By Eric Vandenbroeck and co-workers

Tokyo Aims To Counter Growing Chinese And North Korean Aggression

On Thursday, Japan’s Defense Ministry requested nearly $53 billion for its next defense budget. The 13 percent increase is the largest request in the agency’s history and the 12th consecutive raise. According to Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, the spending boost is part of a five-year, nearly $295 billion plan to strengthen the country’s defense capabilities amid increasingly aggressive Indo-Pacific threats.

Japan hopes to make defense spending 2 percent of its GDP despite decades of a self-imposed 1 percent cap. In this year’s request, more than $5 billion will be allocated toward building a fleet of standoff missiles, nearly $9 billion will go toward enhancing the country’s air and missile defense systems, and around $500 million will be invested in next-generation fighter jets as part of a larger deal with the United Kingdom and Italy.

“This is fairly heady stuff for a nation of military euphemisms where the army is dubbed a self-defense force and aircraft carriers are modestly called ‘multi-purpose operation destroyers,’” journalist William Sposato argued in Foreign Policy.

In December 2022, Tokyo published a new national security strategy that effectively overturned 60 years of military pacifism, though Kishida said the country would remain committed to its self-defense stance. In the report, Japan’s Defense Ministry called China its “greatest strategic challenge.” Kishida has since said that obtaining a “counterstrike capability will be essential to deter an attack” from China.

Tokyo’s pivot toward a more aggressive defense strategy in the Indo-Pacific comes as Chinese and North Korean threats have escalated to dangerous levels. Over the last year, Beijing has increasingly threatened Taiwan’s sovereignty, boosted its overseas naval bases, and expanded its Belt and Road Initiative. Pyongyang appears to be following in Beijing’s footsteps. On Wednesday, North Korea simulated a scorched-earth nuclear strike on South Korea and launched two short-range ballistic missiles into waters off its east coast, spurring Kishida to call Pyongyang’s actions a threat to “peace and stability” in Japan, the Indo-Pacific, and the world at large.

 

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