Work
your way through a room full of Jieitai (Japan Self-Defense Forces)
officers and defense contractor types at a cocktail party in Tokyo and
you’ll likely feel either elation or disgust. If you like the way
Washington runs and think the whole world should be franchisees of its
warmongering-for-profit brand, then you’ll absolutely love how the Japan
defense establishment operates. You couldn’t find more slavish toadies
of America’s foreign-policy “Blob” even if you talked to every man
wearing a suit inside the Beltway.
But
if you think that killing foreigners for money is immoral, that
exposing your own people to harm for the sake of Washington’s hegemonic
schemes is bad, and that latching onto those schemes from a distant
capital is even worse, then you’ll leave such cocktail parties wondering
how the country that gave us the samurai and the warrior code could
have fallen to such despicable depths as have the soulless hangers-on
among the Jieitai officers and defense-industry urchins in Japan.
Over the past few years, I’ve had the privilege of meeting a handful of retired Jieitai officers who
decidedly do not run with the defense crowd here. These men think for
themselves and put their own country, and not Washington, first in their
thinking. A very good example of this kind of man, rare but invaluable,
is Mochida Kazuhito, a former Japan Ground Self-Defense Forces (JGSDF)
general and at one time the commander of the JGSDF Western Army, a
region including Kyushu and Okinawa. I know Gen. Mochida from our
appearances together on a news and politics program called Channel
Sakura. His analysis of the Ukraine conflict, his knowledge of economic
warfare and military hardware, and his overall view of geopolitical
dynamics are superb. He is one of the best strategists and analysts in
Japan today.
I
recently met Mochida in his hometown of Fukuoka, in Kyushu, to learn
more about how he sees Japan’s place in the emerging, multi-polar world
order, especially given Japan’s eighty-year reliance on Washington’s
security guarantees and the Japanese establishment’s unthinking
cooperation with Washington. I was surprised to learn that, despite his
skepticism of Washington’s motives in the western Pacific and elsewhere,
Mochida admires President Donald Trump, has a deep respect for
Christianity, and wants Japan to have a good relationship with the
Americans.
“In
grade school I went to a Christian institution and used to pray the
Psalms with the rest of my classmates every morning,” Mochida tells me
when I ask about his formative years. “I was in Fukuoka through high
school and then entered the Boei Daigakko, the National Defense Academy
of Japan. In the second year of the Academy, students choose a branch of
service. I wanted to be in a tank, so I chose the Army.”
I mention that Col. Douglas Macgregor (Ret.), a contributor to The American Conservative, was also a tank commander. Mochida knows of Macgregor and sometimes cites his analysis with great approval.
“Most
pilots operate alone, or with one other person,” Mochida continues,
explaining how people in different branches of the service tend to
think. “Pilots therefore are in the habit of deciding things by
themselves. The navy is very similar. Captains of ships must have faith
that they are in the right.”
“Like dictators.” I say.
“Yes,
that’s right. Like dictators. But in the army, people are freer to
think for themselves and to differ from what others are saying. You tell
someone in the army what to do, and, well, there’s a chance that he may
do something different.”
The
desire to do something different is a theme in Japan right now. In
three straight elections, voters have sent the ruling Liberal Democratic
Party (LDP) a message that it’s time for a change. But still the LDP
seems not to understand that the world is changing and that business as
usual is not going to work any longer. I mention to Mochida that I
recently met a supporter of Takaichi Sanae, a high-ranking member of the
LDP who is running in the party’s election and closing in on becoming
Japan’s first female prime minister. To my mind, I tell Mochida, the LDP
is a Washington tool, and nothing is to be expected from any LDP
politician but more of the same subservience to Washington.
“There’s
no use arguing with LDP supporters,” Mochida says. “As long as Takaichi
remains in the LDP, she’ll be unable to solve any problems facing
Japan.”
Another
public figure who draws Mochida’s ire, the journalist Sakurai Yoshiko,
is the very face of pro-Washington slavishness in Japan. “Takaichi is
known for visiting Yasukuni Shrine, garnering the applause of people
like Sakurai Yoshiko. But when someone asks Takaichi what she will do
about Japan’s relationship with Washington, she has nothing to offer.
“I
spoke to Takaichi once about defense matters. It was a waste of time. I
have to ask myself, who is whispering in Takaichi’s ear?”
Sakurai,
like Takaichi, is known to put on a patriotic performance while
advancing Washington’s prerogatives, never seeking anything remotely
resembling Japanese independence. Neither Sakurai nor Takaichi seem to
have the faintest clue that Washington is not calling the shots in the
world anymore. Mochida, by sharp contrast, is spending his retirement
working to wake his countrymen up to the reality that Japan is already
facing, whether its decrepit ruling class knows it or not.
“I used to take information coming out of the United States at face value,” Mochida tells me. “But now I think differently.
“What
began to change my mind was when I was part of the group crafting
defense plans for the Ryukyu Islands (Nansei Shoto). The United States
has a multi-domain task force in place for the Ryukyus’ defense,
including anti-aircraft missiles and attack capabilities against enemy
ships. I was at the table when this defense package was put together.”
The
Ryukyu Islands are among the most dangerous places on earth today. The
waters around the Senkakus, islets owned by Japan, are routinely invaded
by vessels dispatched by the People’s Republic of China. And as
tensions between Taiwan and the Chinese mainland continue to simmer, it
becomes obvious that any outbreak of open hostilities between the two
countries will quickly spill over into the Ryukyus, wreaking havoc on
Japan’s national security and either activating, or exposing as an empty
letter, the alliance between Japan and the United States.
“I
gave briefings to the then-commander of the U.S. Seventh Fleet, the
then-commander of the U.S. Marine Corps in Japan, and the then-commander
of the U.S. Army in Japan. They came to the headquarters of the JGSDF
Western Army in Kumamoto to hear about the ‘Ryukyus Wall’ [Nansei no
Kabe] plan for the defense of the southwest of Japan,” Mochida tells me.
“I spoke to them late into the night, sans interpreter. I had a great
deal of help from the then-commander of the U.S. Marine Corps in Japan
in setting up the meeting. I was particularly keen to convey to the
then-commander of the U.S. Seventh Fleet the details of the defense
plan, and to have him understand them.
“As
the Seventh Fleet commander was leaving he told me something I’ll never
forget. He said that people in the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Forces,
as well as people in the U.S. Navy, expressed surprise that he would
travel to a far-flung Japan Self-Defense Ground Forces command post. But
he added that he was glad he ignored their naysaying and was very happy
that he traveled out to Kumamoto. I asked him to spread the word in the
U.S. about the ‘Ryukyus Wall’ defense plan.
“But
I later came to understand that, as a matter of basic strategy, the
U.S. was not going to fight on the front lines when it came to the
defense of Japan. The Americans plan to fall back, to Australia, for
example, if anything happens. We in the Japan Self-Defense Forces have
an important job to do holding down forward positions, but those
positions are not defensible in a protracted battle. And so, when we too
are forced back, then what will happen to the Japanese territory in
front of our retreating lines?”
These
kinds of thoughts are expressed a bit more openly now in Japan, but
they remain, among the establishment, absolutely taboo. I once broached
the topic with a notorious LDP politician here, an acolyte of Washington
and a supporter of Takaichi Sanae, but she brushed me aside as though I
were spouting heresy. I was, in fact. She simply didn’t want to hear,
didn’t want to consider, that Washington might not be 100 percent
committed to defending every last square inch of Japanese soil and sea.
Mochida, though, faces such facts unafraid. As politicians and pundits
watch the Chinese trespass in Japanese waters day after day with no
response from the Americans, I suspect that Mochida says out loud what
many others must surely be fretting about in private.
“The
Americans are afraid of a nuclear war with China,” Mochida continues,
getting down to brass tacks. “In 2015 I was in the U.S. and I had
debates at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments (CSBA),
the Naval War College (NWC), and the National Defense University (NDU). I
spoke frankly with my counterparts, and they seemed pleased to have my
honest assessments. I was told that the American side was not prepared
to launch an attack on the Chinese mainland because of fears that it
would escalate into an exchange of nuclear warheads. It doesn’t matter
who the American president is, a nuclear war with China is unwinnable,
and so must be avoided—that was their view.
“It was also in 2015 that I met Ito Kan for
the first time,” Mochida says, mentioning the name of another Japanese
thinker who is, like Mochida, unafraid to look the geopolitical truth
square in the eye. “That was in Washington. Ito has been saying for a
long time that the U.S. is not going to get into a nuclear war with
China, and so Japan had better think about getting its own nuclear
weapons for self-defense.
“What
I thought then, when I heard Ito say that to me, was that Japan is not
ready even to make a decision about whether to possess such weapons. If
we did try to make them, then there’s a good chance that we’d meet the
same fate the Iranians did in June, when Washington tried to snuff out
Iran’s nuclear weapons program with precision strikes.
“I
understood, conceptually, that the U.S. was not going to fight China in
a nuclear war, but I didn’t see any way forward beyond that conceptual
understanding.”
And
yet, despite knowing that Japan was, defensively, out to sea, Mochida
still could not break with the ingrained habit of relying on the U.S.
for protection. It’s the postwar way, after all. To be a Washington
skeptic in a JSDF uniform is somewhat like being an atheist in a
Trappist monastery. People around you are just not going to listen to
what you have to say, and you will inevitably acquire at least some of
their mental habits.
“After
that trip in 2015 I still thought that the U.S. would let Japan host
nuclear weapons,” Mochida tells me. “I worked toward achieving that. But
in 2022, when Russia began its special military operation against
Ukraine, then-president Joe Biden announced that the United States would
not be sending its military to take part in the conflict, as that would
mean war between the U.S. and Russia. I think this announcement, at the
outset of hostilities, that Washington would not fight surprised many
countries, including American allies. The U.S. would not fight a nuclear
power, Russia, which was tantamount to saying that America would not
fight China, another nuclear power, either. I think the result is that
the United States’ ability to deter China fell apart with Biden’s hasty
announcement. Japan did not react at the time, but both Taiwan and South
Korea were shocked at what Biden had done. In South Korea, more than
sixty percent of the public said that the ROK should develop its own,
independent nuclear capabilities.
“Then,
in 2023, Biden told then-prime minister Kishida Fumio that the U.S.
would not be placing mid-range missiles in Japan. I was stunned. This
was the same as what had happened during the Cold War, when the U.S.
withdrew its Pershing-2 medium-range missiles from Europe. The Japanese
government has been saying that it is prepared to launch attacks against
enemy bases, but the fact is that launching conventional attacks on the
Chinese mainland is suicidal. The United States has effectively
announced the end of nuclear deterrence, so, if Japan were to send
conventional warheads against China, Japan would get multiple nuclear
warheads fired back at it in return. It’s simply unbelievable.
“I
had hoped for a different outcome. I had put my faith in America. I
thought we could depend on Washington’s protection. In the end, though, I
was forced to admit that the only option for Japan was to make and hold
our own nuclear weapons.
“One
other thing has changed my thinking,” Mochida says. “I have seen how
the Washington war machine has sucked up rivers of blood in Ukraine and
the Middle East. The warmongers and war profiteers in Washington are
now coming into Japan.
“Japan
and the U.S. share a most unfortunate common feature: your generals and
our generals are almost all warmongers. Many politicians, too. In the
U.S., there’s former secretary of defense and retired Marine Corps
general Jim Mattis, former national security advisor and retired Army
general H.R. McMaster, former secretary of state Mike Pompeo, retired
Army general Keith Kellogg–what are these warmongers up to? In Japan,
the generals are basically the same. Japanese generals get their
information from Washington and furthermore lack the ability to use
their own brains to think things through.
“Look
at NATO, which Japanese generals tend to support to the hilt. NATO has
been saying that Russia is going to try to take over Europe. It’s a
bald-faced lie. People who say such things are warmongers, plain and
simple. And now those warmongers are trying to open up shop in East
Asia. What we have to do is keep them out.”
In
June of this year, NATO quietly mothballed plans to open an office in
Tokyo, plans which former prime minister Kishida and the pro-Washington
defense network as a whole in Japan welcomed with open arms. Even now,
though, NATO maintains its high reputation in Japan. To question NATO is
almost as bad as questioning Washington. The only thing worse for the
globalists who run Japanese politics and the Japanese media would be if
someone were to—gasp!—look askance at the UN.
Mochida
sees things very differently. He likes what Trump is doing in
dismantling the globalist infrastructure worldwide, but he also sees
that these bold moves will have consequences for Japan.
“President
Trump is thinking in great power terms,” Mochida says, expansively. “He
sees the dynamic actors in the world as China, Russia, maybe India in
the future. Holding the first island chain is not part of Trump’s grand
strategy. Defending Japan is not a priority. Japan does not figure into
Trump’s great-power thinking much at all. This is simply a fact.”
“Also,”
Mochida continues, “AUKUS is—let’s face it—an Anglo-Saxon alliance. Why
include the UK, but not Japan, in a grouping ostensibly designed for
the defense of the western Pacific?