About a year ago, I was in the office of Albert del Rosario, the foreign minister of the Philippines. What, I asked, would Manila say if Shinzo Abe, then running for prime minister of Japan, carried out his pledge to amend the pacifist constitution and “rearm”? (In fact, Japan is already fully armed, but its constitution bars use of force except in self-defence.) I fully expected him to reply that this would be a regrettable move. Not only would it be enormously provocative to China but memories of the country’s invasion of the Philippines, in which rape and civilian slaughter were common, were surely just as raw in Manila as they were in Beijing and Seoul. Not a bit of it, he said. “We would welcome that very much. We are looking for balancing factors in the region and Japan could be a significant balancing factor.”
大约一年前，我曾坐在菲律宾外长阿尔伯特•德尔罗萨里奥(Albert del Rosario)的办公室里。当时我问他，如果正在竞选日本首相的安倍晋三(Shinzo Abe)履行他的承诺，修改和平宪法和“重新武装”日本，菲律宾将作何评价？（实际上，日本已全面武装，但该国宪法禁止使用武力，除非用于自卫。）我信心十足地期待他会这样回答：这将是一种令人遗憾的举动。这不仅仅是因为此举对manbetx3.0 是一种严重的挑衅，而且日本侵略菲律宾的历史（当时强奸和平民屠杀相当普遍）肯定还活生生地印在菲律宾人的脑海里，就像在manbetx3.0 和韩国那样。然而他表示，这没什么。“我们将对此非常欢迎。我们正在这个地区寻找平衡因素，日本可能就是一个重大的平衡因素。”