Remember all that talk just a few months back about how Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, unlike former Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, was embarked on a policy of reconciliation with China?
Well, you can forget that now. Indeed, you should have forgotten it then. Even before visiting Beijing in October in his alleged bid for improved relations, Abe was embarked on policies that should have done far more to antagonize Beijing than Koizumi's heavily criticized visits to Tokyo's Yasukuni Shrine.
In his book published last year, "To be a Beautiful Country," Abe calls for a Japan-India-Australia alliance in Asia. Allegedly based on shared values (Indian castes, Japanese gangsters and Australian beer drinkers?). The target of that unlikely grouping is clearly China. And if this is not enough, he and the people around him talk openly about the Japan-U.S. alliance as another weapon to oppose China.