opinion

Japan is making more desperate efforts than ever before to bring disaster to the Asia-Pacific region again in collusion with outside forces.

It was vividly expressed in the fact that shortly ago, Japan staged a joint drill with foreign strategic forces, including aircraft carriers of the US Navy and the French Navy, in the Asia-Pacific region for nearly 10 days for the first time by mobilizing the large escort warship Kaga of its Maritime "Self-Defense Force" and other war equipment.

It is not an exaggeration to say that one of the main factors causing the danger of destroying the balance of power and creating a new conflicting structure now in the region is Japan's action of frequently inviting the war maniacs from across the ocean on the pretext of "security".

Last year alone, Japan ran amuck to further aggravate the regional situation in collusion with outside forces, talking about "growing threat" by neighbouring countries.

Not content with joining various confrontational groups such as QUAD and SQUAD to play an active role as a core member, it made desperate efforts to get recognized as a full member of AUKUS, an exclusive group of the Anglo-Saxons, being closeted with it.

Japan, which stretched out its tentacles to most of the military blocs in the region, made more frantic efforts than others to avail itself of the US moves to establish the military cooperative relations between the Asian version of NATO with the US-Japan-ROK tripartite military alliance system as its axis and NATO member states.

It is part of such schemes that Japan even set up its independent full-time mission at NATO as soon as the new year started.

It is hard to count the number of various joint military drills staged under such situation.

This year alone, Japan was hell-bent on the largest-ever parachute drill aimed at a sudden invasion of neighbouring countries by introducing overseas aggression forces of more than 10 countries including the US and the UK into its islands.

Japan is busy with the preparations for a war of aggression, as illustrated by the full-scale development and purchase of long-range strike means and the active moves to transfer the SDF headquarters into underground tunnels. Meanwhile, it has joined the outside aggression forces, dispatching even a virtual carrier to an area far away from its "exclusive defense" boundary. The reality hints that the militarists' ambition for overseas aggression has entered the stage of full-scale action.

It is by no means unreasonable for the world public to denounce Japan as the most zealous element undermining the regional peace and stability and as the "guide of NATO".

Though Japan is letting loose a spate of rhetoric about the "security environment around it which is getting severe", pretending not to know its cause, the record of militarist acts performed by it which does not abandon its ambition for reinvasion even a moment will never get vague.

Gone are the days when the "Imperial Army" could ignite wars at will to realize the dream of "Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere".

Those countries in the region which suffered huge damage by Japan in the last century will never allow the descendants of the "Imperial Army" to ignite another war for realizing the old dream.