I served for 3 years in Sasebo Japan on shore duty at our US naval base and ammunition facility there. There are a lot of dynamics in the situation there:
I think a strong Trump presidency would force Japan to make the necessary transition to picking up their fair share of the defense load. So this will actually help Abe to go where he wants to go. Without America pushing for change, however, nothing is going to happen. Below is the naval base in Sasebo... |
Second to last bullet point is excellent. Great suggestion.
Agreed with EVERYTHING you wrote (very well), except for:
When they buy fighter aircraft from us, they modify the aeronautics and send suggestions back to the US manufacturers for improvement.
Alas, the great majority of JASDF a/c are not purchased off-the-shelf, though that is what I would prefer:
Most are licensed produced, generally to a higher quality than the American originals. More and more they are co-developed, a process that involves MUCH more transfer of know-how. I agree with your notation of their habit of suggesting improvements --they are amazing manufacturers, improvers, and increasingly, innovators.
I love Japan in a BILLION ways, but I'm not sure we want to make Japan into an aerospace competitor, and I don't think such measured reservations constitute "Japan-bashing".
Both presuppose that they were both at one time OURS in some sense to lose or abandon --I richly contest that.
I find a great many Western people arrive in Japan, see the technology and living standard, deeming it somehow WESTERN. Well, there is hip-hop, there are movies, yes. Maybe those are western.
But for anyone who really spends time there, there are a bazillion ways in which Japan is not only different, but maybe the OPPOSITE --that escapes the casual visitor.
I think there are people whose livelihood is tied up in minimizing change in Japan as lackeys of their Establishment and that is a role unhelpful not only to the outside world, but ultimately to Japan herself.
It's one of the finest shipyards I've ever seen. They got us out of there 2 weeks ahead of schedule and tossed in a couple of things, not minor, to boot.
I took a carton of Marlboro's and a 5th of Jack out on the town to a bar and traded it for a full week's worth of beer and Santori.
It's the first place I ever saw Karoke and thought it was the weirdest thing I ever saw.
Access to shipyards and aircraft depots, at Japan's expense.
Payment of overseas allowances and COLAs for U.S. service members.
Base construction projects and housing
Fuel for American aircraft when at Japanese bases.
Japan is not freeloading. Facts can be such pesky things when they get in the way of your rhetoric.
The irony, given the tone of this thread, is that the majority of the ships in that picture are Japanese.