Friday 26th of April 2024
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the rising sun flag seeks our help against the tiger...

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In Australia we like to believe that the US Pacific Fleet saved us from Japanese attack in 1942-1944, but that is only partly true.

According to Japanese war history expert, Moteki Hiromichi, it is also true that but for a mistake in Japan’s wartime strategy the US Pacific Fleet would not been there or needed to save us.

And we have to thank China for forcing Japan into making that mistaken change in strategy.

 

By Gregory Clark

 

Moteki is the acting chairman of Japan’s doggedly revanchist Society for Dissemination of Historical Fact.

In the Japan Times of January 20 this year he published a review entitled “Japan’s Master Plan for Victory:  What Could Have Been” based on his 2018 Japanese book of the same name.

His nostalgia for “what could have been” was a nostalgia for an aborted World War II plan which if carried out would have allowed Japan to dominate everything from East Asia to the Suez Canal (with Australia presumably included).

The plan began to be developed by economic and other specialists early in 1941. Entitled “Draft Proposal for Hastening the End of War Against the United States, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and Chiang Kai-shek”, it was formally adopted on November 15, 1941.

It called for Japan first to attack the UK and Netherland’s East and South-East Asian colonies. From there its military would move west towards the Middle East.

Then “with the UK weakened or unable to continue, Japan would persuade the US that conflict with Japan would be futile”. Attempts to supply UK forces from the north, over the Soviet Union, could easily be cut off.

With the UK in a weakened position, the draft proposal goes on to say, the US would “lose the will to continue hostilities against Japan”. (In fact an isolationalist US may never have had that will in the first place.)

Indeed, Moteki points out that UK prime minister Winston Churchill gave a warning to US president Franklin Roosevelt on April 15, 1942 which said just that — that should Japan control the Western Indian Ocean the British position in the Middle East would collapse and supplies via Russia would be cut.

Moteki makes the point that Japan’s success at Pearl Harbor was a defeat rather than a victory for Japan. Not only did it bring the US into the war, early. It also deluded Japan’s planners into thinking they could defeat the US in the Pacific with their dominant naval forces.

Instead, rapidly dominant US naval forces defeated Japan with their victories at Midway, Coral Sea, and Guadalcanal, leaving a battered Japanese navy unable to defend the homeland from subsequent US island-hopping attacks from the south.

Japan should have relied more on its army, Moteki insists. With only a minimum of troops it had already in early 1942 conquered most of the UK and the Netherlands controlled areas in South-East Asia. If it had moved directly from there to the Middle East it would have dominated the world’s oil supplies. For Japan, that would be its final victory.

But this assumes the Japanese army could have bypassed China. It was the inability of that army to defeat a China which had held out for eight painful years from 1937 which had also led Tokyo to prefer the naval strategy that had guaranteed its final defeat.

Moteki makes no effort to hide his anti-navy bias, and his dislike of supreme commander, Isoroku Yamamoto. It was Yamamoto, given a free hand after the glamour of his Pearl Harbor victory, who pushed for the futile strategy of having the navy attack southward. The army, with its early victories in Southeast Asia, should have been given more opportunity.

Another mistake, the reviewer says, was having Japan join the Axis with Germany and Italy in September 1940. This encouraged the US to increase its trade embargo against Japan, which in turn led to the mistaken Pearl Harbor attack.

But there is one key omission from this catalogue of maybes,  and it is crucial. This is the role of the message decoders based in Australia. But for their efforts it is more than possible Japan’s “move south” naval strategy might have succeeded. The bravery of Australian soldiers in the New Guinea fighting to stop Japan’s southward aggression should also be noted.

Today our amateur strategists seek to link us up with Japan to confront the same China that once helped rescue us from the same Japan.

They argue it is not the same Japan, that Japan has changed.

Changed? When our sailors go on exercises with the Japanese navy do they realise they sail under the same wartime rising sun flag which the Japanese navy has refused to change

Pride in Japan’s former aggressive military remains. Reluctance to admit wartime atrocities against China is alarming; the Moteki who regrets Japan’s wartime strategy mistakes is one of Japan’s leading Nanking Massacre deniers.

The dominant group in Japan’s dominant LDP political party have direct blood relations with Japan’s wartime military leaders.

These people still seek to dominate China. What has changed is that this time they want the US and the rest of us to help.

 

READ MORE:

https://johnmenadue.com/japans-master-plan-for-victory-what-could-have-been/

 

 

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traditions of friendship and trust...

 «Russia and China: A Future-Oriented Strategic Partnership»

 

 

by Vladimir Putin

 

 

 

On the eve of my upcoming visit to China, I am pleased to address directly the large Chinese and foreign audience of Xinhua, the world’s largest news agency.

Our countries are close neighbours bound by centuries-old traditions of friendship and trust. We highly appreciate that Russian-Chinese relations of comprehensive partnership and strategic cooperation, entering a new era, have reached an unprecedented level and have become a model of efficiency, responsibility, and aspiration for the future. The basic principles and guidelines for joint work were defined by our countries in the Treaty of Good Neighborliness and Friendly Cooperation, the twentieth anniversary of which we celebrated last year. These are, first and foremost, equality, consideration of one another’s interests, freedom from political and ideological circumstances, as well as from the vestiges of the past. These are the principles we are consistently building on year after year in the spirit of continuity to deepen our political dialogue. Despite the difficulties caused by the coronavirus pandemic, we are striving to dynamically build the capacity of economic partnerships and expand humanitarian exchanges.

During the upcoming visit, the President of the People’s Republic of China Xi Jinping and I will thoroughly discuss key issues on the bilateral, regional, and global agendas. It is symbolic that our meeting will take place during the Spring Festival – the Chinese Lunar New Year. After all, as the Chinese saying goes, ”make your whole year’s plan in the spring“.

The development of business ties will certainly be given special attention. There is every opportunity for this as our countries have substantial financial, industrial, technological and human resources allowing us to successfully resolve long-term development issues. By working together, we can achieve stable economic growth and improve the well-being of our citizens, strengthen our competitiveness, and stand together against today’s risks and challenges.

At the end of 2021, the volume of mutual trade increased by more than a third, exceeding the record level of 140 billion U.S. dollars. We are well on the way towards our goal of increasing the volume of trade to 200 billion U.S. dollars a year. A number of important initiatives are being implemented in the investment, manufacturing, and agro-industrial sectors. In particular, the portfolio of the Intergovernmental Commission on Investment Cooperation includes 65 projects worth over 120 billion U.S. dollars. This is about collaboration in such industries as mining and mineral processing, infrastructure construction, and agriculture.

We are consistently expanding the practice of settlements in national currencies and creating mechanisms to offset the negative impact of unilateral sanctions. A major milestone in this work was the signing of the Agreement between the Government of Russia and the Government of the PRC on payments and settlements in 2019.

A mutually beneficial energy alliance is being formed between our countries. Along with long-term supplies of Russian hydrocarbons to China, we have plans to implement a number of large-scale joint projects. The construction of four new power units at Chinese nuclear power plants with the participation of Rosatom State Corporation launched last year is one of them. All this significantly strengthens the energy security of China and the Asia region as a whole.

We see an array of opportunities in the development of partnerships in information and communication technologies, medicine, space exploration, including the use of national navigation systems and the International Lunar Research Station project. A serious impetus to strengthening bilateral ties was given by the cross Years of Russian-Chinese Scientific, Technical and Innovative Cooperation in 2020–2021.

We are grateful to our Chinese colleagues for their assistance in launching the production of Russian Sputnik V and Sputnik Light vaccines in China and for the timely supply of necessary protective equipment to our country. We hope that this cooperation will develop and strengthen.

One of Russia’s strategic objectives is to accelerate the social and economic upliftment of Siberia and the Russian Far East. These territories are immediate neighbors of the PRC. We also intend to actively develop interregional ties. Thus, the modernization of the Baikal-Amur Mainline and the Trans-Siberian Railway has been started. By 2024, their capacity must increase one and a half times through higher volumes of transit cargo and reduced transport time. The port infrastructure in the Russian Far East is also growing. All this should further enhance the complementarity of the Russian and Chinese economies.

And, of course, the conservation of nature and shared ecosystems remains an important area of bilateral cross-border and interregional cooperation. These issues have always been the focus of our countries’ public attention, and we will certainly discuss them in detail during the negotiations, as well as a wide range of humanitarian topics.

Russia and China are countries with thousands of years of unique traditions and tremendous cultural heritage, the interest in which is persistently high both in our countries and abroad. It is true that in the last two years the number of tourists, joint mass events, and direct contacts between our citizens has reduced due to the pandemic. However, I have no doubt that we will catch up and, as soon as the situation allows, will launch new outreach and educational programs to introduce our citizens to the history and present-day life of the two countries. Thus, President Xi Jinping and I have agreed to hold the Years of Russian-Chinese cooperation in physical fitness and sports in 2022 and 2023.

Certainly, an important part of the visit will be a discussion of relevant international topics. The coordination of the foreign policy of Russia and China is based on close and coinciding approaches to solving global and regional issues. Our countries play an important stabilizing role in today’s challenging international environment, promoting the democratization of the system of interstate relations to make it more equitable and inclusive. We are working together to strengthen the central coordinating role of the United Nations in global affairs and to prevent the international legal system, with the UN Charter at its centre, from being eroded.

Russia and China are actively cooperating on the broadest agenda within BRICS, RIC, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, as well as other associations. Within the G20, we are committed to taking national specifics into account when formulating our recommendations, be it the fight against pandemics or the implementation of the climate agenda. Thanks to a large extent to our countries’ shared solidarity, following the 2021 G20 Summit in Rome informed decisions were made on international cooperation to restore economic growth, recognize vaccines and vaccine certificates, optimize energy transitions, and reduce digitalization risks.

We also have convergent positions on international trade issues. We advocate maintaining an open, transparent and non-discriminatory multilateral trading system based on the rules of the World Trade Organization. We support relaunching of global supply chains. Back in March 2020, Russia proposed an initiative on ”green trade corridors“ that excludes any sanctions, political and administrative barriers. Its implementation is a useful aid to overcoming the economic consequences of the pandemic.

The XXIV Olympic Winter Games starting in Beijing are a major event of global significance. Russia and China are leading sporting nations renowned for their sporting traditions and more than once have hosted the largest international competitions with dignity. I fondly remember my visit to Beijing in August 2008 to attend the 2008 Summer Olympics opening ceremony. Guests and athletes from Russia will remember the vivid performance for a long time, and the Games themselves were organized with the scale and exceptional hospitality inherent to our Chinese friends. For our part, we were delighted to host President Xi Jinping at the opening of the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi.

Sadly, attempts by a number of countries to politicize sports to the benefit of their ambitions have recently intensified. This is fundamentally wrong and contrary to the very spirit and principles of the Olympic Charter. The power and greatness of sports are that it brings people together, gives moments of triumph and pride for the country and delights with fair, just and uncompromising competition. And these approaches are shared by most of the states participating in the international Olympic Movement.

Our Chinese friends have done tremendous work to prepare well for the Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games. I am convinced that China’s extensive experience in the excellent organization of representative international competitions will make it possible to hold this festival of world sports at the highest level. I would like to wish the Russian and Chinese teams impressive results and new records!

I send my warmest congratulations to the friendly people of China on the occasion of the Spring Festival, which marks the beginning of the Year of the Tiger. I wish you good health, prosperity, and success.

 

Vladimir Putin

 

Source

Xinhua (China)

#Xinhua (China) 

 

 

 

Read more:

https://www.voltairenet.org/article215542.html

 

Gus note: the English translation here has a few mistakes, some I have corrected....

 

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