Japan pivots away from peace as fear of China grows

Editor’s Note: This piece by Michael Smith features quotes from CSP Senior Fellow Grant Newsham

Shocked into submission after the United States dropped atomic bombs on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki during World War II, Japan has shied away from conflict both militarily and diplomatically.

The country instead focused on building itself into an economic powerhouse and creating a society that was comfortable, orderly and mostly well-off.

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“Xi Jinping has succeeded in getting Japan to take its defence seriously. That’s something the Americans never had much success at,” Grant Newsham, a Senior Research Fellow at the Japan Forum for Strategic Studies and a retired US Marine Corps colonel, tells AFR Weekend.

“China started to muscle in on the Senkaku Islands around 2009 or 2010, which is what got Tokyo’s attention. And there has been no let up from the Chinese. There’s now a belief on the Japanese side that there’s no deal to be cut with the People’s Republic of China.”

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”South Korea recognises that it’s got an even bigger problem than Japan,” says Japan Forum for Strategic Studies’ Newsham, whose book When China Attacks: A Warning To America, was published this month. “Such is geography. China to the west, North Korea to the north, and in the event Taiwan is attacked and/or falls, the important trade and sea lanes from the south can be cut at PRC convenience. South Korea can easily find itself surrounded if things play out a certain way – and in the not so distant future.”

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