(Tokyo) Japan is due to unveil the biggest overhaul of its defense doctrine in nearly a decade on Friday, planning to inflate its military spending, consolidate its command and increase the range of its missiles against China.
This 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 equip itself with a real army.
“Fundamentally strengthening our defense capabilities is the most urgent challenge in this difficult security environment,” Prime Minister Fumio Kishida insisted again last weekend.
This change is above all the consequence of the growing fear that Chinese military power and ambitions in Asia-Pacific inspire in Tokyo.
Repeated missile attacks by North Korea and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine also play a role, as does the feeling that the protection of Washington guaranteed by the Japan-US Security Treaty is no longer enough on its own.
“Counterattack Ability”
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 member countries.
Japan intends in particular to acquire a “counter-attack capacity”, a concept which until recently would have been immediately deemed incompatible with its Constitution. This would allow it to strike targets threatening the archipelago from neighboring countries, even preemptively.
According to local media, Tokyo should however stress its attachment to a strategy based on “self-defense” and its desire not to become a “military power”, in accordance with the Constitution.
In particular, Japan would like to acquire up to 500 American Tomahawk cruise missiles, while increasing the capabilities of its current arsenal.
The country also announced on Friday its intention to develop an upcoming combat aircraft with the United Kingdom and Italy. It also plans, according to the local press, to build a hundred ammunition depots and launch satellites to better guide its potential future response strikes.
The Japanese military high command should also be unified by merging within five years the respective directions of the three branches of the Self-Defense Forces.
The presence of the Self-Defense Forces on the southernmost islands of Japan, the closest to Taiwan and therefore to China, must also be increased, in particular with an almost tripling of ballistic missile interception units, still according to the Japanese media.
“Normalization” rather than militarism
The new national defense strategy should clearly refer to China.
The Liberal Democratic Party (PLD, nationalist right) led by Fumio Kishida would have liked to use the term of Chinese “threat”, but the official documents expected on Friday should rather consider Beijing as a source of “serious concern”, a concession to the Komeito party , the centre-right ally of the PLD.
However, this would represent a clear hardening of tone compared to the first publication of Japan’s national security strategy in 2013, when Tokyo said it wanted to seek “a mutually beneficial strategic partnership” with Beijing. This expression should now be gone.
Japan’s longstanding concerns about China escalated further last August when Beijing ramped up military exercises near Taiwan, during which missiles reportedly fell into waters within the economic zone. exclusive jurisdiction (EEZ) of the Japanese archipelago.
The new Japanese strategy is likely to irritate Beijing, which regularly alludes to the brutal Japanese militarism of the first half of the 20th century.e century, of which China was one of the victims.
But for its architects in Tokyo, this revised doctrine is rather “the latest step in a slow and gradual normalization” of the Japanese position on defense and national security, estimated James Brady, vice-president of the cabinet of Teneo studies.