Japan and the U.S. move toward open military confrontation over Taiwan

Japan’s ultra-rightwing prime minister, Sanae Takaichi, ignited a political storm when she declared that any Chinese move to reunify Taiwan with the mainland would threaten Japan’s very survival — and that Tokyo would be ready to join military action to stop it.

For Beijing, the message was clear: Japan was abandoning its long-standing stance of avoiding any commitment to take sides in a conflict over Taiwan and was now declaring that it would join the United States in a military response. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning denounced the remarks as a serious provocation and a dangerous interference in China’s sovereignty.

Japanese right-wing forces further inflamed the situation. Japan’s Defense Minister, Shinjiro Koizumi, announced that plans were “steadily moving forward” to deploy a medium-range surface-to-air missile unit at a military base on Yonaguni — an island only 110 kilometers (68 miles) off Taiwan’s east coast. A Reuters report quoted Mao Ning warning that “the move is extremely dangerous and should raise serious concerns among nearby countries and the international community,” especially in light of Takaichi’s earlier comments.

Two Japanese government sources also told Reuters that Donald Trump privately urged Prime Minister Takaichi to tone down her public threats during a call this week. The move fits a familiar Trump pattern: loud public belligerence paired with quiet tactical repositioning when trade negotiations or economic pressure campaigns stall. Some commentators have even coined the acronym “TACO” — “Trump Always Chickens Out” — to describe his habit of retreating behind the scenes after aggressive rhetoric. But far from signaling a real shift, this is political maneuvering. Even as the administration adjusts its tone for trade talks with China, U.S. war planning continues without pause, and Washington is pouring new investments into Japan’s military — underscoring that the U.S. strategy in the region is not about peace.

U.S. greenlights new arms for Taiwan

At the same time that Japan was escalating its rhetoric, the United States approved a new $330 million arms package for Taiwan on Nov. 13 — the first such sale under Trump’s return to office. The package includes repair parts, non-standard components, and continued support for Taiwan’s fleet of F-16 fighter jets, C-130 transport aircraft, and other military systems.

Washington’s intention is clear: more weapons, deeper military integration with Taiwan, and further preparation for confrontation with China.

A U.S.–Japan military bloc

Japan remains the centerpiece of Washington’s military strategy in the western Pacific. The United States operates more than 120 military installations across Japan, including 15 major bases, and stations over 54,000 troops there — the largest concentration of U.S. forces anywhere outside the continental United States. Okinawa carries the heaviest burden of this occupation, with bases crowding the island and dominating local life.

The U.S. has also upgraded and expanded the weapons it deploys and rotates through these bases, tightening its forward position against China. This includes fifth-generation F-35 Lightning II stealth aircraft — with the F-35B variant permanently based at Iwakuni and F-35A rotations continuing at Kadena — as well as V-22 Osprey aircraft operating from Okinawa and Iwakuni. The missile-defense network has been reinforced through Standard Missile-3 interceptors aboard Aegis destroyers homeported in Yokosuka, along with Patriot Advanced Capability-3 batteries across multiple bases. A key recent development is the rotational deployment of the Typhon Mid-Range Capability system, capable of firing both Standard Missile-6 and Tomahawk cruise missiles, giving Washington a new ground-based, long-range strike option aimed directly at China’s coastline.

None of this posture is defensive. It is the architecture of a forward-deployed war machine.

How the U.S.–Japan alliance was rebuilt for confrontation

After Japan’s defeat in 1945, the United States reshaped the country’s political and military structure to serve Washington’s aims in Asia. The 1960 U.S.–Japan Security Treaty locked Japan into a permanent, unequal alliance: The U.S. gained open-ended basing rights, and Japan agreed to rely on Washington for its external defense. In practice, the treaty placed Japan squarely inside the U.S. military orbit.

By 1978, updated defense guidelines went even further. For the first time, they committed Japan to joint operations with U.S. forces in “situations in areas surrounding Japan” — diplomatic code for Korea, the Taiwan Strait, and the entire first island chain along China’s coastline. This language marked a major shift: Japan was being integrated into U.S. war planning beyond its borders.

For decades, Washington has pressed Japan to dismantle its postwar pacifist constitution, particularly Article 9, which formally renounces war. Right-wing governments — from Abe to Kishida to Takaichi — have steadily chipped away at those restrictions. With full backing from the United States, Japan is now rearming at a pace not seen since World War II and positioning itself as a direct participant in U.S. confrontations with China.

The deep scars of Japanese imperialism

China’s response to Japan’s new militarism cannot be understood without remembering the past. In the first half of the 20th century, the Japanese Empire invaded, occupied, and devastated large parts of China. This period — known in China as part of the “century of humiliation” — left deep wounds that continue to shape Chinese national memory.

The War of Resistance against Japan (1937–1945) brought mass displacement, famine, and systematic atrocities. The most infamous was the Nanjing Massacre of 1937, when Japanese troops killed an estimated 200,000 civilians and carried out widespread rape and torture. Across the eight-year war, more than 20 million Chinese people were killed — one of the highest death tolls of World War II.

This history is especially present today as China marks the 80th anniversary of the war’s end. For the Chinese people, the conflict with Japan began long before Germany invaded Poland in 1939. It began with Japan’s invasion of Manchuria in 1931 and the full-scale assault on China in 1937.

Taiwan, too, was seized by Japan — colonized after the 1895 invasion and kept under imperial rule until 1945.

Taiwan after the Chinese Revolution

Taiwan’s modern history is inseparable from the Chinese Revolution. As the People’s Liberation Army defeated the reactionary Kuomintang on the mainland, the KMT regime collapsed in rapid retreat. Between late 1948 and 1949 — culminating shortly after the founding of the People’s Republic of China on Oct. 1, 1949 — Chiang Kai-shek evacuated roughly 1.5 to 2 million soldiers, officials, and supporters to Taiwan.

Once on the island, the KMT imposed martial law and unleashed the “White Terror,” a brutal campaign of repression against workers, students, leftists, and anyone suspected of sympathizing with the mainland revolution. Tens of thousands were imprisoned, thousands were executed, and many simply disappeared into military prisons. The terror lasted for decades, well into the 1980s.

After World War II, Taiwan was returned to China when Japan renounced its colonial claims. But the U.S.-dominated 1951 Treaty of San Francisco — drafted without the participation of either the newly founded People’s Republic of China or the Kuomintang authorities on Taiwan — deliberately left Taiwan’s legal status unresolved. Washington exploited this manufactured ambiguity to obstruct China’s reunification and expand its military foothold in the region.

Washington blocks China’s reunification

With the Chinese Revolution victorious on the mainland, Washington moved quickly to prevent the new People’s Republic from completing national reunification. In June 1950, President Harry Truman ordered the U.S. Seventh Fleet into the Taiwan Strait, blocking the People’s Liberation Army from moving on Taiwan and shielding the defeated Kuomintang regime.

The United States soon signed a mutual defense treaty with the authorities on Taiwan and poured military equipment and advisers onto the island. For two decades — long after the Kuomintang had lost all credibility on the mainland — Washington insisted that this regime represented “Free China” and maneuvered to keep the People’s Republic of China out of the United Nations.

This had nothing to do with “defending democracy.” It was part of a broader U.S. effort to contain the Chinese Revolution and suppress anti-colonial movements rising across Asia.

A shifting global balance

Today, the world situation has changed dramatically. Both the United States and Japan are facing deep capitalist stagnation — marked by slowing growth, rising prices, and long-term economic decline. These crises are pushing the ruling classes in both countries toward greater militarism abroad.

At the same time, socialist China has emerged as one of the central engines of the global economy. By purchasing-power parity, China is now the world’s largest economy, and its industrial and technological advances continue to challenge U.S. domination in region after region.

This is the backdrop for Washington and Tokyo’s escalating confrontation with China. For the U.S. and Japan, military expansion is once again being promoted as a way out of capitalist crisis — and that makes the danger to the world far greater.

The danger ahead

Washington’s own think tanks are already sketching out the opening moves of a new war. The Center for Strategic and International Studies, a major Pentagon-aligned institute, released a detailed scenario in its report The First Battle of the Next War: Wargaming a Chinese Invasion of Taiwan. The study lays out step-by-step plans for U.S. and Japanese military action, treating a catastrophic conflict in the western Pacific as if it were a policy blueprint rather than a global disaster.

Both the United States and Japan are preparing for confrontation, not diplomacy. But war is not inevitable. The struggle of the people — in the U.S., across Asia, and around the world — can stop the drive toward a disastrous conflict with China before it begins.