Japan’s strategic imperative

CAMBRIDGE – Last December, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida announced the most ambitious expansion of military power in Japan since the creation of the country’s Self-Defence Forces in 1954. Japanese defence spending will rise to 2 per cent of GDP – twice the 1 per cent level that has prevailed since 1976 – and a new National Security Strategy lays out all the diplomatic, economic, technological, and military instruments that Japan will use to protect itself in the years ahead.

Most notably, Japan will acquire the kind of long-range missiles that it had previously foresworn, and it will work with the United States to strengthen littoral defences around the “first island chain” off China. Last month in Washington, following Kishida’s diplomatic tour through several other G7 countries, he and US President Joe Biden pledged closer defence cooperation. Among the factors precipitating these changes are China’s increased assertiveness against Taiwan and, especially, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which reminded a new generation of what military aggression looks like.

Of course, some of Japan’s neighbours worry that it will resume its militarist posture of the 1930s. When Kishida’s predecessor, Abe Shinzo, broadened the constitutional interpretation of self-defence to include collective undertakings with Japanese allies, he stoked concerns both within the region and from some segments of Japanese society.