US officials this week reiterated their commitment to Japan’s plans to rapidly increase defense spending amid rising tensions with China and North Korea after decades of limited investment after World War II. But despite support from the US and other allies, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida plans to turn Japan’s self-defense forces into an army to counter threats from its neighbors will depend on the Japanese willingness to pay for – and staff – the surge.
Japan’s new security position will increase the nation’s military budget by 56 percent, from about 27.47 trillion yen over five years to about 43 trillion yen (an increase of about $215 billion to $324 billion as of Friday’s close). Historically, Japan has kept security spending low due to its constitutional obligation to avoid war, but the country has a defense budget and has maintained the Self-Defense Forces since 1954.
US President Joe Biden, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin met with their Japanese counterparts last week and implemented the new stances outlined in Japan’s new strategy. “We are modernizing our military alliance, building on Japan’s historic increase in defense spending and a new national security strategy,” Biden said in his meeting with Kishida on Friday, telling reporters that the US is “fully committed to the alliance.” ”
Blinken vowed on Wednesday in a press briefing with Japanese Foreign Minister Yoshimasa Hayashi, Austin, and Japanese Defense Minister Hamada Yasukazu that Japan would take on “new roles” in the Indo-Pacific region and “encourage” even closer defense cooperation with it as part of the new security plan the United States and our mutual partners,” although Blinken did not specify what those new roles would be.
Kishida has cited Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as a warning of the threat to Japan and other East Asian nations from an increasingly militarized China — and has also used Ukraine’s battlefield successes in garnering support from international partners to back Japan’s recent military stance to explain.
Despite this week’s fanfare and the US and other partners’ commitment to Japan’s military expansion, doubts remain as to whether Kishida can persuade the Japanese people to provide both the financial and human capital his proposed augmentation would require.
Both the American and Japanese leaders have tried for years to increase Japan’s defense spending; The US under Trump particularly urged NATO allies to increase their defense spending to the 2 percent required by NATO members’ defense spending protocols. Japan has long had close ties with NATO despite not being a member; Kishida became the first Japanese leader to attend a NATO summit in June. But increased spending and coordination doesn’t necessarily mean a stronger military, and the “victory laps,” as one expert has put it, surrounding the announcement have overshadowed the difficulties Kishida and Japan face in going through with the proposed expansion.
Japan’s historic military investment, restated
There is no doubt that Kishida’s plan to increase defense spending is significant, but portraying Japan’s new stance as a 180-degree turn from pacifism is misguided. Japan has its defense forces, and its defense budget has increased every year for the past nine years; For fiscal 2023, the Kishida government approved a 26.3 percent budget increase, bringing proposed defense spending to 6.82 trillion yen, or $51.4 billion.
As early as 2023, the government plans to purchase eight F-35A Lightning II joint strike fighters and eight F-35B Lightning multirole fighter jets, part of a much larger package of F-35s it intends to acquire from the United States. Japan will also continue development of a sixth-generation fighter jet with the militaries of Italy and Britain, buy 500 Tomahawk cruise missiles from the US while developing its own counter-attack missile capabilities, and ramp up domestic production of missiles, including a hypersonic model.
But as Tom Phuong Le, associate professor of politics at Pomona College, told Vox, the new stance places more emphasis on acquiring technology and weapons systems than recruiting people for the service. Especially in a cultural context where people often have good jobs after graduation and have no family or cultural ties to military service, “what’s the incentive to go into the military and deal with Russia, China and North Korea in the regular economy have a fairly comfortable job?
There is no doubt that the security environment has become more dangerous, both in East Asia and elsewhere. Between China antagonizing Taiwan, North Korea testing missiles and nuclear warheads, and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, there is cause for concern for many nations – including Japan – about the future and the possibility of conflict.
These concerns have created an environment for proposed policy changes that “the elites have been pursuing for some time,” according to Phillip Lipscy, director of the Center for the Study of Global Japan at the University of Toronto. “The willingness of the Japanese public to join a stronger defense has likely changed, or at least the leadership has perceived that public sentiment has changed in part due to the war in Ukraine.”
But as Mike Mochizuki, associate professor of political science and international affairs at George Washington University, explained, the circumstances in which Japan would be drawn into direct conflict with North Korea or China are very limited; “North Korea will not attack out of the blue,” he said, and China’s threat to Japan is not a direct attack. “The threat is […] a cross-strait military conflict and because of Japan’s geographic proximity, because of the US-Japan alliance, and because US military assets in Japan are considered critical to any sort of viable US military intervention in the Taiwan crisis – for this reason, If there is a Taiwan conflict, there is a high possibility that China will attack Japanese territory.”
The political reality in Japan complicates Kishida’s plan
Kishida’s plan to increase defense spending means he will likely have to raise taxes — a difficult prospect given Japan’s aging population, which requires an ever-increasing share of resources to care for. Japan’s public debt to GDP ratio has been the highest of any G7 since 1998; An increasing debt burden could weigh on the Japanese economy.
Kishida himself is unpopular, tainted by the scandal surrounding the alleged association of his late predecessor Shinzo Abe and the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) with the Unification Church, Phuong Le and Mochizuki told Vox. Revelations about links between the church, which many in Japan see as a blackmailing cult, and the government after Abe’s assassination in July torpedoed Kishida’s popularity. Should he decide to hold an election ahead of his proposed tax increases, as he likely would in late December, it could essentially be a referendum on that proposal. When that happens, there are many Japanese proverbs [Kishida’s] won’t last very long,” Mochizuki told Vox.
As Mochizuki explained, “Kishida himself is quite moderate, and he comes from the faction known as Kochikai, which has been more moderate on defense issues, much more open to stable relations with China, and his foreign minister, Hayashi, has the same views.” Kishida’s unpopularity has him and Hayashi however, pushed towards the more combative elements of the LDP. “He’s basically settled on the defense side of things,” Mochizuki said.
“What Kishida was trying to do is get Biden to hug him,” Mochizuki said.
This political environment, combined with US pressure and legitimate regional threats, “makes it more likely that Japan will take bigger steps,” Phuong Le said. And although US officials have demonstrated their solid commitment to the US-Japan alliance this week, plans for Kishida’s government to realistically implement the proposed changes have fallen short, Phuong Le said.
“Both sides don’t talk about it because they don’t have any solutions.”
Correction, 9 p.m.: An earlier version of this story said that Japan’s military budget would increase from 27.47 billion yen to about 43 billion yen. The amount is 27.47 trillion yen to about 43 trillion yen.
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