The Japanese government on Friday approved a radical revision of its defense doctrine in an attempt in particular to thwart Chinese military power, described by Tokyo as an “unprecedented strategic challenge” to its security.
Japan is thus planning, as part of the biggest overhaul of its defense policy in decades, to drastically inflate its military spending, unify its command and increase the range of its missiles.
Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said on Friday evening that he was “determined to fulfill his mission to protect the nation and its people at this turning point in history”.
Although these changes are supported by Japanese public opinion, it is a major shift for this country whose pacifist Constitution, adopted the day after its defeat at the end of the Second World War, forbids it in principle to build a real army.
Kishida said Japan’s defensive strategy would continue to “be within the framework of its Constitution, international law and Japanese law,” adding that its “exclusive defense” policy would remain unchanged.
The Japanese defensive doctrine is outlined in three documents clearly referring to China, North Korea and Russia, which AFP consulted before its adoption.
These documents adopt more blunt language than when Japan’s national security strategy was first published in 2013.
Chinese “strategic challenge”
China’s increasingly assertive military posture is described there as a “serious concern for Japan and the international community”, Beijing being an “unprecedented strategic challenge to the peace and stability of Japan”.
At the center of its new “national security strategy”, Japan plans to double its annual defense budget from around 1% of its GDP to 2% by 2027. The country would thus align itself with a similar commitment already made by NATO members.
Japan intends in particular to acquire a “counter-attack capability”, a concept which until recently would have been deemed incompatible with its Constitution. This would allow it to strike targets threatening the archipelago from neighboring countries.
“Counterattack capability is necessary,” the documents say, noting that the current system for shooting down potential missiles before they fall on Japanese soil is not effective enough, but no preemptive strikes “cannot be tolerated” under the Constitution.
Government documents mention US Tomahawk cruise missiles, of which local media recently reported that Japan is interested in acquiring up to 500, as well as long-range SM-6 missiles.
The presence of the Self-Defense Forces on the southernmost islands of Japan, the closest to Taiwan and therefore to China, should also be increased.
North Korean “threat”
The documents consulted by AFP indicate that Japan plans to strengthen the capacities of its coast guards and to increase its cooperation with the armies and the coast guards of other countries, without offering more details.
Japan’s longstanding concerns about China escalated further last August when Beijing stepped up military exercises near Taiwan, in which missiles fell into the sea in the exclusive economic zone. (EEZ) of the Japanese archipelago.
The national security strategy also refers to repeated missile fire from North Korea, saying Pyongyang’s military actions pose “a graver and more imminent threat to Japan than ever before.”
As for Russia, its “willingness to use force to achieve its own security objectives, as in Ukraine, is evident”, and its military activities in the Asia-Pacific region as well as its strategic cooperation with China “constitute a strong security concern,” the documents add.
The new Japanese strategy has provoked the irritation of Beijing, which regularly alludes to the brutal Japanese militarism of the first half of the 20th century, of which China was one of the victims.
“Japan is ignoring facts, deviating from common understandings, deviating from its commitment to bilateral relations and discrediting China. We are firmly opposed to this,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said on Friday, adding that Beijing had solemnly protested to Tokyo.
The White House, for its part, estimated that this overhaul would “strengthen and modernize” the alliance between Japan and the United States.
For its architects, the revised doctrine presented by Japan is “the latest step in a slow and gradual normalization” of the Japanese position on defense and national security, said James Brady, vice president of the cabinet of Teneo studies.