A geopolitical analyst in Europe says the United States could allow Japan to rearm itself “but only if it promises to do so under US control.”

Joaquin Flores, who is the director of the Center for Syncretic Studies in Belgrade, made the remarks in a phone interview with Press TV on Wednesday.

US President Barack Obama is hosting Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe at the White House as their countries engage in a power game to keep a rising China in check.

Obama has undertaken an effort to “pivot” US economic and military resources to Asia and has argued that without the trade agreement, China will step into the breach.

"If we don't write the rules, China will write the rules out in that region," Obama said in a recent interview.

“Unlike China, Japan cannot be said to be really a sovereign state,” said Flores, adding that “Japan would like to change the laws following World War II, which prohibit it from having its own military.”

Flores stated that after failing to make any headway during his visit to China last November, Obama has now returned to Japan, which is a long-time US ally.

He said that the US policy in the east is paving the way for a NATO military buildup in the Pacific region to counter Russia and China.

Flores said “that was not strange in light of this, when the US pushes Japan to stoke tensions around nominal territorial disputes involving some really very tiny islands in the South China Sea.”

“The Japanese control over the so-called Senkaku Islands… is really about is that the US would like to see Japan have the potential to create nearly a thousand-kilometer range in closing the East China Sea and blocking Chinese access to the Pacific, likewise the US is pushing on the Philippines to do the same in the South China Sea,” said Flores.

He also said that “without the US interfering, and left to their own devises, the real evolution of China-Japan bilateral relations would be win-win for both people.”

China and Japan, together with India, “would have the capacity to bring increased prosperity and development to half of the world’s population, forever lifting people out of poverty and ending unnecessary maladies and unneeded suffering,” Flores noted.

HDS/GJH