcement of an East China Sea air defense identification zone," Kerry said after meeting his Filipino counterpart Albert del Rosario.
"The zone should not be implemented and China should refrain from taking similar, unilateral actions elsewhere in the region, and particularly over the South China Sea," he told a joint news conference.
"I told the (Philippine) foreign secretary that the United States does not recognize that (East China Sea) zone and does not accept it," Kerry said.
Kerry also threw his support behind the Philippines, calling it a "key treaty ally".
"The United States is committed to working with the Philippines to address its most pressing security challenges," he said.
"That is why we are negotiating a strong and enduring framework agreement that will enhance defense cooperation under our alliance, including through an increased rotational presence in the Philippines."
The Philippines had said last month that Beijing's announcement of its ADIZ in the East China Sea raised the prospect of it doing the same in the South China Sea.
China claims almost all the South China Sea but the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei and Taiwan have overlapping claims.
Citing John Blaxland, a defense analyst at the Australian National University's College of Asia and the Pacific, AFP reported:
Kerry's visit underscored the Philippines' important role as Washington embarks on its so-called pivot to Asia.
At the same time, Japan has announced plan to boost its military spending in coming years, buying early-warning planes, beach-assault vehicles and troop-carrying aircraft while seeking closer ties with Asian partners to counter a more militarily assertive China. Japan’s arms shopping list includes: drone: 3 units, amphibious vehicle: 52, tilt rotor plane: 17, submarine: 5, destroyer equipped with Aegis anti-missile system: 2, F-35 fighter: 28 and a stealth plane far superior to the F-15s that Japan currently has in service.
The planned 2.6 percent increase over five years, announced on December 17, 2013, reverses a decade of decline and marks the clearest sign since Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe took office a year ago that he wants a bigger military role for Japan as tension flares with China over islands they both claim.
The Japanese government also vows to review Japan's ban on weapons exports, a move that could reinvigorate struggling defense contractors like Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd and Kawasaki Heavy Industries Ltd.
The policies, including a five-year military buildup and a 10-year defense guideline, call for stronger air and maritime surveillance capabilities and improved ability to defend far-flung islands through such steps as setting up a marine unit, buying unarmed surveillance drones and putting a unit of E-2C early-warning aircraft on Okinawa island in the south.
Japan will budget 23.97 trillion yen ($232.4 billion) over the coming five years for defense, up from 23.37 trillion yen from the previous five years.
Under current procurement practices, the five-year spending would have been 24.67 trillion yen, but the government expects to save 700 billion yen from streamlining procedures to cut costs, officials said.
Military spending had fallen for 10 years until Abe boosted the defense budget 0.8 percent this year. The Defense Ministry is seeking a 3 percent rise in the year from next April, the biggest increase in 22 years, although much of the growth reflects higher import costs due to a weaker yen.
In the two decades through last year, Japan was the sixth-biggest military spender, just behind Britain, with outlays rising 13 percent in constant 2011 dollar terms, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.
By contrast, China's defense spending exploded more than five-fold, vaulting the country to second place from seventh.
China and Japan have been embroiled in an increasingly strident row over tiny islands, which Japan calls the Senkaku and China calls the Diaoyu.
Tension spiked late last month when Beijing announced an air-defense zone over a wide area including the islands, prompting protests from Tokyo, Washington and Seoul and raising fears that a minor incident in the disputed sea could quickly escalate.
Past Japanese governments have stretched the limits of a postwar Constitution that renounces war and says Japan will never have an army or navy. Abe wants to go further, including lifting a ban on fighting overseas or aiding an ally under attack.
A Reuters report said:
Hostilities between the second- and third-biggest economies would likely drag in the largest, the US, which is treaty-bound to defend Japan in the event of war.
US contractors would be major beneficiaries of Abe's increased spending.
Japan’s arms marketing will benefit V22 Osprey maker Boeing Co, lead F-35 fighter-jet contractor Lockheed Martin Corp, missile-fabricator Raytheon Corp, and Northrop Grumman Corp, which builds the Global Hawk unarmed drone.
Another corporate winner could be Britain's BAE Systems PLC, which through its American subsidiary, U.S. Combat Systems, is a major supplier of "amtrack" assault amphibious vehicles to the US Marines.
Abe’s spending increases suggest he is more willing to back his policies with cash, although Japan's big public debt - more than twice the size of its economy - still acts as a brake.
Japan will have to rely heavily on cooperation with the US and others in the region to maintain the status quo.
Abe's national security strategy calls for Japan not only to upgrade its cooperation with the US but strengthen ties with South Korea, Australia, Southeast Asian countries and India.
Japan's long-range plans also mark a shift from its Cold War posture of defending against a Russian attack from the north, toward a potential conflict with China to the west and south.
The defense plan cuts Japan's tanks by 400 to 300 over 10 years, while adding some faster, more maneuverable combat vehicles that could be flown in, say, to retake islands.
The new policy outline calls for Japan to beef up its ability to defend against ballistic missile attacks, such as from unpredictable neighbor North Korea.
But it stops short of referring to the acquisition of the capability to strike enemy bases overseas, a costly and controversial step that would further distance Japan from the "purely defensive" posture to which it adopted after its defeat in World War Two.
Japan’s defense plan comes with the establishment of a US-style National Security Council that is expected to concentrate greater power in the hands of a smaller number of senior politicians and bureaucrats.
Contain China
In a report headlined “'Containing China' a Japanese strategy” (Dec 12, 2013) in China Daily, Zhang Yunbi writes:
Japan is trying to justify attempts to break away from its pacifist Constitution and build up its military by fanning the so-called China threat, experts said after Japan released the final draft of its national security strategy.
In the draft, Japan vowed countermeasures against what it calls "China's attempts to change the status quo with force" in the East China and South China seas, according to the summary of the draft issued by Japanese news agency Jiji Press.
Lu Yaodong, director of the department of Japanese diplomacy of the Institute of Japanese Studies at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said the strategy included "containing China" in the core missions of Japan's new National Security Council, established a week ago.
"The Abe Cabinet is now bold enough to label China as a strategic target because it has harvested enough excuses from tensions over China's Diaoyu Islands and China's newly established air defense identification zone," Lu said.
Beijing said on Wednesday that it is unreasonable for Tokyo to say that China's decision to establish the East China Sea Air Defense Identification Zone last month is changing the status quo.
"It is not others, but Japan that made provocations" in the East China Sea, Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei said.
The draft also said Japan will review its self-imposed ban on weapons exports, a move Bloomberg said shows that "Japan will seek to make its arms industry competitive globally".
Shi Yongming, a researcher of Asia-Pacific studies at the China Institute of International Relations, said Japan is using China to eliminate self-imposed legislative restrictions on revising its pacifist Constitution and expanding its military.
"Japan is projecting China as an enormous threat and campaigning itself as a 'major victim' to bluff people both domestically and overseas," Shi said.
Abe's bid to stoke Japan's slumbering economy "has given him political capital to push his long-cherished aim of also rehabilitating Japan's military, which under the post-war pacifist Constitution is restricted to defense only", AFP said.
By showing muscle in the islands dispute and making right wing remarks, Abe is making progress in lifting the constitutional bans, said Liu Jiangyong, an expert on Japanese studies at Tsinghua University.
Liu warned that "Japan is also siding with countries including the United States and Australia to step up pressure on China".
"Japan is seeking stronger support from outside the country to speed up a military buildup, strive for more influence in the region and share more burdens in Washington's rebalancing strategy," Shi said.
Japan will also bolster its overall capability to respond to missile attacks as the Democratic People's Republic of Korea improves its ballistic missile technology, its defense guideline draft said.
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