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Strategies & Market Trends : Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: John McCarthy who wrote (107584)	1/31/2010 3:39:54 PM
From: John McCarthy	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 116555

Japan faces a challenging regional context: both direct and potential security threats, as well as suspicion from other states that changes to Tokyo’s defense policy indicate a return to its militarist past. North Korea poses a particularly acute and proximate threat to Japan, heightened by Pyongyang’s ballistic missile and nuclear explosive device tests in 2006. Historical enmity and contemporary competition for influence with China makes Beijing’s military modernization worrisome for Japanese defense planners. The Japanese Self Defense Forces (SDF, the official name for Japan’s military) has detected periodic Chinese military activities in areas surrounding Japan’s outlying islands, including submarine incursions close to Okinawa and a fleet of warships near a disputed gas field. Tokyo also faces difficult relations with South Korea because of Korean distrust based on the memory of Japan’s 40-year annexation of the peninsula and some territorial disputes. fas.org