The Rape of Nanking: Massacre or Myth?
By Jonas E. Alexis • Unz Review • May 21, 2026
The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II by Iris Chang was unquestionably an incendiary and highly tendentious work that quickly generated considerable controversy in both the United States and Japan following its publication in 1997. The book received praise from major publications such as the Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, the Chicago Tribune, and the Philadelphia Inquirer.
The book achieved such remarkable success that it prompted then fifty-year-old Ted Leonsis, vice chairman of AOL, to produce the documentary film Nanking, which he described as a “labor of love.”[1] According to Ted Leonsis, the film was intended to be comparable to Steven Spielberg’s Schindler’s List.[2]
Chang, who was Chinese American, was only twenty-seven years old when she began writing The Rape of Nanking. However, Chang died by suicide in 2004 near Los Gatos at the age of thirty-six.[3] Before taking her own life in her automobile, Chang left three suicide notes, one of which stated in part:
“I can never shake my belief that I was being recruited, and later persecuted, by forces more powerful than I could have imagined. Whether it was the CIA or some other organization I will never know. As long as I am alive, these forces will never stop hounding me.”[4]
Whether Iris Chang’s fears were intensified by the medications she was taking, or whether she genuinely believed that certain organizations were pursuing her, lies beyond the scope of the present analysis. Her references to groups such as the CIA raise additional questions regarding the nature and origin of those concerns.
In any event, what remains undeniable is that Iris Chang’s book helped revive widespread public discussion of the so-called Nanjing Massacre. In a 1998 review of the work, George Will of the The Washington Post declared that: “it has stimulated seminars and conferences at Harvard, Yale, Princeton and many other places, and is assisting those honorable Japanese who are combatting their country’s officially enforced amnesia regarding what the Imperial Army did in December 1937 and January 1938.”[5]
In the same article, Will agreed with Chang’s position and declared that
“Japanese soldiers killed tens of thousands of surrendered Chinese soldiers and almost certainly more than 300,000 noncombatants. (Civilian deaths at Hiroshima and Nagasaki totaled 210,000. Britain and France suffered a combined total of 169,000 civilian deaths from 1939 to 1945.) The Nanking killing continued for seven weeks in front of international witnesses, without any attempt at concealment, and with the sadism of recreational killing. Chinese were used for bayonet practice and beheading contests. People were roasted alive, hanged by their tongues from hooks, mutilated, drowned in icy ponds, buried up to their waists and then torn apart by German shepherds, buried up to their necks and run over by horses or tanks. In addition to pandemic rape by Japanese soldiers even of young children, some of them tied to beds or posts for days, fathers were forced to rape their daughters, sons their mothers.”[6]
According to these accounts, the alleged atrocities occurred within a period of less than two months. The implicit assumption, therefore, is that Japanese soldiers were killing approximately 5,000 civilians each day! An obituary published in the New York Times similarly stated that “in less than two months they [the Japanese] murdered more than 300,000 civilians and raped more than 80,000 women.”[7] Chang placed the estimated number of rape victims between 20,000 and 80,000, rather than “more than 80,000.” Chang wrote:
“Many soldiers went beyond rape to disembowel women, slice off their breasts, nail them alive to walls. Fathers were forced to rape their daughters, and sons their mothers, as other family members watched. Not only did live burials, castration, the carving of organs and the roasting of people become routine, but more diabolical tortures were practiced, such as hanging people by their tongues on iron hooks or burying people to their waists and watching them torn apart by German shepherds. So sickening was the spectacle that even Nazis in the city were horrified.”[8]
Such an extraordinary claim would appear to require equally extraordinary evidence, thereby prompting several preliminary questions. Why did Mao Zedong— who had Jews fighting for him[9] and who later presided over policies that allegedly resulted in the deaths of tens of millions of Chinese citizens[10]—not make substantial use of this alleged evidence against Japan? Why did he never publicly suggest that Japanese soldiers were raping more than 1,300 women per day during the events in question? Is it being suggested that Mao was entirely unaware of such allegations, or that he failed to recognize their potential political significance?
Why did Chiang Kai-shek—who received support from both the Soviet Union and anti-Japanese propagandists such as Morris Cohen and Harold Isaacs in the United States—fail to address these allegations in any substantial manner? Moreover, if Harold Isaacs was deeply sympathetic to revolutionary movements in Asia and maintained associations with figures connected to Leon Trotsky, why did he not emphasize these claims more prominently in his own political and journalistic work?[11] One may ask whether Chang exaggerated certain aspects of the events in question or incorporated claims that were insufficiently substantiated or even fabricated, whether deliberately or unintentionally.
At this point, it is important to note that the book cannot be taken seriously, largely because her book omits many of the issues and questions raised above. Moreover, unlike historians such as David Irving, whose works are often grounded extensively in archival research, Chang’s book relies heavily on secondary sources rather than primary archival documentation. Furthermore, unlike detailed historical studies such as Orderly and Humane: The Expulsion of the Germans after the Second World War by R. M. Douglas, Hitler’s Jewish Soldiers: The Untold Story of Nazi Racial Laws and Men of Jewish Descent in the German Military by Bryan Mark Rigg, Hitler’s War by David Irving, or After the Reich: The Brutal History of the Allied Occupation by Giles MacDonogh,[12] Chang’s ambitious work is not primarily based on extensive archival materials or a substantial body of primary-source evidence. This is not to suggest that there is anything inherently problematic about the use of secondary sources. Rather, the concern is that many of the sources upon which Chang relied contain their own uncertainties, ambiguities, or expressions of skepticism.
In all honesty, assessing Chang’s The Rape of Nanking is almost like scrutinizing Daniel Jonah Goldhagen’s Hitler’s Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust, a fraudulent book which was quickly denounced for its historical inaccuracies, methodological weaknesses, and a lack of balance. Hitler’s Willing Executioners is indeed filled with citations, but they were largely distortions of the actual facts.
In fact, Goldhagen made things up whenever possible in order to prove the preposterous thesis that ordinary Germans were responsible for what happened to Jews in Nazi Germany. When scholars exposed his clear errors and deliberate deceptions, Goldhagen did not apologize. Instead, he wanted to sue those scholars—a response that is completely contrary to genuine scholarship and historical research.[13] Of course, the Holocaust establishment had an interest in promoting Goldhagen’s threadbare hoax. Like Goldhagen’s book, the American establishment also almost certainly had an interest in promoting Iris Chang’s The Rape of Nanking. After all, didn’t Japan attack Pearl Harbor? Didn’t Japan ally itself with Germany? Wasn’t Japan considered one of the villains of the war?
What is especially striking about this controversial debate is that Chang deliberately left out important issues from her book—issues that would have seriously weakened her thesis. For example, she never mentioned the Tongzhou Incident, which took place in the same year as the alleged Nanking Massacre.. In July 29, 1937, a group of some 3,000 Chinese soldiers ambushed Japanese garrison’s barracks
“and proceeded to raid Japanese shops, inns, and private homes. Approximately 200 of the 380 Japanese residents of Tongzhou were slaughtered. The 120 who survived did so only because they fled to the barracks, seeking refuge, before they were surrounded. These acts were flagrant violations of international law relating to the conduct of war (hereafter referred to as ‘international law’). Four days after the incident, the aforementioned director officially condemned the Chinese troops for the abduction, rape, and slaughter of Japanese citizens. Defense attorneys submitted his statement to the Tokyo Trials, but it was rejected by William Webb, the presiding justice, without explanation. The Allies were unwilling to allow any mention of the Tongzhou Massacre in the courtroom.”[14]
In April of 1947,
“defense attorney Levine called Kayashima Takashi (a former lieutenant-general in the Japanese Army) to the witness stand.” Takashi testified that the Chinese were committed brutal acts of rape and murder. His soldiers were called to Tongzhou in order to rescue the Japanese settlers. His accounts obviously make one wonders why Chang completely dismissed the entire incident in her book: The scene inside the town was ghastly. Brutally murdered bodies of Japanese settlers were lying everywhere. Most of them had ropes tied around their necks. I had to force myself to look at the mutilated corpses of women and innocent children. I no longer have the report I wrote at the time. I have relied on my memories for this statement. But I assure you that what I witnessed was so horrifying that I will never be able to forget it.
“I went to a restaurant (I think it was called Asahiken) to investigate. There were seven or eight women there, ranging in age from 17 or 18 to 40. They had all been raped, and then shot to death as they lay naked on the floor. Four or five of them had been stabbed in the genitals with bayonets. … The living quarters had been ransacked, and all the furniture, bedding, and clothing stolen. The situation was virtually the same at the homes of the other Japanese victims. The scene at the Kinsuiro Inn was gruesome. Since many of the Japanese had gathered there, sensing danger, there had been mass carnage. … The owner of Kinsuiro and the maids had been tied together, raped, and decapitated.”[15]
Similar incidents also took place in places such as Tanggu and Tianjin. The Japanese made several attempts to resolve the conflict peacefully, but those efforts failed. In fact, a peace conference between the Japanese and the Chinese was scheduled in Shanghai for August 9, but it never took place because soldiers from the Chinese Peace Preservation Corps killed Navy Sublieutenant Oyama Isao and First Class Seaman Saito Yozo on that very day.[16]
Edouard Helsey, China’s correspondent for a Paris newspaper, wrote in 1938:
“An unfortunate incident occurred on August 9, in which a Japanese naval officer was murdered by Chinese sentinels from the Rainbow (Hong) Bridge Airfield. Perhaps the Japanese officer should have been more cautious, but there is no denying that this was a Chinese plot. It is clear that the Nanking government had decided to go to battle in Shanghai at least 15 days prior to this incident. Their plan was not simply to split the Japanese forces in South China, but also to entice them into the Neutral Zone, which act would certainly cause international problems. It was a malicious trick, this engineering of incident upon incident, the misinterpretation of which would sway public opinion in the West.
“Chiang Kai-shek himself concurred that that was his intention, and he seemed rather pleased with himself. When I met with him at the end of October (1937) in Nanking, I asked him the following question. ‘That was a clever ploy, since Shanghai is a thorn in Japan’s side. Until it is extracted, the Japanese will be paralyzed, will they not?’ Chiang replied, through an interpreter: ‘You are right. I believe it was successful.’ At that time, the Japanese government and military authorities were attempting to avoid a war. They viewed an attack on Shanghai as a real danger.”[17]
During the Second Sino-Japanese War, about 22,000 Japanese living around the Yangtze River evacuated to Shanghai. It was agreed that the Japanese government had the right to protect those citizens in that area. At the same time, many foreigners from the United States, Britain, France, and Italy were also living in Shanghai. Because of the Boxer Rebellion around 1900, these governments had signed agreements with China that explicitly gave them the right to protect their citizens in Shanghai. So by August 11,
“Japan dispatched a naval landing party of 4,000 to Shanghai, to protect the lives and property of Japanese citizens. But by then, the Chinese force, shielded by pillboxes and creeks, had already swelled to 150,000. Therefore, the Japanese government decided to send two more divisions from Japan to Shanghai on August 13. On the night of August 14, five days after Sublieutenant Oyama was assassinated, as hostilities and tension heightened, Chinese Air Force planes bombed Shanghai. Several aircraft flew toward Shanghai at 10:00 a.m., and dropped bombs on the Japanese Consulate, Naval Landing Force Headquarters, Japanese warships, and on the streets of Shanghai. At about 4:00 p.m., a dozen aircraft bombed the moored warship Izumo, the French Settlement, and the International Settlement. An entry in The China Year Book 1938 reads ‘Chinese planes drop bombs in International Settlement.’ Those bombs killed 1,741 persons and wounded 1,868. Most of the victims were Chinese. The Chinese Air Force had intentionally dropped bombs on its own people, setting a world record, however disgraceful.”[18]
All of these historical backgrounds were completely omitted from Chang’s The Rape of Nanking. Chang claimed that Nanking’s population was around 600,000 when the city fell, but independent estimates place the population closer to 200,000 to 250,000. “The population did not reach 600,000 until June 1940, 30 months after the Japanese occupied the city.”[19]
It gets more interesting. As historian Higashinakano Shudo convincingly puts it,
“If 300,000 were indeed massacred over a period of two months, then 5,000 people would have been killed each day, at a rate of three or four per minute, for a period of 60 days… The total area of the Safety Zone was only 3.86 square kilometers. If, in such a small space, 100,000, or 300,000, individuals were massacred, there would have been corpses everywhere.”[20]
If Chang’s claims are incorrect, then what is the historical truth behind the debate? Is it historically accurate to say that the Japanese mercilessly tortured and massacred more than 300,000 noncombatants and raped between 20,000 and 80,000 women? What would the Japanese military have gained from such actions? And is it reasonable to believe that the international community knew these events were taking place and did nothing?
Japanese historian Shudo Higashinakano wrote in his documented work The Nanking Massacre: Fact versus Fiction that Chang’s book “relies on faked photographs and hugely exaggerated accounts.”[21]
Higashinakano also sent Penguin, the publisher of The Rape of Nanking, a list of no fewer than ninety historical errors found in just the first sixty pages of the book. Penguin eventually corrected some of those errors.[22]
Higashinakano was not the only historian to point out factual errors in Chang’s book. Shortly after the book was published, Ikuhiko Hata, one of Japan’s leading historians, wrote a lengthy article highlighting what he described as serious deceptions involving at least eleven photographs used in the book. I also had the opportunity to receive Hata’s book on comfort women in South Korea through one of his university associates. As the San Francisco Chronicle put it one year after Chang’s book was published:
“One photo, which the book credits to the military Politburo of the Chinese Nationalist government, shows women and children walking across a bridge with Japanese soldiers, and carries the caption: ‘The Japanese rounded up thousands of women. Most were gang-raped or forced into military prostitution.’ “The truth is, Hata said, that, although the photo was published with a similar caption by the Chinese Nationalists in 1938, apparently as anti-Japanese propaganda, it originally appeared the previous year as one of four in a Japanese newspaper, Asahi Gurafu, showing peaceful scenes of Chinese villagers under Japanese occupation, with women and children returning home from the fields.
“In the sharper original photo, it is possible to see that two of the villagers are smiling, and there is a woman pulling a cart of freshly harvested cotton that was cropped out of the Nationalist Chinese version. The cropped photo appeared in a recent book on Nanjing by a Japanese professor as an illustration of Japanese army atrocities in China. But after its interpretation was challenged, the publisher of his book apologized and retracted it.
“Other mistakes occur in Chang’s book, which quotes as ‘compelling evidence’ a secret telegram by Japan’s foreign minister admitting that Japanese troops, ‘in a fashion reminiscent of Attila and his Huns,’ had slaughtered ‘not less than 300,000 Chinese civilians.’ This was, in fact, a quotation from the cable of a British reporter, and concerned deaths not only in Nanjing but elsewhere. The book also describes Japan as the first nation to use air power ‘as a means of terrorizing civilian populations,’ a distinction generally attributed to the Germans in World War I.”[23]
Chang’s thesis is now beginning to fall apart. Historian David M. Kennedy of Stanford noticed similar problems. Although Kennedy praised the book, especially for its many photographs—likely unaware that critics had challenged the authenticity of several of them—he still stated that the book contains “intellectually insufficient” assertions.[24] In a similar vein, historian Roger B. Jeans of Washington and Lee University declared that Chang’s book is “half-baked history.”
Chang, said Jeans, was “greatly inflating the population of Nanjing (Nanking) at that time and uncritically accepting the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal and contemporary Chinese figures for the numbers of Chinese civilians and soldiers killed.”[25] Historian Timothy M. Kelly put the final nail in the coffin. When academics and the media were praising Chang’s book, Kelly wrote:
“In light of the discrepancies I found in Chang’s book, it makes me wonder whether any of the reviewers know enough about the subject (Chinese and Japanese history, WWII, war crimes, historiography, not to mention the pertinent scholarly literature) to venture an informed opinion about the merits of Chang’s book… The mass media and those who write for it are often incredibly irresponsible and they need to be told so.”[26]
Kelly argued that the problem with the book can be placed in four categories: “simple carelessness, sheer sloppiness, historical inaccuracies, and shameless plagiarism.”[27]
Kelly provided multiple examples to support his accusations—far too many to discuss in full here. We will mention only a few of them. On page 166 of her book, Chang writes: “The Westerners themselves were often sprayed with Lysol upon entering the city.” Kelly responded,
“It’s incredulous that Chang would use a brand name here. Does she expect her readers to believe that Japanese authorities really sprayed foreigners with the particular product called Lysol? Surely the generic word ‘disinfectant’ would have been more adequate, not to mention accurate.”[28]
On page 13, Chang says: “In the documentary In the Name of the Emperor, one Japanese historian dismisses the entire Rape of Nanking with these words: ‘Even if twenty or thirty people had been killed, it would have been a great shock to Japan.” Kelly responded: “Chang does not identify this historian here or in the Notes section. Who is this historian? Is he/she a major or minor player? What impact has this historian had?”[29]
Chang: “When Shanghai finally fell in November, the mood of the imperial troops had turned ugly, and many, it was said, lusted for revenge as they marched toward Nanking.” Kelly: “Chang does not document the source of this statement, that is, who said it. This rhetorical device only gives the appearance that Chang is reporting fact.”[30]
Chang: “In July 1853, he (Matthew Perry) sent two ships belching black smoke into Tokyo Bay — giving the people of Japan their first glimpse of metal-clad, steam-powered ships. Surrounding himself with some sixty to seventy aggressive-looking men armed with swords and pistols, Perry strode through the capital of the Shogun and demanded meetings with the highest-ranking officials in Japan.”
Kelly: “The capital Chang refers to here is Edo, the present-day Tokyo. The historical truth is that Perry never set foot in the capital. He was officially, though reluctantly received, after some delay, on the beach at Uraga, some 35 miles from Edo at the entrance to Edo Bay, which has since been renamed Tokyo Bay. At the completion of the ceremonies Perry ordered his fleet of four vessels to a new anchorage about ten miles into the Edo Bay. He later proceeded in the Mississippi further into the bay to a point where he could see the Shinagawa area of Edo.”[31]
Chang: “In March 1944, the United Nations created the Investigation of War Crimes Committee …” Kelly: “How is this possible? The United Nations was not chartered until October 24, 1945. Chang again has her facts wrong.”
Once again, that is only the tip of the iceberg. If you believe Chang’s book is accurate, Kelly’s detailed research will likely come as a major shock. Even historian Takashi Yoshida Western Michigan University, who does not support the Japanese revisionist interpretation of what happened in Nanking, admits that Chang’s book contains “numerous errors and inaccuracies.”[32]
Even if we grant Chang’s questionable thesis that The Rape of Nanking is somehow accurate, it still would not fit with what the Allies actually did to Japan after World War II. Chang never discussed the fact that the Allied forces—especially the United States—committed sexual crimes and abuses, including the rape of many Japanese civilians, after the war. She called on Japan to apologize and pay reparations, yet she said nothing about what the United States did to Japan after the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Moreover, Chang never discussed reports that some Chinese soldiers raped Chinese women and then blamed the crimes on Japanese soldiers. Even The New York Times—hardly a Japanese propaganda outlet—published an article in 1938 titled, “Ex-Chinese Officers Among U.S. Refugees: Colonel and His Aides Admit Blaming the Japanese for Crimes in Nanking.” It stated:
“The ex-Chinese officers in the presence of Americans and other foreigners confessed looting in Nanking and also that one night they dragged girls from the refugee camp into the darkness and the next day blamed Japanese soldiers for the attacks.”[33]
When the American professors who had protected those former Chinese officers realized that the officers themselves were involved in wrongdoing, they became “seriously embarrassed.”[34]
Chang mentioned none of these. Shudo argues:
“20 days before and immediately prior to the fall of Nanking, the city’s population was 200,000, according to Europeans and Americans who were there at the time. Eight days after the fall and on Christmas Eve, it was still 200,000. No one indicated a vast decrease in population due to mass slaughter. Confronted by these facts, how can anyone claim that 300,000 noncombatants were murdered in Nanking?
“Prior to the capture of the city, Chinese troops stripped off their uniforms and mingled with the civilian population. By doing so, they became unlawful combatants not protected by the Regulations Concerning the Laws and Customs of War on Land annexed to the Hague Convention. No Chinese military personnel inside the city walls surrendered to the Japanese. Accordingly, during the 11-year period spanning December 13, 1937, the day Nanking fell, to December 1948, when the Tokyo Trials ended, no one accused Japanese troops of having killed prisoners of war in violation of the aforementioned regulations. Confronted with these facts, how can anyone claim that the Japanese murdered prisoners of war?
“The Japanese are accused of having murdered 7,000 persons each day, i.e., 300,000 persons over a period of six weeks. But according to ‘Daily Reports of Serious Injuries to Civilians,’ the only killing witnessed by a European or American in Nanking was one ‘lawful execution.’ The contents of these reports (issued on a daily basis and submitted to the Japanese Embassy in Nanking) are corroborated by data gathered from the testimonies of European, American and Chinese residents in Nanking, and from Japanese military records (all of which data has been computerized and analyzed). How do we explain a massacre with no witnesses?”[35]
Harold Timperley, a British reporter for the Guardian, wrote the book What War Means, which helped spread the claim that Japanese forces were frequently killing civilians. However, the book itself did not provide documented evidence to support those accusations. Shudo continued:
“Rev. Miner Searle Bates and George Fitch submitted material for What War Means (both used pseudonyms). The ostensible intent of the book, edited by Timperley, was to impress upon the reader the horrors of war via accounts written by disinterested parties (European and American residents of Nanking). But Timperley was, in fact, an advisor to the Nationalist government’s Ministry of Information. Rev. Bates, a famous Christian missionary who taught at the University of Nanking, was also an advisor to the Ministry of Information. And Mrs. Fitch was a close friend of Mme. Chiang Kai-shek.
“It has also become clear that What War Means is a propaganda book compiled and published by the Counterintelligence Division of the Nationalist Ministry of Information’s International Propaganda Section. Timperley was paid by the Ministry of Information for editing the book. Thus, What War Means, perceived as proof of the ‘Nanking Massacre,’ was not written from an impartial standpoint. On the contrary, it can be viewed only as war propaganda.”[36]
As noted earlier, Chiang Kai-shek was aligned with Joseph Stalin in efforts to weaken or defeat Japan. In fact, scholar Li Yuzhen writes that Chiang made several attempts “to secure the direct participation of Soviet forces in China.” Yuzhen argues that Chiang’s cooperation with Stalin contributed significantly to Japan’s defeat during World War II.[37]
Both the Soviets and Chiang “were committed to defeat the Axis powers of Germany and Japan… War necessity compelled two men [Stalin and Chiang] who had every reason to distrust each other to overcome a long history of mutual suspicion and animosity to find common ground.”[38]
In other words, although Chiang Kai-shek and Joseph Stalin had their differences, they were united in their determination to defeat Japan and Germany. As Yuzhen puts it:
“As the threat of Japan to China increased, and that of Germany and Japan to the Soviet Union, China and the Soviet Union moved gingerly toward an accommodation. While Chiang hoped for Soviet material aid and actual Soviet military involvement in China’s war with Japan, Stalin’s strategy was to trap Japan in China so as to be able to concentrate on Europe and avoid a war with Japan on its eastern frontier. Stalin had the best cards, including a far more powerful army. He resisted China’s pressure to throw Soviet forces into China’s war with Japan until the last two weeks of the war.”[39]
It was Stalin himself who pressured the communist party in China to accept Chiang as their leader. “Soviet financial and military aid was instrumental in sustaining China’s war effort during the first five years of the war against Japan. Even though it is fair to say that the Soviets gained the most, the accommodation between Stalin and Chiang Kai-shek paid dividends for both sides.”[40]
Anyone with a minimum level of intellectual honesty would acknowledge that it would have been in Chiang’s interest to promote the so-called Nanking massacre. Yet he never mentioned it. This suggests that the Nanking issue is far more complex than what has been portrayed by publications such as The New York Times and the Chicago Daily News. In addition, numerous key documents from the period of the alleged events in Nanking do not mention the incident either. In fact,
“the International Information Department (a branch of the Ministry of Information established not long before the fall of Nanking) sponsored 300 press conferences for foreign journalists between December 1, 1937 and October 24, 1938. During that time, emergency press conferences were called whenever important news broke (even in the dead of night, according to reports), and the news was transmitted all over the world. But no press conference was ever called to announce a massacre in Nanking.”[41]
So, the so-called rape of Nanking appears to have been shaped by wartime propaganda in the United States and possibly by Chinese authorities at the time. In the next articles, we will interview several Japanese writers and historians to hear their perspectives on this important issue.
Notes
[1] Thomas Heath, “Ted Leonsis Takes a Sharp Turn,” Washington Post, July 31, 2006.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Heidi Benson, “Historian Iris Chang won many battles / The war she lost raged within,” San Francisco Chronicle, April 17, 2005; Kathleen E. McLaughlin, “Iris Chang’s suicide stunned those she tried so hard to help,” San Francisco Chronicle, November 20, 2004. The prevailing vision is that hate mail and threatening notes from Japanese ultranationalists may have contributed to her death. Implausible. First of all, the Chang family never told us who those “ultranationalists” were. The fact is that Chang’s book was widely criticized by Japanese academics for its lack of historical accuracy and intellectual honesty. Furthermore, Chang must have known that writing books like The Rape of Nanking was a huge enterprise which had the potential to create enormous controversy and historical debates. It sounds like she was not prepared to faced criticism and the complete historical inaccuracies in her book.
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iris_Chang .
[5] George Will, “Wartime Sadism: Nanking Remembered,” Washington Post, February 19, 1998.
[6] Ibid.
[7] “Iris Chang, Who Chronicled Rape of Nanking, Dies at 36,” NY Times, November 12, 2004.
[8] Iris Chang, The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust Of World War II (New York: Basic Books, 1997), 6.
[9] Tom Segev, “The Jews Who Fought With Mao,” Haaretz, July 27, 2012.
[10] See Frank Dikötter, Mao’s Great Famine: The History of China’s Most Devastating Catastrophe, 1958-62 (London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2010).
[11] For a meticulous study on these issues, see Joshua Blakeney, Japan Bites Back: Documents Contextualizing Pearl Harbor (Non-Aligned Media, 2015).
[12] R. M. Douglas, Orderly and Humane: The Expulsion of the Germans after the Second World War (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2012); Brian Mark Rigg, Hitler’s Jewish Soldiers: The Untold Story of Nazi Racial Laws and Men of Jewish Descent in the German Military (Lawrence: The University Press of Kansas, 2002); David Irving, Hitler’s War and the War Path (London: Focal Point Publications, 1991).
[13] See Norman G. Finkelstein and Ruth Bettina Birn, A Nation on Trial: The Goldhagen Thesis and Historical Truth (New York: Verso, 1998).
[14] Shudo Higashinakano, The Nanking Massacre: Fact versus Fiction (Minato-ku, Tokyo: Sekai Shuppan, Inc., 2005), 5.
[15] Ibid., 6.
[16] Ibid., 10.
[17] Ibid., 12.
[18] Ibid., 13.
[19] Ibid., 191
[20] Ibid., 150.
[21] Ibid., i.
[22] https://web.archive.org/web/20070705013557/http://www.jiyuu-shikan.org/nanjing/errors.html.
[23] Charles Burress, “Wars of Memory / When Iris Chang wrote ‘The Rape of Nanking,’ to memorialize one of the bloodiest massacres of civilians in modern times, she wasn’t prepared for the firestorm she started,” San Francisco Chronicle, July 26, 1998.
[24] David M. Kennedy, “The Horror: Should the Japanese atrocities in Nanking be equated with the Nazi Holocaust?,” Atlantic, April 1998 issue.
[25] Roger B. Jeans, “Victims or Victimizers? Museums, Textbooks, and the War Debate in Contemporary Japan,” Journal of Military History, January 2005: 149-195.
[26] Timothy M. Kelly, “Book Review: The Rape of Nanking by Iris Chang,” Edogawa Joshi Tanki Daigaku Kiyô no.15, March 2000: http://www1.edogawa-u.ac.jp/~tmkelly/research_review_nanking.html.
[27] Ibid.
[28] Ibid.
[29] Ibid.
[30] Ibid.
[31] Ibid.
[32] Takashi Yoshida, The Making of the “Rape of Nanking”: History and Memory in Japan, China, and the United States (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), 146.
[33] Higashinakano, The Nanking Massacre, 179.
[34] Ibid.
[35] Ibid.
[36] Ibid., iii.
[37] Li Yuzhen, “Chiang Kai-shek and Joseph Stalin During World War II,” Hans van de Ven and Diana Lary, eds., Negotiating China’s Destiny in World War II (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2014), chapter 8.
[38] Ibid., 142.
[39] Ibid., 141
[40] Ibid., 142.
[41] Higashinakano, The Nanking Massacre, v.
Chinese jet fuel and the myth of energy independence
Inside China Business | April 8, 2026
Except for in Russia and (ironically) Iran, the war in the Persian Gulf has blown up energy markets everywhere. Worldwide, no country is self-sufficient in all its energy needs, and disruptions in a supply chains anywhere result in major problems everywhere. China is the largest refiner of jet fuel in Asia-Pacific, and has enormous reserves of crude stashed away, which can last months. But immediately after the war on Iran began, China locked down its exports of jet fuel. The effect on prices across Asia was felt immediately, with costs more than doubling in just six weeks. In the United States, fuel prices also soared, and also by over 100%.
Resources and links:
$140, and going higher: That’s the real price of oil, right now. Oil traders will be wiped out. 
• $140, and going higher: That’s the real p…
Singapore’s major oil source is blocked and experts warn Australians will pay https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-04-0…
Australia and Japan face jet fuel supply crunch as China cuts exports https://www.scmp.com/economy/china-ec…
Daily Jet Fuel Spot Prices https://www.airlines.org/dataset/argu…
America’s energy independence https://no01.substack.com/p/americas-…
US crude oil exports decreased by 3% in 2025 despite higher production (+3%) https://www.enerdata.net/publications…
Petroleum & Other Liquids, Imports by Country of Origin https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/pet_move…
China set to extend fuel export ban with small exemptions, sources say https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pa…
South Korea to enforce 5-day vehicle rotation system as Mideast conflict hits energy supplies https://www.aa.com.tr/en/asia-pacific…
Nations across Asia strike direct deals with Iran for Hormuz passage
Al Mayadeen | April 7, 2026
As US President Donald Trump threatens to “obliterate” Iran’s energy infrastructure unless it reopens the Strait of Hormuz, a growing number of countries are now negotiating directly with Tehran to secure safe passage for their ships.
Several nations in Asia, arguably the region most affected by the ongoing fuel crisis, have been able to get their vessels through the chokepoint, through which about a fifth of the world’s oil and gas normally transits. Tehran effectively closed the Strait after the country was attacked by the US and “Israel” on February 28.
It is a state of affairs that reflects a new geopolitical reality: access to the world’s most critical energy chokepoint is no longer governed by international maritime law, but by direct diplomacy with Iran.
A ‘de facto toll booth regime’
According to maritime tracking platform Kpler, commodity traffic through the strait fell by 95 percent when the war began. Before the US-Israeli aggression, around 100 ships transited daily. On some days this past week, that number was in the single digits.
But Iran has not closed the Strait entirely. Instead, it has created what maritime intelligence firm Lloyd’s List has described as a “de facto toll booth regime,” a permissions-based system operated by the IRGC, in which vessels from friendly countries are escorted through a narrow northern corridor near Larak Island.
As of this week, a second southern corridor near the Omani coastline has become operational, with Windward Maritime Intelligence tracking 11 transits on Sunday split across the two routes.
Iran names friendly nations
Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi has publicly named the countries considered friendly enough for passage: China, Russia, India, Iraq, and Pakistan. Several others have since joined the list.
India was among the first countries to secure safe transit, reportedly without paying any fees. The Iranian embassy in New Delhi posted on social media that “our Indian friends are in safe hands.”
Pakistan was allocated 20 vessel slots by Tehran. “This is a welcome and constructive gesture by Iran,” Pakistani Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar said.
Thailand struck a deal after weeks of disruptions that included a Thai bulk carrier being struck by Iranian projectiles in March, leaving three crew members unaccounted for. A Thai tanker subsequently crossed without paying a fee.
Malaysia secures passage
Malaysia secured assurances of safe passage through what its Transport Minister described as a “good diplomatic relationship with the Iranian government.” The Iranian embassy in Kuala Lumpur said on Monday that the first Malaysian ship had passed through the strait since the war began. “Iran does not forget its friends,” it said.
A Malaysian Foreign Ministry statement confirmed that one of seven Malaysian-owned commercial vessels stranded in the strait has been granted safe passage and is now heading to its destination, following “high-level diplomatic engagements” and “constructive” talks with Iranian officials led by Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim.
Other nations join the list
The Philippines, despite its close ties with the US, became the latest Asian country to secure an agreement after what its foreign secretary described as “a very productive phone conversation” with Tehran. Iran assured “safe, unhindered and expeditious passage” for Philippines-flagged ships.
China, Iran’s largest oil buyer, confirmed that some of its ships had sailed through. Windward’s data show Chinese-linked vessels account for around 10 percent of the limited traffic still moving through the strait.
Indonesia secured passage for two of its vessels following diplomatic engagement with Tehran. Iraq has also been granted an exemption, with Windward identifying 21 Iraqi-linked tankers already operating under the arrangement.
Japan joined the list this week after a vessel operated by Mitsui OSK Lines carrying liquefied natural gas passed through the strait.
A system based on political alignment
The system is selectively allocated based on political alignment rather than open maritime norms. Of the roughly 280 global transit requests tracked by one intelligence firm, only 17 were approved. Some 670 commodity vessels were still stranded west of the strait as of last week.
Iran’s parliament is pursuing legislation to formally codify the toll system, likely making permanent a wartime measure and turning one of the world’s most important shipping routes into a fee-paying corridor controlled by its military.
A strategy that works
While Washington threatens military action and demands European naval support, Iran has quietly built a parallel system: nations that engage with Tehran diplomatically get their ships through. Those who follow Washington’s lead find the strait closed.
As the US-Israeli war on Iran enters its sixth week, the message is clear. Iran controls the Strait. Iran decides who passes. And Iran is proving that diplomacy, not threats, is the only path through. The countries that need their ships to move are making their own deals, and they are getting results.
Japan Clings to US Vassalage Despite Energy Crunch Caused By Iran War
Sputnik – 27.03.2026
With 90% of Japan’s oil and 11% of its LNG sourced in the Persian Gulf, effectively closed thanks to the US-Israeli war on Iran, Tokyo has been put in a strategic bind, facing growing pressure both domestically and in ties with neighbors.
Tokyo has contributed 80M barrels of oil to the G7-led 400M barrel phased reserves release, but signaled it will only sell it to domestic refiners, rejecting pleas for help from Vietnam and the Philippines, per Bloomberg.
Domestically, the government has been forced to lift restrictions on coal-fired power plants, introduce subsidies to keep gasoline at ~$4 a gallon, and raise household electricity bills by ~$95 starting in April. Over time, logistical, flights, and everything else linked to hydrocarbon energy will face price hikes.
80M barrels is enough for ~45 days. If Hormuz remains blocked after then, Japan will have only two options, neither of them good:
- engage in a cutthroat energy bid price war, which will raise domestic prices and worsen ties with other energy-dependent neighbors in Asia
- introduce fuel rationing, which could trigger a recession or even a debt crisis (Japan already has a debt-to-GDP ratio of ~240%, the highest among rich nations)
Notwithstanding these pressures, Japan:
- continues to buy US Treasuries ($1.2T and counting)
- lets 50k+ US troops be stationed on its territory, 80 years after the end of WWII, for ‘defense’ (although the Iran war has seen US pulling out assets and repositioning them in Israel)
- keeps sanctions on Iranian oil, one of the only sources of Gulf oil currently making its way past Hormuz
- has pledged $73B to US energy security projects, including small modular reactors and natural gas infrastructure in Tennessee, Alabama, Pennsylvania and Texas
- swallows US tariffs and accepts an export-crushing strong yen policy to satisfy Washington
- sidelines its own foreign policy interests, including ties with powers like China and ASEAN
Role reversal – “divide & conquer” used against the west
Ashes of Pompeii | March 21, 2026
For centuries, the strategy of “divide and conquer” has been a cornerstone of Western geopolitical power. The British Empire mastered the art of ruling vast territories with minimal forces by exploiting internal divisions, setting local leaders against one another, leveraging ethnic tensions, and securing cooperation through selective incentives (aka bribes). The United States later employed similar tactics, from Cold War interventions to coalition-building in Iraq and Southeast Asia. The principle remains consistent: fracture opposition to maintain advantage.
Today, we are witnessing a role reversal in real time. Iran, long subjected to Western pressure and sanctions, is employing a parallel strategy regarding the Strait of Hormuz. Much of the west is not entirely enamoured of Trump’s Iran strategy but is afraid to openly challenge America. The closing of the Strait is economically catastrophic for most US allies and they are caught between a rock and a hard place – a vindictive Trump demanding support to open the Strait, and economic hardship.
In steps Iran with its own “divide and conquer” strategy, now reportedly negotiating with individual Asian and European countries a sort of Hormuz toll to allow tankers from these allied countries to pass through. And of course, they would each be required to not support the the US Navy if it attempts to open Hormuz. These discussions would be regarding tolls, security guarantees, and bilateral arrangements that would circumvent a collective response.
This approach carries significant strategic implications. If key U.S. allies secure individual agreements ensuring their energy shipments, the incentive to support a unified, potentially confrontational effort to keep Hormuz open is dead in the water.. Why risk escalation when a separate deal preserves economic interests? This dynamic could gradually erode the cohesion of Western alliances. Imagine Japan, Korea or Germany putting their national interests ahead of America’s! Unthinkable just a few weeks ago.
Iran’s maneuvering reflects a calculated understanding of coalition politics. By offering tailored terms, Tehran exploits the very real economic dependencies that different nations have on Persian Gulf oil flows. A country like Japan, facing immediate energy shortfalls, may prioritize short-term access over long-term strategic solidarity.
The irony is substantive, not merely rhetorical: a regional power taking advantage of a strategy historically used to extend Western influence, now being adapted to counter that same influence. Traditional western asymmetric power dynamics being used against the west.
If Iran successfully institutionalizes a system of bilateral tolls or passage agreements, it could reshape regional power structures and perhaps challenge the precedent of freedom of navigation under international law. However, this development also exposes the conditional nature of the “rules-based order” itself. When international norms align with western strategic interests, they are vigorously defended; when they become inconvenient, exceptions are quietly made. The interesting aspect here, is that for once, the exception is used against the USA.
In the end, this is power politics, plain and simple. Iran is using the tools available to it, geography, energy dependence, and diplomatic patience, to turn a strategic vulnerability into leverage. The West built much of its influence by splitting opponents; now it faces the same tactic applied in reverse. One would expect that states would always seek national advantage where they find it, but that has often not been the case for “junior” members of the western alliance in the last 30 or 40 years.
This is just another step towards a multipolar world where the west is seeing its own playbook used against it, where alliances and coalitions may be less static, and where national interest may be considered more important than following the diktats of a hegemon or a bloc leader.
Turn around is fair play and America and the west will need to get used to the idea that other countries, here Iran, can both play hardball and use divide and conquer strategies.
I am not sure Donald Trump will quite understand the significance of this moment.
Seven US allies endorse Hormuz ‘coalition,’ offer ‘no commitment’ for military action
The Cradle | March 20, 2026
The UK, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Japan, and Canada issued a joint statement on 20 March in support of a potential “coalition” to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, while specifying “no commitment” to a concrete military role.
“We express our readiness to contribute to appropriate efforts to ensure safe passage through the strait,” the close US allies announced.
The joint statement did not, however, touch on any military involvement or the commitment of any forces to the initiative.
One political reporter writing for Axios said the statement was “largely a gesture to placate [US] President [Donald] Trump, who has railed against allies for declining to help secure the strait and warned that a failure to do so could undermine the future of NATO.”
The allies condemned attacks on commercial vessels and energy infrastructure, citing “the de facto closure of the Strait of Hormuz by Iranian forces,” and called on Tehran to “cease immediately its threats, laying of mines, drone and missile attacks and other attempts to block the strait.”
Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni said no state is considering “a military mission to forcibly break the Iranian blockade,” adding the EU favors “diplomacy and de-escalation.”
She clarified that any contribution would apply to a “post-conflict phase” and require agreement among all parties.
Other governments echoed this position, with Germany confirming “no military participation,” while France said its deployments remain strictly defensive.
The UK ruled out a NATO mission, focusing instead on negotiations, though it has sent planners to coordinate options.
Despite the political backing and global panic over soaring energy prices , maritime data shows the strait is only partially restricted, as roughly 90 vessels crossed in early March.
Iran has established a controlled “safe” shipping corridor through its territorial waters in the Strait of Hormuz, allowing only approved vessels – mainly from countries like India, Pakistan, China, Iraq, and Malaysia – to transit after IRGC vetting, while ships linked to the US or Israel are effectively excluded.
Access is currently negotiated on a case-by-case basis but is moving toward a formal system requiring detailed disclosures of ownership and cargo, often coordinated through intermediaries and, in at least one case, involving a reported $2-million payment.
So far, at least nine vessels have used the route, which passes near Larak Island for inspection, but traffic remains minimal.
The US remains largely the only country carrying out direct military operations, deploying forces and striking Iranian positions along the strait, as well as conducting offensive strikes inside Iran.
Earlier US-led efforts to secure regional shipping routes followed a similar trajectory, with coalitions struggling to gain meaningful participation as several allies refused or limited involvement, leaving only a small number of naval deployments.
Efforts to secure maritime routes during the Israeli genocide on Gaza in 2024 faced the same constraints, as US and EU resources proved insufficient to deter Yemeni strikes across the Red Sea.
Officials had warned that strikes on Yemen were “not contributing to the solution,” while Yemeni attacks on vessels continued, raising pressure on global trade routes.
Yemeni forces maintained their stance as a support front for Gaza, persisting with attacks until Washington ended its campaign under an Omani-brokered truce, with President Trump claiming Yemeni forces “don’t want to fight anymore.”
Even The Neo-Cons Admit The Iran War Is Failing
The Dissident – March 16, 2026
The current U.S./Israeli war on Iran is, in many ways, a product of the policies long advocated by U.S. neoconservatives, most importantly the clean break strategy drafted by the Project for a New American Century (PNAC), which advocated taking out “Iraq, and then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and, finishing off, Iran” on behalf of Israel.
But many of the original Neo-cons who first drafted this plan, including John Bolton and even Robert Kagan and Bill Kristol, the founders of the Project for a New American Century, are now jumping ship and admitting that the U.S./Israeli war on Iran is failing.
In an interview with NPR, longtime Neo-con John Bolton, despite saying he has “been a supporter of efforts at regime change in Iran for a long time” was forced to admit that the regime change plan has failed and that the U.S. underestimated Iran’s response.
Bolton was forced to admit that Trump underestimated Iran’s ability to effectively close the Strait of Hormuz and disrupt oil shipping in response to the U.S/Israeli bombing, saying:
… it was questionable whether he was cooperating effectively with and assisting the opposition inside Iran. That’s what I said, I think, in our last conversation. Since then, I’m very worried that there are now signs that they haven’t thought about a lot of other things. For example, there’s reporting that the White House was surprised at how quickly oil prices went up.
And all I can say to that is I’m surprised that they’re surprised. If they weren’t planning for that both economically, politically and militarily, then that’s a huge hole in the planning. I am worried that they apparently didn’t take as seriously as they should have the potential to mine the Strait of Hormuz. Trump said several days ago that the Iranian navy had been completely destroyed. And despite years of listening to that kind of thing, I should have known better. I actually sort of believed in for a while. But now we learned that it was only yesterday that we got around to destroying 16 mine-laying vessels. Of course, they’ve got the capability to mine via drones going over the strait and dropping mines in it.
Even more shocking than Bolton’s admission was a podcast released by the founders of PNAC, Robert Kagan and Bill Kristol, where they essentially admitted that the U.S. war on Iran was destroying the U.S. empire.
Robert Kagan, in the podcast, admitted that the Iran war was debilitating America’s ability to wage a new Cold War on Russia and China, and isolating the U.S. empire globally.
The “undoubted effect of the Iran war has been to drive a deeper wedge between the United States and pretty much all of its allies or at least all of its traditional allies, both in Europe and in Asia, and I would say potentially even in the Middle East” Kagan Said.
Kagan lamented that the Iran war was crippling the U.S.’s ability to continue the proxy war in Ukraine saying, “the skyrocketing oil prices … are even before Trump took the action of lifting sanctions against Russia was going to increase Russian income” and “American forces are … burning through major stocks of weaponry and particularly Patriot and other forms of interceptors on which Ukraine depends heavily because those are the interceptors that defend their major cities from constant Russian attacks.”
Kagan also lamented that the war was taking away the U.S. empire’s ability to wage a new Cold War on China, saying, “very few countries in the world are more dependent on Middle East oil, including the oil that comes directly through the Strait of Hormuz, than Japan. Japan I think, depends on something like 95% of its oil supplies come from the Middle East and 70% of that runs through the Strait of Hormuz. So once again the Japanese were not consulted”, adding, that the prime minister of Japan is “very upset” and “ talked about how this crisis has severely impacted Japanese interests”.
He also added “the Japanese will notice that the United States has sent significant forces that are dedicated both to the defense of Japan and are sort of critical to any response to a Chinese attack on Taiwan. Those forces are now being sent or some of them are already there, and some are being sent to the Middle East.”
Kagan also admitted that the war in Iran is isolating the Gulf States from the U.S. and potentially moving them towards China.
He said, “I just wonder whether the Gulf States in particular are wondering whether they’ve joined the right team here because they have, by the way, been very on background, very vocal in saying that they were against the war. … They did not favor it. They thought they had a pretty good deal going with the Iranians, that kind of an agreement that they would get to, they would leave each other alone for the most part,” adding, “it turns out the United States can’t really protect them. I mean they have suffered the worst in some respects because it’s not only that they’ve been targets and that they’re shipping you know they’ve lost money on oil, but you know they with the tremendous cooperation of the Trump and I would say in this case the Trump family and social circle have been very deeply involved in the United States making investments in AI and other things but particularly AI they’re hosting data centers for all kinds of companies and in general, they’ve been trying to make themselves an attractive place for investment and also tourism.”
Citing the example of Dubai, Kagan said, “You watch the UAE is basically arresting people for taking pictures of damage that may have been done by Iranian drone strikes and other things on things in Dubai. For instance, I think they’ve arrested foreigners who took pictures of these things. Why? Because they don’t want people to see that it’s risky to be in Dubai, because then people won’t invest and they won’t come, and so it’s kind of a disaster for them,” adding, “the bottom line for the Gulf States is that the United States undertook this war and then was not able actually to protect them”.
He added, “I don’t think it’s hard to persuade certain Gulf states like the UAE and others that maybe China is also a pretty good partner or at least as much of a reliable partner as the United States has turned out to be.”
In other words, Kagan and his host Bill Kristol are essentially admitting that the Iran war is destroying and isolating U.S. empire and destroying the U.S.’s ability to project power in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East through proxy states.
This is why Kagan- as journalist Max Blumenthal described it – essentially “describes Israel as a strategic liability leading the US into a quagmire” saying, “I find it a little bit it’s kind of a syllogism when people talk about what a great ally Israel is. It it is a great ally in defense of Israel” adding, “at the end of the day, Iran is a much greater threat to Israel than it is to the United States.”
Kagan also admitted that Iran, “were deliberately not closing the straits for all these years precisely because we did not confront them with the prospect of complete annihilation” adding, “it was only when both the Israelis and the United States made it clear that their goal was the annihilation of regime, assassinated the entire leadership with a bombing strike that they then did this. So we are now solving a problem that we clearly provoked.”
Make no mistake about it, John Bolton, Robert Kagan, Bill Kristol, and their fellow Neo-cons set the stage for this war with Iran, but the fact that even they are now jumping ship shows that war is not at all going as planned for the U.S.
‘Not our war’: Trump’s naval coalition to reopen Strait of Hormuz dead in the water
The Cradle | March 16, 2026
Several countries have either rejected or expressed serious concerns about US President Donald Trump’s plan to form a coalition aimed at escorting vessels through the Strait of Hormuz, which Tehran has closed to Washington and its allies in retaliation for the brutal US-Israeli strikes on the Islamic Republic.
Germany’s Minister for Foreign Affairs, Johann Wadephul, said on 15 March that he was “skeptical” of Trump’s plan.
“Will we soon be an active part of this conflict? No,” he went on to say.
German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius said, “What does Trump expect a handful of European frigates to do that the powerful US Navy cannot?” adding, “This is not our war, and we did not start it.”
Meanwhile, France officially rejected the US request to send warships to the Strait of Hormuz.
The French Foreign Ministry rejected reports that it was gearing up to send vessels, saying, “No. The carrier strike group remains in the Eastern Mediterranean. France’s position remains unchanged: defensive and protective.”
Australia has also denied the request, as have Japan, China, Norway, and Spain. The UK and South Korea said they were reviewing options.
The US president had demanded that NATO states join his proposed coalition, threatening that they would face a “very bad future” if they did not.
Trump had also expressed hope that “China, France, Japan, South Korea, the UK, and others, that are affected by this artificial constraint, will send ships to the area so that the Hormuz Strait will no longer be a threat by a nation that has been totally decapitated.”
Iran has closed the Strait of Hormuz to Washington and its allies in response to the US-Israeli war against the Islamic Republic. Several vessels trying to cross in violation of Iranian warnings have been targeted.
A number of countries have reached out to Tehran for access to the Strait, through which 20 to 30 percent of the world’s energy passed prior to the war.
India has confirmed that two of its ships passed after talks with Iran. Tehran also allowed a Turkish vessel to pass through the strait.
“The Strait of Hormuz has not been militarily blocked and is merely under control,” said Alireza Tangsiri, naval commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi stated, “The Strait of Hormuz is open. It is only closed to the tankers and ships belonging to our enemies, to those who are attacking us and their allies. Others are free to pass.”
After Yemen began its pro-Palestine blockade in the Red Sea following the start of the Gaza genocide in 2023, Washington launched a naval operation under the name Prosperity Guardian – aimed at deterring Sanaa’s forces and facilitating the transit of vessels.
The US failed to secure enough partners, and the mission ultimately failed.
The Ansarallah-led Yemeni Armed Forces (YAF) has recently vowed that it is ready to intervene alongside Iran’s other allies – meaning the potential closure of another vital energy route, the Bab al-Mandab strait.
Japan to Sign Up For NATO’s Ukraine Arms Pipeline
Sputnik – February 10, 2026
Japan has allegedly pledged significant financial support for Ukraine, and committed to providing specialized equipment, with reports indicating long-term assistance.
Doubling down on its US-pushed militarization drive, Japan is moving closer to NATO by signing on to the alliance’s Security Assistance and Training for Ukraine (NSATU) program, which facilitates the flow of military equipment to Ukraine, according to NHK.
Sources cited by the outlet claim Japan will soon officially announce its participation in the initiative, announced during the NATO Summit in July 2024 and headquartered in Wiesbaden, Germany.
The equipment that Japan is expected to procure for Ukraine reportedly includes body armor, vehicles, and, potentially, radar systems.
The NSATU mechanism coordinates the donation of military equipment from Allied and partner nations to Ukraine’s armed forces, aligning their capabilities with NATO standards.
Russia has repeatedly argued that Western weapons shipments to Ukraine undermine any prospects for a negotiated settlement and amount to NATO’s direct involvement in the conflict. Russia has also warned that convoys delivering arms to Ukraine would be treated as legitimate military targets.
Pentagon downgrades China threat, shifts focus to homeland, hemisphere
Al Mayadeen | January 24, 2026
The United States Department of War has released its long-delayed 2026 National Defense Strategy (NDS), signaling a major shift in Washington’s military priorities by no longer treating China as the “primary threat” to US national security.
The document, published late Friday, places the defense of the US homeland and the Western Hemisphere at the center of Pentagon planning, a sharp departure from strategies issued under both former President Joe Biden and President Donald Trump’s first term, which identified China as the foremost strategic challenge.
According to the strategy, past US administrations “ignored American interests,” allowing strategic vulnerabilities to emerge in areas such as the Panama Canal, Greenland, and the broader Western Hemisphere. The document explicitly calls for abandoning what it describes as “grandiose strategies” in favor of policies rooted in the “practical interests” of the US public.
Reduced emphasis on China, conciliatory tone in the Pacific
While China remains a key concern, the 2026 NDS no longer characterizes Beijing as an “acute” or “existential” threat. Instead, it refers to China as a “settled force” in the Indo-Pacific that must be deterred from dominating the US or its allies.
The document adopts a notably conciliatory tone, stressing that Washington does not seek to “strangle or humiliate” China. It argues that a “decent peace” is achievable under terms favorable to the US and acceptable to Beijing, emphasizing diplomacy, stable relations, and expanded military-to-military communication channels to avoid escalation.
Although the Pentagon continues to advocate a “strong denial defense” in the Pacific, the strategy does not specify what military assets will be deployed. Notably, Taiwan is not mentioned by name, marking a significant shift from the 2022 National Defense Strategy, which explicitly framed Taiwan as a central security concern.
Europe’s declining importance, new DPRK strategy
In contrast to the National Security Strategy released last month, the defense document avoids describing Europe as being in “civilizational decline”, but it nonetheless downplays the continent’s strategic importance.
“Although Europe remains important, it has a smaller and decreasing share of global economic power,” the strategy states, adding that while US engagement will continue, Washington will prioritize defending the homeland and its immediate sphere of influence.
The strategy also outlines a reduced US military role in deterring the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, shifting primary responsibility to South Korea, which currently hosts around 28,500 US troops.
“South Korea is capable of taking primary responsibility for deterring North Korea with critical but more limited US support,” the document states.
The strategy notably omits any reference to the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, reinforcing speculation that Washington is moving toward managing the DPRK’s nuclear capabilities rather than seeking their elimination.
“This shift in the balance of responsibility is consistent with America’s interest in updating US force posture on the Korean Peninsula,” the strategy explains, noting that Washington seeks to make its forces more flexible and better positioned to respond to a wider range of contingencies across the region.
Burden-sharing and regional rebalancing in the Pacific
Across the broader Pacific region, the Pentagon is urging allies to assume greater responsibility for their own defense, linking continued US cooperation to increased military spending by allies, with benchmarks as high as 5% of GDP. The strategy emphasizes economic and maritime security over regime-change policies, describing the Indo-Pacific as the world’s most dynamic economic region and underscoring the need to protect trade routes and strategic access points.
Japan and South Korea are identified as central to this regional balancing approach, with the US seeking to “incentivize and enable” allies to play a more assertive role in collective defense.
Meanwhile, South Korea has raised its defense spending to 7.5% of GDP and continues to field upwards of 500,000 regular troops with approximately 3.1 million reservists. On its part, Japan is moving to decisively break with decades of post-war pacifism, accelerating a historic military buildup and adopting a more assertive security posture.
Tokyo is on track to reach defense spending equivalent to 2% of GDP by March 2026, abandoning the long-standing 1% cap, as part of a five-year rearmament plan totaling 43 trillion yen. The shift is accompanied by the development of “counterstrike” capabilities, marking a transition from an exclusively defense-oriented doctrine toward deterrence by punishment and the fielding of overtly offensive weapons. While Japanese officials frame the change as strategic maturity and greater alliance responsibility, critics have denounced it as a revival of Japanese militarism.
The release of the 2026 NDS comes after months of internal delays. US media reported that a draft reached War Secretary Pete Hegseth as early as September, but disagreements within the administration over how to characterize China’s threat, particularly amid ongoing trade negotiations, stalled its publication.
Despite references to Russia, Iran, and DPRK as sources of risk, the strategy treats these threats as secondary, reinforcing the Pentagon’s pivot toward homeland defense and regional retrenchment rather than expansive global confrontation.
What’s on Trump’s mind as US adjusts to multipolarity
By M. K. BHADRAKUMAR | Indian Punchline | December 12, 2025
The world order’s transformation to multipolarity is a work in progress with the variables at work, but its outcome will be largely determined by the alignment of the three big powers — the United States, Russia and China. Historically, the ‘triangle’ appeared as the lid came off the Sino-Soviet schism in the 1960s and a ferocious public acrimony erupted between Moscow and Beijing, which prompted the Nixon administration to moot Henry Kissinger’s secret mission to Beijing to meet up face to face with Chairman Mao Zedong and Premier Zhou En-lai and, hopefully, work out a modus vivendii to jointly counter Russia.
Revisiting the Sino-Soviet schism, it is well understood by now that the US-Soviet – China triangle never really ran the course that Kissinger had envisaged. Kissinger’s failure to consolidate the opening of relations with China was partly due to his loss of power by January 1977 and, in a systemic sense, inevitably so, given the complexity of the boiling cauldron of Sino-Soviet schism where ideology mixed with politics and geopolitics — and realpolitik.
While the western mythology was that the US built up the foundations of China’s rise, historiography points in another direction, namely, that Beijing always had in mind the dialectics at work and even as a degree of compatibility of Chinese and American interests in checking the expansion of Soviet power existed, Beijing was determined to avoid military conflict with the Soviet Union and concentrated its attention on improving its tactical position within the US-Chinese-Soviet triangle.
On its part, the Soviet Union also consistently promoted increased exchanges with China despite the bitter acrimony and even military clashes with a view to undercut perceived advantages the US derived from the Sino-Soviet split — and even sought to persuade China to accept the military and territorial status quo in Asia.
In fact, to retard Sino-US cooperation against them in the early 1970s, the Soviets offered at one point to modify their territorial claims along their border, to sign non-aggression pacts and / or agreements prohibiting the use of force, to base Sino-Soviet relationship on the five principles of peaceful co-existence, and to restore high-level contacts, including party ties, in the interests of their common opposition to the US.
If China largely ignored these overtures, it was almost entirely due to the great turbulence in its internal politics. Suffice to say, no sooner than Mao, the Soviet Union’s nemesis, died in September 1976 (and the curtain descended on the Cultural Revolution), Moscow followed up quickly with several gestures, including Brezhnev sending a message of condolence (the first CPSU message to China in a decade), followed by another Party message in October congratulating the newly-elected CCP Chairman Hua Guofeng, and shortly thereafter in November sending their chief negotiator for border talks Deputy Foreign Minister Ilichev back to China in an attempt to resume the border talks. But, again, if nothing came of it, that was because of China’s invasion of Vietnam and the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan soon thereafter in 1980.
Indeed, looking back, the main legacy of the 1970s viewed through the prism of the US-China-Russia ‘triangle’ was the reorientation of China’s defence policy and its geopolitical realignment with the West. China made no contribution significantly to weaken the Soviet Union or to aggravate the stagnation and brewing crisis in the Soviet political economy.
Meanwhile, the Sino-US differences over Taiwan and other issues had reemerged by 1980-1982, compelling China to reassess its foreign policy strategy, which manifested in Beijing’s announcement in 1982 of its “independent” foreign policy — plainly put, an attempt to rely less explicitly on the US as a strategic counterweight to the Soviet Union — and the move to open “consultative talks” with Moscow, and a growing receptiveness towards the numerous pending Soviet overtures for bilateral exchanges (in sports, cultural and economic areas, etc), the overall direction being to reduce tensions with the Soviets and increase the room for manoeuvre for Beijing within the China-US-Soviet triangle.
Indeed, a broader detente between China and the Soviet Union had to wait till the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan following the Geneva Accords signed in April 1988. Nonetheless, a basic change in the Sino-Soviet relations through the 1980s appeared, which included regular scheduled summit meetings; resumption of cooperative ties between the CCP and the CPSU; Beijing’s acceptance of the pending Soviet proposals for non-aggression / non-use of force; and resumption of Sino-Soviet border questions at vice-foreign minister level.
Washington could sense the shift in Chinese policy directions vis-a-vis the Soviet Union. Notably, reviewing the marked shift in the Chinese strategy, a CIA assessment noted:
“More recently, Moscow followed Brezhnev’s call in 1982 for improved relations with China with a halt in most authoritative Soviet statements critical of China. When Sino-Soviet discussions resumed in October 1982, Soviet media cut back sharply on criticism of China. And they have remained restrained on this subject, although occasional polemic exchanges marked Sino-Soviet coverage at the time of Premier Zhao Ziyang’s visit to the United States in January 1984. Moscow has continued to be critical of China through the Soviet-based clandestine radio Ba Yi… China for its part has continued criticism of Soviet foreign policy, although past attention to Soviet “revisionist” internal policies has all but disappeared since China’s own economic policies have been significantly changed after Mao’s death.”
Succinctly put, with CPSU General Secretary Gorbachev consolidating power circa late 1988 by his election to the chairmanship of the presidium of the Supreme Soviet and on a parallel track, Deng had outmaneuvered political rivals and become China’s paramount leader by 1978 — and had launched the Boluan Fanzheng program to restore political stability, rehabilitate those persecuted during the Cultural Revolution, and reduce ideological extremism — the door had opened for the two erstwhile adversaries to enter the rose garden of reconciliation.
Significantly, the timing of Gorbachev’s visit to Beijing to meet up with Deng in 1989 was far from ideal by virtue of the Tiannenmen Square incidents, but neither side proposed to postpone or reschedule the meeting. Such was the intensity of their mutual desire for reconciliation.
Today, the above résumé has become necessary when we assess the future directions of the Trump administration’s China policies. The common perception is that Trump is attempting to create a wedge between Putin’s Russia and Xi Jinping’s China with a view to isolate the latter and thwart it from surpassing the US. But there is no shred of evidence available hinting at the potential for decoupling Russia from China.
All the signs are to the contrary in the direction of the steady integration of the two countries. Last week, the Kremlin announced a visa-free regime for Chinese citizens to visit Russia. Interestingly, this was a reciprocal move. FT reported recently that a Chinese businessman has been given equity in Russia’s biggest manufacturer of drones which supplies the military — in the first known collaboration in the area of defence industry.
With the Power of Siberia 2 on the anvil, China’s dependence on Russia for its energy security will increase further. Russia’s foreign trade is undergoing a profound shift, with China replacing the EU as Russia’s main trading partner. Overall, Sino-Russian relations are closer today than they have been in decades.
On the other hand, there is no credible suggestion that the Trump administration is preparing for a war with China. Japan under its new leadership is whistling in the dark.
So, what is on Trump’s mind? In his revolutionary agenda for the remaking of the new world order, Trump aims at a strategic concord between the US on one side and Russia and China on the other. The recent US National Security Strategy strongly points in that direction, too. The implications of this revolutionary thinking for multipolarity are going to be profound — for partners such as India or allies like Japan or Germany alike.
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Truth, History and Integrity
By Gilad Atzmon | March 13, 2010
… As devastating as it may be, at a certain moment in time, a horrible chapter was given an exceptionally meta-historical status. Its ‘factuality’ was sealed by draconian laws and its reasoning was secured by social and political settings. The Holocaust became the new Western religion. Unfortunately, it is the most sinister religion known to man. It is a license to kill, to flatten, no nuke, to wipe, to rape, to loot and to ethnically cleanse. … Read full article
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