News from the mysterious Orient

I would define this one as Japanese policymakers getting that funny prickly feeling on the back of their collective neck when they glance west toward North Korea and China:

"The first sweeping review of defense policy in nearly a decade envisions a bigger Japanese role in global military cooperation and better response to terrorist and missile attacks, but steered clear of proposing pre-emptive strike capability."

More stories on Japan's changing defense policy:

From the International Herald Tribune.

From the Christian Science Monitor.

China's reaction has been one of concern.

The tightening of the Japanese-American alliance over the last few years is one of those stories that just hasn't been getting a lot of press in the West lately. Probably because Japanese leaders have largely bucked the trend of many of the European nations - Koizumi and Bush have a strong relationship. That doesn't make for very good press these days. This ties into the McNamara quote I elaborated on earlier at my MSN Spaces site. Japan and the U.S., by conventional standards, don't share much of a value base (click here for an interesting Economist piece on the gap between the two nations) but they do share the common interest of controlling China's growth into the dominant Asian power.

In a 'somewhat' related story from NKZone, rumors persist of a shakeup at the highest levels of the North Korean government. This comes at a time when foreign diplomats have reported other unusual activity within Pyongyang - mostly involving the removal of Kim Jong Il's portraits from some public displays.

A few weeks ago, there were news stories floating around about a massing of Chinese troops on their border with North Korea. Speculaton in the article above mentioned the possibility that China may fear that NK's government is becoming unstable. The troops could then be seen as either a buffer to prevent massive defections or as a stabilization force designed to move into NK if there was a general collapse of authority.

May you live in interesting times...