CAMBRIDGE, England -- I was in Beijing last week for a conference and research visits that focused on regional cooperation in Northeast Asia. While I was there, Chinese newspapers reported on Japan's dispatch of the Aegis missile detection system-equipped warship, Kirishimi, to the Indian Ocean.
Sending a heavily armed warship to a war zone is an aggressive act. The move is an expression of support for the planned U.S.-led war on Iraq and therefore, in many people's minds, illegal under the Japanese Constitution, whatever the legalistic constitutional hairsplitters say.
The same week saw the Japanese government announcing its support for the development of the United States' missile defense system and its commitment to helping the U.S. develop the application of that system to the East Asia region as a theater missile defense system. Other countries in the region see this as an aggressive and destabilizing act.