Cobra Gold 2006

With so many exercises happening between so many countries at one time, everyone is bound to receive great training to take back home.

Unfortunately, the above quote is not an excerpt from the Olympic Committee's homepage, but rather how the US Pacific Command website describes the commencement of the 25th annual Cobra Gold. What began in 1981 as joint US-Thai war games has turned into a full-blown Asian NATO, with this year's participants also including Singapore, Japan, and for the first time Indonesia. While this is Japan's second year participating, it is the first time the Self Defense Forces will actively take part in Combined Field Training Exercises. Despite an obvious violation of Article 9 of the country's Constitution, Japanese participation has been exceptionally euphemized, limiting activities to "humanitarian/civic assistance projects" (as opposed to the other countries' "peace support operations field training exercise in support of the United Nations Global Peace Operations Initiative (GPOI)").


Japanese rearmament is an explicit goal of the United States-Japan Security Consultative Committee Document Joint Statement signed on May 1 of this year by Rumsfeld, Rice, Minister of Foreign Affairs Aso Taro, and Minister of State for Defense Nukaga Fukushiro. (Rice and Taro pictured together, right.) Contained in the Statement:

The Ministers stressed the imperative of strengthening and improving the effectiveness of bilateral security and defense cooperation in such areas as ballistic missile defense, bilateral contingency planning, information sharing and intelligence cooperation, and international peace cooperation activities, as well as the importance of improving interoperability of Japan’s Self-Defense Forces and U.S. forces.

And there you have it: "interoperability" of Japan's SDF and US forces. As the new Japanese military chief of staff Massaki Hajime told Reuters:

Integrating the forces has been our dream since the Self-Defense Forces were established about 50 years ago.

Adopting the new joint staff system will also make it easier to coordinate with the United States, which has a similar structure.