Abe to put Japan at mercy of US war policy: Analyst

Press TV has conducted an interview with Mike Billington, a member of the Executive Intelligence Review in Leesburg, to share his thoughts on Japan’s newly-passed controversial law that expands the role of the country’s military, allowing it to take part in overseas conflicts.

What follows is a rough transcription of the interview.

Press TV: How much of this was a direct push by the United States?

Billington: There is no question. It is not quite accurate to say that the policy allows Japan to be involved in fighting overseas, there is truth to that, but it is a very explicit policy which the LDP (Liberal Democratic Party of Japan) leaders that are backing this acknowledge which is that the purpose of this is that Japan can and will join in a US war against China and we have the President of United States who is committed to a war with Russia, who is confronting Russia intentionally, deploying nuclear tactical missiles to Europe at the same time that he is surrounding Russia and China in Asia with ABM systems, with the missile systems and a war with Russia would be a war with China. So we are on the brink of global thermonuclear war.

It is a terrible mistake by Abe. Abe has other interests that are far more sane. Mr. Kishida, their Foreign Minister was in Moscow this last week. They are concerned about trying to settle the issue of the islands in the north but really the issue is economic collaboration into development of the Russian Far East as part of the BRICS and as you probably know the South Korean President Park Geun-hye attended the celebration, the 70th anniversary of the end of the war in Moscow and stood proudly with Xi Jinping and with Vladimir Putin and that threesome is a very clear display to the United States and to Japan that the neo-con Obama idea of a US, Japan, Korea alliance against China is rejected.

So Abe is foolishly trying to put Japan at the mercy of the US war policy, at the same time that he is trying to establish closer ties with Russia and China. My sense is that Xi Jinping and Putin are moving towards trying to draw Abe into recognize that the sanity of Japan, that the same policy for Japan is to join with the BRICS in development. Japan has a [tremendous] productive power and potential not to be part of this paradigm for global war.

We will see how that goes. There is going to be a meeting between Xi Jinping, Park Geun-hye and Abe sometime over the end of this year, that has been agreed to and I think this is a sane effort to try to bring Japan away from the brink of this policy. It is reversible, it is not cut in stone, it has been passed but I think it is going to bring Abe down in his support and it is a mistake that he made which should be corrected.

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