Liberal Japan

Japan has had a six year operation in the Indian Ocean. One purpose of this operation has been to refuel vessels engaged in the Afghanistan theater of operations. Because there is no authorization, MSDF vessels are not suppose to be refueling ships engaged in other operations, such as the one in Iraq.

MSDF big fuel tankers not only refuel other vessels directly, but indirectly. How? They often replenishing the fuel tankers of other nations, which in turn refuel their own vessels. These other countries would mostly be America, followed by Britain, and then some others.

Now if I am reading this article from the Nikkei correctly, then the following is true:

Japan’s MSDF has exchanged fuel with other fuel tankers (from other countries) 105 times out of 777 times (13.5%).

Japan’s MSDF transfered 267,000 kiloliters out of 484,000 kiloliters to fuel tankers (55.1%).

Now, say some big American navy fuel tanker fills up on fuel provided by Japan, would that American navy fuel tanker then have carefully only provided fuel to ships with missions related to Afghanistan. This seems very unlikely to me.

We are talking here about over half the fuel that Japan has provided during its Indian Ocean operations.