Is World War Three about to start... by accident? Max Hastings asks whether rising tensions between China and Japan could boil over

Chinese diplomat argued that Japan risks 'serious threat to global peace'

He even compared Japan today to Lord Voldemort, from Harry Potter



It comes just weeks after China declared its own Air Defence Zone

Japan's prime minister has threatened to shoot down any Chinese drones

Perhaps it is possible — and how nice it would be to believe this — that war between the greatest nations on earth has been abolished.

The cost and the threat of nuclear escalation is so horrendous that reason argues that nothing remotely resembling the 20th century's vast global clashes can ever happen again.

Assuredly, there can be no more Dunkirks or D-Days, because no Western nation — even the United States — can deploy a mass army.

Armed Chinese soldiers stand at attention after being deployed in Qingdao, Shandong province

If conflict does come, it will be waged with the high-tech weapons of our own time: warplanes manned and unmanned, missiles, cyber-attack weapons and the many instruments of destruction guided from space satellites.

But this would not make a great power conflict any less catastrophic.

And this is why a shiver will have run through the leaderships of Asia and of the Western powers this week when China's ambassador to London argued that Japan risks 'a serious threat to global peace' by 'rekindling' the bellicose attitude that hastened the expansion of World War II into a global conflict.

He even compared Japan today to Lord Voldemort, the arch villain in the Harry Potter novels.

This comes just a few weeks after China — with absolutely no warning — declared hundreds of thousands of square miles of airspace above the East China Sea as its own Air Defence Zone.

This includes the eight tiny uninhabited pimples, called the Senkaku Islands by Japan and Diaoyu by China.

Taiwan also has a claim to the islands — nationalised by Japan from private sellers in 2012, much to the anger of China.

M60A3 tanks fire off shells during the annual Han Kuang military exercise in Penghu, west of Taiwan A Chinese submarine attends an offshore blockade exercise during the third phase of the Sino-Russian 'Peace Mission 2005' joint military exercise, held on the sea to the south-east of China's Shandong Peninsula

The United States responded to this bitter dispute between Tokyo and Beijing by dispatching two USAAF B-52s bombers to overfly the islands, emphasising its commitment to the right of free navigation.

Japan's prime minister, Shinzo Abe, declared gravely that China had started 'a whole new game'. His government threatened to shoot down any Chinese drones that appeared over the Senkakus. Beijing responded that this would be an act of war.

Nobody, including the Chinese, wants armed conflict. Indeed, an analyst for the International Institute Of Strategic Studies has said that China 'aims to push rather than break limits'.

Yet the tensions between Tokyo, Washington and Beijing have been increasing for years.

Amphibious tanks of the Chinese People's Liberation Army move to land a beach A Chinese naval vessel launches anti-submarine missiles in an offshore blockade exercise

For the moment, China, the U.S. and Japan still maintain courtesies between governments. Most crucially, Beijing holds trillions of dollars of U.S. debt.

But many of history's wars have been triggered by miscalculations while nations have been testing each other's strengths.

Indeed, there is a profound fear in Washington, in Tokyo, and maybe also in Beijing, that one day something unspeakably ghastly could happen by mistake.

Remember that in 1914 before the outbreak of World War I, Britain and Germany were each other's largest trading partners. Professor Peter Dutton, of the U.S. Naval War College, has warned of the growing tensions, saying: 'China's challenge to existing maritime norms is creating hairline fractures in the global order.'

Rising tensions: A hot-air balloon a Chinese cook took a ride in caused a diplomatic incident recently when it was discovered by Japanese coast guard in waters near the East China Sea islands called Senkaku by Japan and Diaoyu by China

A jet fighter of Jinan Military Region takes part in a China Air Force Military drill on September 17, 2012 in Jinan, China

This comment followed an authoritative Washington defence guru who said that, whatever short-term bother terror groups such as Al Qaeda might cause, 'in the middle-long term, there will only be one main concern of the U.S. armed forces, and that is China. China is reshaping the military order in Asia, and is doing so at our expense'.

China has an ever-growing fleet of missile-armed warships — thought to number around 80, as well as nearly 300 amphibious assault ships — including fast-attack craft specifically designed as 'carrier-killers', to engage the U.S. Navy's behemoths.

In response, the huge U.S. Andersen air force base on the Pacific Ocean island of Guam has become host to a £10 billion reinforcement programme.

The Japanese Ground Self-Defense Force holds an anti-tank weapon during an annual training exercise at Higashifuji training field near Mount Fuji in Gotemba, west of Tokyo A Japanese armoured tank fires during an annual training exercise at Higashifuji training field near Mount Fuji Paratroopers from Japanese Ground Self-Defense Force (JGSDF) Narashino 1st Airborne Brigade jump out from a military plane

As a result, its hangars now hold B-2 and B-52 bombers, air-to-surface and cruise missiles, Global Hawk drones, F-15 and F-22 fighters, the latter just a 20-minute flight from the Taiwan Strait.

Amitai Etzioni, professor of international relations at George Washington University, declares bleakly: 'There are increasing signs that the United States and China are on a collision course.'

What is not disputed is that China is determined to assert its new status as a major regional power, while the U.S. is equally bent upon deterring or deflecting Chinese expansionism, and especially aggressiveness.

This was the reason behind President Obama's 2010 decision to rebalance American strategic assets towards the Pacific.

The American case is as readily made as was the British one, for resisting quite similar German posturing before 1914. Washington's attitude is: 'We and our allies are democracies, while China is an autocracy which denies respect for human rights or international law.'

Japan's Aegis-class destroyer Kirishima launches and an anti-aircraft missile off the coast of Hawaii

I believe that unless the Washington administration makes plain its determination to support any country (such as Japan) that is threatened with aggression by Beijing, China will go ahead and impose its ruthless will upon the entire Pacific region.

As for the contrary view from Beijing itself, China's leaders cherish a profound grievance about the Tokyo government's persistent refusal to confront the reality of Japan's mid-20th century war crimes in Asia.

For the Tokyo government asserts that the time has passed for any Japanese apologies or even discussion of its historical record.

An example of this defiance is the military museum that is situated next door to Tokyo's Yasakuni shrine, where so many Japanese war criminals' ashes lie and to which many Japanese politicians visit to pay homage.

I have been to the place myself, and find it as repugnant as do the Chinese. Which is why they found such offence a few days ago when the Japanese premier arrived there to pay his respects. (Its choice of exhibits is intended to prove that during the middle of the last century, Japan entered China — where at least 15 million people fell victim to its occupation — and other Asian countries in order to 'protect' them from European exploitation.) In the same vein, Japan describes its half-century occupation of Korea as a 'partnership'.

Japan Ground Self Defense Force soldiers rapel down from a transport helicoptor UH-1

The ghastly Thirties massacres committed by the Japanese army at Shanghai and Nanjing are not mentioned.

In Japanese school textbooks, the systemic exploitation of 'comfort women' by the Japanese Army is a forbidden subject.

Most shockingly, a Japanese minister claimed last year that such victims were 'volunteers'.

While it is deemed unforgivable — and even criminal — across most of the world to deny the existence of the Nazi Holocaust of six million Jews, almost the entire Japanese nation denies its own barbarities across Asia.

This intransigence helps to explain why South Korea, for instance, recently refused to conclude an intelligence-sharing security agreement with Japan, because public opinion remains so alienated by its former oppressors' lies about the past. For its part, the U.S. is impatient for Japan to abandon the controversial Article 9 of its post-war constitution (imposed by America after the end of World War II), which forces the country to renounce war and restricts its armed forces to a self-defence role.

Japan's prime minister, Shinzo Abe, declared that his government would shoot down any Chinese drones that appeared over the Senkakus

Senkaku islands, the small island cluster on the East China Sea, which Japan, China and Taiwan all claim sovereignty over

Times have changed and Washington now wants to see the Japanese accept a much larger share of the responsibility for containing China.

But more than a few prominent Asians are wagging a warning finger at the Americans, urging: 'Be careful what you wish for.'



The truth is that many of Japan's Asian neighbours — not to mention the Chinese — will never trust Tokyo until it comes clean about its dreadful history, as it seems determined not to do.

China is a tough, assertive, immature nation in a hurry; the United States is seen in Beijing as a weakly led, declining military power that is vulnerable to pressure

On the specific issue of the disputed Senkaku islands, China points out that Tokyo has held them only since the late 19th century, when Japan became an early entrant into the race for an Asian empire.

There are economic issues at stake, too. Sovereignty claims are based on a desire to exploit the area's rich resources in fish and hydrocarbons.

Above all, though, the tension is based on much bigger ambitions.

China argues, just as Germany did before 1914 in respect of Britain's maritime supremacy, that now it is one of the big players in Asia, there is no reason why it should accept America's claims to Pacific hegemony.

Why should Beijing tolerate U.S. warships and aircraft conducting close surveillance of the Chinese coast? Such a presence is unjustified in an age of satellites and simply reflects a wish by America to parade its military might at the expense of Chinese dignity.

Such arguments have spread to cover debate about freedom of the internet. A Chinese army general recently dismissed American drum-banging about the importance of preserving 'global internet freedom.'

He said that Washington was using this as an excuse to preserve its own 'cyber-hegemony'. He added: 'In the information era, seizing and maintaining superiority in cyberspace is more important than was seizing command of the sea and air in World War II'.

Even if we British, as American allies, ultimately reject some of these arguments, we should acknowledge that the U.S. often seems clumsy, patronising and over-bearing in its attitude to other nations.

For example, the Chinese were enraged recently by the behaviour of U.S. Vice-President Joe Biden. On a supposed goodwill visit to Beijing, he urged a group of Chinese to keep up their protests against denial of human rights. He said they should 'challenge the government'.

Biden may have been right, but his action was foolish and insensitive.

During the Second Sino-Japanese War in the 1930s, Nanjing was the scene of a Japanese massacre (the Rape of Nanking), which is ignored by the Japanese government even today

Such self-righteous moralising is the sort of behaviour that worries Nigel Inkster, a former deputy director of Britain's Secret Intelligence Service, who, earlier this year, spoke bleakly about the relationship between the two countries.

He said: 'If it is to avoid becoming the chronicle of a death foretold, both parties will need to demonstrate greater self-awareness than either has yet shown'.

A key issue of contention remains human rights.

Of course, it is right that the rest of the world presses China to respect international law abroad and human rights at home.

Military power, firmness and clarity of purpose are essential tools for addressing China through the years ahead, as it increasingly flexes its muscles.

But so, too, is a willingness to recognise that China will not become a liberal democracy any time soon.

As this vast country has for centuries been so misused by the Western powers, including Britain, its rise to greatness now deserves applause as well as prudent apprehension.

Yet, however careful the U.S. and China may be in managing their future relationship, I fear that it will remain fraught and indeed dangerous.

China is a newly rich, increasingly mighty nation, which is bent upon elbowing aside the Americans, in the Pacific region at least, to assert its own claims as a Great Power.

This makes it inevitable that there will be rows, confrontations, crises, some involving both nations' armed forces.

The peril will persist throughout our lifetimes and the great worry is that a clash such as one over the disputed Senkaku islands will go horribly wrong.

Popular nationalism is a growing force in China, just as it is in Japan, and the great challenge for both nations' politicians is to grapple with its excesses.

China often speaks of the importance of using restraint — kezhi — in its conduct abroad.

But its defence minister has said that although any full-scale war is unlikely, 'we cannot exclude the possibility that, in some local area, unexpected events may occur, or military friction may take place due a to a misfire'.

History tells us that nations that create vastly expensive armed forces sooner or later feel an itch to use them.

China is a tough, assertive, immature nation in a hurry; the United States is seen in Beijing as a weakly led, declining military power that is vulnerable to pressure.

For the moment, Washington knows that it can deploy vaster greater military power than China. It is also morbidly anxious not to be seen to show weakness — hence its decision to dispatch the B-52s over the Senkakus.

Ultimately, I want to be hopeful. The world managed to avert war during more than 40 years of armed nuclear confrontation between the Soviet Union and the United States.

Maybe it can do so through the 21st century, as China grows ever stronger and America's superiority wanes.

But we cannot take peace for granted.