POLITICS: Japan raises first-strike question.

Originally posted by Nygdan

Originally posted by taibunsuu
It's pretty simple if you look at history.

First Strike = Bad Guys / Aggressors
Defenders = Good Guys / Righteous

Germany never attacked the United States, neither did Italy. Sure, the Japanese did, and I'm not trying to nitpick.

Try telling that to all of our dead sailors at the bottom of the Atlantic. They were sinking our ships before we entered the war.

Japan should do what is in it's best interests.

Originally posted by taibunsuu
It's pretty simple if you look at history.

First Strike = Bad Guys / Aggressors
Defenders = Good Guys / Righteous

First Strikes:

Germany on Czech, Poland, Denmark, Holland, Norway, Balkans, Greece, Russia
�����������..
First strike = Road to bad things. Pre-emptive warfare is bull#.

How would the following wars fit into your simple assessment: 1812, Spanish-american, (as previously pointed out) US on Germany ww2, US during ww1

Originally posted by taibunsuu
I think a good idea would have been to not allow US companies to fund Hitler, that way he would have never been able to attack anyone������..

Just a q were do you get this, as all historians I�ve seen accredit the lack of funding from the ww1 allies as a contributing factor to ww2

Japan's military was basically dismantled after World War II. The JSDF (Japanese Self-Defence Forces) were only created after the US forces started getting streched thin, when the Korean war started. Since then, the JSDF has been organized to only operate in coordination with the US.

They practice in English, and they aren't really ready to operate overseas by themselves. For instance, until recently they weren't equipped with foreign maps. Koizumi's government has been trying to make the Japanese miltiary play a more active role in the world, by going on peace keeping missions, and deploying to Iraq. However, Japanese troops do not even protect Japanese embassies, abroad.

Structurally, the JSDF are not really an independent establishment. The top bureaucrats are mostly from other government ministries, and so the powerful bureacracy doesn't really push the military too much. The US has been pushing Japan's military to take up more of the burden, but so far the changes have been mostly cosmetic. Japan's powerful Yakuza-backed rightists also kind of like the idea of a more powerful military, but I don't think it will happen very soon.