US Imperialistic Mindset, and Japan's Double-Track Diplomacy toward N. Korea

Beijing Olympics baseball: Japan 2-6 Korea (final)

*

Do those NATO aspirants, Ukraine and Georgia, belong to the North Atlantic region?

*

You have made many very persuasive and moving indictments of American imperialism in Vietnam. Could you spell out the reasons why the United States went into Vietnam?

… If you read the State Department’s propaganda of 1950/1951, you will find that their intention then was to give sufficient support to the French to enable them to re-constitute French colonial rule and to eradicate Communists (in Vietnam).

When the French proved incapable of carrying this out, the United States imply took over. Dean Acheson made it clear that when China was “lost,” the United States would not tolerate any further disturbance to the integrated world system it was attempting to construct and revolution in Vietnam was seen as an erosion of that system. Now it is perfectly true, as many people point out, that the United States can survive without Vietnam as a colony, that the United States does not need Vietnamese rubber or anything like that. But I think the very fact that Vietnam is so unimportant in this respect show how desperately necessary it is felt to maintain an integrated world system. They are willing to make this great commitment even to hold a marginal, peripheral piece of their empire.

If one looks into it even more deeply then one discerns other things going on. For example, the United States fought the Second World War, in the Pacific theatre, primarily in order to prevent Japan from constructing its own independent, integrated imperial system which would be closed to America. That was the basic issue which lay behind the Japanese-American war. Well, the United States won. The result is that now it must develop a system in which Japan can function effectively as a junior partner. That means the United States has to grant Japan what it needs as a partner, namely markets and access to raw materials, which for Japan, unlike the United States, are desperate necessities. Now the United States can very well survive without Southeast Asia. But Japan cannot. So of the United States wants to keep Japan securely embedded within the American system, then it has to preserve Southeast Asia for Japan. Otherwise Japan has other alternatives. It would turn to China or to Siberia, but that would mean the United States had lost the Second World War, in its Pacific phase. Once again a substantial industrial power would be carving itself out an independent space which, taken to its logical conclusion, would be separate and partially scaled off from the American world system. (P. 106, “Linguistics and Politics (spring 1969),” “Language and Politics,” Noam Chomsky)

*

朝日新聞（電子版）によると、自民党の山崎拓議員（福岡）が北京市で行った北朝鮮関係者との会談（19日）について、「先般の日朝実務者協議を踏まえ、（日朝交渉を）確実に前進させるために話し合った」「現在停滞している核申告の検証問題が打開されれば、一気に進展する」と述べたらしい。こんな二元外交がどうして放置されているのだろうか。