hankyoreh

Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe is visiting Washington D.C. for the first time since he assumed office, and he is running into harsh criticism about the issue of Japan's military comfort women. Again he has made a comment that is vaguely apologetic, but public opinion within the United States remains critical. Nevertheless, the issue was not even a main part of the summit agenda. Instead of touching on the issue, the U.S. is using Abe's vulnerability on the issue as a card to play and advance U.S. interests. Japan, in turn, has hurriedly accepted American demands. The result is a more dangerous U.S.-Japan alliance.

In time for the summit, the White House announced that there are no plans to remove North Korean from the U.S.'s list of terror sponsoring nations before Pyongyang resolves the issue of its Japanese abductees. The statement was stronger than what had been the position earlier, that resolving the abductee issue is merely important. Granted, it will be hard to resolve the question of North Korea's inclusion on the state terrorism list without progress on the nuclear issue. The February 13 statement from the six party talks says discussion on shutting down North Korea's nuclear facility and the terror list issue are to be discussed simultaneously. The question of North Korea's Japanese abductees, however, is something that needs to be resolved between North Korea and Japan. If the U.S. accepts Japan's unreasonable demand to make solving the abductee issue a precondition for taking Pyongyang off the state terror list, it would do serious harm to the six party process.

The Japanese government gave the U.S. some big gifts ahead of this summit. One was its offer to buy a large amount of F-22s, the latest American jet fighter, costing more US$200 million a piece. The U.S. administration and military hardware industry were looking for market for jet fighters and can hardly conceal their smiles, despite a mood opposed to such a sale in the Congress. The other gift is Japan's decision to begin full preparations for being able to exercise "collective self-defense." What that means is that if the U.S. were attacked, Japan would join it in joint operations, a military policy of an offensive nature that Japan has never had previously. The move in that direction is only going to make Japan's neighbors in Northeast Asia nervous and lead to wasteful competition over military spending in the region. China has already expressed its concerns, and in Korea you hear hasty calls for Korea to again consider buying the latest generation of jet fighters.

Japan is trying to enjoy regional hegemony in Northeast Asia by becoming a thoroughly subordinate partner of the U.S., while the U.S. seeks to strengthen its global hegemony by making Japan it's proxy to keep China in check. What you see is a U.S.-Japan alliance that is moving towards confrontation and dominance instead of peace and multilateral cooperation. The road to constructing a peace regime for the Korean peninsula and Northeast Asia is becoming more perilous.



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