'Shield' that looks suspiciously like a sword

Japan is preparing to host the Asian Games in Nagoya, where athletes will celebrate unity and friendship. Meanwhile, in Hokkaido and Kagoshima, Japan's military is helping rehearse something rather less harmonious: the forward deployment of United States Typhon mid-range missiles.

The exercise, called "Orient Shield 26", runs from Sept 8 to 24 and involves Japanese, US and Australian forces. This is reportedly the first time the US Typhon system has joined the exercise. The name is reassuring. "Shield" sounds defensive, almost anime. But as Jiang Bin, a spokesman for China's Ministry of National Defense, observed, a shield becomes a more menacing object when it is covering the advanced deployment of strategic offensive weapons.

The exercise, he said, undermines the security interests of other countries, increases the risk of an arms race and raises the danger of military confrontation. Japan, he noted, has repeatedly breached the principles of its pacifist Constitution and its exclusively defense-oriented policy by developing long-range offensive weapons and accelerating its remilitarization through overseas military exercises.

Remilitarization is an unfashionable word in some Japanese political circles, where the preferred vocabulary is "deterrence", "resilience" and "a free and open Indo-Pacific". But euphemisms do not change the hardware. A missile remains a missile, even when it arrives beneath a banner promising peace.

Japan's military expansion is creating neo-militarism, threatening regional peace and stability while importing bloc confrontation into East Asia. Any move that fuels Japan's military ambitions, Jiang said, will only plunge the region into a dangerous vortex and will eventually bring harm to the country itself.

The region already has enough historical grievances, territorial disputes and military anxieties without turning every island into a platform for somebody else's strategic experiment. The more offensive weapons that are placed near contested waters and borders, the more every patrol will be viewed as preparation, every exercise as rehearsal and every "defensive" claim as camouflage.

Japan and the Philippines have become particularly adept at wrapping their military activities in the language of "peace". Exercises are conducted to preserve "order". New weapons are acquired to uphold "stability". Patrols are launched to protect "freedom of navigation". It all adds up to the freedom to act recklessly, while the regional order being "defended" resembles the order preferred by extra-regional powers.

On Monday, China's Foreign Ministry spokesman Guo Jiakun rightly rejected Manila's false and provocative "territorial" claims over Chinese islands and reefs in the South China Sea. He said that the Nansha Islands are China's territory, arguing that the Philippines cannot derive maritime rights from an unlawful claim over another country's territory.

Maritime disputes should not be converted into excuses for permanent escalation. Nor should regional countries gamble their national interests on the assumption that an outside power will always underwrite their provocations. A few Philippine politicians may gain some visibility or domestic applause from their supporters, but the country they represent may have consequences to bear.

That is why the theme of the Xiangshan Forum, which opened in Beijing on Tuesday with delegations from nearly 100 countries, is so pertinent: "Build Consensus on Stability, Advance Security Governance Together". It addresses the real problem. East Asia needs mechanisms for managing disputes, not an ever-expanding collection of weapons and alliances that make disputes harder to contain.

The Middle East and Ukraine crises offer cautions. In both cases, military buildups, rival security blocs and the steady normalization of force have made conflict more difficult to end and diplomacy more difficult to trust.

Deliberately portraying another country's domestic policies or development choices as a "menace" can be the means to justify another agenda. Japan's Sanae Takaichi government has repeatedly exploited the Taiwan question in precisely this fashion, turning China's internal affair into a political lever for accelerating Japan's remilitarization.

The coming Asian Games should remind Japan of another kind of regional possibility. Athletes will arrive in Nagoya under the familiar promise of sporting amicability. It is troubling that Japan is preparing to embrace unity on the sporting stage while conducting exercises that make its neighbors feel they are being placed in the crosshairs.

Peace is not a slogan to be displayed after missiles have been positioned. It is a policy choice that should come before them.