Resurgent Japan
military entanglements.” Thus, despite the ideals of world peace and human rights that many today associate with Article 9, its initial propagation by the Japanese government cannot be attributed solely to these ideals, but rather instead to Yoshida’s radically pragmatic and unprecedented approach to international relations.
Moving out of the US shadow
the United States seems to have finally achieved this desire of involving Japan in its regional disputes.
On December 24 2021, the cabinet of Japanese Prime Minister Kishida Fumio approved 5.4 trillion-yen (USD 47.2 billion) defence spending in fiscal year 2022, starting in April, amid the increasingly tense security environment in East Asia. The Japanese Ministry of Defence’s request to buy new equipment had been brought forward into the supplementary budget for fiscal year 2021, which also hit a record high for an extra budget, thus virtually surpassing the long-standing cap of one per cent of GDP for defence spending.
In a recent policy paper (June 2022), Japan wanted to drastically increase its defence spending “within the next five years”. The annual economic policy document for the first time mentioned both a time frame for the expenditure and concern about threats faced by Taiwan. Japan and the United States “emphasized the importance of peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait and a peaceful resolution of any problem on both sides,” the document said in a footnote that was a reference to a meeting between US President Joe Biden and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida in Tokyo last month, reports Reuters.
Interestingly, Japan joined the China-led Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) on January 1, 2022 though India had withdrawn from it at the last moment. RCEP has significant economic importance because it is the first comprehensive economic partnership in East Asia to include the three major countries in the region — China, Japan and South Korea. RCEP could encourage China and Japan to cooperate in their investments and achieve win-win situations in the region, such as in Southeast Asia. Japan’s most influential business association, Keidanren (the Japan Business Federation), has sought to expand the operations of Japanese companies in the huge Chinese market, and RCEP is likely to provide more opportunities on this front.
Japan has responded to the rise of China by playing a leadership role in the creation of the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), of which India is not a member. It is argued that India’s withdrawal from RCEP may undermine Japan’s efforts to maintain leadership in that trading bloc. In the end, China may become the dominant economic power in the region by establishing trade and investment rules beneficial to it.
In this fast-changing geo strategic equation, till date, India has remained an outlier. Apparently, Japan has moved out of the US shadow. Now the USA has found a trusted junior partner in India. The US-initiated recent alliance among India, Israel, UK and USA (I2U2) is a case in point.
Views expressed are personal