
The participation of Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida for the first time in the NATO summit, and earlier joint military maneuvers of the Japanese Naval Self-Defense Forces with the ships of Great Britain, France and Germany, gave rise to rumors about the possibility of formalizing relations between the Land of the Rising Sun and the North Atlantic Alliance.
Japan has experience in creating military-political blocs with European powers. Thus, in 1936, the Anti-Comintern Pact was concluded between Japan, Germany and Italy, which was subsequently joined by other countries that were in the orbit of these powers. In 1940, a tripartite block of named states was created, which became the basis for coordinating the actions of Tokyo, Berlin and Rome in World War II.
In both cases, the object of the unification of the military efforts of the most aggressive states of Europe and Asia was the Soviet Union, in the defeat of which and the division of its territories the members of the Tripartite Pact were to take part. Objectively, the Pact was also directed against Great Britain and the United States, which was especially evident after the start of the Pacific War by Japan.
Now, the coordination of Japan’s actions with NATO states, primarily with the United States, is conceived in a military confrontation with Russia and China. Although it will be difficult for European states to carry out such coordination and interaction due to the geographical remoteness of Japan from Europe. However, in terms of military strategy, Tokyo’s alliance with NATO can be used to create the need for Russia to wage war on two distant fronts, which Russia/USSR has always sought to avoid.
As the experience of World War II showed, although Japan’s treacherous attack on the USSR in the summer of 1941 did not take place, Moscow’s forced retention of a large group of the Red Army in the Far East led to the prolongation of the Great Patriotic War and an increase in the victims of the Soviet people.
The current desire of the Japanese government to move closer to NATO, it must be understood, is aimed at demonstrating to Moscow and Beijing that in the event of complications in their relations with Tokyo, the collective West will confront Russia and China together with Japan.
“At the G7 summit, I intend to discuss … the problems of the international economy, including the issue of a sharp increase in prices, the situation in the Indo-Pacific and other regions, climate change, thereby demonstrating our unity. I will also be the first Prime Minister of Japan to attend a NATO summit. At it, I expect to take our country’s relations with the alliance to a new level,» Kishida said.
At the NATO summit in Madrid, Kishida will discuss the military operation in Ukraine, but also the actions of China and the DPRK, and will also reveal Japan’s plans to radically strengthen its defense capability, the Japanese television corporation NHK noted. The Japanese government promised the Allies to double military spending to equip the Self-Defense Forces. Thus, Tokyo will join the fulfillment of the US demand for NATO member countries to allocate at least 2% of GDP for military needs. Given that Japan, despite the protracted recession, retains its position as the third economic power in the world, the military budget of the Land of the Rising Sun will be about $ 100 billion a year, which will exceed the military spending of such nuclear powers as Russia, Great Britain, France.
Japan’s new national defense doctrine, which is being developed in Japan, will require closer cooperation with the United States, Australia and India in the quadripartite security dialogue, as well as with European countries, including Britain and France, Japanese media have reported. It is possible that the issue of intensifying joint military maneuvers with the fleets of NATO countries off the Far Eastern coast of Russia and China is also being discussed in Madrid.
The problem of the prospect of some kind of formalization of Japan’s relations with NATO was touched upon in a conversation with a Japanese military expert by a TASS correspondent in Tokyo. “Japan and NATO,” says Yu Koizumi, senior fellow at the Center for Advanced Science and Technology Research at the University of Tokyo, “have different perceptions of the threats they face. For Japan, this is China, but NATO clearly does not want to get involved in a military conflict with it. Tokyo also does not intend to participate in the wars that the North Atlantic Alliance may wage. By virtue of this official military alliance between Japan and NATO, apparently, there will be no … However, they will, of course, develop cooperation in the field of military technologies. This is especially true for such promising areas as the development of a sixth-generation combat aircraft and hypersonic weapons, as well as the military use of outer space, artificial intelligence, and quantum systems.”
Earlier, in an interview with a TASS correspondent, Daisuke Kawai, one of the leading experts on security issues in the Asia-Pacific region, an employee of the Japan Institute of International Affairs, noted that Tokyo is interested in drawing the attention of the North Atlantic Alliance as much as possible to security issues in Asia, primarily to the threat of exacerbation of the situation around Taiwan. To this end, representatives of Japan, including the leadership of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the Self-Defense Forces, are increasingly using various NATO activities.
In connection with the NATO summit in Madrid and the participation of Japanese Prime Minister Kishida and President of the Republic of Korea (South Korea) Yun Sok-yeol, an article by Kim Hyo-myung, an employee of the North Korean Scientific Society for International Policy, published by the DPRK news agency KCNA, attracted attention.
“NATO is responsible for the catastrophe in Eastern Europe. NATO was created with a so-called mandate to defend Europe. The only «contribution» that the North Atlantic Alliance has made to world peace and security is the destruction of sovereign states, the massacre of hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians and millions of refugees as a result of illegal wars of aggression in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, including Yugoslavia, Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya,” the author of the article notes.
In his opinion, “the main culprit in the current deplorable state of Europe is none other than the United States, since they have sowed discord, discord, confrontation and conflict there with their “movement to the east”, systematically ignoring the security interests of Russia.”
As Kim Hye Myung points out, the US is now seeking to sow discord in the Asia-Pacific region as well. “The new strategic concept to be adopted at the NATO summit includes confronting China. The US and South Korea are becoming more outspoken (adversaries) in their actions against us on and around the Korean Peninsula. All this is an ominous sign that the dark waves of the North Atlantic will sooner or later break the silence of the Pacific Ocean, ”says the North Korean expert.
The desire of the Kishida cabinet to create a united front against Russia, China and the DPRK against the collective West, the intention to abandon the pacifist article of the Japanese Constitution, and calls for the country’s nuclear armament worry the Japanese and lead to the activation of anti-war forces. However, will the fragmented opposition forces be able to resist the reactionary tendencies in government policy? To a certain extent, the answer to the question can be obtained in the upcoming July 10 general elections for the upper house of councilors of the Japanese parliament.













Alastair Crook