Germany and Japan once threatened democracy. Now they’re saving it |
Germany and Japan once threatened democracy. Now they’re saving it
You have reached your maximum number of saved items.
Remove items from your saved list to add more.
It’s one of the most remarkable transformations of our time. Japan and Germany are emerging from three-quarters of a century as pacifist nations to become fully armed and active.
Not that they’ve wanted to. They’ve been enjoying a very comfortable existence to now.
After their WWII fascist regimes failed and fell, they were content to allow the US to provide their defence overwatch while they concentrated on building two of the most prosperous and successful liberal democracies on earth.
Germany today is the world’s third-biggest economy and Japan the fourth. Both are in the exclusive club of countries classified by the Economist Intelligence Unit as “full democracies”.
This club has only 26 members remaining out of 167 countries assessed. It includes Australia. But not the US. Since 2016, when Donald Trump was first elected, America has been listed as a “flawed democracy”.
If history were a Norse deity, it would surely be the god of mischief, Loki. The greatest wartime fascist powers are now bastions of liberty while the chief wartime defender of freedom is now showing autocratic tendencies.
Japan to test more advanced weaponry in Australia as ‘quasi allies’ deepen co-operation
It is America, like Russia and China, that now seeks to destabilise the world. Reluctantly at first, purposefully now, Tokyo and Berlin are beginning to assume responsibility for preserving order.
“Both Germany and Japan appear to have crossed a strategic Rubicon, moving decisively away from the constraints of post-WWII pacifism toward a more assertive and self-reliant security posture,” says Indian analyst Harsh V. Pant of the........