Opinion     

US-Japan war games will miss target

People's Daily, August 23, 2012

• US, Japan start joint military exercises.

  Beginning from Aug. 21, the Japanese Ground Self-Defense Forces will take part in the 37-day drill of taking back islands occupied by enemy troops with the third Expeditionary Force of the U.S. Marines on Guam and Tinian, Japanese media outlets said. This is the first time that islands were chosen as the exercise sites.

  The Japanese Defense Department had claimed that the drill would not take any particular country as the imaginary enemy. It is closely related with Japan's conception of establishing new East Asian security pattern based on the Japan-U.S. Security Treaty and its active response to the United States' strategy of returning to the Asia-Pacific region.

  A few months ago, Japan and the United States had reached a new consensus on strengthening the military cooperation in the Western Pacific region during Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda’s visit to the United States. The drill has undoubtedly a realistic pertinence and symbolic meaning.

  Japan had made it clear that the drill will promote the cooperation of "dynamic defense force."

  The so-called "dynamic defense force" was proposed by Japan in the "National Defense Program Outline" in 2010, meaning Japan will pay special attention to mobility and rapid response capability of forces to prevent from the "terrorist attacks" and "external invasion." What is Japan’s intension to eagerly learn the distance projection and quick-reaction capability and carry out the "struggle for the island?" The Sankei Shimbun had quoted a defense official as saying, "The drill is a training of recapture against Chinese army's offensive action on the Diaoyu Islands."

  Japan tries its best to link the sovereignty over the Diaoyu Islands with the Japan-U.S. Security Treaty, hoping to put pressure on China by external force. The United States takes a vague position on the territorial dispute between China and Japan but provides help to Japan from time to time, which underestimated the willpower of China to safeguard its territorial and sovereign integrity.

  Despite knowing that it is useless to conduct the island capturing exercise, the United States and Japan are in high spirits. The two countries know exactly that it just a petty trick to enrage China or a show of no confidence in the strategy.

  On the path of peaceful development, China cannot ignore the hostilities of other countries and set aside its core national interests, it also cannot stop its pace of progress due to external interference. It means that the state must break the existing power structure with strong development and control its relations with Japan through unique willpower and insistence.

  China must have firm confidence and sufficient courage to take the new road of rising as a big country, which is a difficult exploration about how to rich the international relations.

   

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