Japan’s changing military & security doctrines |
THE incumbent government of Japan headed by its Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi through various posturing, signaling and acts seems to be trying to reset new military and security doctrine in the country.
According to many regional countries and their experts it would start a new race of arms and conflicts in the region damaging regional peace, stability and prosperity. Thus, its series of policy initiatives has broken its long-awaited post-World War II (WWII) image of a peaceful nation. Additionally, immense expansion in defense spending, developing country’s missile technology and intentional revising of the Three Principles on Transfer of Defense Equipment and Technology, to seeking to enshrine the Self-Defense Forces in the Constitution, and repeatedly hyping the Taiwan question, Japan is pursuing a new national security strategy through a gradual and institutionalized manner, moving onto a dangerous path of remilitarization.
Previously, Japan has been following and maintaining its national security policy on the principle of exclusively defense-oriented policy since World War II, building on a minimum level of self-defense, possessing no offensive weapons and refrain from military expansion abroad. Obviously, it remained an important political symbol distinguishing post-war Japan from its prewar militarism. Nevertheless, recent policy changes have drastically changed this principle gearing towards massive militarization in the region. Evidently, since 2022 the Japanese Government has been initiating many integrated policies mainly the National Security Strategy, National Defense........