Big change divides Japan and worries neighbours
When Lee Kuan Yew, the late Singaporean statesman, was asked what he thought of giving an international role to Japan’s armed forces, he compared it to ‘‘giving a chocolate liqueur to an alcoholic’’.
‘‘Once the Japanese get off the wagon, it will be hard to stop them,’’ he said. He spoke as one who had lived through World War II and brutal Japanese invasions of southeast Asia that are remembered with a shiver even today.
But three decades on, the world has changed. To adopt his metaphor, Japan finds itself plied with booze.
This week, British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and his Japanese counterpart Fumio Kishida signed an agreement to formalise joint military training and exercises. At a summit in Washington, DC yesterday, United States President Joe Biden welcomed Kishida’s announcement that Japan is to double its defence spending to Nato levels and acquire long-range cruise missiles.
What difference will the changes to Japan’s security policy make to the strategic balance in Asia?
In theory, the changes are huge and historic. Since the war, Japanese policy has been frozen by its constitution, imposed in 1946 by US occupying forces. Article 9 bans the use of war in settling international disputes and the maintenance of ‘‘land, air and sea’’ potential.
But with the dawning of the Cold War in the 1950s, an unarmed Japan no longer suited the US. A colossal fudge was born – the Self-Defence Forces, or SDF, one of the world’s best-funded, largest and bizarrely restricted armies.
US forces, stationed in Japan, were the mainstay of its deterrence, with the SDF providing backup. In the 1990s, the SDF began to take part in modest peacekeeping exercises, and even sent troops to Iraq, after Japan agonised.
Two developments have brought about the latest changes: the rise of a nuclearised North Korea, and a newly rich, militarised and assertive China.
Beijing’s claims to the Senkaku Islands are a direct threat. More alarming is the possibility of its invasion of Taiwan, which many assume would lead to attacks on US bases in Japan.
Japan’s latest defence strategy warns of the most severe and complex security environment since the war.
In 2015, Japan ‘‘reinterpreted’’ the constitution, awarding itself the right to dispatch the SDF
overseas. Kishida’s government is to increase the defence budget to 2% of GDP by 2027, and spend part of this on long-range cruise missiles capable of ‘‘counterstrike’’ against rocket bases in China or North Korea.
However, polls show that although the Japanese public are anxious about China and North Korea and believe in stronger defence, many remain cautious about risking Japanese lives in engagements in the wider world.
An effort to remove the constitution’s ‘‘peace clause’’ would divide Japan with Brexit-like intensity.
Some critics believe that increasing the budget before determining detailed defence needs is a formula for inefficiency and poor decision-making. Plans to build a 20,000-strong cyberdefence force and manoeuvrable hypersonic missiles do not appear to have been thought out in detail.