'All options on the table' with N Korea, says Japan PM Abe

International Desk: As US President Donald Trump arrives in Tokyo on Sunday, he and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe are expected to act in lockstep in terms of their messaging on North Korea - nuclear weapons and missile development are entirely unacceptable and "all options are on the table" in terms of how this threat may be met.

The political phrase "all options on the table", of course, encompasses the possibility that the United States and Japan might jointly launch an aggressive military attack on North Korea, which they would portray as being "pre-emptive" in light of the many verbal threats that have already been issued by the regime of Kim Jong-un.

At a personal level, Abe hardly needs Washington to push him into a hardline stance vis-a-vis North Korea (or China or even South Korea for that matter) because his hawkishness towards mainland Asian neighbours has been part of his political trademark throughout his career. At times, he has associated with even some of the more fringe elements of the Japanese hard right.

As critics point out, support for "all options" including an attack on North Korea puts Abe in spiritual rebellion to the nation's constitution, which mandates that "the Japanese people forever renounce war as a sovereign right of the nation and the threat or use of force as means of settling international disputes".

Obviously, "all options are on the table" is precisely the sort of threat of the use of force that Japan's post-World War II constitution explicitly bans.

 

Source: Agencies

 

risingbd/Dhaka/November 4, 2017/A K Azad