Asia Times: ‘Faux pacifists’ imperil Japan while empowering China

Original Article: Asia Times: ‘Faux pacifists’ imperil Japan while empowering China by Kerry K Gershaneck

Professor Kerry K Gershaneck is currently a scholar at the Graduate Institute of East Asian Studies, National Chengchi University, ROC; a guest lecturer at the ROC National Defense University; a senior research associate with Thammasat University’s Faculty of Law (CPG); and the Distinguished Visiting Professor at Chulachomklao Royal Military Academy, Thailand. He is a former U.S. Marine Corps officer, with extensive operational and security policy-level experience pertaining to Northeast Asia

Anti-US airbase demonstrators protest the US Airbase relocation to Henoko in front of the Japanese Parliament in Tokyo, Japan on June 19, 2016. Photo: Nurphoto via AFP/Alessandro Di Ciommo

In this snapshot, we will want to highlight the more on the aspect of China’s “political warfare” mentioned in the article. While the article also mentioned a lot the military posturing situation, the internal political struggle within Japan to uphold the “peace constitution” while building an effective military, as well as the importance of the alliance between Taiwan, Japan, and the United States as an effective counter-balance against China and North Korea.

Japan still has not implemented a coherent national defense strategy and its armed forces face major shortfalls in funding, manpower, communications, doctrine, training, and weapons and equipment.

Just as important, US-Japan-Taiwan strategic communications efforts need to be better led and coordinated to help fight the efforts by both radical activists within Japan and China’s “political warfare” operations designed to disintegrate its perceived enemies.

There is still a lot of work for Japan to do, in regards to its military and strengthening of the alliance between the 3 non-China countries.

However, hands are pretty tied political within Japan.

Given the existing political environment dictated by Beijing, Japan is limited in its public cooperation with Taiwan on common and increasingly pressing security issues.

Political terminology/labeling that is currently messing up the United States, looks to be just as potent in Japan.

While there are some genuine pacifists in Japan who sincerely question the need for defense reform, it is Japan’s radical leftist activists (kagekiteki katsudoka) that generate the most hysteria.

In their worldview, Abe’s efforts will upend Japan’s “pacifist” tradition and lead it once again to fascism and rapacious regional conquest.

Reasoned debate is desirable in any democracy. But faux pacifist attacks directed against Japan’s overdue defense efforts amounts to simple “political warfare” that supports China’s larger drive for regional and, arguably, global hegemony.

There is such a thing called “Faux Pacifist” – which literally mean, people who are on the surface anti-war and anti-militarisation, is actually simply doing it to undermine their own country’s security, by allowing the adversary to overtake/strengthen unopposed.

Anti-US base protesters shout slogans at a rally in front of the Diet building in Tokyo, Japan on June 19, 2016. Photo: NurPhoto via AFP/Alessandro Di Ciommo

In Japan, it has successfully exploited “anti-defense” and “anti-bases” organizations in Japan to obstruct military reform and paralyze the long-delayed relocation of the Marine Corps Air Station at Futenma from crowded mid-Okinawa island to the less- populated northwest part of the island.

The pattern is well established, predictable and blatantly hypocritical. Radical activist news media and anti-defense groups always find fault with any efforts by Japan to strengthen its defensive posture.

However, they will never utter a word of criticism about China’s massive military buildup, illegal occupation of disputed islands and ecological terrorism in destroying the South China Sea to build massive naval and air bases that threaten Asia and Oceania.

It is a surprise (or should not have been a surprise), to us here in DPA, that the Okinawa protests could be funded and supported by China. It is a good example of how everything that appears “righteous” on the surface, have undercurrents that drive things undetected.

Another “political warfare” example is the contrived hysteria regarding Japan’s recent activation of a small JSDF amphibious brigade. This unit can land only perhaps 600 JSDF soldiers to re-capture a Japanese island occupied by a hostile force: 600 people is less than the number of passengers inside a single Tokyo subway train at rush hour.

However, the faux pacifists never mention that China currently deploys a 30,000-strong Marine Corps, and is building it to 100,000 Marines in the near future.

Yeah, Japanese military is increasingly inadequate to face China’s threat in case of war.

Radical Japanese activists (often joined by outside Chinese supporters) have violently attacked women and schoolchildren in vehicles driving on and off US military bases, physically harassed and verbally threatened Japanese and American base employees, and their families; fired mortars against JSDF and US bases, to include Yokota Air Base, home of the headquarters for the US 5th Air Force and the United Nations Rear Area Command for Korea.

They have also attempted to cause aircraft to crash with lasers, balloons, kites, and construction cranes raised in front of aircraft landing approaches; booby-trapped military facilities such as fence lines; caused traffic accidents in front of base gates; and blocked off gates to interfere with essential emergency base functions.

They have also obstructed construction of new facilities needed for training and operations to include delaying construction of vital aviation facilities in northern Okinawa for nearly two decades.

These radical activists remind me a lot of the Antifa movements in USA and Europe. I think, given the proposition suggested that pacifists are accusing Japan of moving from being pacifist to becoming fascist – then these radical activists are effectively Antifa too.

And the horrible activism landscape revelations continues:

According to Grant Newsham, a former US diplomat in Tokyo and a research fellow with the Japan Forum for Strategic Studies, perhaps the most well-known of the extreme leftist groups is Chukaku-ha, or the Japan Revolutionary Communist League.

Still calling for world Marxist revolution, Chukaku-ha might be considered a descendent of Japan’s violent leftist groups active from the 1950’s into the early 1990’s such as the well-known Japanese Red Army.

Other anti-alliance organizations include Japan’s Socialist and Communist Parties, which are by doctrine anti-military, anti-American, and even pro-China. And there are scores more that include labor unions, leftist lawyer groups, university academic groups and radical student groups such as Kakumaru, the Shimagurumi Kaigi, the Okinawa Peace Action Committee and Henoko Shinkichi Kensetsu O Tomeyo.

To an extent, extremist ideology permeates Japanese politics, news media, and the educational system, says Newsham. One reason: the influential Japan Teachers Union is dogmatically anti-defense, an ideology it brings daily to classroom instruction nationwide while providing no context of external threats.

This indeed sounds a lot like the political situation in both Europe and United States. Could this be a deficiency of a democratic system?

Anti-US airbase demonstrators in central Naha, Okinawa, June 19, 2016. Photo: AFP via Anadolu Agency/Richard Atrero de Guzman

Regardless, Japanese military is badly affected.

One outcome of the resultant anti-defense ideology is that the JSDF has not developed effective capabilities, and Japan’s security policies have been stunted.

And then to make matters worse, we have China supporting and funding the chaos…

The faux pacifists’ actions thus actively support China against both Japan and Taiwan. Accordingly, China invests heavily in Japan to support a pro-Beijing, anti-defense campaign. Beijing’s tactics in Japan (also seen in Taiwan, Australia, and other countries) include entertaining and funding pliable politicians and hosting lavish visits to China by eager officials.

Other strategies include establishing direct linkages between Japanese news media organizations and universities to Communist Party-directed Chinese counterparts, and heavy Chinese investment in Hokkaido and Okinawa to develop political and economic leverage in what some have termed “a North-South Pinch.”

In Okinawa, tactics include “educating” Okinawans that they are “from the same womb” as the Chinese; that is, their allegiance is to China and not Japan, and support for a separatist Okinawan “independence” organization.

I highly recommend you to read the entire article on Asia Times, and it contains a lot more meat than what I had highlighted here in this snapshot.

Original Article: Asia Times: ‘Faux pacifists’ imperil Japan while empowering China by Kerry K Gershaneck