The Kishida government has ramped up military buildup in preparation for a potential war in Taiwan, including upgrading civilian airports for military use. The most vocal protests to the Japanese government’s militarism have come from Okinawa, who would bear the brunt of the cost of war. A 2022 study revealed that 83 percent of Okinawans believed that Okinawa’s bases would be targeted during a conflict.
Read MoreThose that call China an enemy of the U.S. have yet to tell us how and why that is so. The Western media repeatedly fails to uphold the basic tenets of good journalism when painting China as a global threat: China’s last armed conflict was the four-week Sino-Vietnamese War in 1979; in contrast, since 1945, when it “cast itself as the global peacekeeper,” the US has been in a state of endless war and invasion , not to mention its 20-year wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. And yet based on media portrayals, Russian or Chinese spy balloons are flying all around us. Why does the US conjure imaginary enemies? For armaments to be manufactured and generate profit for the war industry, public consent also needs to be manufactured. Without such an enemy, real or perceived, maintaining military budgets ten and a hundred times the size of most countries would be impossible.
Read MoreYoshikawa says that peace movements are responding by working to “create a larger, more cohesive peace movement” that is organizing events and rallies to which peace groups from mainland Japan and abroad are invited. The growing US-Japan-South Korea trilateral alliance has “sparked a counter-alliance among peace movements” in each country. If Okinawa is an unsinkable aircraft carrier for the US to wage war, it can also become a bastion for movements to wage peace.
Read More2023 ISC International Forum Online Event
Building Peace: Preventing War in Northeast Asia
Day 1 - Struggles on the Frontlines
Korea: Oct. 28th 10am-noon ㅣBerlin: Oct. 28th 3-5am ㅣNYC: Oct. 27th 9-11pm
Day 2 - Peace and the New Non-Aligned Movements
Korea: Oct. 29th 5-7pm ㅣBerlin: Oct. 29th 9-11am (Daylight Savings) ㅣNYC: Oct. 29th 4-6am
Read MoreJuly 27 marked the 70th anniversary of the 1953 ceasefire to the Korean War. In the three years leading up to the anniversary, South Korean peace movements organized the international Korea Peace Appeal campaign to replace the armistice agreement with a peace treaty to conclude the 70-plus-year Korean War. The anniversary has come and gone, but, instead of peace, the Joe Biden, Yoon Suk Yeol, and Fumio Kishida administrations are stoking tensions in the Korean Peninsula as a smokescreen to build a NATO-level U.S.-Japan-South Korea trilateral alliance against China.
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