In Japan, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe bluntly spoke the truth that the current Sino-Japanese tensions and relations are similar to those between Britain and Germany on the eve of World War I. Indeed, the Financial Times reported that Abe said on Wednesday that Japan and China are in a “similar situation” to the two European powers in the lead-up to the Great War. While the government has since tried desperately to clarify that statement rewording it, the recharacterization put it: “The prime minister meant to say that something like WWI must never be allowed to happen,” according to the Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, who is the government’s top spokesman.
Every now and again, politicians say what they truly mean. The comparison may need to be tweaked a bit. For the underlying resentment in China against Japan runs very deep and is not dissimilar from the resentment in Europe against Germany that resurfaces from time and time again. I China, it is very hard to find even a Japanese restaurant. If you ask directions to one, they are politely given, but it is always with a stunned look in the eyes that how dare you speak the word – Japanese.
As was laid out in the Cycles of War report, this border tension is precisely on time for China. It has regularly entered periods of conflict along its borders and this is a period concerning Japan that is precisely on par for the USA is really incapable of defending Japan on any conventional standard. In truth, Japan would draw in the USA, but the USA has no underlying strength to support Japan with troops on the ground as was the case with Korea.
