Cooperation with NATO will draw Japan into sharing U.S. global strategy

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Cooperation with NATO will draw Japan into sharing U.S. global strategy
Akahata editorial

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) held a summit meeting in Riga, the capital of Latvia, at the end of November. Appreciating its activities in Afghanistan, the Riga Summit Declaration stressed the necessity to expand its activities on a global-scale and put forward military cooperation with Japan that will include overseas operations of the Self-Defense Forces as its principal task.

Foreign Minister Aso Taro in his lecture in Tokyo on November 30 stressed the importance of military cooperation with NATO, saying, "The scope of cooperation between the SDF and NATO will increase." Military cooperation with NATO, however, will pose a serious problem to peace in Japan and the rest of the world.

Dangers multiplied

The mastermind behind this proposal for military cooperation between Japan's SDF and NATO is the U.S. Bush administration. The Bush administration has been mobilizing NATO in the U.S. preemptive attack strategy by having NATO go outside the North Atlantic area to the rest of the world. However, not only Iraq but also Afghanistan refused to take U.S. orders. France and Germany objected to launching the Iraq War, and the United States failed to make all of NATO take part in the war. Even in Afghanistan, Germany, Spain, and Italy refused to deploy their combat troops in the war zone in the southern area, despite the pressures from the United States and Britain.

In contrast, the Japan-U.S. alliance is being transformed into a global military alliance capable of meddling in military disputes throughout the world under Koizumi and Abe governments following an extraordinary subservience policy to the United States. Japan quickly expressed support for the Iraq War, which the Bush administration started by claiming that Iraq was in possession of weapons of mass destruction, and has been continuing to support the war, thus acting as an adjutant to the United States.

The Bush administration is attempting to make the most of the synergic effects from the Japan-U.S. alliance and NATO by having these two military alliances cooperate together to share the U.S. preemptive attack strategy. By enabling them to cooperate, the United States also intends to plant in NATO the same allegiance to the U.S. as Japan has and to press Japan to exercise the right of collective self-defense as NATO does.

Cooperation between the SDF and NATO will allow the SDF to fight together with NATO forces. President Bush in his speech at the NATO summit emphasized the NATO plan of conducting not only joint training and joint exercises but even "common defense planning" between the SDF and NATO forces. Integrating military operations of NATO forces with the SDF and drawing up common war plans is a dangerous move to involve Japan in wars across the world.

The government is rushing to establish a setup to fight wars abroad. Cooperation with NATO will unmistakably pave the way for Japan's national ruin.

Based on remorse over its war of aggression against other Asian countries, Japan established the Constitution that declares renunciation of war, non-possession of war potential and denial of the right of belligerency. Defending Article 9, an international pledge made to Asia and the rest of the world that Japan will never go to war again, remains obligatory. We cannot allow the government not only prepare for fighting in wars abroad under U.S. orders but also militarily link up with NATO.

U.N.-centered peace order

Military alliances like NATO and the Japan-U.S. alliance, which assume hypothetical enemies and have nothing in common with the collective security system stipulated in the United Nations Charter, should not be allowed to prevail over world affairs. World peace should be pursued through the United Nations, just as the French President Jacques Chirac in the NATO summit stated that the United Nations should continue to be the sole political organization to conduct missions of global-scale.
- Akahata, December 6, 2006