Three days ago, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida rang warning bells before Western powers that East Asia could be the next Ukraine, referring to the second largest eastern European country invaded by Russia 11 months ago.
The 65-year-old Kishida was in Washington, DC last Sunday where he led off Japan’s year as head of the Group of Seven, the elite informal group of the world’s advanced economies.
The G7 is an informal grouping of seven of the world’s advanced economies, including Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States, as well as the European Union.
While closing his trip to Washington, the Japanese head of government said he shared with G7 leaders his “strong sense of crisis regarding the security environment in Asia.”
He told a news conference a day after meeting US president Joe Biden, that East Asia might become the Ukraine of tomorrow, calling security concerns in the two regions “inseparable.”
His thoughts: “The situation around Japan is becoming increasingly severe with attempts to unilaterally change the status quo by force in the East China Sea and South China Sea and the activation of North Korea’s nuclear and missile activities.”
East Asia includes China, the two Chinese dependencies of Hong Kong and Macau, Mongolia, North Korea, South Korea, Taiwan and Japan.
Manila, only a little over 1,000 kilometers from Taiwan, is 2,990 kilometers away from Japan.
Two months ago, nine months from the invasion of Ukraine by Russia, a most senior US general said the war had left more than 100,000 of Moscow’s troops dead or wounded, and Ukraine had probably suffered a similar number of casualties.
General Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, in remarks at the Economic Club of New York, said Russia’s invasion had also killed about 40,000 Ukrainian civilians and displaced 15 million to 30 million.
Kishida’s eye range had reference to China’s growing assertiveness in surrounding waters where Beijing has a clump of island disputes, including with Japan, the Philippines and Vietnam.
Kishida had gone to the United States after his government announced that Japan would double defense spending over the next five years, a metamorphosis for a country that has been officially pacifist since its defeat in World War II.
He has underscore that Japan still sees itself as a “peace loving” nation and will use the G7 to push for the eventual abolition of nuclear weapons.
Providential that the G7 leaders will hold their summit in May in Hiroshima, the site of the world’s first nuclear attack and Kishida’s parliamentary constituency, where an estimated 80,000 people instantly died in the first deployed atomic bomb in August 1945.