PARIS — Vietnam is seeking to strengthen ties with Tokyo and Washington in a search for security against neighboring China — a fellow communist power but one whose territorial claims are raising concerns, an international relations expert said.
Vietnam seeks to strengthen ties with Tokyo and Washington in a search for security against neighbouring China, a fellow communist power but one which raises grave concern with territorial claims, said Matake Kamiya, professor of international relations at the Japanese National Defense Academy.
Vietnam has a "very complex attitude" toward China as both are communist countries and the natural policy is to avoid bad relations with a "brother communist party," Matake Kamiya, professor of international relations at the Japanese Defense Academy, said on Tuesday March 31 (eds: correct) at conference held by Institut de Recherche Stratégique de l'Ecole Militaire (IRSEM), a think tank at the French military's staff college.
"But there are territorial and territorial water issues," he said. "Many ordinary Vietnamese feel that China is a too arrogant neighbor and they have increasing sense of insecurity toward China.".
"That's why they want a partner outside southeast Asia, including Japan and to some extent even the United States," he said.
There is rThere is rising tension in the region which risks triggering a clash of arms, said John Swenson-Wright, senior lecturer at Cambridge university. Swenson-Wright is also head of the Asia program at Chatham House, the London-based think tank.
China is building a "great wall of sand" with an unprecedented land reclamation in the South China Sea, Adm. Harry Harris, commander of the US Pacific fleet, said on Tuesday March 31 at a naval conference in Australia, the BBC reported. China is pouring sand on coral reefs and laying down concrete to create artificial islands.
There are sSeveral competing claims are active in the South China Sea, but the Chinese move is "drawing a lot of concern in the here and now," he said.
Vietnam is one of the nations in dispute with China in the South China sSea, while Philippines has launched a legal case in a maritime territorial dispute with Beijing.
Over the next decade, China will overtake the US and become the largest global economic power in terms of nominal gross domestic product, Kamiya said. But Washington will retain superiority in military and technology.
The big question is whether China will be a status quo or a revisionist power, he said. Will China challenge the international order?
China has shown "increasing assertiveness," Kamiya he said. Chinese fighter jets have flown with 30 to 50 meters of close to Japanese aircraft, which is "extremely dangerous.".
China needs to reconsider its policy, he said. "Unless China improves, relations with other nations won't improve. I am not optimistic," he said.
In the region there is a A heightened nationalism, or hyper-nationalism, is occurring in China and South Korea, while North Korea is playing a policy of "brinkmanship," continuing to develop nuclear warheads and ballistic missiles despite international efforts on atomic disarmament, Kamiya he said.
"Nationalism in Japan has been consistently relatively moderate and self-restrained in the post-war years," he said. Japanese intellectuals and journalists have warned against hyper-nationalism, but those warnings have been absent in China and North Korea.
There is hHyper-nationalism has popped up in Japan as some seek to rewrite history, but this is a "small segment in Japanese society," he said.
Swenson-Wright said he had a "less sanguine" view, due to as there has been a rise in nationalism in Japan and confusion in the government's messages.
"The messages I think coming from the [Shinzo] Abe administration have been, perhaps not intentionally, confused," he said. The government is considered has been seen to be "unduly heavy handed in trying to manage the public discourse.".
Abe has not been very careful and has been "a bit clumsy," said Guibourg Delamotte, a specialist in Japanese defense at the Institut National des Langues et Civilizations Orientales, a high-level language institute. Delamotte chaired the conference.
An attempts to rewrite history are evident can be seen in the appointment of senior officials to Japan Broadcasting Corp., known as NHK, and a press battle between the conservative Yomiuri Shimbun and progressive Asahi Shimbun newspapers, Swenson-Wright said.
In popular culture, Japanese manga comics feature there is "virulent" and "racist" portrayals of Chinese and North and South Koreans, in Japanese manga comics which is derogatory and unhelpful, he said. These can help explain understand the "emotional tension" that which has risen in recent years.
Abe is seeking seeks to support the international community by using military force to support peace, marking a break with the strictly domestic defense policy strictly observed since 1945.
But Abe has sent conflicting messages to the international community, such as his visit to the Yasukuni shrine, and a potential revision of a 1995 statement by Prime Minister Tomiichi Murayama. S, sexual slavery in World War IITwo, or the "comfort women," remains an unresolved issue with South Korea, Swenson-Wright said.
There is a A common sense of victimhood among tThe élite and public in China, Japan and South Korea all have a sense of victimhood, with each country failing to see the counterpart sharing a similar victimhood, he said.
"That lack of empathy is important because, notwithstanding the importance of deterrence as a means of creating security, while it is necessary it is not sufficient to minimize the risk of conflict," Swenson-Wright he said. "The temperature in the region has gone up to such a degree that I think there is a legitimate reason to worry that misperception and distrust, which is becoming all pervasive throughout the region, will itself act as a catalyst to potential military conflict.," he said.
"I am less confident on the reliability of deterrence," he said. For example, South Korean President Geun-hye Park has given much more autonomy to the military to respond to potential provocation from the North.
"It is very easy to see how military conflict might escalate in the face of that distrust on both sides," Swenson-Wright he said. There is A similar risk exists in the territorial claims in East and South China Seas.
Previous Japanese governments publicly pursued a non-nuclear policy, "but the non-nuclear policy was violated in practice by signing secret agreements with the US," he said.
On March 13, Japan and France signed March 13 an agreement on military equipment and technology transfer, Reuters reported. The deal was part of Tokyo's more active pacifist policy, which allows sending troops abroad in peacekeeping missions and allowing arms exports. The signing with France follows similar agreements with Australia and Britain.
Email: ptran@defensenews.com
