reedak
Well-Known Member
- Joined
- May 1, 2014
- Messages
- 752
1. Washington, Jan. 11 (CNA) The U.S.' and Japan's top diplomats and military officials stated after the "2+2" U.S.-Japan Security Consultative Committee on Wednesday that the two countries' basic position on Taiwan remains unchanged, while reiterating the importance of peace in the Taiwan Strait for the international community.
The meeting between U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and Japanese Foreign Minister Yoshimasa Hayashi and Defense Minister Yasukazu Hamada was held in Washington D.C. ahead of a meeting between U.S. President Joe Biden and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida scheduled for Friday.
The "2+2" meeting covered a range of security issues, from bolstering the U.S.-Japan alliance and deterrence, the situation in the Taiwan Strait, the Russian war on Ukraine, North Korea's increased frequency of missile launches to regional stability....
Source Link: https://focustaiwan.tw/politics/202301120005
2. TOKYO (Kyodo) -- Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida aims to boost the country's defense budget to about 43 trillion yen ($318 billion) for fiscal 2023 to fiscal 2027, an increase of over 50% from its current five-year spending plan, ministers said Monday.
The figure is up from around the 27.47 trillion yen that Japan had originally planned for five years through the fiscal year from April 2023, in view of the deteriorating regional security environment amid mounting security threats from China and North Korea....
Kishida's decision came as his Liberal Democratic Party has set a goal of doubling Japan's defense spending to 2% or more of gross domestic product -- a level on a par with North Atlantic Treaty Organization member states -- over the next five years.....
Source Link: https://asia.nikkei.com/Politics/Japan-seeks-to-raise-5-year-defense-spending-by-50
3. Japanese increase in military spending was unthinkable some years ago in particular shortly after its surrender. Without America's encouragement and cajoling, Japan could never be allowed to increase its military budget. Of course, Japan welcomes the loosening of the US military grip on the militarily occupied country.
Although Japan could achieve some limited military independence from the US, it could never gain full military independence and could never shake off the US military occupation as long as China exists and as long as the US uses it to contain China.
From the bitter lessons learned from its fierce naval battles with Japan in the Pacific War, the US could never trust its so-called Asian ally. It would never allow Japan to possess nuclear weapons or intercontinental ballistic missiles that could strike at the US mainland. Who knows? Some years down the road, Japan may attack the Pearl Harbour again or lob a few nuclear bombs into the US heartland to settle the score with the conqueror for killing at least 39 percent of Hiroshima's population and 32 percent Nagasaki's population in the 1945 nuking of Japan.
4. Using an analogy, some years after capturing a ferocious wolf, a hunter is forced to loosen the leash on the beast in order to aid him in attacking his "powerful" neighbour. However, the hunter will never allow the ferocious beast to return to the wild as there is a high chance for it to turn round and give him a fatal bite.
Additional Reference:
en.wikipedia.org
en.wikipedia.org
www.nytimes.com
www.life.com
theworld.org
www.openculture.com
The meeting between U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and Japanese Foreign Minister Yoshimasa Hayashi and Defense Minister Yasukazu Hamada was held in Washington D.C. ahead of a meeting between U.S. President Joe Biden and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida scheduled for Friday.
The "2+2" meeting covered a range of security issues, from bolstering the U.S.-Japan alliance and deterrence, the situation in the Taiwan Strait, the Russian war on Ukraine, North Korea's increased frequency of missile launches to regional stability....
Source Link: https://focustaiwan.tw/politics/202301120005
2. TOKYO (Kyodo) -- Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida aims to boost the country's defense budget to about 43 trillion yen ($318 billion) for fiscal 2023 to fiscal 2027, an increase of over 50% from its current five-year spending plan, ministers said Monday.
The figure is up from around the 27.47 trillion yen that Japan had originally planned for five years through the fiscal year from April 2023, in view of the deteriorating regional security environment amid mounting security threats from China and North Korea....
Kishida's decision came as his Liberal Democratic Party has set a goal of doubling Japan's defense spending to 2% or more of gross domestic product -- a level on a par with North Atlantic Treaty Organization member states -- over the next five years.....
Source Link: https://asia.nikkei.com/Politics/Japan-seeks-to-raise-5-year-defense-spending-by-50
3. Japanese increase in military spending was unthinkable some years ago in particular shortly after its surrender. Without America's encouragement and cajoling, Japan could never be allowed to increase its military budget. Of course, Japan welcomes the loosening of the US military grip on the militarily occupied country.
Although Japan could achieve some limited military independence from the US, it could never gain full military independence and could never shake off the US military occupation as long as China exists and as long as the US uses it to contain China.
From the bitter lessons learned from its fierce naval battles with Japan in the Pacific War, the US could never trust its so-called Asian ally. It would never allow Japan to possess nuclear weapons or intercontinental ballistic missiles that could strike at the US mainland. Who knows? Some years down the road, Japan may attack the Pearl Harbour again or lob a few nuclear bombs into the US heartland to settle the score with the conqueror for killing at least 39 percent of Hiroshima's population and 32 percent Nagasaki's population in the 1945 nuking of Japan.
4. Using an analogy, some years after capturing a ferocious wolf, a hunter is forced to loosen the leash on the beast in order to aid him in attacking his "powerful" neighbour. However, the hunter will never allow the ferocious beast to return to the wild as there is a high chance for it to turn round and give him a fatal bite.
Additional Reference:
Pacific War - Wikipedia
Pearl Harbor attack | Date, History, Map, Casualties, Timeline, & Facts
Pearl Harbor attack, (December 7, 1941), surprise aerial attack on the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor on Oahu Island, Hawaii, by the Japanese that precipitated the entry of the United States into World War II. The strike climaxed a decade of worsening relations between the United States and...
www.britannica.com
Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki - Wikipedia
After Atomic Bombings, These Photographers Worked Under Mushroom Clouds (Published 2020)
A new book of photos documents the human impact of the bombings that ended World War II — and challenges a common American perception of the destruction in Japan.
Hiroshima and Nagasaki: Photos From the Ruins, 1945
LIFE photographs -- resembling every war-battered panorama from Verdun to Vietnam -- made in September, 1945, in Hiroshima and Nagasaki
www.life.com
The only known photos from Hiroshima taken on Aug. 6, 1945
Yoshito Matsushige took the only known photographs of Hiroshima, Japan, on Aug. 6, 1945, after the United States dropped an atomic bomb on the city during World War II. Nearly half a century later, Matsushige told his story to Max McCoy, a reporter visiting Hiroshima from Kansas. McCoy speaks...
theworld.org
Watch Chilling Footage of the Hiroshima & Nagasaki Bombings in Restored Color
Hiroshima. Nothing,' says Eiji Okada in the opening of Alain Resnais' Hiroshima mon amour. 'I saw everything,' replies Emmanuelle Riva. 'Everything.' The film goes on to show the effects of the American atomic-bomb attack that devastated the titular city nearly fifteen years before.
