Japan Warns That the World Faces ‘Greatest Post-war Trial Yet’

The Japanese government said today that the world has entered a new international crisis unlike any seen since World War II. More than eight decades ago, Japan, of course, waged a war of aggression, sparking the last global conflict, but today it’s on the front lines of authoritarian regimes’ intensifying threats to peace.

“The international community is facing the greatest post-war trial yet, and has entered a new era of crises,” the Japanese ministry of defense said in a post to Twitter today.

The stark warning came in the form of a map featuring the security challenges in Japan’s neighborhood posed by dictatorships. All those regimes are cooperating in various forms, the ministry said.

“There are several nations and regions in this region with large military forces, including nuclear weapons, do not share universal values, nor the political and economic systems based on such universal values,” text below the map read. “There exists a complex intertwining of diplomatic and other relations based on historical backgrounds.”

One image featured demonstrations of force by China and Russia, which inked a “no limits” partnership in February 2022, just days before Vladimir Putin gave the order to invade Ukraine.

The Japanese defense ministry pointed to “joint navigation” and “joint flight” exercises between the two countries and the deployment of further Russian forces to the region.

There’s been a noteworthy uptick in joint Sino-Russian drills this year. The two countries joined South Africa for exercises just off the coast of that country in February, and they held further exercises in July beginning in the Sea of Japan. According to the International Institute for Strategic Studies, China and Russia also conducted at least five joint drills in that area last year.

Amid that flurry of naval exercises, Taiwan spotted and tracked two Russian warships that appeared off its eastern coast in late June.

Japan has also carefully tracked China’s threats against Taiwan, and some prominent officials, including the late prime minister Shinzo Abe, have argued that an attack on Taiwan would draw Tokyo into such a conflict, given the island’s proximity to Japan.

In addition to new worries about Sino-Russian military cooperation, North Korea has stepped up its nuclear provocations, with the Japanese defense ministry pointing out that Pyongyang has “continued systematic development of various weapons, including nuclear weapons.” Last week, it test-fired missiles in a drill that it said “simulated tactical nuclear attack.”

All of this has contributed to a perceptible unease in Tokyo, which says it is surrounded by several nuclear-armed bad actors.

“Number of arms including nuclear weapons and missiles is rapidly building up around Japan, and the tendency towards the unilateral changes to the status quo by force is further increasing,” the Japanese defense ministry post said.