Abe in June 2022: "Russia felt they'd been fooled" by NATO expansion
Since the late Shinzo Abe has been in the news this week for getting a state funeral despite widespread opposition, I’ll translate an news article published one month before his death containing comments that, as far I know, weren’t reported in the English-language mainstream media (original article here). Let’s see if you can work out why.
Speaking in Kyoto City on 4th June, Former PM Shinzo Abe was critical of the Russian invasion of Ukranie, but he said that “Russia felt they’d been fooled.” He explained, “I attended 27 world leader conferences with President Putin. He had a great distrust of America. It was [due to] NATO expansion.”
Mr Abe pointed out that “James Baker, Secretary of State at the time, had said that even if East and West Germany were reunified, NATO wouldn’t expand.” He stated, “After that, it gradually expanded, taking in Hungary, Czech Republic, the three Baltic states. So [Russia] though it’d eventually come to incorporate Ukraine.”
However, Mr Abe said about the Ukraine invasion “But just because that happened doesn’t excuse [the invasion]. I’m saying this so that you understand what [Putin] is thinking.”
This wasn’t the only time Abe openly expressed views contrary to the approved narrative on Ukraine. In an interview with The Economist published in May, he said the following
“Maybe the war could have been avoided if Zelensky had been forced to pledge that his country would not join NATO, or had been forced to grant a high degree of autonomy to Luhansk and Donetsk in the east.”
Granted, these are not exactly original insights, but they were made by someone who’s difficult to smear as a stooge of Putin. The grandson of Japanese PM and CIA asset Nobusuke Kishi, Shinzo Abe fully supported Japan’s status as a US protectorate. So it’s easy see why his comments in Kyoto were ignored by the English-language press.
But although he was willing to present the Russian point of view of the conflict in Ukraine, in another interview, he used the conflict to call for Japan to increase its defense budget, acquire first-strike capability, and revise its constitution.
I am pleased to see that discussions on constitutional revision are underway in the constitutional review boards of both houses of the Diet. The situation in Ukraine provides an excellent opportunity for a thorough debate on Article Nine, one of the LDP’s four proposed constitutional amendments. (Article Nine renounces war and the threat or use of force to settle disputes.)
So no matter what he said about the reasons for the conflict in Ukraine, Abe mainly wanted to exploit it to expand government power in Japan. Now what does that remind me of?
" Now what does that remind me of?"
I know exactly what you a referring to. I would say that politicians are trying to break the spirit of their people but there is no spirit to be broken. I see this lack of sprit every time I walk out the door. The first person I saw today was wearing both a "Be Free" t-shirt and a mask. Japan has come along way since the Samurai.
HIya,
Founded in 1949 NATO was 'purely defensive', in the 1960's it's main function was meant to be detente; easing of relationships between the US and the Soviet Union. According to NATO’S own website page entitled Defence and Deterrence;
'The Warsaw Pact embodied what was referred to as the Eastern bloc, while NATO and its member countries represented the Western bloc.
NATO and the Warsaw Pact were ideologically opposed and, over time, built up their own defences starting an arms race that lasted throughout the Cold War.
The Warsaw Pact was declared at an end on 25 February 1991 and the Czechoslovak President, Vaclav Havel, formally declared an end to it on 1 July 1991. Gorbachev’s policy of openness (Glasnost) and restructuring (Perestroika), together with other initiatives, opened the way for popular uprisings. The Berlin Wall fell in November 1989 and communist governments in Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Romania and Bulgaria started to fall.
The break-up of the Warsaw Pact was shortly followed by the dissolution of the Soviet Union in December 1991.
Err.... and that was where the page ends. Why was NATO not also dissolved. It can only be considered to be a group of 'western' countries ganging up on an enemy that no longer exists and/or bureaucrats justifying their existence and/or war mongering bullies. Its mere continued existence can’t help but provoke Russia, the largest of the former Soviet union countries.
The UN is meant to be the agency that eases relationships between countries. The Cold War is over. No Soviet Union.
What does the world need NATO for?
Jo