Despite the constitutional constraint of the past decades, Tokyo never stopped trying to establish a strong military alliance with Washington. In November 1978, the two sides signed the Guidelines for Japan-US Defense Cooperation, which says that Japan and the US will take coordinated joint action in case there is an armed attack on Japan and that the two sides will cooperate in dealing with "situations in the Far East (even) outside Japan" if they perceive that they could have an impact on Japan's security.

In the mid-1990s the US intensified its efforts to contain China's rise, and Japan, as the US' closest ally in the region, has been playing a key role in this game.

In 1997, the US and Japan approved the new guidelines for bilateral defense cooperation, in which "situations in the Far East outside Japan" was rephrased as "situations in areas surrounding Japan", and in 2005 Washington and Tokyo declared in a joint agreement that Taiwan is a mutual security concern.

Since becoming prime minister for the second time in late 2012, Abe has tried every trick up his sleeve - from the "China threat" theory to the need to defend its allies - to convince Japanese people that Japan needs to strengthen its Self-Defense Forces. Of course, Abe's real motive has always been to lift the restrictions of the pacifist Constitution and transform Japan into a military power. And the most effective way of doing that, Abe and his colleagues believe, is to build a strong Japan-US military alliance. But since it is impossible to establish such a military alliance without lifting the constitutional restrictions, Abe has taken the first step toward that end by reinterpreting Article 9.

The Abe government seeks to further revise (or amend) the Constitution to suit US-Japan defense cooperation. In this context, the reinterpretation of Article 9, which allows Japanese forces to join other countries under the umbrella of collective self-defense to deal with conflicts outside Japan, lends enough military substance and institutional guarantee to the Japan-US alliance.

The shift in Japan's defense strategy, along with Washington's "pivot-to-Asia" policy, will have a great impact on the Asia-Pacific region, especially on East Asia, adding to the diplomatic complications facing China, triggering a chain reaction leading to an arms race and undermining the years of efforts to establish mutual trust and cooperation among countries in the region.

Washington may be happy to make political and strategic capital out of the deteriorating relations between Beijing and Tokyo, but for the greater good of the region, neighboring countries should realize that China's rise is irreversible, and the need of the times is for the region as a whole to find ways to benefit from it in a peaceful and amicable manner.

The author is a researcher in Japan studies at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.

(China Daily 07/10/2014 page9)