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In the first days of the invasion, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida was quick to frame the Ukraine crisis as a global issue. “This is a very serious situation which doesn’t just affect Europe, but also Asia and the whole world order,” he told reporters.
For Japan, support for Ukraine serves a dual purpose, according to Yoko Iwama, an international relations and security expert at the National Graduate Institute of Policy Studies.
“The purpose of Japan’s response is to send a message that we will be ready and we will resist if there’s an invasion (of Japanese territory), that we will not allow the borders to be changed by force,” said Iwama.
“We don’t want a real war, the objective is political — that China is persuaded from an aggressive act like the one that Putin has taken in the last several days and weeks.”
It’s against that backdrop that Japan’s former prime minister, Shinzo Abe, raised a previously unthinkable suggestion during an interview three days after the Russian invasion.
Abe, still an influential figure in the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, floated the idea of Japan entering a NATO-like nuclear weapons sharing program — hosting US nuclear weapons on Japanese soil. It was a shocking proposal for country that suffered the devastating impact of the two atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki during World War II — but one Abe says should no longer be taboo.
Different times, changing tactics
Japan’s response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine differs markedly to its actions after Moscow’s attack on Crimea in 2014.
Then, under Abe, Japan was called out for being too slow to act. Now its strategy is different — and the urgency arguably greater.
Back in 2014, Abe adopted the tactic of pulling Russia closer to prevent it tightening ties with China, said James Brown, an associate professor of political science at Temple University in Tokyo.
Russia had annexed the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea by sending in armed forces to take over key facilities…
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Source : cnn
