In a weekend speech that struck back at Beijing’s claims of a “new militarism” emerging in Japan, Defense Minister Shinjiro Koizumi told an audience of defense officials from across the globe that nothing could be further from the truth.
But there was something missing from Koizumi’s address: a direct mention of China.
“There is a country that has a huge arsenal of nuclear weapons and strategic bombers. Japan has neither of such weapons. And yet Japan is labeled ‘new militarism.’ Isn’t it strange?” the defense chief said Sunday during the Shangri-La Dialogue regional security summit in Singapore, in a thinly veiled rebuttal of Beijing’s claims that Tokyo is repeating the steps that led it into World War II.
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