安倍首相のダボス会議発言−日中間の戦争の可能性

安倍首相のダボス会議での基調講演がFTやBBCから批判を浴びていることに対し、政府は首相の真意は日中の衝突回避にあるとの説明を始めた。また、外務省が手配した外部の通訳が首相の発言を英語で伝えた（1／25日経）、と暗に通訳が首相の発言を踏み越えたと示唆する情報を流している。

問題になるのは、首相の真意ではなく、日中間に戦争の可能性があることを明言した首相の認識に対してであり、その経緯は記者懇談会の司会を務めたFTのGideon Rachmanの記事（後記参照）から明らかである。通訳云々に至っては、言った言わないの水掛け論に過ぎない。

首相がダボスでヨーロッパの知識人を相手に第一次大戦前の英独関係を取り上げた真意は報じられていない。少なくとも対外的には、好戦的な政治家と評価されたであろうし、中国には更に安倍政権攻撃の材料を与えたことになる。

安倍首相の主張−he repeated his call for the opening of a military-to-military communication channel between China and Japan.−は、実現性の乏しい仕組みを構築することを提案して、開戦に至った時に責任を中国に転嫁する、あるいは、こちらからの開戦の大義名分を得ようとする意図があるようにも思われる。

首相発言が戦前の近衛文麿の「国民政府を対手とせず」声明（1938年（昭和13年）1月16日）に通じるものでないと思いたい。

国際政治上の含意については、下記を参照。
站谷 幸一：世界にとって「右翼のルーピー」となった安倍首相：ダボス会議の衝撃
http://agora-web.jp/author/taya_kouichi

ロイター　http://jp.reuters.com/article/marketsNews/idJPL3N0KW5GJ20140123
安倍晋三首相は２２日、世界経済フォーラム年次総会（ダボス会議）で基調講演を行い、不戦の誓いを強調するとともに、成長の果実は軍備拡張に浪費されるべきでないと述べ、軍拡を続ける中国を暗にけん制した。昨年末の靖国神社参拝については、第二次世界大戦だけでなく、第一次大戦や１８６８年の戊辰戦争の戦没者を弔うためと説明した。

Davos leaders: Shinzo Abe on WW1 parallels, economics and women at work
January 22, 2014 2:39 pmby Gideon Rachman
http://blogs.ft.com/the-world/2014/01/davos-leaders-shinzo-abe-on-war-economics-and-women-at-work/

Here at Davos, I’ve just had the opportunity to moderate a discussion between the Japanese prime minister, Shinzo Abe, and a group of international journalists. I asked Mr Abe whether a war between China and Japan was “conceivable”.
Interestingly, he did not take the chance to say that any such conflict was out of the question. In fact, Mr Abe explicitly compared the tensions between China and Japan now to the rivalry between Britain and Germany in the years before the first world war, remarking that it was a “similar situation”.
The comparison, he explained, lies in the fact that Britain and Germany – like China and Japan – had a strong trading relationship. But in 1914, this had not prevented strategic tensions leading to the outbreak of conflict.
Naturally enough, Mr Abe also made it clear that he would regard any “inadvertent” conflict as a disaster – and he repeated his call for the opening of a military-to-military communication channel between China and Japan.
In a later response, Mr Abe argued that a major source of instability in the Pacific region is the steady increase in Chinese military spending, which he says is increasing by 10 per cent a year.
The prime minister also pointed out that America and Japan are to hold talks about their security relationship later this year, and added that Japan would “very much like to strengthen our military relationship with the US.”
When a Chinese journalist pressed Mr Abe about his recent controversial visit to the Yasukuni shrine, which commemorates the souls of the Japanese war-dead, including some classed as war criminals, Mr Abe said that this was a simple tribute to the Japanese who had died in many wars and pointed out that he had called, at Yasukuni, for Japan “never again to fight a war.”
The other main topic of conversation was Japan’s programme of radical economic reforms, known popularly as “Abenomics”. When I asked the prime minister about the risks associated with the strategy, he resorted to a golf metaphor.
Japan, he said, had been like a golfer, stuck in a bunker for 15 years, but reluctant to reach for the sand wedge, in case they over-hit the ball and shot out-of-bounds. Now, he said, Japan had finally had the courage to use the sand-wedge. Deflation, he argued, had not been totally vanquished but was now much less of a threat.
Pressed on the so-called “third arrow” of Abenomics – structural reforms that are meant to spark higher productivity growth – Mr Abe laid considerable emphasis on the need to get more women into the work-force. Japan, he said, would now aim to have women making up 30 per cent of civil servants.