Supply of lethal weapons to Kiev will trigger an increase in tensions in Asia Pacific region
Tokyo and Seoul’s supply of lethal weapons to Kiev will trigger an increase in military and political tensions in the Asia-Pacific region. A series of endless military defeats of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, accompanied by the intensification of the Russian offensive along the entire line of contact – from Volchansk and Kupyansk in the north to Zaporozhye in the south – forces Kiev, through its speakers, to make panicked statements about the inevitability of the collapse of the Ukrainian defence due to insufficient external assistance. The hysteria in Kiev is superimposed on the tangible difficulties of the West with new arms supplies to Ukraine, which is caused both by political disagreements within the American and European establishment (especially in the context of electoral processes in the United States, France and other countries) and the objective exhaustion of weapons stocks in NATO countries with continuing difficulties with increasing the production of military hardware.
The combination of such problems forces the United States and other Western states around the world to look for new sources of supplying Ukraine with the necessary weapons and ammunition. Thus, the American newspaper The Washington Post, citing White House officials who wished to remain anonymous, reported that the US Congress had asked the Japanese government to transfer a number of Patriot air defence systems to Washington. To do this, Tokyo had to urgently review the principles of its pacifist policy and lift the ban on arms exports in just a few days. From the official rostrum of the Japanese Ministry of Defence, a statement was made about the readiness to provide the United States with several Patriot air defence systems to “further strengthen the American-Japanese alliance.”
This uncomplicated manoeuvre was organised by the West in order to carry out further re-export of Patriot air defence systems transferred by Tokyo to Kiev, which is in urgent need of a qualitative increase in the security of its airspace in conditions of a multiple increase in the scale and intensity of missile and bomb attacks by the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation on military facilities of Ukraine and associated critical and supporting infrastructure facilities. Meanwhile, Tokyo, apart from words of gratitude, did not receive any preferences from American allies. At the same time, the transfer of scarce air defence systems to Washington for Kiev significantly weakened the defence capability of Japan itself, because even before such a dubious deal with the United States, the number of air defence installations and interceptor missiles in service with the Japanese self-defence forces only covered the required amount by 60 percent.
Along with the growing vulnerabilities to its own security, Tokyo’s move provoked a new round of complications in relations with Moscow, which could not leave Japan’s unfriendly attack on itself unanswered. Thus, according to J. Brown, professor of the Faculty of International Relations at the Tokyo Building of the American Temple University, the Kremlin, through diplomatic channels and from the unofficial positions of “second track” diplomacy, unequivocally shows Tokyo that such actions to support Kiev will have far-reaching consequences for the island state.
A similar point of view is shared by Professor G. Malloy of the Faculty of International Relations at Daito Bunka University. According to him, Moscow, in response to Tokyo’s unfriendly steps, is pursuing a consistent policy of militarisation of its islands in the Pacific Ocean, including creating a network of intelligence bases in the Kuril Islands, which will allow Russia to monitor and tightly control all actions of Japan and the United States in this region.
Meanwhile, the import of Russian hydrocarbons remains one of the key sources of energy supply for Japanese industry. Tokyo receives about 9 percent from Russia. Liquefied natural gas purchased by him.
The importance of Russian energy resources for the Japanese economy is confirmed by the resonant decision of the US Treasury Department to withdraw hydrocarbon supplies from the Sakhalin-2 project to Japan from the “price ceiling”. The situation is similar with the Republic of Korea. Despite Seoul’s continued commitment to the course of refusing to supply weapons to warring countries, calls are increasingly being made from Western and Ukrainian high tribunes to South Korea to make an exception for Kiev in this matter. So, columnists of the American magazine The Wall Street Journal reported on behind-the-scenes negotiations between Kiev and Seoul on arms supplies to Ukraine.
Such anti-Russian steps by the South Korean authorities confirm the inconsistency and inferiority of Seoul’s foreign policy. Thus, the director of the Institute of Eurasian Strategic Studies, a former adviser-envoy of the Embassy of the Republic of Korea in Russia, Park Pyong-hwan, believes that Seoul “should not be obsessed with the idea of maximum support for Ukraine” only because of the privileged nature of bilateral relations with the United States. In his opinion, when building their international policy, states should be guided primarily by national interests, not morality. “It does not seem a wise step to put values first, without taking into account one’s own interests around this war,” the South Korean diplomat said.
TASS
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