China and Japan on the brink of Third World War
Countdowntozerotime.com
March 3, 2014
WHILE vast swathes of the Middle East are embroiled in conflict and Ukraine teeters on the brink, many believe the real flashpoint for war is between China and Japan.
As China flexes its military might, with huge increases in defence spending and increasingly assertive patrols in disputed territories, Japan has compared the tensions to those between England and Germany before the First World War.So far it has been a war of words.However, historian Niall Ferguson has warned that US President Barack Obama’s policy of non-intervention, or, as he puts it, his being “resolved only to avoid being George W Bush”, also resembles the incoherent foreign policies of British Liberals a century ago before the First World War.Against this background, a dispute over five uninhabited islands and three barren rocks looks increasingly dangerous.
China views the “nationalisation” of what it calls the Diaoyu Islands by the Japanese in 2012 as a serious provocation and will do whatever is necessary to assert its sovereignty.
Japan, meanwhile, which calls the territory the Senkaku Islands, is using an ever increasing number of naval ships and warplanes to guard them and is trying to involve the US.
If war were to break out, the US is bound by treaty to come to the aid of Japan.
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