1. In Europe, Japan, and South Korea, which have military alliances with the US, the influence of Western media is vital. However, since Russia’s military invasion on February 24, 2022, the Western media has emphasized only Russia’s accusations, hardly mentioning the issues of NATO’s expansion eastward and the US intervention in Ukraine after the Maidan coup d’état.
2. Russia’s military aggression is a military invasion violating the UN Charter. However, at the same time, it is essential to note that NATO’s eastward expansion with the United States as its ally and US interference in Ukraine’s internal affairs are acts of provocation against Russia.
Military tensions between NATO and Russia intensified after Ukraine and Georgia applied for membership at NATO’s Bucharest meeting in 2008 and after the US intervened in the Maidan coup of 2014 to oust President Yanukovych. This Coup led to a backlash among ethnic Russian speakers and the beginning of an eight-year civil war. President Zelensky’s failure to abide by the Minsk Accords for a ceasefire led to the Russian invasion. NATO and the United States are politically responsible for this situation.
3. The UN Charter stipulates the right of collective self-defense, but military blocs and alliances are inconsistent with the UN Charter’s collective security regime and contrary to the spirit of the Charter. The Charter also recognizes only the provisional exercise of the right of collective self-defense and does not recognize military alliance treaties that make the right of collective self-defense permanent; NATO and U.S.-South Korea-Japan military alliance treaties violate the UN Charter.
4. the US and its allies ignore the UN system, which is based on multinationalism, and seek to dominate the world with military alliances and agreements, with over 800 US military bases and exercise sites around the world. They seek imperialist domination by force, not by law or by dialogue.
5. In response to Russia’s military aggression, the Western powers have imposed economic sanctions on Russia, but most participating countries are the United States and its allies. Article 41 of the UN Charter requires a decision by the UN Security Council if economic sanctions are necessary. The UN also refers to economic sanctions without a decision by the Security Council as Unilateral Coercive Measures, and the UN considers UCM to be a violation of the UN Charter, and the UN Human Rights Council has also established a special rapporteur on UCM.
6. After the Cold War, the role of military alliance should have ended with the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact, but NATO’s military alliance has been revived; NATO has changed from a defensive to an offensive military alliance and has conducted military invasions of Kosovo, Afghanistan, Libya, and Syria and extended NATO membership to Eastern European countries
7. The same situation of confrontation with the US military alliance is also applied in East Asia today. The US has had military alliances (defense treaties) with South Korea and Japan since the 1950s (U.S.-South Korea Mutual Defense Treaty 1953, U.S.-Japan Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security 1951). These were initially self-defense organizations.
8. In Japan, however, in 1995, after the Cold War, the U.S.-Japan military alliance expanded its role from a defense alliance against the Soviet Union to an offensive to all of Asia. As a result, the US deployed troops from US bases in Japan to Afghanistan and Iraq; as NATO did in Europe, it changed from a defensive to an offensive military alliance after the Cold War. Moreover, military exercises between the US, Japan, and South Korea, in which China is assumed to be the enemy, have legal base on this military alliance.
9. In South Korea, too, the Korean War is over, but the US signed a mutual defense treaty in 1953, and UN Command is still stationed there under the name of the UN Forces. Recent aggressive U.S.-South Korean military exercises against North Korea are based on this U.S.-South Korean military alliance.
Thus, the military alliance with the US is also active in East Asia, and the presence of U.S.-South Korea, Japan-U.S., and Japan-U.S.-South Korea military exercises and the military alliance has increased military tension between the North Korea and China groups and Japan, South Korea, and US groups.
10. In South Korea, since the President Yoon Suk-yeol took office, U.S.-South Korean military exercises against North Korea have become much more frequent than before. These are offensive exercises, including a campaign to behead Kim Jong-un. These aggressive military exercises have created military tension in Northeast Asia. North Korea’s missile launches are being made as a self-defensive measure against these U.S.-South Korean military exercises and the development of its self-defensive capabilities.
11. Japan is also using the war in Ukraine as an excuse for militarization. Prime Minister Kishida is trying to make the SDF more aggressive. He wants to enhance the SDF’s enemy base attack capability and raise the defense budget to 2% of GDP, on par with NATO. At the same time, he is taking a hostile attitude toward China and North Korea, instead of dialogue and diplomacy.
12. the US Department of Defense has announced an Indo-Pacific strategy in cooperation with Asian countries to strengthen military alliance, against China, Russia, and North Korea as possible partners in 2019. It sought to confront China, North Korea, and Russia by strengthening its military alliance with Japan and South Korea and joint military cooperation with other Southeast Asian countries. The national security strategy under the Biden administration also considers China as an enemy and seeks to improve joint military action, containment, and offensive capabilities. The military actions of Japan and South Korea are perfectly in line with these US strategies. By forming military alliances with its subjugated allies, South Korea and Japan, the US, with its overwhelming military might, seeks to exert military dominance over Asia.
13. In East Asia, the US military alliance treaties with Japan and South Korea allow them to have huge US military bases and colonial domination by the US, and the majority of public opinion in Japan and South Korea is in favor of the US military alliance with Japan. And the majority of Japanese and Korean public opinion, incited by US-led culture and media, now supports the US military alliance to protect themselves from North Korea and China.
14. In 2022, North Korea launched many missiles in response to U.S.-South Korean military exercises, and a visit to Taiwan by Speaker Pelosi forced China to conduct military exercises against Taiwan. However, the causes for the missile launches and China’s hard-line stance have not been adequately reported in both Japan and South Korea, and hostility toward North Korea and China has been fueled by the U.S.-influenced media. But this U.S.-South Korea and U.S.-Japan military alliance is an aggressive one. It is urgent to eliminate the U.S.-South Korea-Japan military alliance in order to prevent military tension and the danger of war in East Asia.
15. Let us expose the ambitions that US imperialism seeks to achieve in Europe and Asia and make it a global task to rid the world of aggressive military blocs by the United States.
