United States is obliged to come to Japan's aid if attacked by China, top U.S. diplomat said.

[Samstwitch]

United States is obliged to come to Japan's aid if attacked by China, top U.S. diplomat said. I would hardly call this a "spat". It may lead to a full-on war.

Treaty with Japan covers islets in China spat: U.S. official

September 21, 2012 - WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The uninhabited islets in the East China Sea at the center of a bitter dispute between China and Japan are "clearly" covered by a 1960 security treaty obliging the United States to come to Japan's aid if attacked, a top U.S. diplomat said on Thursday.

"We do not take a position on the ultimate sovereignty of these islands," Kurt Campbell, assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, told a U.S. Senate Foreign Relations subcommittee.

Japan has controlled the rocky islets since 1895 - except during the 1945-1972 U.S. post-war occupation of Okinawa - and calls them the Senkakus. China, and rival Taiwan, maintain they have an older claim and call them the Diaoyu islands.

"We do acknowledge clearly ... that Japan maintains effective administrative control ... and, as such, this falls clearly under Article 5 of the Security Treaty," Campbell said at the panel's hearing on Asian territorial disputes. He told the Senate subcommittee that recent violent anti-Japanese demonstrations in China and other actions that stoked tensions were a growing worry to the United States.

The long-standing territorial dispute bubbled over again last week when the Japanese government decided to nationalize some of the islands, buying them from a private Japanese owner.

"We are concerned ... by recent demonstrations, and, frankly, the potential for the partnership between Japan and China to fray substantially in this environment," said Campbell. "That is not in our strategic interest and clearly would undermine the peace and stability in the Asia-Pacific as a whole," he added.

The Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security between the United States and Japan was signed in 1960 as a successor to a 1951 bilateral security treaty and underpins what is seen as the most important of five U.S. treaty alliances in Asia. Article 5 says "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 in accordance with its constitutional provisions and processes." The article also commits the allies to report "any such armed attack and all measures taken as a result thereof" to the U.N. Security Council and to halt those actions once the Security Council takes steps to restore peace and security. He said this stance on the islets is the same that has been articulated by American officials since 1997.

Subcommittee chairman Senator Jim Webb, a Virginia Democrat and veteran Asia military expert, urged the Obama administration "to respond, carefully and fully" to Chinese actions in the East China Sea and the South China Sea, where China has other territorial disputes that have intensified in recent years. "This threat has direct consequences for the United States," said Webb, who noted a declaration in 2004 by the George W. Bush administration and in 2010 by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton that the U.S. security treaty obligations extended to the disputed islets.
"Given the recent incursion by China into waters around the Senkaku Islands, it is vital that we continue to state clearly our obligations under this security treaty," he said.

 

[Octavusprime]

As the world heads to war...

It is a tense time for world. One wrong move could cause a chain reaction triggering all out war between the world powers. Let's hope that minds prevail.

 

[Samstwitch]

 

[Opmmur]

Japan has no real army or navy, as far as I know. But the US will stand up for Japan in case China starts any thing. . .

 

[Samstwitch]

Today's Headlines...

China carrier a show of force as Japan tension festers

September 25, 2012 - TOKYO/BEIJING (Reuters) - China sent its first aircraft carrier into formal service on Tuesday amid a tense maritime dispute with Japan in a show of force that could worry its neighbors. China's Ministry of Defense said the newly named Liaoning aircraft carrier would "raise the overall operational strength of the Chinese navy" and help Beijing to "effectively protect national sovereignty, security and development interests". In fact, the aircraft carrier, refitted from a ship bought from Ukraine, will have a limited role, mostly for training and testing ahead of the possible launch of China's first domestically built carriers after 2015, analysts say.

China cast the formal handing over of the carrier to its navy -- attended by President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao -- as a triumphant show of national strength at a time of tensions with Japan over islands claimed by both sides. "The smooth commissioning of the first aircraft carrier has important and profound meaning for modernizing our navy and for enhancing national defensive power and the country's overall strength," Xinhua news agency cited Wen as saying at the commissioning ceremony in the northern port of Dalian.
Sino-Japanese relations deteriorated sharply this month after Japan bought the East China Sea islands, called Senkaku in Japan and Diaoyu in China, from their private owner, sparking anti-Japan protests across China.

"China will never tolerate any bilateral actions by Japan that harm Chinese territorial sovereignty," Vice Foreign Minister Zhang Zhijun told his Japanese counterpart on Tuesday as the two met in a bid to ease tensions. "Japan must banish illusions, undertake searching reflection and use concrete actions to amend its errors, returning to the consensus and understandings reached between our two countries' leaders."

In a sign of the tensions, China has postponed a ceremony marking the 40th anniversary of the resumption of diplomatic ties with Japan. But an official at the Japan-China Economic Association said Toyota Motor Corp Chairman Fujio Cho and Hiromasa Yonekura, chairman of Japanese business lobby Keidanren, and other representatives of Japan-China friendship groups would attend an event on Thursday in Beijing.

The risks of military confrontation are scant, but political tensions between Asia's two biggest economies could fester and worries persist about an unintended incident at sea. "If blood is shed, people would become irrational," Koichi Kato, an opposition lawmaker who heads the Japan-China Friendship Association and will travel to Beijing, told Reuters.

"NOT CUTTING EDGE"

For the Chinese navy, the addition of carriers has been a priority as it builds a force capable of deploying far from the Chinese mainland.

China this month warned the United States, with President Barack Obama's "pivot" to Asia, not to get involved in separate territorial disputes in the South China Sea between China and U.S. allies such as the Philippines.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in turn urged China and its Southeast Asian neighbors to resolve disputes "without coercion, without intimidation, without threats and certainly without the use of force".

Narushige Michishita, a security expert at the National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies in Tokyo, said he thought the timing of the launch was unrelated to the islands dispute. Rather, experts said it might be associated with China's efforts to build up patriotic unity ahead of a Communist Party congress that will install a new generation of top leaders as early as next month.

"China is taking another step to boost its strategic naval capability," Michishita said. "If they come to have an operational aircraft carrier, for the time being we are not super-concerned about the direct implications for the military balance between the U.S. and Japan on the one hand, and China on the other. This is still not cutting edge."

The East China Sea tensions with Japan were complicated on Tuesday by the entry of Taiwan, the self-ruled island that Beijing calls an illegitimate breakaway, which also lays claim to the islands.

Japanese Coast Guard vessels fired water cannon to turn away about 40 Taiwan fishing boats and 12 Taiwan Coast Guard vessels. Six Chinese patrol ships were also near the islands but four left, leaving two nearby but not in waters Japan considers its own.

Japan protested to Taiwan, a day after lodging a complaint with China over what it called a similar intrusion by Chinese vessels.
Taiwan has friendly ties with Japan, but the two sides have long squabbled over fishing rights in the area. China and Taiwan both argue they have inherited China's historic sovereignty over the islands.

The flare-up in tension comes at a time when both China and Japan confront domestic political pressures. Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda's government faces an election in months, adding pressure on him not to look weak on China. China's Communist Party is preoccupied with the leadership turnover, with President Hu Jintao due to step down.

As China and Japan set meeting to ease island dispute, Taiwan steps into fray

Japan is sending a top diplomat to China for talks. But Taiwan is now sending ships to patrol the disputed region, threatening to further complicate things.

September 25, 2012 - Chinese and Japanese officials are set to meet to discuss their nations' impasse over a disputed island cluster tomorrow, as Chinese ships patrol the area in an attempt to reinforce Beijing's claim to the islands. But a new party looks set to step in with its own claim to the islands: Taiwan. CLICK ME TO READ MORE