Read more here.

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States for the first time will base a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier in Japan starting in 2008, the U.S. Navy said on Thursday, after the only country ever hit with atomic bombs dropped its long-standing resistance to the move.

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Hiroyuki Hosoda, Japan's top government spokesman, said, "We believe that the change (of the carriers) will lead to maintaining the solid presence of the U.S. Navy and contribute to keeping Japan's security and international peace into the future."

The carrier announcement followed word out of Tokyo on Wednesday that Japan and the United States agreed on the relocation of a U.S. military base on the southern island of Okinawa, clearing the way for a deal to reorganize the deployment of U.S. forces throughout Japan.

The United States has about 50,000 military personnel in Japan.

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Originally posted by West Coast Tiger:
I wonder what North Korea and China is thinking about all this.

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The US Navy issued a statement on the changeover from the non-nuclear Kittyhawk to the nuclear-powered vessel:

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The security environment in the Western Pacific region increasingly requires that the U.S. Navy station the most capable ships forward, from established forward-deployed positions. This posture allows the most rapid response times possible for maritime and joint forces, and brings our most capable ships with the greatest amount of striking power and operational capability to bear in the timeliest manner.

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Furthermore, the Chinese--and everyone else who's been watching US/Japan defence relations recently--will see this as furthering the trend towards eliminating what remains of certain long-standing Japanese policy obstacles to offensive militarization generally, and to nuclear militarization particularly.

Changes to Japan's policy towards Taiwan, to its chain-of-command rules to accommodate BMD plans, to its placement of US bases on Japanese territory--the Chinese (among others) will definitely have been watching these and additional changes to the Japan-US defence relationship, because they're obviously related to US plans to 'manage' China, its 'strategic competitor,' according to George W. Bush.

Oh, by the way, many of the Japanese citizens living near the future carrier's base don't want it there:

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From the governor on down, officials and citizens of Yokosuka expressed shock Friday at a government announcement that U.S. naval forces will deploy a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier at the naval base in Kanagawa Prefecture.

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More than 340,000 signatures have been collected by a citizens group since last year protesting deployment of a nuclear carrier.

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Link.

Perhaps the Koizumi government is right to ignore the needs and aspirations of these Japanese citizens, however--especially if doing so furthers the US National Security Strategy's selfless aim of making China 'truly accountable to its citizen's [sic] needs and aspirations.'

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Originally posted by nister:
China can sink any carrier, with the hyper-cruise Sunburn missile, without resort to nuclear warhead.

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Originally posted by nister:
The Onyx has enough kinetic energy to sink an escort carrier with it's mass alone, and it's open to question whether the carrier will even know it's targetted.

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