From: Foreign Policy

‘We Face a Very Serious Chinese Military Threat’

Japan’s former defense minister talks to FP about cyberattacks, the East China Sea face-off, and whether North Korea’s Kim Jong Un is a puppet dictator.

INTERVIEW BY ISAAC STONE FISH

Over the weekend, when President Barack Obama met with Chinese President Xi Jinping, China’s territorial disputes came up in conversation. The most pressing is China’s claim on the Diaoyu, a small island chain administered by the Japanese, who call it the Senkakus. It’s probably the most dangerous flashpoint in China’s often tense relationship with Japan, and a big worry for Satoshi Morimoto, Japan’s defense minister from July 2012 to December (he’s now a professor at Takushoku University). The first defense minister since World War II who was not a member of the Diet, Japan’s parliament, Morimoto is a defense expert, not a politician. In September, his government nationalized the Senkaku Islands, inciting protests across China; that a political outsider like Morimoto now calls China “an obvious threat” is all the more worrying.

Foreign Policy sat down with Morimoto in Tokyo to discuss China’s aggressive posture, Japan’s historical record during World War II, and whether or not North Korea’s president, Kim Jong Un, is just a puppet leader. Interview is edited and condensed for clarity.

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FP: How vulnerable is Japan to cyberattacks from China?

SM: Already our society, including government organizations, as well as some [parts of] the defense and IT industries have already been the target of cyberattacks from China, although China denies conducting such very intentional cyberattacks. The problem is we have no concrete or comprehensive international law to prohibit cyberattacks or cyber-terrorism against another country. Mainly due to the definition of cyber — it’s so difficult, so complex. Even if we could define what cyber is, we have no international organization or mechanism to detect cyberattacks. And even if we can detect cyberattacks, we cannot intervene on the sovereignty of another nation.

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