Les dangers de la querelle sino-japonaise

Les rapports entre la Chine et le Japon sont désormais un point important de tension. Les manifestations anti-japonaises en Chine ont donné à cette tension un caractère dramatique et urgent. Il est d’autant plus intéressant, pour mieux en comprendre les enjeux, de bien embrasser le cadre général où cette tension s’est développée.

Ci-dessous, nous restituons une appréciation assez complète de ce cadre général, que nous avons trouvée dans une interview de Steven Clemons, sur le site “Democracy Now !”, le 19 avril. L’interview portait sur un tout autre sujet, les débats de la commission sénatoriale des affaires étrangères sur la nomination de John Bolton comme ambassadeur US à l’ONU. Clemond, avec son site “The Washington Note”, a organisé un mouvement de résistance à la nomination de Bolton, et de manière très efficace si l’on en juge par les derniers échos à ce propos.

Clemond est aussi un spécialiste des affaires japonaises: Senior Fellow à la New America Foundation, Clemond a été pendant sept ans directeur de la Japan America Society of Southern California et il est co-fondateur, avec Chalmers Johnson, du Japan Policy Research Institute. Dans l’interview de Democracy Now !, la présentatrice Amy Goodman termine son intervention par une question hors sujet, sur la crise sino-japonaise. Voici la réponse de Clemond.

« Yeah. Very virulent nationalism is being let out of the box in both Japan and China. And, regrettably, I feel that the United States is complicit in what's going on. And just to give a very brief take on this, the United States sort of pushed Japan hard recently to state that Taiwan was part of its security concerns, and that if there was an engagement, a conflict between China and Taiwan, and the United States was involved, Japan would support the United States and support Taiwan. This is an agreement, an arrangement that has always been known privately. What mattered more recently is that America compelled Japan to make this a public articulation.

» And China took great umbrage at that — at what it already knew was Japan's policy, but the overtness of it created pressure on China to respond in kind. In addition, there is a serious effort underway, which the United States supports, to try to get Japan as a permanent member of the Security Council. And beneath this, you have a — an ongoing uneasiness and in many cases a denial of history in Japan that has continually given the Chinese, the Koreans and others, opportunities to continually hit Japan for its failure to acknowledge and reform like Germany has in some part done, for its World War II and prewar activities six decades ago. So what has come out of the box is essentially an orchestration by China to hit Japan back both for its global pretensions in the U.N. Security Council, but also because of our effort to try to get Japan to sort of declare itself in our camp more. Why is that important? Well, China's economic activity with Japan has surpassed American economic activity with Japan. The United States is very worried that Japan will slowly and incrementally slip towards a greater affection with China. Thus, we wanted more military-oriented declarations from Japan. This has essentially upended the apple cart, and both governments are basically unleashing their people. And it's very, very dangerous. »

Mis en ligne le 20 avril 2005 à 20H40