The signboard of “joint” is recently emerging as a term frequently used in various military acts of Japan.

Shortly ago, Japan and the US agreed on the joint production of the latest air-to-air missile AIM-120, during the visit to Japan by US Secretary of Defense. Such examples are numerous: on-going joint development of the next-generation fighter planes with the UK and Italy, joint development of new-type warships with Australia, joint research with the US to put microwave weapons to practical use, joint maintenance and overhauling of US warships and aircrafts, etc.

Given the joint military exercises with the forces of NATO and different countries, which Japan is frequently staging not only in the Asia-Pacific region but also in the far-off regions beyond its boundaries, it is not difficult to understand that the signboard of “joint” put up by Japan covers most of the military moves of the archipelago nation.

This does not merely mean the strengthening of Japan’s external military cooperation.

As a war criminal state which inflicted huge damage on the Asian people in the last century, Japan has been bound by various internal and external institutional mechanisms deterring its military expansion.

Now all the constraints have become a thing of the past. For example, Japan abolished the principle of banning weapons export it had observed for decades and has come up with the new “three principles of defence equipment transfer.”

According to it, the items of export weapons are confined to non-lethal ones as it was done in the past, but international joint development and joint production are exceptions. As a result, the weapons of attack and destruction, which are against the “exclusive defence,” can be developed, produced and sold under the signboard of “joint.”

The aim sought by Japan through the trick deceiving the world is not only to earn money but to modernize its munitions industry, which materially and technologically supports its ambition for becoming a military giant, and to bolster up the militaristic state’s war capability.

All the joint military actions of Japan are being conducted under this sinister intention.

This will lead to the emergence of not merely a “single entity” of a dangerous war state keen on reinvasion in the Asia-Pacific region but an exclusive military alliance, a war bloc integrated in an all-round way.

Herein lies the essence of the signboard of “joint” frequently put up by Japan.

Japan’s subterfuge to revive a war state and an aggressor state by circumventing the international community’s vigilance and legal constraints with a plausible justification can no longer work.

Japan should be well aware that any “disguise” can never help it cover up its black-hearted intention and that its signboard of “joint” will only make it a “joint target” of regional countries.

KCNA