Americans should welcome the meeting between Japan’s prime minister, Shinzo Abe, and his Australian counterpart, Scott Morrison, in Darwin, Australia, on Friday. It illustrates a rising consensus in the U.S.-led constraint of Chinese imperialism.
The symbolic importance of this visit should not be discounted. By visiting Darwin, the site of a Japanese air attack in February 1942 that led to more than 235 Australian deaths, Abe signaled contrition for his nation’s former actions. This is notable in that Abe leads the Japanese-nationalist Liberal Democratic Party, which has long been reluctant to admit Japanese injustices in and before World War II.
But this meeting wasn’t ultimately about history; it was about contemporary strategy. Because while imperial Japan was defeated by Allied warriors like Ernest Kernen (and my grandfather), a new Pacific imperial aggressor is currently rising off Australian and Japanese shores. Led by Xi Jinping, China intends to displace the U.S.-led international order built on the rule of law and replace it with a feudal system of economic domination. Alongside its capricious usurpation of free trade regimes and its structural thievery of foreign intellectual property, China is using military power to impose its empire upon the world.
For these reasons and more, Xi’s China must be contested.
That takes us back to Friday’s events. Meeting with Morrison, Abe specifically referenced China and pledged the two American allies “are special and strategic partners to jointly lead peace and prosperity in this region.” According to the New York Times, the two men even discussed Japanese army and marine force training in Darwin alongside Australian and U.S. Marine forces based there. That would be a welcome development in building allied interoperability. If the U.S. is ever forced to defend or retake islands like Guam and Okinawa from an aggressive China, we will want effective allies alongside us.
But the secondary benefit of this training is in signaling to Xi that his aggression is meeting common allied resolve.
More must be done. While the Australian and Japanese armed forces are well-trained and well-equipped, they need more capabilities (and in Japan’s case, authorities) to assist U.S. forces in contesting Chinese area denial strategies. As a next step, the Trump administration should organize an allied naval transit thru the South China Sea to include Australia, Britain, France, India, and Japan.
Nevertheless, what we’ve seen here is good news. It speaks to the power of democracy and free markets to make allies out of foes. I spoke to my grandfather on Friday and asked him what he thought of the Australian-Japanese rapprochement. He said “the Japanese shouldn’t have apologized; it was war. But this is the way of things.” I suspect he was lamenting political correctness. Still, I know that my 93 year-old grandfather is proud the war he helped win is now marked by strong alliances.
It is a peace we must resolutely preserve under alliances of arms. Trump should congratulate Abe and Morrison.
By the way, if you click the center of the video below, you can hear my grandfather being interviewed just before the assault on Okinawa in late March 1944. The assault imposed an approximately 80 percent casualty rate on his 2nd Marine battalion of the 22nd Regiment, 6th Marine Division.
