This article by Stephen Brawer, Chairman of the Belt and Road Institute in Sweden, was originally published by CGTN.
The great awakening of the international community to Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s grossly incorrect statement regarding the question of Taiwan’s sovereignty and the so-called security threat she claims this poses to Japan has many underlying realities that need to be clarified and understood. To be sure, all the official condemnations coming from China’s Foreign Ministry spokespersons are undeniably correct. Her blatant and provocative public statement questioning China’s sovereign rights to Taiwan as a part of China is not just a clear violation of the historic agreements signed at Potsdam in 1945, officially ending Japan’s War of Aggression against China and all of Asia, it is a clear- cut case of Japanese arrogance and ethnic superiority directed against China and generally against the Global South. This underlying arrogance does not have its roots only in Japanese Militarism and Barbarism in the War of Aggression against China. It goes further back in history. Following the Meiji Restoration in the late 1800s, Japan’s technological advance became a tool of British geopolitics. The idea was to use Japanese technological advancement as an imperial battering ram against other targeted nations in Asia. In this sense, the Japanese elites developed an ethnic and even racial superiority that was and is remarkably similar to British Colonial and Racial Superiority justifying genocide and ethnic cleansing. This attitude was deeply engrained in Japanese Aggression and Militarism in World War Ⅱ. It also played a horrific role in the barbaric slaughter of men, women and children in Nanjing in 1937, a crime which the Japanese have yet to officially acknowledge and apologize for.
What force in today’s world could possibly wish to awaken this militaristic monster that has laid dormant since the Great Victory over Fascism in WWⅡ? We celebrate the 80th Year Victory over Fascism and the Japanese War of Aggression this year, in 2025. The answer is not so difficult to grasp.
The same historical forces behind Geopolitics, and very specifically British Geopolitics have a clear objective: contain China. Since China’s undeniable rise as a global economic power, it has been a major, if not the major issue for the remaining elements of the unipolar world power structure. This is the combination of the intelligence network referred to as Five Eyes, meaning Britain, USA, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, consisting in large part, of the old British Empire in its modern form as the British Commonwealth, and the expansion of NATO, into Asia, as AUKUS, and out-of-area deployments of NATO into the Far East. The very same forces which began the proxy war of NATO against Russia in Ukraine, are now planning to do something similar against China. They need an aggressor, capable of provoking a similar proxy war against China, and these old right-wing militarists networks in Japan fit the role nicely. The game was actually publicly articulated in an interview with the former NATO general secretary Anders Fogh Rasmussen approximately two years ago.
He said in so many words, “After we succeed in dealing with Russia, we shall need to deal with the real problem and that is China.”
The reality of geopolitics has not disappeared. The role of NATO and AUKUS may be weakening in relation to the rise of Asia and the Global South, but it still poses a great danger to world peace and the better interests of humanity. The better solution is seen clearly in the increasing membership of BRICS countries, the SCO (Shanghai Cooperation Organization) and the Belt and Road Initiative, which constitutes the framework for global cooperation and development.
The people of Japan today should not be held collectively accountable for the grotesque policies of the Japanese militarists. However, there remains a necessary but difficult choice for the Japanese people. There should have been a formal apology from the Japanese Government to all the countries that were victims of their gross violations of Human Rights and Human Dignity. That is still in order for the Nation of Japan. They need to admit their crimes publicly and move in an entirely different political direction. That involves a certain humility and willingness to go forward in a spirit of peace and development.
That most certainly could be an active decision to join hands with the Belt and Road Initiative and contribute all the great technological and economic potential that Japan as a nation can contribute to global peace and development. As far as Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi is concerned, one could recommend she cease going to worship old war criminals at the Yasukuni Shrine and instead offer not only a retraction of her provocative and incorrect statement, regarding Taiwan and China, but in addition offer the formal apology for the war crimes that the old Japanese militarists committed but that to this day has never been made by the Japanese Government. It would surely ease if not remove the rising tensions between Japan and China that are most definitely not in the interests of either of the two nations and their peoples.