The following is from the final installment of Yoko Sakurai's regular column in the weekly magazine Shincho, released today.
This article also proves that she is a national treasure, the supreme national treasure, as defined by Saicho.
It is a must-read not only for Japanese citizens but also for people worldwide.
The LDP is lost under the leadership of new president Ishiba
If Shigeru Ishiba becomes president of the LDP, the Japanese economy will stall, and our country will become poor.
It is what I have been writing and saying for a long time.
And now, the signs are appearing as I predicted.
When Sanae Takaichi defeated Ishiba in the first round of voting for the LDP presidency, the stock market soared, and the exchange rate weakened, improving the performance of many companies.
As soon as Ishiba came back from behind in the final round of voting, the stock market plummeted, and the yen reversed its earlier weakness.
On September 30th, including the holiday, the Nikkei average fell by over 2000 yen at one point.
The Ministry of Finance is trying to sink Japan into the cold hell of deflation by adopting a tax increase policy that prioritizes fiscal discipline over economic growth.
Mr. Ishiba, the new governor, is firmly supported and held in the palm of the Ministry of Finance's hand.
Yoshihiko Noda, who has been appointed leader of the Constitutional Democratic Party, also follows the Ministry of Finance's orders.
When you see these two men sitting together on TV programs, you can see that they are very similar in appearance, in their policies of prioritizing fiscal discipline and leaning towards tax increases under the leadership of the Ministry of Finance, and in their ideas of allowing a female-line emperor to shake the foundations of Japan's national character.
What's more, they were born in the same year.
It's as if they were "bipartisan twin brothers."
When the two men sit side by side, there seems to be no difference between the LDP and the CDP.
Mr. Ishiba's security concept includes the idea of an Asian version of NATO.
Yukio Hatoyama, the leader of the Democratic Party of Japan (the predecessor of the CDP), also put forward the idea of an East Asian Community.
These proposals were probably made on the spur of the moment, without sufficient preparation.
It is hard to believe that they were proposals that thoroughly considered Japan's national interests.
The idea of an Asian version of NATO was immediately criticized as "impractical but strategically unwise" (Kelly A. Grieco, senior fellow at the Stimson Center).
Mr. Ishiba also mentioned the need to review the Japan-US Status of Forces Agreement, which also raised questions and concerns from the US side.
In response, he hastily contributed an article entitled "The Future of Japan's Foreign Policy" to the Hudson Institute, a US think tank.
Loss of trust
The article's main point was that creating an Asian version of NATO was essential to deter China.
There is already the Quad (Japan-US-Australia-India), AUKUS (US-UK-Australia), and the de facto "three-country alliance" of Japan-US-South Korea. Japan also has "2+2" quasi-alliance relationships with Canada, Australia, the Philippines, India, the UK, France, etc.
If these alliance relationships are upgraded, it will be possible to develop them into an Asian version of NATO with the Japan-US alliance at its core.
The US extended deterrence strategy is no longer functioning.
The Asian version of NATO will compensate for this, and the US nuclear sharing and nuclear introduction should be specifically considered. Mr. Ishiba also wrote that under his administration, the Japan-US alliance would be raised to the same level as the US-UK alliance, and Japan would have its own military strategy and become an "equal nation" with the US.
There is absolutely no reason to oppose either strengthening Japan-US relations or making Japan independent regarding security.
The question is how to make this a reality.
If Japan were to become the core of an Asian version of NATO with the US, it would mean that if a member country were attacked, Japan would send the Self-Defense Forces to fight on behalf of that country that had been invaded.
Can Japan do that now?
It is a big problem for a politician who is about to become prime minister to make such a statement without showing a concrete path to such a significant change, which can lead to a loss of trust.
Mr. Ishiba should take a realistic view and steer Japan in the right direction.
At the moment, the nuclear threat from China is looming over our country.
It has reached a level far beyond our imagination, and I don't think we have the time or energy to review the Status of Forces Agreement or create an Asian version of NATO.
China's nuclear capability is increasing at an extraordinary rate.
China, which currently possesses 500 nuclear warheads, has abandoned its previous "minimum deterrence strategy" (i.e., possessing nuclear weapons for self-defense but keeping them to a minimum) and has begun to adopt a "mutual assured destruction strategy" (i.e., if a nuclear attack is launched, China will respond by launching a nuclear strike to destroy the attacking country).
The background to this strategic shift is that China's nuclear capability has reached a different level from before, and this has given China confidence.
At a study group meeting of the think tank "National Institute for Basic Issues," it was reported that China's nuclear capability is centered on ground-launched intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) and that China has completed more than 350 silos for launching these missiles.
If we only look at ICBM silos, China has almost 400, which is equivalent to 2.5 times the number of silos in the United States.
It is said that China currently has a system in place to launch approximately 240 strategic nuclear warheads at the mainland United States.
There is video footage of fixed-point observations of Chinese silo sites using civilian satellites, the result of joint research by Yu Koizumi's University of Tokyo Research Center for Advanced Science and Technology and Bunji Ohara's Sasakawa Peace Foundation.
In this footage, we can see that each silo has a considerable tube called a canister buried in a hole dug into the ground and that the missiles are stored inside this canister.
Each silo is built at intervals of 2.5 to 3 km.
The Reality in China
On the other hand, as revealed by the satellite image analysis of the National Institute for Land and Infrastructure Management, the silo sites are surrounded by power lines and have two-lane roads running through them.
Each silo is covered by a lid measuring 152m x 87m, and a double barbed wire fence protects the lid and the area outside that is solidly piled up with earth.
It is probably in case of an explosion inside the silo.
In August, a senior official in the Biden administration said it was highly likely that China had begun loading missiles into each silo.
It is thought that China can produce 50 ICBMs a year, and by 2030, around 100 nuclear warheads a year that can be loaded onto ICBMs.
If we calculate from there, in 2028, four years from now, all 350 of China's silos will be loaded with missiles.
Experts also point out that there is no definite evidence to rule out the possibility that China's silos are connected underground.
If this is the case, it is possible that they are trying to complicate analysis by combining silos containing missiles loaded with nuclear warheads with empty silos.
It is the reality of China's situation.
The United States' enemies are not limited to China.
They also include Russia, North Korea, and potentially Iran.
If the United States' ability to defend its territory declines, the reliability of its extended deterrence will also decline.
It would be contrary to Japan's national interests.
What Japan can do is complement the United States and strengthen the power of both countries.
Experts emphasize that concrete discussions must be held now to achieve this.
For example, if the Air Self-Defense Force could refuel US strategic bombers in mid-air, the time US forces could spend patrolling the waters around Japan would increase.
It is time to listen to the suggestion that this kind of joint action would be a deterrent against China.
This is much more realistic than the Asian version of NATO, which was dismissed with a sneer as "an illusion."
2024/10/1 in Osaka
