Japan in a mood for war

Under the revived hawkish leader PM Abe, Japan is geared to return to militarism and is calling for war. It is going to tear away all the pacific treaties signed with the Americans after the defeat in WW2. The cries of war are all over Japan. Japan will fight to keep the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands it seized from China at all cost. There is a new tension, a romanticism of old Imperial Japan that once ruled East Asia.

Japan is a small country relative to China but is threatening China once again. It chased Chinese surveillance ships at Diaoyu/Senkaku, arrested Chinese fishing boats, nationalized the Islands as Japanese territories, scrambled fighter jets to intercept non military aircraft from China. It is boosting its defence expenditure to acquire more military aircraft and ships. Wherever Abe stepped foot on, he is calling for tougher actions to defend the Islands and accusing China of provocations. It even tried to convince the Obama regime to join force to fight China. It is trying to convince the Asean countries that China is the enemy.

Japan is still caught in the memories of the 19th and 20th Centuries when, despite its smallness in size, could raid and invade neighbouring countries that were poor and underdeveloped, including a broken China that was bankrupt of everything except a sea of poor peasants. Under those circumstances, Japan, like the Europeans powers, with their huge military hardware and soldiers, could look superior to the rest. It conquered Korea, Manchuria, Southeast Asia and almost the whole of China.

China was weak and had no resources to fight a war, no finance, no modern industries, no modern armies, a corrupt leadership under a dying Manchu Dynasty and an inexperienced bunch of revolutionaries. But China fought with all the handicaps and weaknesses to prevent the country from being taken over by the invading Japanese. The Japanese could control some major cities but not the Chinese people in the whole country. In a war of attrition, Japan could never subdue and rule China even at it poorest and deplorable condition.

The China today is a renewed nation with resources, finances and all the industries, including war industries, and the three armed military services with modern weaponry and a central united command. Japanese must be in delusion to think that it still can fight China when the cards are stacked differently this time, in favour of China. A war between Japan and China would tell a completely different story.

The reality today is that Japan is a small country, small in every aspect, even the military forces vis a vis China. No matter how much Japan militarized and armed its people, it is still a small country to China. It is now a mismatch that only the Japanese hawks refuse to see. A small country like Japan wants to go to war with China and thinking of winning?

The new China and new Chinese are no longer poor hungry peasants and rag tag soldiers. There is a new vibrancy and spirit in these new people who believe in a new destiny. As far as China is concerned, Japan is no longer a threat. Period.

All the hawkish calls in Tokyo are just a make belief, a drumming up of national pride and arrogance but refusing to admit the new reality. Japan is no longer in the same league as China. It would even have problems attacking Korea and could be the other way. It would not be able to run through Southeast Asia like it used to do. Vietnam would simply stop it in its path.

Japan, Abe and all the hawks and rightists leaders are dreaming in the past. The world has changed. Japan is a small country and cannot be a big power that it used to be. Those days are over. The earlier that Japan recognizes this hard truth the better it is for the Japanese to live under the new world order and be a respectable world citizen, without having wild thoughts of going to war. This time it would not be Hiroshima and Nagasaki being flattened. The whole of Japan will be waste land and the casualties will make Japanese a threatened life form.