Discover more from Blue Blaze
Washington has been working to bring together several allies and partners in the security competition with China. In the latticework of Indo-Pacific security cooperation taking shape, Japan is a key partner: a democracy, a longtime ally, and – wealthy and technologically advanced – highly capable. Although Tokyo has long pursued a highly reticent national security policy, observers see in recent policies a fundamental shift. But Japan has a lot of ground to cover between reluctant ally and shoulder-to-shoulder. Just how committed is the United States’s key Asian ally to balancing against China?
It’s Complicated
Since World War II Japan has had a fraught relationship with national security. The country’s catastrophic defeat was blamed on its overzealous military dragging the civilians into war. Article 9 of Japan’s constitution prohibited maintaining a military or wielding military force, the constitution has been repeatedly “reinterpreted.”
The Yoshida Doctrine (named for Prime Minister Shigeru Yoshida) relied on the U.S.-Japan alliance as the cornerstone of Japan’s national security policy, sought to avoid military statecraft, and prioritized economic growth. The public, and a committed socialist and communist political opposition, fought increases in defense spending, which stayed consistently around 1 percent of GDP.
Proposals to dispatch Japan’s Self-Defense Forces (SDF) overseas met with strong pushback: such as in Korea, Vietnam, and the Persian Gulf. During the Cold War, a major theme was gaiatsu: Washington pushing Japan to increase defense spending or participate in other countries’ wars. Japanese leaders learned to resist U.S. pressure to send forces overseas, while making small concessions in order to maintain the alliance.
Welcome to Your Cold War
The present superpower competition, as commentators always explain, differs from the Cold War in many ways. One important difference is that Europe was the center of the Cold War superpower competition. Asia endured wars, but the bulk of the Soviet military threat was trained on Western Europe.
This time, Japan sits on the front lines of the superpower threat. After a four decade-long rise, China has become an economic, technological, and military superpower.
China threatens Japan in several ways. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has defined China’s interests as “reunifying” the territories China lost to Western and Japanese imperialism. This territory includes Taiwan (which a recent Japanese Defense White Paper called “important for Japan’s security”), and Japanese-controlled islands (that the Japanese call Senkaku, the Chinese Diaoyu).
Chinese ideas for international order – trade, development, technology, and human rights – depart sometimes significantly from Japan’s preferences and values. Furthermore, Beijing frequently relies on economic coercion, which Tokyo has observed with alarm against Australia, the Philippines, South Korea, and others. At home the CCP fans hostility toward Japan in public education. (The CCP has plenty of material to work with given Japanese atrocities against China in the early twentieth century.) More broadly, as I have previously written, regional hegemons make for pushy and dangerous neighbors: for Japan, “life in China’s Asia” could be very uncomfortable, perhaps perilous.
In sum, Japan faces a serious, proximate security threat. We’re not in the Cold War; balancing against this threat should not be mistaken as doing the United States any favors. It’s not chunks of America that China is claiming.
Your Mission, Should You Choose to Accept It
Balancing against a superpower threat is neither easy nor cheap. It requires assembling a coalition of allies and partners, identifying relevant and necessary military missions, and mobilizing the military forces for those missions (which will require guns-butter spending tradeoffs). It requires investment in innovation of relevant technologies. It requires public diplomacy and economic, financial, and cultural statecraft aimed at bolstering partnerships and building support around the world. So far Tokyo and Washington have announced numerous such initiatives.
But is Japan up for this?
On the one hand, remarkable changes appear to be afoot. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was a huge shock to the Japanese; polls conducted since the invasion registered highest-ever levels of approval for expanding the size of the SDF. Japan’s government is acquiring previously-taboo weapons and has repaired relations with South Korea, engaging in trilateral cooperation with the U.S. military. In 2022, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida pledged significant increases in Japanese defense spending over the next five years, aiming by 2027 to bring Japan up to (aspirational) NATO defense spending levels of 2% of GDP.
Longtime Japan-watchers have marveled at these changes. Satoshi Ogawa has argued that “a majority of Japanese people have given up on their utopian pacifism and started to worry about Japan’s readiness for a foreign military attack.” Mireya Solís describes Japan’s emergence as a strong regional leader in economic statecraft and diplomacy. Tobias Harris observes “a historic turning point for Japan – the decision to increase defense spending sharply, the decision to acquire long-range strike capabilities, the ongoing reorganization of the Self-Defense Forces, the growing partnerships with other countries in Asia and outside of Asia, the deeper cooperation with the US military.” I joined the party of impressed Japan-watchers in Foreign Affairs.
Other observers, however, argue that more needs to be done. Former U.S. defense official Elbridge Colby has argued that the magnitude of the Chinese challenge means Japan should be spending far more, such as 3% of GDP (a figure that makes Japan-hands sputter—see Harris’s rejoinder). Indeed, the distance between the Yoshida Doctrine and balancing against a superpower is vast; from Tokyo’s efforts to date, it’s not yet at all clear that Japan is going to close that gap.
Not a Lot Going on at the Moment
Although Japan’s people are wary of regional threats, they don’t support their government’s defense plans. In the polls I quoted earlier that noted “historic highs” for increasing the size of the military, the historic high was…41 percent. Over half the respondents (53 percent) said the SDF was at appropriate levels. In another 2023 poll, 60 percent of respondents called Kishida’s five-year defense plan “not appropriate.”
When it comes to financing defense spending, Kishida initially argued that taking on more debt was irresponsible; that the current generation should not pass the cost to future generations. No thank you, said the public. In a 2023 poll, 80 percent of respondents opposed tax increases to cover increased defense spending. But Kishida had a point; among the world’s wealthy economies, Japan is the most indebted country in the world, at 255% of GDP.
As time passes, Japan’s defense pledges seem less and less likely to materialize. Their cost is growing as the value of the yen has plummeted, down 30 percent since 2019 in real terms. Furthermore, Kishida’s pledges may be derailed by SDF corruption scandals. As a member of the opposition commented, because the scandals have “undermined public confidence” in the SDF, Kishida “should consider backing down on his plan to raise taxes for higher national defense costs.”
Last summer the Diet avoided tax hikes and instead passed a bill – amidst robust opposition – creating a “Defense Enhancement Fund.” A lot of spending will be financed through bonds; or, in what sounds rather mysterious, “tapping surplus funds in some special accounts of the state budget” and “spending reform.” The government is also issuing construction bonds (sorry, next generation). One controversial idea is diverting revenue from bonds issued for the post-tsunami reconstruction of the Tohoku area.
The bottom line is that construction bonds and diverting money from Tohoku reconstruction is the equivalent of financing a major national security initiative by hunting for coins in the sofa cushions. It’s not going to be enough to finance the five-year plans, and it says a lot about the level of public support for a counter-China balancing effort.
Colby has written, “Japan should feel more of a sense of urgency.” Among security studies scholars and U.S. foreign policy elites, people often talk about a need to educate the public –about the threats Japan faces and why Japan’s people should fear them. But perhaps we need to realize that Japan’s public is actually educating us.