Back on July 25, 2014 I posted a column here called “Future History Friday — China’s Coming “Days of Future Past” where I stated that China’s hyper-aggressiveness with its neighbors would make Japan act like a “normal nation,” increase its military defenses of the Southern Ryukyus and make military alliances with its neighbors to contain China. Today, a “flaming datum” of that prediction arrived. Japan has just announced steps to bring those “Days of Future Past” closer for China. The Japanese are moving to militarily garrison Miyako and Ishigaki with ground troops and mobile anti-ship missile batteries.
See:
Japan prepares to deploy troops on Miyako and Ishigaki｜WantChinaTimes.com
The May-June 2015 Issue | The National Interest
Miyako and Ishigaki were air bases for Imperial Japanese Army and Navy Kamikaze planes based on Formosa — modern day Taiwan — during the March – June 1945 Battle for Okinawa. Today, they are being prepared to support any operations Japan’s Self-Defense Forces are ordered to do by the Japanese government…including communications to and air support of Taiwan in case of a Mainland Chinese Invasion.
That the Japanese government felt compelled to do this just days after a US-Japanese Defense agreement announcing America’s “Ironclad Support” for Japan in its dispute with China on the Senkaku Islands these cruise missiles will cover. And very shortly after Vietnam announced its purchase from the Russian Federation of 50 anti-ship and land attack 3M-14E Klub supersonic cruise missiles for its burgeoning fleet of SSK Kilo-class diesel-electric submarines (NATO reporting name SS-N-27 SIZZLER) says a great deal, none of it good as far as American diplomacy.
The next steps to look for are the deployment of JSDF fighters and radar planes to back up the large existing Japanese Air Self Defense Force radar network in the Southern Ryukyus. See below
Thus ends another visit to China’s “Days of Future Past”.
More questions than answers.
Japan has become an aging and toothless shell, much like the USSA is aging (but not toothless, only impotent). Vietnam? Armed by Russia, but a historical mortal enemy of China, and having territorial disputes with China much like Japan is…..but Vietnam doesn’t like Japan either from their WWII tyranny. Russia also an aging but not toothless country allied with China against the USSA. China hates Japan for WWII tyranny and for being allied with the USSA to contain China geographically.South and North Korea dislike Japan from WWII, but did supply conscripted troops to the Empire of Japan.
Who is going to shoot who?
China & Russia allied with Iran & N. Korea are shooting it out with USSA & Japan, allied with Australia & S. Korea. Vietnam is 60/40 with Russia-China or neutral.
Then Iran brings in the Shiite vs Sunni civil war into the conflict to make it WWIII, with Israel “allied” with the Sunnis for mutual survival. Europe splits on traditional lines of “East vs West” but with the added indigenous immigrant Muslim 5th column attacks on the established Govs in addition to their civil war Shiite vs Sunni or just think “Syria in Europe”. Then the Balkans erupt confusing the Serb/Russian alliance with the Iranian/Russian alliance, but at this point who cares?
“We must have a NWO” will be screamed from the roof tops of the world, or more likely from the rubble of the world. Have a “nice world day”, most of us will be gone, according to the Georgia NWO Guide Stones.(recently updated).
Japan is not toothless. It specializes in sea and air control. Japan’s Navy and Air Force personnel numbers are about 50% larger than those of the Royal Navy and Air Force, and they are comparably equipped. The major unknown concerns the war stocks of Japan’s self-defense forces, as those have never been tested.
I would add to what Mr. Holsinger said, that Japanese forces are tremendously professional and have high morale. Which cannot be said for many European forces. Further, while the details are not known it is estimated that Japan’s distance from a declared nuclear deterrent can be measured in turns of screws.
The recent North Korean launch of an SLBM may have some Japanese to receive orders to make sure that the tool kit is within reach.
Japan, in concert with much of the West, does have severe cultural and sociological problems. But they are on the front line and know that there is no US help to be had if they are attacked. Which tends to concentrate one’s mind.
If the number one rule for a non-Asian power is never get involved in a land war in Asia.
The number one rule for a continental Eurasian nation is never get into a naval war with the dominant sea power. It is very hard for a land power to beat a sea power. China, like Russia, is the very essence of a continental power.
Japan is the mirror opposite. The only thing that has historically beaten Japanese sea power is a bigger sea power, the USA.
The Japanese Kongo class Destroyers have full Aegis with anti-ballistic missile software and hardware upgrades.
The Japanese have license built F-15CJ built fighters with Japanese airborne electronically scanned array radars that are supported by dozens of E-2C and E-3J AWACS.
Japanese sub crews are only bettered by British and American SSN crews (in that order) in the quality of training/skill of sailors, and the Japanese sub crews are in quieter diesel electric subs.
And the Japanese also have Patriot III ATBM’s.
The deployment of the Type 88 launcher batteries means the Japanese own that part of the ocean and any Chinese surface vessel near the disputed island lives strictly at Japan’s sufferance.
Will the Japanese deployment include any air defence? These islands seem a likely target for an H-6K stand-off raid.
The dragon is becoming very dangerous. It’s pride and past humiliations are a festering sore that they believe needs to be cauterized with the flames of war and soothed with the salve of conquest.
And they need some way to get rid of 50 million unmarried men being an unexpected consequence of their one child policy.
With their knew found wealth, stolen technology and ability to intimidate a war weary western world they believe their turn at world domination has come.
But the window of opportunity is fast closing for them with the departure of the present day White House weakling.
To delay is to chance his being replaced with a strong willed patriot that can fire up the American money machine and rehire our fighting Generals and Admirals and rebuild Reagans armada.
Even with their communist allies they know they will lose if they delay.
North Korea would be stopped by South Korea. Vietnam is on their southern flank, Taiwan would fight like a rabid tiger with a do or die mentality. Japan is a proven war machine arming once again. And the Russian Bear would have to fight on two fronts. They know how well that worked for Germany. Australia and New Zealand might show up with some medics and shrimp for the bbq –who knows.
So Barack is their guy because they know he will send fighters but when the Chicoms start sinking ships and filling up American body bags for him; his dead-beat academic pseudo-intellectual, left coast deep-thinkers, welfare queens and union boss supporters will cry foul and demand a negotiated peace in lieu of victory that will leave all of Asia the vasal of China.
2016 is going to be a busy and profitable year for the American weapons industry.
If I was a tourist I would not go to Asia in 2016 and early 2017. And I would rethink Europa also. Weakness attracts adventurers and revenge.
“If I was a tourist I would not go to Asia in 2016 and early 2017.”
I’m going to Greece after watching the results of the present Greek political activity. I did not want be in Athens with another month of riots, like November 2012.
We will spend only a day in Athens, where I have been before. Most of the time will be in Crete. We are going to visit Verging and the royal tombs where Philip II is buried. It’s near Thessaloniki.
I gave up the idea of visiting Egypt after Obama made it so problematic.
China is not on my agenda because of the distance. I’m too old for those very long flights. At one time my daughter, who has been to China multiple times, wanted me to take her to Mongolia and I would like to have seen Ulaanbaatar but not now. Too far. Greece is far enough.
Coincidentally, the other day I listened to a talk on this very topic:
Robert Kaplan – Senior Fellow, Center for a New American Security & member of Defense Policy Board.
Rethinking Series 2014-15: Chinese Views, Strategy and Geopolitics
https://youtu.be/73aUAdqALqI
Lots of additional talks can be viewed at RETHINKING SEMINAR SERIES:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLlEZu4V2NIdkNl2VHNpE7r3RYfnZrXrpw
Taiwan is a tougher nut to crack than is generally realized.
When the ROC Navy decommissioned it’s 12 ex-US Navy destroyers — which all had has a pair of twin 5-in/38 caliber guns in addition to Israeli Gabriel anti-ship cruise missiles and American Sea Chaparral or boxed Standard anti-aircraft missile — and replaced them with French and American frigates. It took the 24 twin turrets and mounted them as coast defenses to cover all the good landing beaches for both floating hulled and hovercraft type landing vessels on its west coast.
I don’t know what happened to the missile batteries from those DD’s, but Taiwan has since developed its own family of cruise missiles to include a Harpoon equivalent in its frigates and it’s naval cruise missile shore batteries broadly equal to the JGSDF Type 88’s.
The Taiwanese Harpoon equivalents have a stretched version with GPS type mid-couse guidance to strike Mainland China.
The Japanese fortifying of the Southern Ryukyus gives Taiwan a secure shipping lane down its East Coast from Japan under Japanese or Taiwanese land based radar coverage the entire passage. (See Google Island and JASDF radar map above)
China cannot cut that sea lane without fighting Japan inside Japanese radar controlled airspace or trying to project airpower through Taiwainese airspace, and over Taiwanese Patriot batteries, to Taiwan’s East Coast.
There is a reason why Mainland China is investing in precision ballistic missiles.
However, ballistic missiles cannot take air superiority. Only aircraft can.
And Taiwan’s cruise missiles are good enough to reach Mainland Chinese airbases within range of Taiwan’s East Coast.
The Taiwan Straits Mexican Stand off, 21st Century version, continues.
GenEarly,
Also keep in mind that Japan can have nuclear weapons in much less than a day after its Prime Minister orders assembly of its stocks of pre-fabricated nuclear weapons parts. How many nuclear weapons it has pre-fabricated parts for is a matter of conjecture, but not that it has some.
Japan could deploy @ 1500 nuclear weapons in a year given the funding. It has the experience, sufficient weapons-grade plutonium ready to use, the necessary personnel and the manufacturing capability.
Japan could definitely become the second most country on the planet in twelve months given the political will to do so.
It isn’t China’s growing strength that poses the greatest threat, but rather the accelerating decline into irrelevance of the U.S.
At the end of WW2, two of the most militaristic and aggressive cultures in the world were disarmed and pacified in defeat. I see nothing positive in the re-arming of either now because they no longer perceive the U.S as a reliable ally and protector.
Rational people don’t cheer when a dragon’s egg that has lain dormant for over half a century starts to hatch.
Face Palm —
http://hotair.com/archives/2015/05/13/whos-ready-for-an-international-crisis-in-the-south-china-sea/
My son was in Athens during the riots.
The rioters would yell and scream and get in shoving matches with the cops for the TV cameras.
When the cameras left, the “rioters” and the cops stood around chatting and smoking cigarettes together.
So they were all putting on a show, for somebody.
That history will not be televised.