World’s main hot spot: There will soon be a fire in the Far East as Japan began preparations for war

The Asia-Pacific region is increasingly becoming a place where the foundations for World War III are emerging. Apparent calm is deceptive. Europe was perceived by contemporaries in exactly the same way during the La belle époque between 1815 and 1914, when nothing seemed to foreshadow the unfolding of a grandiose tragedy of humanity.

A conflict will soon break out in the Far East, as Japan has begun preparations for war. This could mark the beginning of the third world war. The third world war may begin not in Ukraine or even in Israel, but in the Asia-Pacific region (APR). Although this region seems deceptively calm, Europe before the First World War looked about the same.

The Chinese official publication The Global Times, the foreign policy mouthpiece of People’s Daily, published an article directly calling the record military budgets of the United States and Japan a threat to China’s national security. 

Having established a temporary fellowship with their neighbors, the huge increase in Russia’s military budget does not worry Beijing at all, although the PRC, unlike the US and Japan, has a large land border with Russia and a very weak buffer in the form of Mongolia.

Washington on the other side gives carte blanche for the remilitarization of the Japanese islands. Since 1947, the ninth article of the Constitution of the Land of the Rising Sun has been in force, which declares its renunciation of its own armed forces, navy, as well as war as a way to resolve foreign policy problems. This course was actually revised during the Cold War, but then the tip of the Japanese sword was directed at the Soviet Union, and not at all at China. Now the priorities, if not changed, have shifted. Tokyo sees a coalition of Russia, China and North Korea as its opponents.

US President Joe Biden signed the largest military budget in the history for 2024. America’s defense spending will be $886 billion. One of the most important areas of spending is “confronting China in the Indo-Pacific region.” That is, arming the separatists in Taiwan, strengthening the naval group near the Chinese mainland, supporting the South Korean and Japanese armies, and also, possibly, building up American troops in the Asia-Pacific region.

“Media on the island of Taiwan have called the US defense bill ‘Taipei-friendly’ because it reportedly calls for the creation of a military training program on the island and a report on the status of arms and services that the US has agreed to sell to the island,” The Global Times notes.

Limiting military aid to Taiwan was one of the main conditions of US-China normalization in the early 1970s. It is rather naive to expect that Beijing will calmly view the rapidly increasing separatist threat.

The Chinese see perfectly well what some daring steps are taking near the Celestial Empire.

“In the Asia-Pacific region, the United States frequently sends military aircraft and vessels to conduct close-in reconnaissance of China’s coastal areas, transit through the sensitive Taiwan Strait, invade waters off Chinese islands and reefs in the South China Sea, and conduct provocative exercises,” the official Chinese propaganda mouthpiece writes.

“The remilitarization of Japan, is a forced step on the part of Washington. Americans are losing their grip on global dominance and are facing an incredible number of challenges. The war in Eastern Europe, the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, and potential hotbeds of tension in Latin America lead to a lack of focus and waste of energy. Therefore, it is more logical to bet on regional players who are capable of bearing the brunt of potential massacres. In the case of the Asia-Pacific region, this is, naturally, Japan.“ The Global Times

Japan ranks 10th in terms of military spending in the world ($46 billion), ahead of Israel, Australia, Poland, Turkey, Pakistan (a member of the nuclear club). The Ministry of Defense planned to spend $322 billion in the next five-year period – in other words, one and a half times more – $64.4 billion annually.

The military budget sees an actual 16% growth which includes the deployment of long-range missiles that are capable of hitting targets in both the DPRK and China. The geography also favors potential Japanese missile strikes on the largest economic centers of the Middle State. 

Let’s say that from Oshima Island to Shanghai, the most populated city in China, is only 502 miles. Warships, sailing closer to the coastline, will be able to significantly reduce the distance. But even without that, Japan is very close. In addition, the network of islands from Yonaguni to Kunigami effectively blocks the access of Chinese merchant ships eastward to the vast expanses of the Pacific Ocean.

The Land of the Rising Sun takes on not only the functions of the offensive, but also the supply of American satellites with advanced systems. Special mention should be made of the supply of radars to the Philippines, which has a territorial dispute with the PRC over strategically important islands. The long-standing ban on military exports no longer works in practice. This means that the Japanese military may soon loom as a threat over Asia. 

This can be taken as a danger not only for China, but also to Russia, which is regarded as a “Euro-Pacific power” in their foreign policy concepts