US military bases remain essential to Japan’s security, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said in an interview yesterday, as he brushed off comments by Republican presidential hopeful Donald Trump that Tokyo should be left to defend itself.
Japan’s alliance with Washington has been the bedrock of its defense since the end of World War II, and the country hosts 47,000 US troops.
“I cannot conceive of any situation within the foreseeable future when the US presence wouldn’t be necessary,” Abe told the Wall Street Journal.
Abe has vowed to boost Japan’s military, but he sidestepped a question on whether Japan would play a bigger role in its own defense, saying Tokyo would strengthen its relationship with Washington.
“By strengthening the Japan-US alliance, we’ll strengthen deterrence and that will contribute to peace and stability in the region, not just Japan,” Abe said in the interview with the Journal, conducted in Tokyo on Tuesday.
Abe also said he wanted to push through a trade deal that has been attacked by Democratic presidential hopefuls Bernie Sanders and Hillary Rodham Clinton.
“This is the birth of an economic zone that has 40 percent of the world’s [GDP], one that is protected by free and fair rules,’ Abe told the Journal, referring to the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). “Through it, the US, Japan and the other countries participating in TPP will achieve great profit and gain chances for growth.”
Trump said that US alliances with countries such as Japan and South Korea cost too much to maintain and that they should be responsible for their own defense — unless they bear more of the cost burden. Trump has also suggested that they could develop their own nuclear weapons, a stance particularly controversial in Japan, the only country in the world to be attacked with atomic bombs.
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