It’s easy to start a war, but it is difficult to predict the consequences. The invasion of Ukraine has already caused a blowback for Russia with the Nordic enlargement of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). Equally consequential has been its impact in the Indo-Pacific where Japan has made the most dramatic changes to its foreign and security policy since World War II. Tokyo has abandoned its erstwhile pacifist policy and is set to re-emerge as a “traditional” military power that seeks to enhance the containment of China. The catalyst has been the “no limit partnership” announced on the eve of the Ukraine invasion by China and Russia, Japan’s historic adversaries.
Recently, United States (US) President Joe Biden met Japanese Prime Minister (PM) Fumio Kishida at a summit meeting in Washington DC to discuss a “new era” for the alliance between the two countries. Later, the two leaders held a trilateral summit with the Philippines President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. The goal of the unprecedented trilateral meeting was to send a warning to Beijing against its aggressive tactics in the South China Sea.
The US and Japan laid out plans to upgrade their military alliance, increase interoperability between their forces and undertake more joint development of military equipment. Japan plans to bring its own armed forces under a new joint command structure by March 2025. The US plans to upgrade the forces commander in Japan to a four-star general, who will liaise with the new Japanese joint commander. Thereafter, there are plans for a unified Japan-US command.
They also announced plans to upgrade defence communications networks and to network air defence capabilities involving Japan, the US and Australia to jointly deal with air and missile threats. The two sides will establish a council to identify areas for the co-development and co-production of missiles and maintenance of US warships and aircraft. They will also set up a working group for fighter-pilot training, advanced simulators and co-development and production of jet trainers.
Among the more important discussions between Biden and Kishida related to Japan joining pillar II of the Australia-UK-US (AUKUS) alliance. Pillar II will not confer primary membership to Japan, but will involve developing and sharing advanced capabilities in areas like hypersonics, anti-submarine warfare, cyber weapons as well as quantum computing and AI.
It was at the Quad summit in Tokyo in May 2022, three months after the Russian invasion of Ukraine that PM Kishida had set the new tone for his country, declaring that the invasion “had fundamentally shaken the rule of law based international order”. His reference was to a possible Chinese invasion of Taiwan. But the context was his own declaration a few weeks earlier in London that such a development could directly threaten Japan’s survival and international security. The Japanese believed that if Taiwan fell, China could constrict Japan’s key trade routes and increase pressure on the Senkaku islands to coerce Japan. Beijing and Tokyo have a significant dispute over their maritime boundary in the sea between Japan and Taiwan.
In December 2022, the Kishida government issued its new National Security Strategy (NSS), along with a National Defence Strategy (NDS) and the Defence Buildup Programme. The new NSS said Japan was “facing the most severe and complex security environment since the end of World War II”. Tokyo did not quite yet designate Beijing as a “threat”, but spoke about the rise of China as “the greatest strategic challenge that Japan has ever faced”.
However, the most dramatic shift was Tokyo’s decision to create a counter-strike capability based on long-range missiles that could take out enemy bases and command and control nodes. Till now its posture was wholly defensive, reliant on anti-ballistic missile capability to shoot down missiles targeting Japan. As part of this new strategy, Japan began enhancing the range of its own Type 12 missiles and in January 2024, signed a deal to buy 400 US-made Tomahawk missiles with a range of 1,600 kms. Japan has also abandoned its restraint on exporting armaments and is agreeable to the foreign sales of a sixth-generation fighter that it plans to develop with the UK and Italy. Tokyo also plans to augment its cyberwarfare capability by recruiting thousands of cyber specialists to the self-defence forces.
The Kishida government has made it clear that it is no longer bound by the traditional restriction of keeping its defence spending at 1% of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Japanese officials have been asked to obtain a budget equal to 2% of the GDP by 2027. Kishida has ordered the five-year defence plan to be hiked by 60% to some $315 billion. Not only would this bring Japan in line with the NATO defence spending standard, but enable Japan to get ahead of India and become the third largest defence spender in the world after the US and China.
The US traditionally operated on a hub-and-spoke system of alliances that linked with Japan, South Korea, Australia and the Philippines through bilateral agreements. Now the effort is to create trilateral and quadrilateral linkages through military exercises, intelligence-sharing, force posture agreements, industrial integration and defence technology development agreements. 2025 will see a new trilateral arrangement when the UK joins the US and Japan in regular military exercises.
President Biden has systematically built up the US’s Indo-Pacific posture by strengthening alliances not just with South Korea and Japan, but also the Philippines and India. In 2023, he joined PM Narendra Modi in a major elevation of the US-India defence and security relationship, at one end of the Indo-Pacific; now, he has sharply upgraded the northern tier with Japan.
These developments show, that far from being a distraction, the wars in Europe and Gaza have actually worked to strengthen the determination of Indo-Pacific states to deter adventurism by China.
Manoj Joshi is a distinguished fellow, Observer Research Foundation, New Delhi. The views expressed are personal
China in mind, Japan set for defence rehaul
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29.04.2024
It’s easy to start a war, but it is difficult to predict the consequences. The invasion of Ukraine has already caused a blowback for Russia with the Nordic enlargement of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). Equally consequential has been its impact in the Indo-Pacific where Japan has made the most dramatic changes to its foreign and security policy since World War II. Tokyo has abandoned its erstwhile pacifist policy and is set to re-emerge as a “traditional” military power that seeks to enhance the containment of China. The catalyst has been the “no limit partnership” announced on the eve of the Ukraine invasion by China and Russia, Japan’s historic adversaries.
Recently, United States (US) President Joe Biden met Japanese Prime Minister (PM) Fumio Kishida at a summit meeting in Washington DC to discuss a “new era” for the alliance between the two countries. Later, the two leaders held a trilateral summit with the Philippines President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. The goal of the unprecedented trilateral meeting was to send a warning to Beijing against its aggressive tactics in the South China Sea.
The US and Japan laid out plans to upgrade their military alliance, increase interoperability between their forces and undertake more joint development of military equipment. Japan plans to bring its own armed forces under a new joint command structure by March 2025. The US plans to upgrade the forces commander in Japan to a four-star general, who will liaise with the new Japanese joint commander. Thereafter,........
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