Japan's defence budget will be doubled within five years, and it's military will acquire counterstrike capabilities under sweeping changes to its defence policy. - AFP
TOKYO (The Straits Times/Asia News Network): Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida returned from a seven-day, five-country trip on Sunday (Jan 15) with the wind in his sails, having won the backing of fellow Group of Seven (G-7) leaders for a radical overhaul to its pacifist security posture.
The whirlwind trip came as Japan, which holds the rotating presidency of the bloc of seven industrialised democracies in 2023, sought a display of unity against challenges to the global rules-based order.
Kishida visited all the G-7 capitals – Paris, London, Rome, Ottawa and Washington – but Germany, owing to scheduling conflicts. This followed sweeping changes he enacted to Japan’s defence policy three weeks ago.
Japan plans to double its defence budget in five years, and also acquire counterstrike capabilities that will enable it to attack enemy bases should it come under threat.
Among the key discussions in Britain and Italy was a plan to jointly develop fighter jets that will replace Japan’s ageing fleet.
And, visiting the White House for the first time since taking office in October 2021, Mr Kishida discussed with US President Joe Biden a plan for Japan to become only the second United States ally after Britain to be sold Tomahawk cruise missiles, which will allow it to strike ground targets.
There, Kishida scored a “crystal clear” vow that the US is “fully, thoroughly, completely committed to the alliance – and, more importantly, to Japan’s defence”.
Significantly, they will establish a new chain of command to bolster “integrated deterrence” to oversee conventional land, sea and air forces, nascent areas such as cyberspace and electromagnetic warfare, as well as through the use of economic sanctions and diplomacy. Among the urgent issues that experts say this can address is a potential operational gap should US bases in Japan come under attack.
China was the elephant in the room.
Last Monday, vice-president of Japan’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party Taro Aso said in Tokyo that a Taiwan contingency will lead to “the flames of war falling on Japanese territories close to Taiwan”. The inhabited Okinawan island of Yonaguni is 110km away from Taiwan.
Dr Satoru Nagao, a non-resident fellow of the US-based Hudson Institute think-tank, told The Straits Times that the hub-and-spoke security model is evolving with Washington’s inability to deter China on its own, which has led to burden-sharing and calls for its allies to step up and do more.
Both the US and Tokyo, which observe the “one China” policy, have been on edge over the prospect of Beijing trying to seize Taiwan, which it sees as a renegade province, by force.
The overwhelming security focus of Kishida’s tour of Japan’s key Western partners has fanned disquiet in the country, with liberal commentators wondering if he is trying to create a fait accompli.
The shift in defence posture has not been debated in the Diet, while there is simmering unhappiness over a plan to raise taxes to fund defence spending when inflation is at a 40-year high and wages remain depressed.
And then there are questions over whether enough thought has been put into trying to ease tensions through dialogue, with the Mainichi newspaper saying on Sunday: “Military deterrence and diplomacy are the two wheels of security. Despite this, no strategy is in sight for easing regional tensions.”
However, the conservative Sankei newspaper, voicing support for the defence build-up, said: “Modern Japan is at a crossroads between whether it can keep peace or whether deterrence fails and it gets invaded. Success depends on realising the strengthening of deterrence centred on defence capabilities.”
Kishida, elected from a Hiroshima constituency, will host his G-7 counterparts in the atomic-bombed city from May 19 to 21.
The summit will be rife with symbolism, with Kishida hoping to win support for his pet cause of a world without nuclear arms amid rising fears that Russia will turn to such weapons in its war against Ukraine.
Yet no country would blink and willingly give up their nuclear arsenal first, amid the overwhelming distrust in global geopolitics. Japan, for instance, is protected under the US security umbrella – which Biden reiterated on Friday also covers the Senkaku/Diaoyu islets claimed by China – that includes nuclear as an option.
This is why, despite Kishida’s entreaties against nuclear, both Japan and the US have not signed the United Nations’ Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.
Another potential spanner to G-7 unity lies in how Japan is the only country in the bloc whose leader has not visited Kyiv since the invasion, despite Ukraine having extended it an invitation.
Dr Nagao postulated that Japan might be caught between a rock and a hard place were Ukraine to ask for offensive weapons beyond the bulletproof vests and helmets that it has supplied, given Japan’s wartime history and pacifist Constitution.
Yet he questioned the hesitation as there has been precedent, albeit controversial: in 2013, Japan provided ammunition to South Korean troops fighting in South Sudan, Dr Nagao said, noting that the move did not face any legal issues.
