Text Fwd: [Rick Rozoff] U.S. Supports Japan, Confronts China And Russia Over Island Disputes 미국, 일본의 중국과 러시아와의 군도 분쟁에서 일본 지지, 중.러와 대립

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Rick Rozoff blog
Stop NATO
November 4, 2010
U.S. Supports Japan, Confronts China And Russia Over Island Disputes
Rick Rozoff

In a six-day span the U.S. State Department has bluntly affirmed unequivocal backing for Japanese territorial claims against both Russia and China, even invoking a defense treaty provision that could lead to direct military intervention and war with the world's most populous nation.

Beginning a 13-day, seven-nation tour of the Asia-Pacific region on October 27 in Hawaii, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton visited Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam and met with Admiral Robert Willard, head of U.S. Pacific Command - the largest overseas regional military command in the world - and held a joint press conference with new Japanese Foreign Minister Seiji Maehara in Honolulu.

Clinton's comments on the occasion underlined Washington's increasingly assertive - and intrusive - role in East Asia and the Western Pacific Ocean. They included:

"This year, we celebrate the 50th anniversary of our alliance, which was forged at the height of the Cold War. At the time, President Eisenhower described the indestructible partnership between our two countries, and time has proven him right. The world's geopolitical landscape has shifted many times since then, but the partnership between the United States and Japan has endured....This alliance is the cornerstone of American strategic engagement in the Asia Pacific..... I'm grateful that we are the two largest contributors to reconstruction in Afghanistan." [1]

Responding to a question from the press corps on an East China Sea island chain contested by Japan and China - the Senkaku Islands in the Japanese designation and the Diaoyu Islands in the Chinese - near which a Chinese trawler collided with two Japanese coast guard ships on September 7, almost leading to an international incident, Clinton added that for the government she represents "the Senkakus fall within the scope of Article 5 of the 1960 U.S.-Japan Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security. This is part of the larger commitment that the United States has made to Japan’s security. We consider the Japanese-U.S. alliance one of the most important alliance partnerships we have anywhere in the world and we are committed to our obligations to protect the Japanese." [2]

Clinton's raising Article 5 of the 1960 Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security between the United States and Japan, which states that "Each Party recognizes that an armed attack against either Party in the territories under the administration of Japan would be dangerous to its own peace and safety and declares that it would act to meet the common danger," paralleled and followed by three months a similar attempt to intervene against China in the South China Sea.

On July 23 Clinton spoke at the 17th Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Regional Forum in Hanoi, Vietnam, and alluding to disputes in the South China Sea between China and ASEAN member states Vietnam, Malaysia, the Philippines and Brunei over the Spratly Islands and between China and Vietnam over the Paracel Islands, she maintained that "The United States, like every nation, has a national interest in freedom of navigation, open access to Asia’s maritime commons, and respect for international law in the South China Sea....We oppose the use or threat of force by any claimant." [3] Clinton had the temerity to evoke the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, which the U.S. has not ratified.

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