US-JAPAN MISSILE DEFENCE COOPERATION: CHINA'S REACTIONS AND RESPONSES.

This article deals with the important and enormously complicated issue of US-Japan Ballistic Missile Defence1 (BMD) cooperation. A context for analysis is developed through the consideration of China's views of the causes and consequences of the highly controversial December 2003 Koizumi Cabinet decision to commit Japan to the US-led missile defence programme. An analytical trajectory is drawn between that decision and the emerging shapers of China's strategic thinking on the process of political, legislative and force-structure reform, which is underway in Japan's security policy. It begins by discussing the rationalisation used by Tokyo and Washington to justify BMD cooperation, and how it is linked at the various different levels of China's policymaking to 'new' threats that have emerged over the last seven years. This connection highlights the pressing need to distinguish between the following questions: what are missile defences (in an operational context), and what are they being used for? It concludes by arguing that the Koizumi and subsequent administration's enthusiasm for US-Japan BMD cooperation is, to many Chinese, tantamount to a long-term Japanese commitment to the materialisation of a new regional security order - one that is capable of forcing Japan to take on a larger security role and severely curtailing China's strategic reach to the outside world. This, for now, makes the very idea of missile defences one of the biggest impediments to more open, trusting and cooperative relations between China and Japan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]