[Non-US] News That Makes You laugh/cry/neither...

[PhoneLobster]

You just claimed that the US is 'committing evil' on a scale above

Neoliberalism and the US backed international enforcement of it alone accounts for the sheer scale of human suffering and death alone. I mean China is happy enough to buy your power network if you are dumb enough to sell it, but it's basically the USA and it's minions that go around the world saying "Drown your government in a bathtub of anarchist small government neoliberal privatization bullshit at vast cost in the suffering and lives of your people for OUR profit... OR ELSE!". That has a real cost in suffering and death and the scale at this point is beyond fucking calculation.

Neoliberal looting and pillaging also accounts for them not particularly needing to formally expand territories, though frankly I don't think you get to claim "but we don't territoriality expand" when you go around the world engaging in wars of aggression and sponsoring undemocratic and often violent coupes every time you decide you want someone more obedient to run any given nation. I mean so what, US imperialism/colonialism is about installing compliant puppet dictators instead of formally sticking their flag in a nation. If anything it makes it worse.

[PhoneLobster]

While the US still struggles with what equality means, it's one of the relatively few places where that conversation can be had generally lefally and generally peaceably.

One of the few?

Seriously though. One of the few. You ACTUALLY think that the majority of the planet except for the USA and "a few other places" is under such crushing totalitarian oppression that it cannot talk about inequality.

Another hint for the Americans out there, to avoid sounding like a stupid fucking USAsshole, every time you are about to make a claim about US Exceptionalism, ALWAYS reconsider it REALLY hard and check if it is actually fucking insane.

[Mechalich]

Neoliberalism and the US backed international enforcement of it alone accounts for the sheer scale of human suffering and death alone. I mean China is happy enough to buy your power network if you are dumb enough to sell it, but it's basically the USA and it's minions that go around the world saying "Drown your government in a bathtub of anarchist small government neoliberal privatization bullshit at vast cost in the suffering and lives of your people for OUR profit... OR ELSE!". That has a real cost in suffering and death and the scale at this point is beyond fucking calculation.

Even if one buys into your conspiracy theory that the US has pulled the strings of the global economy in a neoliberal direction since the end of the Cold War - which is an incredibly dubious assertion in the first place, your assumptions about mass suffering and death due to, presumably, neoliberal capitalism inducing economic disasters are, once again, empirically wrong.

Extreme poverty and global poverty in general are declining and are currently lower than they have ever been (by some absolute measures more people are in poverty, but that's a consequence of exponential population growth). The poverty rate in China fell from 85% in 1981 to 33% in 2008 - meaning that literally hundreds of millions of people escaped poverty - during a time period where it adopted neoliberal US-inspired economic policies.

If you want to blame the US for the financial crisis of 2008 and subsequent austerity and maybe a few other post WWII fiscal crises, you can do that. It's a huge stretch, but there are arguments you can mobilize. Those events certainly caused considerable human suffering and death, but they simply do not compare to the tens of millions of deaths caused by Nazi German and Imperial Japanese aggression during WWII. And if you want to talk about deaths caused by bad economic policies, China is the current global winner with 15-30 million deaths caused by the Great Leap Forward and subsequent mass famine.

Seriously though. One of the few. You ACTUALLY think that the majority of the planet except for the USA and "a few other places" is under such crushing totalitarian oppression that it cannot talk about inequality.

Global population is 7.4 billion (ish). So half of that would be 3.7 billion. Lets see now:

China: 1.3 billion
India: 1.3 billion
Pakistan 0.19 billion
Russia 0.14 billion
Japan 0.12 billion
Egypt 0.09 billion
Iran 0.08 billion
Democratic Republic of the Congo 0.08 billion
Thailand 0.07 billion
Myanmar 0.05 billion
Sudan 0.04 billion
Algeria 0.04 billion
Uganda 0.04 billion
Iraq 0.04 billion
Morocco 0.03 billion
Afghanistan 0.03 billion
Malaysia 0.03 billion
Uzbekistan 0.03 billion
Nepal 0.03 billion

There we go 3.73 billion, and I didn't even make it out of the 50 most populous countries to find half the world's population living in regimes where blatant legally mandated or backed sanctioned oppression of minority populations is going on (and I left Indonesia, Brazil, Nigeria and a bunch of others out because I was erring on the side of caution).

[PhoneLobster]

Lets see now:

You actually think you cannot talk about inequality in those nations? You actually think that?

You think you can go putting India, Japan, Egypt, Iran, Afghanistan or fuck it, lets face a lot of that list but lets just start with them, on the list of nations where you "can't talk about inequality" because it is "illegal" or it will result in you experiencing violence somehow?

Fuck you Americans are ignorant. Just because there is oppression of some minority going on in a country, just because it's a dictatorship or has some other shit going down does NOT mean there are fucking thought police patrolling the streets and that to merely mention inequality is a crime or a beatable offense. The fact that you idiots do not know that and cannot tell the fucking difference is part of why you are such useful stooges for a government that installs and supports a lot of the bullshit going on in those countries while TELLING you dumb as hell fuckers that they are fighting the good guy fight against the endless realm of totalitarian darkness YOU dumb asses apparently believe the entire rest of the globe consists of.

Meanwhile if you think Afghanistan has a problem with free speech, and really it's more just got a problem with rampant never ending war, ask yourself "oh yeah which fucking nation did that to Afghanistan again?"

And if you think your qualification for being on the dark totalitarian "can't talk about inequality" list is simply minority oppression and you can say anything you like in the USA safely and soundly without authorities beating or murdering you go talk to some black people and see if they agree with that assertion. Just for a start.

[Count Arioch the 28th]

You know what the best part of this is? Even if Phonelobster's ranting was accurate every American posting here will live a long full life and never get one second of comeuppance for any of these, leaving Phonelobster to scream and thrash in the middle of the wilderness, impotently. Stay mad, bro.

[Prak]

I think it's important to remember that PL lives in the middle of Sheepfuck Australia and might actually not have seen a newspaper or history textbook published in this century.

[Username17]

You know what the best part of this is? Even if Phonelobster's ranting was accurate every American posting here will live a long full life and never get one second of comeuppance for any of these, leaving Phonelobster to scream and thrash in the middle of the wilderness, impotently. Stay mad, bro.

Basically this. He's crawled so far up his own asshole that he's declaring the United States to be the Great Satan like he was a cartoon Ayatollah. It's embarassing.

I mean sure, you could make the claim that the United States is the most powerful country in the world today and is thus responsible for the most evil today. That's not a huge stretch. I think it ascribes considerably more power to the United States than it actually has, but it's logically consistent. It's the "If God sees evil and does not stop it, then God is evil" argument.

But arguing that the United States is the greatest force for evil in all of history is pretty puzzling. We live in a world which is objectively less bad than the world our ancestors lived in. Life expectancies are up, death by famine, war, and pestilence are all down. People are happier and wealthier at the mean, the median, and even the 20th percentile. Today about one half of one percent of the population of the world are slaves, which is lower than it's ever been.

It takes a very strange head space to believe that any one evil could be worse than all previous evils in a world that objectively has less evil in it. Who slew all the other dragons? And if you can blame all the evil in the world on one nation, wouldn't you have to praise them for all the good in the world as well? Obviously not if you're Phone Lobster.

But realy, PL has just completely lost the plot. At this point he is arguing that it ain't no big thing to be invaded and conquered by China. I remind you that China is an undemocratic kleptocracy that executes more people every year than the rest of the world combined. Not more "per capita," just more. His claim that China is less powerful than the United States and therefore not evil is simply completely counterfactual and also insane.

-Username17

[Koumei]

Australians do, on the whole, hate the country of America quite a bit. Even the non-racist Australians, even the ones who don't have a problem with American people, resent how a lot of shitty policies and indeed entire governments in our country came about "Because America". And the whole "being dragged into an illegitimate war because Bush wanted to and then our government agreed with anything proposed" thing.

A great many would go so far as to wish for the country to collapse. Ranging from:
-Realists: it would be nice if there wasn't a big powerhouse, shame about the real world. Maybe globalisation was a bad idea after all, but we can't change that now. Pass the gin.
-Stupid People: it would be great if the US became a failed state, then there would be no megapower sitting at number 1 to shove its dick in everyone's eye. Sadly, the US can't implode without the rest of the world suffering.
-Very Stupid People: the US should definitely collapse under its own stupidity, go Trumpocalypse! This can't go badly in any way whatsoever.

PL takes it to remarkable levels, mind you, beyond what you'd find in the majority of people in countries that have been shafted by America. While also not focusing enough on how plenty of Australia's problems are our own (fuck, Murdoch was technically born here).

[PhoneLobster]

But realy, PL has just completely lost the plot. At this point he is arguing that it ain't no big thing to be invaded and conquered by China.

No my whole damn point is China isn't invading anyone go on name the fucking country you actually claim China is invading or about to invade that desperately needs the USA to occupy it for it's own good first you war crime apologist, name it.

[Count Arioch the 28th]

Well, yeah. I don't think anyone would claim that we haven't done some shit and are also in the process of doing shit, with more shit planned to be done in the future. That's a fairly easy argument to make and support.

[Username17]

But realy, PL has just completely lost the plot. At this point he is arguing that it ain't no big thing to be invaded and conquered by China.

No my whole damn point is China isn't invading anyone go on name the fucking country you actually claim China is invading or about to invade that desperately needs the USA to occupy it for it's own good first you war crime apologist, name it.

They are fighting in Mali, Pakistan, and Iran right now. They put threats of military invasion of the Philippines and Taiwan into their state newspapers last month. China is invading people. They are threatening to invade people. They have invaded people with the intention to conquer and have conquered territory. They are currently occupying lands belonging to India and Vietnam. They are still supplying the hyperaggressive madness state of North Korea. They are currently building artificial islands in the sealanes that Japan uses to ship itself food and fuel for the purposes of interdicting that country.

Your claim that China is a peaceful nation that just wants to be left alone is simply counterfactual. The military is one of the three Maoist pillars of society, and the PLA justifies its continued existence with a constant drumbeat for military expansion.

-Username17

[OgreBattle]

[PhoneLobster]

Pakistan

I like this as an example of how everything you say when you try name dropping is disingenuous shit. I mean I'm like "that seems odd, I feel I'd have heard of that... oh wait, he can't mean, oh wow, seriously THAT, that's what he means. What a fucking, really THAT"

I could be wrong, but I fucking doubt it, it seems pretty clear you actually mean THAT.

You fucking dishonestly imply you have an example of Chinese Aggression. But. Not so fucking much.

So yeah looks like you mean the key US ally, Pakistan, occupies a place on China's border. China has sent troops there. To perform joint patrols with Pakistani forces. There are also some other projects in the area, like some Chinese sponsored infrastructure works. Oh god does this mean, yes, China has been providing a key US ally with eagerly received military and civilian assistance! THE TERROR.

Now of course India doesn't like it, but Pakistan sure as hell seems to. Now frankly as an example you were totes giving of China invading a place right now that the USA needs to invade for it's own protection. It, rather expectedly, is fucking underwhelming.

Yeah. You don't deliver Frank, you only give out shallow slight of hand that turns out to wildly misrepresented propagandized spin.

[Username17]

I could be wrong, but I fucking doubt it, it seems pretty clear you actually mean THAT.

At least you finally admit you could be wrong. Of course, you are wrong. About fucking everything.

China has a series of semi-extraterritorial enclaves all over the world. They negotiate and/or extort these concessions through a variety of means, but basically it's old school imperialism. One of them happens to be a port complex in Pakistan near the Iranian border. Nowhere near the Chinese border.

Now as it happens, this region has its own indigenous peoples independence movement, the Baloch independence movement. And these people don't particularly like having part of their land given away to the Chinese, so they attacked the port complex. China escalated and sent in soldiers. The Baloch people live in an area that extends into Iran, so the conflict did as well.

So to recap, you have Chinese soldiers fighting against the indigenous population of Western Pakistan and Eastern Iran to protect Chinese imperial enclaves gifted to them by corrupt and distant Pakistani elites. If that sounds exactly like 18th century style imperialism, that is because that is exactly what it fucking is.

But by all means, use more hand waving and capital letters. It totally makes you look like the adult in this conversation.

-Username17

[deaddmwalking]

It's totally possible to create some 'objective standard' of good that the US fails; it is also possible that by some metrics other countries might pass, though most would fail. Life is a messy business and the US (and Western Democracies in general) struggle to balance the needs of wants of individuals with the needs of a larger society.

Democracy works with the acceptance that the minority's rights will be respected, even when the chosen policy is not what the minority wanted AND when the minority agrees to accommodate the will of the majority. 'Separatist Movements' are inherently difficult - at least if you subscribe to the notion that national governments can ever affect positive change in the world. Freely allowing dissolution every time a disagreement occurs inevitably leads to every individual as their own 'sovereign nation' - perfect anarchy. So trying to decide if the Basque should be allowed to be their own nation or whether they ARE French is tricky. But that's not one that the US is directly involved in. Nor is deciding whether Northern Ireland is British or Irish.

But what I do know is that most Utopian visions rely on PEOPLE being perfected FIRST. 'If everyone just did X' is easy to say and easy to show how that would immeasurably improve the lives of everyone in the world, but people continue to not do X. Getting 'more' than their fellow-man appears to be a hard-wired instinct related to happiness.

The US (and other Western Democracies whose political and cultural heritage we share) posits that people as individuals are flawed and often selfish - even greedy - and that we need ways for our society to function that allows those individuals as much freedom as possible without allowing them to cause harm to others.

The United States does not and has not had a consistent policy. It is not an individual, but a nation composed of more than 300 Million people. The composition of those people, and the world around them, has changed. The US has never had perfect knowledge of how the actions it takes will impact the world - it can't know - but in general, it has taken actions that at the time they legitimately felt would improve conditions in the world. I understand that you believe the US should not have supported autocratic or totalitarian regimes to limit the spread of Communism. That's totally an argument you can make and you might even be right...but you also can't know. Would we all be in Soviet style gulags as slaves to the state if the US hadn't taken those actions? I don't know, and you don't either.

From the US perspective, we are judged harshly if we involve ourselves in external affairs WHEN ASKED and things go poorly regardless of our level of involvement AND if we don't involve ourselves in external affairs and things go poorly.

If an 'accurate' description of history is something you're looking for, why don't you choose whichever 'evil' the US did that you think is your best example and we'll look at how two different sides in that conflict asked for US involvement.

[maglag]

They have invaded people with the intention to conquer and have conquered territory.

But when the USA does it it's somehow called glorious liberation! Like they're the brave protectors of the Philipines nevermind the bit where they brutally conquered it on the first place and still have plenty of troops there to make sure the local "government" does whatever Washington wants.

They are currently occupying lands belonging to India and Vietnam.

The USA still didn't leave Japan or Germany or a bunch of other places last time I checked. Heck, the USA keeps nukes in some of those areas and everything. China is really asking for it putting their mainland so close to the USA's stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction!

They are still supplying the hyperaggressive madness state of North Korea.

The USA are still supplying the hyperagressive fanatic cults of the middle east.

They are currently building artificial islands in the sealanes that Japan uses to ship itself food and fuel for the purposes of interdicting that country.

You mean the country that not only invaded China into a genocidical war but also spammed chemical weapons and promoted their soldiers to rape, eat and kill chinese people (often in that order)? The chinese above everybody else have reason to be wary.

In particular when the USA gave a full pardon to the japanese developers of chemical weapons that experimented on captured chinese civilians and stuff.

Your claim that China is a peaceful nation that just wants to be left alone is simply counterfactual. The military is one of the three Maoist pillars of society, and the PLA justifies its continued existence with a constant drumbeat for military expansion.

China is just learning from the USA, the country that still spend a lot more money on military and go around supplying weapons to terrorists that were killing north-americans by the thousands barely a decade ago.

Really, you can't simultaneously have "USA iz the best guyz!" and "following the USA's example is bad!".

From the US perspective, we are judged harshly if we involve ourselves in external affairs WHEN ASKED and things go poorly regardless of our level of involvement AND if we don't involve ourselves in external affairs and things go poorly.

Maybe they would be judged less harshly if they didn't keep bragging about having the biggest military in the world and then failing to bring down some crazy cult of sand people that have nothing besides light infantry after a decade and a half.

This is, the USA in the old days was extremely efficient in exterminating the natives and trapping the survivors. And they didn't have any fancy jets or satellites or tanks or "smart" missiles back then. And the natives had cavalry on top.

[TiaC]

This is, the USA in the old days was extremely efficient in exterminating the natives and trapping the survivors. And they didn't have any fancy jets or satellites or tanks or "smart" missiles back then. And the natives had cavalry on top.

I've been staying out of this, but I'm not going to let this pass. You seem to be suggesting that the problem with how the US is fighting wars is that there isn't enough genocide. If not for all those pesky rules of engagement, the US could just kill enough people that the broken remnants of their civilization would surrender and could be shoved off to some shitty little tract of land to slowly die.

[DSMatticus]

They are currently building artificial islands in the sealanes that Japan uses to ship itself food and fuel for the purposes of interdicting that country.

You mean the country that not only invaded China into a genocidical war but also spammed chemical weapons and promoted their soldiers to rape, eat and kill chinese people (often in that order)? The chinese above everybody else have reason to be wary.

... Are you suggesting that China would be justified in interdicting Japanese trade because of WW2? Are you retarded, or are you just kind of racist? I don't really get it. Normal people don't talk about starving the German economy into collapse because of their actions in WW2. Normal people bitch about the things Germany is doing to the rest of Europe right now, sure, but not about WW2.

Really, you can't simultaneously have "USA iz the best guyz!" and "following the USA's example is bad!".

Yes, the United States is the most powerful country in the world. It also has a history of aggression, as well as of using covert agents to shit stir around the globe. To say that any particular brushfire war or coup was probably the fault of the United States before you learned anything about the situation is a good bet. There may be a lot of marbles in the bag, but more of them say "United States" than anything else.

When the United States blocks UN actions on stopping Israel from doing whatever latest anti-Arab atrocity they are doing today, the US is the bad guy. But get this: when Russia blocks UN action on stopping the Syrian civil war, they are the bad guy. And holy shit! When China blocks UN action on child soldier enslavement in Myanmar, they are the bad guy. It's almost like different countries can simultaneously be in the right and in the wrong on different important issues at the same time.

Absolutely no one has put forward the reductionist black and white, good vs evil view of international politics that you are strawmanning them with. We are talking about a set of specific conflicts in a specific region in which China is an incredibly aggressive actor that is being partially checked by a U.S. presence in the region. That is not a global declaration that the U.S. is always right. That is not "USA iz the best guyz!" The exact strawman you are trying to wield has already been brought up and addressed.

I have a decent amount of patience for stupid. I'm still responding to you, after all. But I am quickly running out of patience for lying shitheads. Maybe it's the presidential election? Regardless, could you do me a tiny favor? Could you not be a lying shithead? I would love if it that was not a thing you were. You can tell us all how you don't care whether or not Taiwan wakes up tomorrow with their democracy in tact, and I'll call you a shitbag. You can tell us all how you don't think the U.S. is any significant restraint on China's aggression, and I'll call you an idiot. But I would really, really appreciate it if you could not "paraphrase" people's arguments by replacing them with something else entirely, especially (but certainly not only) when it takes literally two minutes to find quotes proving what a lying shithead you're being.

There is merit in arguing with idiots; every little bit of stupid is an opportunity to make a substantive argument rebutting it. That's discussion, and discussion at least has the potential to be meaningful in some way. There's no merit in arguing with a liar; at the end of the day the best case scenario is you've figured out that some asshole is full of shit, and that just isn't an interesting or important revelation.

[hyzmarca]

The USA are still supplying the hyperagressive fanatic cults of the middle east

Are you saying that the USA is evil because Musilms are evil and we do too much to help Muslims?

[Username17]

Like they're the brave protectors of the Philipines nevermind the bit where they brutally conquered it on the first place and still have plenty of troops there to make sure the local "government" does whatever Washington wants.

DSM already did the heavy lifting about how you're a liar and a shitbag, but this is an interesting point. Back in August, Duterte threatened the Chinese with "Bloody Confrontation" if they didn't back down in the South China Sea. He directly and deliberately antagonized a much more powerful country to give chubbies to nationalists at home because he knew that even though it pissed the US off, they were still committed to backing him up and China couldn't afford to start shooting.

In short: The Philippines doesn't do what we want them to, and they make decisions that only make sense in light of the fact that they are relying on the US military to protect them. So you're wrong coming and going and that was a really shit example.

-Username17

[PhoneLobster]

... Are you suggesting that China would be justified in interdicting Japanese trade because of WW2?

I'm not going to join in on Maglag's thing there too much. The history is pretty much right and important to understanding the region, but not really a justification for modern actions.

However there IS something important going on NOW that really needs a mention. That being the USA has been using Japan as a proxy to antagonize China and all the while has been pushing Japan VERY hard towards once again becoming an aggressive militaristic power with the clear intent of getting Japan to attack China on behalf of the US in the general region.

I don't know if that is justification of anything China might do in response but what it IS is war mongering by the USA.

[angelfromanotherpin]

That being the USA has been using Japan as a proxy to antagonize China and all the while has been pushing Japan VERY hard towards once again becoming an aggressive militaristic power with the clear intent of getting Japan to attack China on behalf of the US in the general region.

Do you have a source for any of that?

[deaddmwalking]

... Are you suggesting that China would be justified in interdicting Japanese trade because of WW2?

I'm not going to join in on Maglag's thing there too much. The history is pretty much right and important to understanding the region, but not really a justification for modern actions.

However there IS something important going on NOW that really needs a mention. That being the USA has been using Japan as a proxy to antagonize China and all the while has been pushing Japan VERY hard towards once again becoming an aggressive militaristic power with the clear intent of getting Japan to attack China on behalf of the US in the general region.

I don't know if that is justification of anything China might do in response but what it IS is war mongering by the USA.

I'd like to see your source as well. My major in College was International Relations and I had a minor in Asian Studies and Japanese. That's an area of the world that I have studied in great detail. I have considered a conflict there as a major possibility, but it has nothing to do with Japan becoming aggressively militaristic (their Constitution caps their defense spending at 1% of GDP - though the accounting for that can allow it to exceed that amount). North Korea is constantly trying to provoke a response from Japan in part because relations between both Koreas on one side with China and Japan on the other have been...strained...since World War II.

The US has asked Japan to pay a larger share of the military maintenance costs. And of course, while Japan has asked and pays for a US military presence, US soldiers are not popular everywhere. In Okinawa, for instance, protests against US troops are not uncommon.

Of course, that would qualify as one of those 'difficult situations' where the US is trying to cooperate with a friendly power but things are never a 'perfect fit' what with cultural differences and some 'us versus them' antagonism that is nearly identical to conflicts between University Students and 'Townies' in any college town in the US.

[Stahlseele]

Yeah, if WW3 starts it's going to be the muricans versus either the russkies or the chinese, one side of Asia is going to get it.
The east side would mean a more direct war, probably mainly navy and airforce, between USA and Comrade China, while the west asian end with europe in between would go to landwar and airforce.
If the political climate does not change drastically between these three.
And woe be upon us, if Russia and China decide to team up on somebody.
A War of expansion BETWEEN Russia and China would be . . well, aside from being a humanitarian tragedy of unknown calibre, probably good spectator sport, as long as WMD are not being used . .

[PhoneLobster]

Do you have a source for any of
that?

There has been a push on since Iraq by the US for Japan to lift various restrictions that prevent it from engaging in military conflicts other than the actual defense of Japan.

It has taken a long time to get a sufficiently complaint Japanese government but restrictions on Japan's military HAVE been lifted, in fact a number of restrictions in Japanese law on the range of operations for it's naval forces and the removal of the basic "no foreign wars" thing have been lifted over the course of last two years or so.

If you haven't noticed this in the news then that's not my fucking problem, go look it the fuck up it's not hard throw in "Japan Military Restrictions" into Google, at the very least you'll get the Wikipedia entry including this about the 2014 "reinterpretation" of the pacifistic article in their constitution...

In July 2014, Japan's government approved a reinterpretation of this article despite concerns and disapproval from mainland China and South Korea, although the United States supported the move. This reinterpretation would allow Japan to exercise the right of "collective self defense" and exercise military action if one of its allies were to be attacked. It is considered by some parties as illegitimate, posing a serious danger to Japan's democracy since the Prime Minister circumvented the constitutional amendment procedure, dictating a radical change to the meaning of fundamental principles in the Constitution by way of Cabinet fiat without Diet debate, vote, or public approval.

... but it is worth noting that further changes have been ongoing at least during 2015 and the push seems ongoing to lift what very little restrictions now remain.

As of basically nowish about the only thing the Japanese "self defense force" is still not permitted to do, yet, is a flat out first strike attack, they can now go basically anywhere, threaten China in waters Japan previously didn't even let its forces go to, and join basically any military operation they like on a pretext as thin as "the US asked us to". Incidentally they are increasing their defense budget, they are working on creating amphibious assault forces and otherwise escalating their now not so much "defense" related military capabilities all round.

But don't worry. I'm sure that turning Japan into an aggressive militarized state and actively encouraging it to take on a role exerting military force in the greater Pacific region and well beyond will work out just great for the USA... THIS time around.