Today, 65 years ago

Great Debates
1

On July 7, 1937, just after midnight, IJA (Imperial Japanese Army) forces attempted to enter what is now Beijing by using the pathetic excuse that one of their soldiers was lost.

Such an unreasonable demand was promptly rejected by the Chinese garrison, and the IJA attacked, resulting in the famous Marco Polo Bridge Incident.

It marks the full scale invasion of China by Japan, and the beginning of the 8-year long War of Resistance, resulting in 20 million Chinese casusalties.

What’s more worrying, however, is the rise of Japanese militarism. There was a prolonged economic slump in Japan then, as there is one now.

2

What on bloody earth is is the relevance of this OP.

Let’s see…

[ol]139 years ago Kit Carson’s campaign against the Indians start – we know how that ended.

50 years ago Himmler decides to begin medical experiments on Auschwitz prisoners – beats them all.

304 years ago the Swedes launch a renewed attack on Prague – often forgotten, but the Thirty Years War is out of a relative viewpoint the bloodiest war in Western history, it even beats WWII and the Swedish army committed acts of genocide as part of it.

195 years ago Napoleon defeats the Russians at the Battle of Friedland – but the French back then were nice guys, yes?[/ol]

Don’t you think we should worry about those pesky Americans, Germans, Swedes and French a little? I mean for crying out loud they all have standing armies, to boot two of those nations have nukes!

Were does the OP fetch the information that Japan is remilitarizing?

What indication does the OP have that Japan of 2002 is harboring politics like those of Imperial Japan of the 1930s?

Oh that’s right, recession it was.

Those not troubled by silly little things like reason would also draw conclusions from the following: The economy in the US is doing half ass at best. Germany is experiencing quite a rough ride at the moment. Sweden is in recession. The French economy is staggering and crab walking.

I’d say we had better take away their guns before they do something rash. I mean who knows? Before you know it they might be launching unprovoked attacks on Iraq, or getting involved in some other absurd venture like the blasted militarists they all are. They might even use them guns in conjunction with those scary Japanese medical and rescue corps over in Afghanistan, heaven forbid.

I take it the OP was written a little faster than thought flows, yes?

Sparc

3

Sparc: While I don’t really understand what the OP is getting at either, exactly, I do feel the overwhelming compulsion to point out to you that 304 years ago it was 1698 and the Thirty Years War had been over for fifty years ;).

And, hey let’s cut the “Swedes” ( who mostly weren’t of course - the armies of the day were heavily mercenary in character and by the latter days of the Thrity Years War the Swedes were no exception ) a break :). Though they degenerated badly towards the end ( like every other force engaged in that meat-grinder of a conflict ), they were pretty disciplined early on under Gustav Adolf and late in the war under Lennart Torstensson and the evidence is pretty strong that the areas they entered saw the halting of the mass slaughter of “witches” ( mostly anything but ) which was at its genocidal peak in various German Prince-Bishoprics in this period.

Also fifty years ago it was 1952 - WW II was well over. But you got the Battle of Friedland and Kit Carson’s Navajo campaigns right :D.

Sorry man, it’s just the history geek in me taking over :p.

  • Tamerlane
4

To me, July 7 is about justice and annexation, 19th-century style!

(from abcnews wires)

Today is Sunday, July 7, the 188th day of 2002. There are 177 days left in the year.

Today’s Highlight in History:

On July 7, 1865, four people were hanged in Washington, D.C., for conspiring with John Wilkes Booth to assassinate President Lincoln.

On this date:

In 1846, the United States’ annexation of California was proclaimed at Monterey after the surrender of a Mexican garrison.

In 1896, the Democratic national convention opened in Chicago.

In 1898, the United States annexed Hawaii.

5

here’s 5 or 6 reasons it wont and maybe one reason why it could

Why it wont:

1 China isn’t parceled out among the western powers with a weakened goverment

2 that same government is unified and isn’t fighting a decades old civil war

3 China has a modern army where as Japan only has a defense force

4 China has nukes and too many allies in the area i.e. n Korea Vietnam ect

5 us self interest if there was a war between the two wed step in either directly or through the U. N or the NATO alliance

6 It wouldn’t be viewed as "chinks fighting each other " this time around and the UN is somewhat stronger than the league of nations in enforcing its mandates (well the debate on that would cause another whole thread)

Now the reason it might happen is this:

China and America have a cold war , Japan invades we let it in the name of “democracy and freedom " and” ending the oppression of the communist government "

They’d have some help from us and from Chinese rebels and sympathizers also

But unless something extreme happens WW3 wont be started from there like a lot of WW2 was

6

Very misleading point here. The Japanese “Self-Defense Force” is one of the most modern armies in the world - Considerably more so than China. It’s not nearly as large of course. But given Japan’s population and industrial base they truly cxould quickly ramp themselves up into a major military power if they had the political need or will to do so.

However they don’t, in either respect.

Also misleading. Vietnam and China cordially loath one another and have for decades. Remember they fought at least two nasty border wars ( over 500,000 troops engaged ) after the unification of Vietnam. North Korea is also currently on the outs with China and is at any rate stalemated by South Korea, which is rather the more formidable of the two.

China really doesn’t have any serious military allies to speak of. Not that they need any for self-defense.

Any attempted invasion of China would be insane. Especially by Japan, which for cultural reasons and recent historical memory would attract enormous opposition and little support in China.

All the above aside, Sparc ( by implication ) is correct. Japan is a bastion of ( relative ) stability, not an aggresive threat to anybody. The almost ‘cultural inversion’ their society has undergone since WW II would almost guarantee that Japan would become politically paralyzed with internal opposition to any foreign aggression, long before anything ever reached a crisis point.

A potential powerhouse they may be - But a relatively sane and peaceful one these days. Speculating on them ‘going rogue’ is wandering well out of the realm of rationality and into the demesne of the fantasy.

  • Tamerlane
7

And don’t forget they have the ability to summon Mecha-Godzilla

8

You mean like the current “economic slump” here in the US? There is only one “world leader,” at least to my knowledge, who has proclaimed on several occasions that, based on mere suspicion, he has the right to send his country’s military forces to make a first strike attack on another country. Have the intelligence agencies upon which that leader must rely shown you that they are so reliable that you would risk starting a war against Iraq and Iran in the mideast based on their data?

9

Well, I am glad that it didn’t take long for someone to resort to conjecture and lies.
But back to the OP. Japan is culturally very different now, as compared to the 1930’s. The Japanese parliment almost shit a brick when it was proposed that they allow for naval deployments outside of territorial waters. (Much to their credit, they agreed). There just isn’t much of a warrior-culture left in Japan, at least at the governmental level. Not much to worry about from Japan.

Sweden? That’s another story. The Ja.39 Gripen, their new goofy stealth FAC’s, recent purchase of Leopard 2’s, all does not bode well. Don’t let their ‘neutrality’ fool you. It’s just a maskirovka for what is to come.

10

Don’t forget that Japan is currently occupied by the United States, as it has been for the last 50 years.

11

At the end of WW2, Japan signed a surrender agreement with the U.S. in which they promised, among other things, not to maintain a military of their own any larger than a defense force.

Isn’t Japan still subject to that restriction? If Japan was seen to be building up its military, wouldn’t the U.S. be authorized to step in and stop it before its military grew substantial?

Of course, as msmith537 points out, the U.S. would have to contend with MechaGodzilla if it intervened in Japanese internal affairs, but it wouldn’t be too hard to drum up some brilliant reclusive scientist who knows MechaGodzilla’s secret weakness.

12

It’s written into the 1947 Constituition - Article 9 of the Constitution, the “No War Clause”, contains two paragraphs. The first states that the Japanese people “forever renounce war as a sovereign right of the nation and the threat or use of force as a means of settling international disputes”. The second is that “land, sea, and air forces, as well as other war potential, will never be maintained”.

However by casting the Japanese military ( started as a National Police Reserve in 1950 during the U.S. occupation as a replacement for U.S. troops dispatched to Korea, expanded into the SDF in 1954 ) as a “Self-Defense Force” they have, with a wink and a nod from the U.S. ( who during the Cold War in particular had good reason to build up Japan’s defensive capabilities ), eeled around the restriction in the second paragraph. In essence the Constituition forbids them from ever conducting offensive actions, but has been interpreted to mean that they may legitimately fight in self-defense. However many Japanese pacifists think even this is illegal.

The relationship with the U.S. is codified in a series of defense treaties in the 1950’s and finally in 1960, in which the U.S. guarantees the external security of Japan. I don’t think the U.S. maintained any explicit right to intervene since 1960 if, say, the Japanese government decided to amend Article 9. However that doesn’t mean they aren’t capable of exerting enormous political pressure in opposition if they so chose.

The Japanese military isn’t huge ( ~250,000 ), but their military budget was the fourth largest in the world in 1997. They spend an awful lot on not only the latest equipment, but also on logistics and support - It is an extremely well-maintained and efficient force.

MechaGodzilla can be dealt with. The more serious problem is the real Godzilla - That guy always finds a way to win ;).

  • Tamerlane
13

I thought the US hasn’t occupied any part of Japan since relenquishing control of Okinawa in the early Seventies.

14

Obviously I wasn’t wearing my thinking cap turned to the algebra segment. Add 50 and 10 years and you’ll be in in 1648 and 1942 as intended, but you all probably worked that out already.

I guess I was writing faster than thought flows…

Can’t help it either…

As re the Swedes and the Thirty Years war Tamerlane is certainly correct as far as their composition. leadership and what-not goes. However (I bet you already knew there would be a ‘however’) there is a not so insignificant and often overlooked part of the Thirty Years War that beggars if you ask me, namely Bohemia. The Swedish army, (granted; not the Swedes, but an army non the less under Swedish command) repeatedly plundered burned and raped their way through this part of Europe during the bare 20 years that they were involved on the continent. Before the war Bohemia counted 738 towns, 34 000 villages and approx. 3 million inhabitants. When the Swedish army was done there were 230 towns, 6 000 villages and and some 800 000 inhabitants left.

The worst of all this did in fact come to pass in 1639 under Baner, in the last years of the period between HM Gustav II Adolf and Torstensson. In early summer that year the Swedish army enters Bohemia headed for Prague. In grave need of fodder and supplies they turn on the countryside with some wanton violence that is still legend in the area. Some estimates give that during this campaign alone over 6 000 villages and towns were burnt to the ground and their inhabitants brutally murdered. No doubt it was ‘just’ pillaging and there was some resistance in the military leadership to it – but it was pillaging and murder justified by the supposed Catholic faith of the victims. That some of those were in fact Protestants and expressed their outrage at being lumped in with the awful Papists didn’t have much effect in saving neither them nor the actual intended victims. Maybe not planned genocide, but hey the degrees in Hell are only significant as long as you’re not the one being burned.

As far as the OP goes and any support it may have gotten; Can we please have a mild but very much needed reality check?

Beyond my rhetorical answers Tamerlane’s short but significant expansion should suffice to show you that the OPs position on Japan is completely fallacious and in such a way based on bygone events that it is dated to the point of rot. To succumb to such an opinion as the OP propones is to tumble into the abyss of absolute ignorance.

Sparc

15

Well, I suppose it depends on how you define the word “occupy.” My point is that there is a significant American military presence in Japan. If any Japanese leaders are thinking about a World-War-Two style adventure, that presence is gonna affect their thinking (IMHO).

16

And if Japan invaded China, where would they get the soldiers? The youth of Japan? Not F*'ing likely…

17

Sparc: Oh, aye ( arrh! shiver me timbers! ), Baner’s army in particular was a little more than a chaotic, murderous rabble towards the end. My understanding was that the only way Torstensson restored discipline was by a) bringing in some fresh Swedish reinforcements with him when he took over command, which he used to stiffen up the ranks and b) brutalizing it back into shape with floggings and beatings. The troops apparently hated him, but he consistently got results, both on and off the battlefield.

An exceptionally destructive war in many respects, with Bohemia perhaps only the most prominent and thoroughly hit of the many devastated areas. Both sides tended to live off the countryside ( Ernst Mansfeld’s good reputation apparently rested not on his, at best, competent battlefied skills, but on his logistical abilities that allowed him to maintain sizeable armies in the field at a low cost to his employers ) and the civilian population were the first to suffer and last to recover. Even more than most wars this was a hard one on the countryside, not least because it just dragged on and on. And the “Protestants” had plenty of symbols of their own of “Catholic” atrocities, like the bloody sack of Madgeburg ( though in that case apparently Tilly’s army just got away from him and he was personally horrified at the wanton slaughter ).

Anyway, can we possibly get more off topic :)?

  • Tamerlane
18

That should be “…floggings and hangings”.

  • Tamerlane
19

Beat me to it.

Also, for the OP, I would point out that Japan invaded Manchuria in 1931 over the objections of the league of nations. Or lets go back to the Sino-Japanese war of 1894-95, where China lost and ceded Korea, Taiwan, Pescadores and the Liaodong Peninsula as well as paid a massive indemnity. Or in the aftermath of WW1, when the west gave Japan treaty ports with extraterritoriality in China. Economic war that was going on when the Japanese brutallized the Chinese silk industry, or the boycott of Japanese goods. So, I’m not sure what the point of the OP is, but the Marco Polo Bridge incident was a chapter in the middle of the book.

20

Since it appears that you have had no access to any news media for the last few weeks, I will call your attention to the U. S. Military Academy commencement address: Bush: U.S. Will Strike First at Enemies

There are no conjectures–and certainly no lies–in the quote you have provided from David Simmons. Throughout the Cold War, the leaders of the U.S. were generally careful not to claim that they had no “first strike” policy, but the assumption of the U.S. and the world was that the U.S. would follow the policy enunciated by Roosevelt prior to Pearl Harbor that we would not initiate a war.

Bush has now repealed that position with a clear “first strike” policy.