Japan's moves undermining regional trust

East Asia should be a region of peace and development not an arena for geopolitical strife. This was what a spokesperson of the Chinese Foreign Ministry said in response to Japan's announcement of its formal membership of NATO's Cooperative Cyber Defense Center of Excellence on Friday.

Even before becoming a formal member of the CCDCOE, which was founded in 2008 after a series of cyberattacks the year before crippled Estonia for weeks, Japan participated in last year's "Locked Shields", the cyber war-gaming exercise that the CCDCOE stages each year.

As a matter of fact, Japan has long been a participant in NATO. As early as 2018, Japan established its permanent mission to NATO and designated an ambassador to this military alliance in 2018.

In April this year, Japanese Foreign Minister Yoshimasa Hayashi attended NATO's foreign minister meeting. It was the first time for a Japanese foreign minister to do so.

Joining the CCDCOE takes this one step further, as it is a NATO-accredited military research institution and thus a military alliance organization in its own right.

So Japan's joining of the CCDCOE has gone beyond what its Constitution allows it to do in this regard. As Japan's pacifist Constitution has a stipulation that the country cannot participate in any organization of a military alliance.

With its war of aggression against quite a number of neighboring countries and the atrocities its invading forces inflicted on the people of these countries, any move by Japan is naturally a matter of concern to its neighbors.

As well as joining the CCDCOE, Japan has significantly bumped up its military budget and signed a security cooperation treaty with Australia to expand the space for its Self-Defense Forces, and it continues to push the boundaries of its pacifist Constitution, in order to pave the way for its revision.

All these have gradually undermined the trust of its neighbors.

Further eroding that trust is the attitude of many Japanese politicians toward the war of aggression Japanese militarists launched against its neighbors during World War II. It seems that many Japanese politicians do not feel any remorse for the atrocities the Japanese invading forces committed.

Countries in East Asia have more than enough reason to be suspicious about the motivation for Japan's moves, fearing that its military expansion will pose a threat to peace and development in the region at large.

Japan needs to take into consideration its relations with its neighbors and peace and stability of East Asia, instead of trying to pump up its muscles to be accepted in the West's gang of bullies.