- Hubert Walas
Japan's remilitarization.
Just days after the assassination of the former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Japan held a general election and Abe's party, The Liberal Democratic Party, had an overwhelming victory. Some of the votes may have been sympathetic, but the election was primarily a clear signal of public sentiment regarding the growth of Japan's military capabilities and a de facto break with the country's post-World War 2 pacifist stance. And that was precisely one of Shinzo Abe's last wishes before his death. Now his successor, Fumio Kishida, is gradually restoring Japan's military superpower status.
Second-Order Thinking Failure
80 years ago, Imperial Japan possessed one of the largest and most powerful militaries in the world. The mighty Japanese offensive brought the empire extensive territorial gains, but ultimately suffered a devastating defeat resulting in subjugation by the United States.
After the end of World War II, in order to avoid renewed bloodshed, the Americans wanted to have Japanese military capabilities under their control. Thus, acting prudently, they inserted a provision into the newly created Japanese constitution in 1947 for this to be guaranteed. Introduced under duress and overseen by the commander of the occupation forces, General Douglas MacArthur, Article 9 of the Japanese constitution prohibited Tokyo from having a military. This was a decision that the Americans would later regret.
Japan, after World War II, diametrically changed its policies. It abandoned its imperial past altogether, became a democracy, and focused on only one goal: economic growth. And at this, it performed the best in the world. At the same time, a recent adversary, and after a while an ally, the United States was fighting battles in many places around the globe in a strategic rivalry with the Soviet Union.
Meanwhile, Japan's location in the Pacific theater continued to be crucial. It was located in close proximity to the Soviets' main Pacific port, Vladivostok. Soviet ships could not sail into the open Pacific without circumventing Japanese islands first. Moscow was looking for a way to field a significant naval force in the Pacific and draw American power away from the other side of the globe. Whereas Washington, having its main interest in securing the Atlantic and Europe, did not want to pull resources away to the other side of the globe. Therefore, for this purpose, the Americans wanted to use the economically growing Japan which no longer presented a threat to them.
But Tokyo refused by citing Article 9 which the Americans themselves had written into the Japanese constitution. The Japanese were reluctant to invest in a navy and air force, preferring instead to invest in the electronics and automotive industries which were soon to threaten their American counterparts.
Japan's constitution, despite having 75 years since its inception, has not experienced any amendments to date, but the interpretation of Article 9 has become increasingly flexible. The first significant step took place as early as 1954 when the Japan Self-Defense Forces were established. And this due to persistent urging from the Americans.
Abe’s Legacy
In the 80 years since the end of World War II, the Japanese, still remembering the trauma of those events, have become an extremely pacifist nation. The ceiling of just 1% of GDP being spent on the Self-Defense Forces established in the 1970s was intended by lawmakers to be a concrete manifestation of this. The Japanese were content to lease their own security status to the Americans, which they concluded on the back of a mutual security treaty signed after the end of World War II. In it, the United States pledged to defend Japan's sovereign integrity in exchange for the aforementioned pacifist constitution. Under this treaty, the United States established more than eighty military facilities in Japan, with more than sixty thousand U.S. troops stationed there - more than in any other country.
But in the past 10 years, the architecture of global security has begun to change rapidly, primarily due to the unprecedented rise of China, Japan's close neighbor and historical rival in the region. The threat posed to Japan by China's rise was quickly realized by Japan's longtime prime minister in the second decade of the 21st century, Shinzo Abe.
In response, Abe implemented an unprecedented series of security reforms and heavily modernized Japan's forces. Aware of the relatively waning power of the United States, he acted strongly in favor of the QUAD treaty and therefore in line with countries that are, to put it mildly, concerned about China's recent meteoric rise. In addition to Japan and the US, QUAD includes Australia and India. On this canvas, Japan's Self-Defense Forces began taking part in international maneuvers in another flexible reinterpretation of Article 9.
Moreover, Abe even broke the nuclear taboo in Japan and raised the possibility of stationing U.S. nuclear weapons on Japanese soil on a similar basis to NATO's nuclear sharing program. These proposals were greeted as highly controversial by the Japanese public who still have memories of the horrors of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Admittedly, this scenario is hardly a probable one, but it is one of the many trial balloons Abe has sent out to redefine Japan's military mind-set. With all these tests, the most critical move Abe fought for was to double the defense budget and it seems that this goal will be posthumously realized.
Same Old Threats
Abe finished his third term in 2020, and after Prime Minister Suga's brief tenure, Fumio Kishida, formerly the longtime foreign minister in Abe's cabinet, took office. He enjoys widespread public confidence sealed by having recently won the landslide election. Although Kishida is considered by observers to be a more subdued politician than Abe, his foreign policy is an extension of the past rather than a subversion. Kishida's moderation is even seen as an asset among a public that, although increasingly aware of growing threats, does not want the transition to happen too abruptly.
What do the Japanese fear? There are two primary threats. The harder-to-read danger is North Korea’s nuclear and missile program. A recent poll conducted by the Yomiuri Shimbun center found that as many as 86% of Japanese feel a real danger from North Korea. Hence, 64% of Japanese support a program to expand the country's defense capabilities.
The second, and strategically more serious, challenge is China. China's aggressive policies in the context of Taiwan or Hong Kong, in the form of militarization of artificial islands and oil extraction in disputed waters or its silent support for the criminal invasion by the Russian Federation are forcing Tokyo to abandon its pacifist doctrine and take more responsibility for its own and regional security.
Japan and the United States share a common interest in neutralizing the threats from North Korea, but primarily, from China. However, the characteristics of this threat for the two sides are different. While the Americans are operating on a broader scale, concerned with securing their current level of prosperity and power, the Japanese, like Ukraine today, face an existential threat in the extreme. It is not a matter of months or even the next few years, but actions taken today that will project into the following decades, when China will inevitably become the world's largest country economically as the disparity between Tokyo and Beijing continues to grow.
Geographically, this rivalry boils down to the Senkaku Islands, or Diaoyu as the Chinese call them, located to the northwest of Taiwan. It is a perennial flashpoint between Japan and China. Recently, the Biden administration reiterated the position taken by the earlier Trump and Obama administrations to bring Japan's Senkaku Islands under Article 5 of the Bilateral Security Treaty which automatically allows for US military intervention in the event of Chinese aggression.
The Japanese, with deep concern, are also watching the situation around Taiwan. The island is only about 110 kilometers from the Japanese island of Yonaguni Jima, where the Japanese have Patriot systems deployed, and 500 kilometers from the strategically crucial Okinawa, which is home to a massive U.S. military base hosting 26,000 Marines.
"Because we are so close to Taiwan, the security of the Taiwan Strait is also our concern," said Koichiro Matsumoto, secretary in the Japanese prime minister's cabinet. Shinzo Abe's break from official responsibility let him go even further in his words. As recently as December 2021, Abe said that a Chinese attack on Taiwan would present a direct threat to Japan and that the conflict would "drag Japan and the United States into it."
The Japanese also have a territorial dispute with the Russian Federation over the "Northern Territories," better known by its Russian name, the Kuril Islands. Russia is a theoretical third threat to Japan, but in practice is non-existent compared to North Korea and China. Nevertheless, it must be taken into account as an essential element, synchronizing its actions with the other two.
War Drums
That's why the Russian invasion of Ukraine has intensified the beating of war drums even by the Japanese who are thousands of kilometers away from the epicenter of events. The two Ukrainian-Russian and Japanese-Chinese correlations are diametrically different and have their own , but it is hard to not notice parallels or even draw direct comparisons.
Japan's sensitivity on this topic can be gauged from the fact that Japan was one of the first and most forceful nations to take concrete action against Russia after the invasion of Ukraine. Tokyo froze the assets of Russia's Central Bank, banned the export of high-end technology, and stripped Russia of its "privileged country" trade status. In practice, Japan has shed any semblance of neutrality. Moreover, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida was the first Japanese leader in history to attend a NATO summit.
All this is forcing Kishida to redefine Japan's defense doctrine. The prime minister says he will consider every option to "drastically increase" the country's defense capabilities, including the controversial ability to strike enemy bases. "I am determined to fundamentally strengthen Japan's defense capabilities over the next five years and to secure the significant increase in Japan's defense budget needed to implement it," said Kishida at the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore on a policy he likes to call "diplomatic realism for a new era."
How is Kishida going to actually realize this? First and foremost, by implementing Abe's last wish, that is, by increasing spending on the military to 2% of GDP. As we can read in the draft national security strategy document of Japan's ruling party published in April: "With the defense spending target of more than 2% of GDP for NATO nations in mind, our country is also striving to realize a budget that meets the level necessary to fundamentally strengthen defense capabilities within five years."
This one move will make Japan the world's third largest military power, at least in terms of defense spending which will increase from $50 billion to more than $100 billion per year.
Japan today has more than 900 combat aircraft, 48 destroyers, including eight Aegis anti-missile systems, and 20 submarines. Additionally, Tokyo is buying 147 F-35 fighters, including 42 F-35Bs, making it the largest user of US stealth fighters outside the United States, where 353 of its own jets are to be deployed. These jets will be able to be stationed on two Japanese aircraft carriers, Izumo and Kaga, which are Japan's first aircraft carriers since World War II and have been adapted from being helicopter carriers to support F-35s.
Whether Japan will develop its own independent missile capability or continue to rely on U.S. technology remains to be seen, but what is certain is that Tokyo is on its way to acquiring a "counter-strike capability," as the Liberal Democratic Party has phrased it.
Demons of the Past
How do the Chinese see all this? Let's just say they are not happy. They see it as subservient to US interests and warn that it will only bring Japan and the Japanese people harm. Above all, they strike historical tones and recall the terrible crimes of the Japanese from World War II, even suggesting that the risk of this remains. The Global Times, even warned that "Japanese militarism was defeated during World War II and will be defeated again," and "if Japan dares to threaten the security of other countries or even make a surprise attack, Japanese territory will become a battlefield." This is the opinion of Chinese expert Song Zhongping, but if it didn't reflect Party sentiment, it wouldn't have been reprinted in China's propaganda media.
Just a day after Nancy Pelosi's visit to Taiwan, the Chinese fired a dozen missiles, five of which landed on Japan's exclusive economic zone. This is the new 'normal' in the region that Japan must be ready for. That doesn't mean conflict is inevitable, but the militarization of the region makes the risk of an incident higher. All the more so since the 20th Congress of Chinese Communist Party will be held this Fall with President Xi Jinping predicted to win - in unprecedented fashion - a third term. This projects well on Chinese leadership which wants to show strength and its own self-integrity.
The merging and unification of the potentials of both Japan and the U.S., and their concentration on China, also due to the Americans' own choice of ‘pivoting’ to Asia from Europe, is bad news for the Chinese. Xi Jinping has broken with Deng Xiaoping's 24-character doctrine which called for calm and not getting ahead of the game. He also endorsed Russian imperial plans. The result is an increasingly strong consolidation of the Free World against China. The stance of the world's first and third most powerful economies is the most glaring example. Japan's doubling of arms spending is a move that will make Tokyo the world's third military power and is the ultimate break with the country's current pacifist nature.
Sources:
https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202206/1267220.shtml
https://geopoliticalfutures.com/japan-enters-a-new-phase-in-its-history/
https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2022/04/14/national/japan-nuclear-sharing-strike-capability/
https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2022/02/27/national/politics-diplomacy/shinzo-abe-japan-nuclear-weapons-taiwan/
https://www.yomiuri.co.jp/election/yoron-chosa/20220403-OYT1T50144/
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