Japan’s Defense Ministry said Monday that it has decided to stop unpopular plans to deploy two costly land-based U.S. missile defense systems aimed at bolstering the country’s capability against threats from North Korea.
Defense Minister Taro Kono told reporters that he decided to “stop the deployment process” of the Aegis Ashore systems after it was found that the safety of one of the two planned host communities could not be ensured without a hardware redesign that would be too time consuming and costly.
More on the decision:
The missile threat to Japan is real. The Defense Ministry’s 2019 white paper warned that North Korea has hundreds of ballistic missiles capable of hitting every part of Japan. That arsenal, in combination with Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons program, poses “a grave and imminent threat to the security of Japan.” China has an even larger number and variety of missiles that menace Japan and are integral to the success of its “anti-access/area denial strategy” which Beijing hopes will allow the People's Liberation Army to prevail in an armed conflict.
The threat is also to American forces on Japan.
Is the decision to cancel Aegis Ashore really because the expensive systems are "unpopular." Is being nuked--again--a more popular option?
Or does the Japanese government just not worry about North Korean nukes now? If so, why? Do they think North Korea hasn't solved the issue of mounting a nuclear warhead on a missile? Is Japan confident that they could detect preparations for launch and destroy the nuclear weapons before launch? Does Japan think that North Korea will collapse or that China will invade the place soon? Do the Japanese think their sea-based and Patriot point-defense systems are good enough?
Japan doesn't have offensive capabilities but in the absence of the missile defenses, but could that change?
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said Thursday that his country needs to bolster its security posture amid threats from North Korea and should consider acquiring preemptive strike capability after having to scrap the planned deployment of two new land-based missile defense systems.
And what about the Chinese missile threat to Japan? Does that not count? Is a preemptive capability really going to work on China (short of nukes)?
Is the decision really from the concern that the Aegis Ashore missiles are more suitable for shooting down missiles heading for Guam or Hawaii? Thanks guys, but this isn't really a favor to America. They do realize that America's nuclear umbrella works better over Japan if North Korea can't threaten to nuke America, right?
Cancelling the missile defense is odd, isn't it?
