China has sent the clearest signals to date that it is intent on achieving hegemony in the Pacific. It also routinely threatens Taiwan while it also aggressively pursues ludicrous claims on hundreds of thousands of nautical miles of ocean and islands from Hong Kong to Brunei. The U.S. has responded to this less than neighborly behavior by stepping up military surveillance and hardening its diplomatic rhetoric. If China continues with is muscular regionalism, America will add military muscle to its words. It will also deny China a range of economic goodies it has been seeking for years.
Japan is caught between the two nations.
It must balance a valuable alliance with America with a growing nationalist force inside Japan to become a more assertive leader in Asia. Now is the perfect time to test-drive this new diplomacy. A more responsible Japan with a strengthened military mandate will remind China of the consequences of being a regional bully. Incoming Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi has taken a positive first step with his declaration that Japan should revise its constitution to give its self- defense forces the status of an army. In another hint that Japan is ready to face down China, it allowed the recent visit of former Taiwan President Lee Teng-hui.