Japan's leaders want to rearm to face China. Will the Japanese people support this?
Has China woken up a sleeping giant?
Over at Reuters, Tim Kelly and Ju-min Park tender the feel-good story for the week: Japan’s governing Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) intends to double defense spending from 1 to 2 percent of GDP, which would equate to roughly $100 billion. Since World War II the island state has maintained an informal cap on defense budgets to soothe worries among neighbors fearful that Tokyo might again march Asia over the precipice into regional or world war.
The cap made sense during the immediate postwar decades. Memories run long, and so do fears. By now, though, Japan has recouped its good name many times over. It menaces no one. Plus, the rise of an increasingly domineering China that covets neighbors’ territory and natural resources, seeks to subvert if not overthrow the regional order, and routinely threatens to use force to take what it wants makes misgivings about Japanese militarism feel quaint.
Now, it’s one thing for party chieftains to make a bold pledge, quite another to coax a people with a strong pacifist streak into supporting it. We will learn something about the character of the Japanese government and society—and thus Japan’s fitness for great sea power—as the LDP tries to put promises into action.
The author goes on to describe what a Japanese military supported by 2% of Japan's GDP should look like. His outline of capabilities is basically good.
I thought Japan with its small but high quality force had a good shot on a narrow front when faced off against China. But China has gotten stronger since then. Japan will need more just to bottle up the Chinese north of Taiwan.
This is certainly a good start:
Japan has launched the second of a new class of diesel-electric submarines exactly one year to the day that the lead boat of the lithium-ion powered series took to the water.
And with a more powerful Chinese military as its opponent, Japan needs to do more than operate around Japan, down to Taiwan. Japan will need to protect its trade routes out to Singapore if necessary, in cooperation with allies. A 2% military--the NATO minimum standard--should be able to do that.
Japan's prime minister is making the case:
Prime Minister Fumio Kishida called for increases in Japan's military capability and spending in response to what he described as growing threats from China and North Korea in a public debate with eight other political party leaders ahead of upcoming national elections.
Will the public back this?
