Recent news accounts announce with great fanfare that Japan’s Ministry of Defense is asking for a boost in spending, primarily to fortify the country’s outlying island chain in the East China Sea that is the focus of a bitter territorial dispute with China.
The budgetary request confirms that Tokyo has no intention of compromising regarding the feud over the Senkaku/Diaoyu islands.
But the fine print in the news stories also suggests that Japan is not very serious about creating a more robust military capability to enforce its territorial claims, Ted Galen Carpenter wrote for The National Interest.
The requested increase is a mere 2.2%, and it would bring Tokyo’s annual military outlays up to $42.38 billion. That is less than one-third of China’s official defense budget of $145 billion, which almost no one believes fully accounts for that country’s actual military spending. Both the Pentagon and independent estimates place the real figure at $180 billion or more.
The security bills would permit the Self Defense Force to engage in combat for the first time since World War II in cases of “collective defense,” when Japan’s allies, such as the US, are attacked, but Japan itself is not.
This underscores a dangerous disconnect between Tokyo’s increasingly strident geostrategic ambitions and its military capabilities.
Not only has Japan taken a hard line on the Senkaku/Diaoyu issue, the government of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has also moved to “reinterpret” article nine of the country’s pacifist-leaning constitution to permit Japanese involvement in collective defense efforts.
The reinterpretation also broadens the definition of what constitutes a threat to Japan’s security. It would no longer be confined to an attack on Japanese territory.
Regional Competition
All of this is designed to enable Japan to play a more active role in East Asia’s security affairs. In addition to such constitutional maneuvering, the Abe government has begun to forge significant military ties with other nations in the region that worry about China’s ambitions.
Steps already have included arms sales to Vietnam and the Philippines. Tokyo has also begun to involve itself in the contentious territorial disputes of the South China Sea, even though Japanese interests are only indirectly involved in that region.
The change in military doctrine and the various geopolitical initiatives have generated considerable domestic controversy, as critics worry that Abe’s policies could increase the likelihood of Japan becoming entangled in military conflicts.
“No to war legislation,” ‘’Scrap the bills now” and “Abe, quit” were chanted in one of the biggest protests in recent memory in Tokyo in objection to the country’s military ambitions.
Japan’s neighbors, especially China and South Korea, also worry about the possibility of a revival of the Japanese militarism that scarred East Asia so badly during the first half of the 20th century.
The hesitance of Japanese officials to acknowledge their country’s responsibility for that tragic period has intensified suspicions and worries.
Tripartite Approach
Tokyo is on the verge of creating the worst possible combination of policies. It is trying to play a much more assertive regional strategic role without developing the necessary military wherewithal to back it up in the event of a crisis.
Worse, it is trying to adopt that more assertive strategic role without taking steps to erase the resentment and uneasiness among key neighbors generated by Japan’s earlier imperial abuses.
Japanese leaders want to take three steps to correct these mismatches. One step is to emulate Germany and offer a truly unconditional apology for Tokyo’s behavior during the imperial era. Previous statements, including the latest one by Abe marking the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II, have seemed too conditional and even evasive.
The second step would be to adopt a more conciliatory stance regarding its territorial disputes with both China and South Korea. The legal validity of the rival claims is murky at best. It would be a constructive gesture for Tokyo to compromise with two countries that were victims of Imperial Japan’s aggression, even if Japanese claims are perfectly valid.
Sometimes a willingness to make concessions on relatively modest issues can lead to better relations and greater gains overall.
Finally, if Japan is determined to play a more vigorous regional strategic role, the Abe government must do a better job of convincing the Japanese people that the new course is warranted and desirable.
Public Backing
Playing such a role requires a much more serious level of military spending than $42 billion a year, something that is not possible without greater domestic support.
But the support does not seem to on the table for now.
The demonstrations against the new military legislation started earlier this year and grew sharply after July, when Abe’s ruling coalition pushed the legislation through the more powerful lower house despite polls showing a majority of Japanese opposed.
A group called Mothers Against War started in July and gained supporters rapidly via Facebook. It collected nearly 20,000 signatures of people opposed to the legislation, which representatives tried unsuccessfully to submit to Abe’s office last week.
Tokyo’s current course creates worrisome dangers for the US as Japan’s ally. The worst scenario would be for an excessively rigid, provocative Japanese geostrategic posture to produce an armed conflict that Japan could not handle by itself.
The US might then find itself in a war, most likely with China, over issues that have little relevance to America’s own interests.
Before that danger increases further, US leaders need to have a candid discussion with their Japanese counterparts about some necessary constructive initiatives.
