While the US-Japan alliance played a positive role in facilitating Japan's economic recovery immediately after World War II, it now serves only to make Japan a proxy for the United States in its bid to contain China.
By getting involved as actively as possible in the US' moves to encircle China or creating various types of barriers for the smooth development of its neighbor, Japan is doing a disservice to the economic integration of East Asia and stability of the region. In unconditionally submitting to whatever the US dictates, Japan is also reinforcing its loss of autonomy as a protectorate of the US.
In making itself a vassal of the US, Japan is pushing aside almost all the factors that have made it a major country in East Asia, such as its long-term economic cooperation with China, which has facilitated its economic stability, its role as a key player in the economic integration of the region and the contribution it has made to the building of political trust among countries in the region.
That Japan's 2021 defense strategy emphasizes for the first time the importance of maintaining stability across the Taiwan Straits and Japan's Parliament has adopted a resolution on what it called the "serious human rights situation in China". Pointing an accusing finger at the Chinese government's policies in the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region highlights how willing Japan is to jump on the US' anti-China bandwagon.
With its increasingly active role in various US-led cliques such as the Quad, Japan has increasingly become a factor of instability in East Asia. The Japanese prime minister is even expected to attend the NATO summit due to be held later this month, which is viewed as a move intended to facilitate NATO's expansion into the Asia-Pacific region.
By following such a path, Japan is estranging itself from its neighbors, complicating the security situation in East Asia and jeopardizing the integration of the regional economy. This will only gain it the mistrust of other countries in the region.
With the atrocities Japanese invading forces committed during Japan's aggression against its neighboring countries before and during World War II still being raw wounds thanks to its recent attempts to obscure and rewrite history, Japan's neighbors have no reason to believe that Japan acting as the minion of a self-obsessed and imperious US will do any good to the peace and development of the region.
It is a shame that Japanese politicians have become so obsequious to Japan's junior partner role in the alliance that they are willing to stoop so low as to cater to whatever Washington dictates at the cost of regional peace and even Japan's own development.