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Japanese Minister Proposes More Active Military Presence in Region | Japanese Minister Proposes More Active Military Presence in Region |
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TOKYO — Japan is considering the acquisition of offensive weapons and surveillance drones and will assume a more active role in regional security, the country’s defense minister said Friday, providing an early glimpse of ways the new conservative government could lead the nation farther than ever from its postwar pacifism. | |
The minister, Itsunori Onodera, said Japan was considering taking such steps to counter the growing military capabilities of North Korea and of China, which has been extending its influence in the region and is embroiled in a territorial dispute with Japan over islands in the East China Sea. The drones would be used to monitor Japan’s vast territorial waters, presumably including the area around the islands. | |
Mr. Onodera spoke after his ministry released an interim report on an overhaul of Japanese defense strategy ordered up by the cabinet of the country’s hawkish prime minister, Shinzo Abe, whose Liberal Democratic Party won a decisive election victory on Sunday. The interim report is meant to start debate on the issues before decisions on changes to defense policy that are expected to be announced by the end of the year. | |
Mr. Abe has vowed to reverse the long decline of his nation, which was Asia’s dominant local power during much of the last century but is being eclipsed by China. In addition to his economic revitalization strategy known as Abenomics, the prime minister has said he wants to change Japan’s antiwar Constitution, written by American occupiers after World War II, to allow its forces to become a full-fledged military. | |
Such a fundamental shift would require parliamentary approval and a referendum. But analysts said acquiring an offensive weapon, like a cruise missile, would be an important symbolic step away from the current constitution’s limitations. | |
“It would be a big deal, a fundamental change in our defense philosophy,” said Narushige Michishita, director of security studies at the National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies in Tokyo. “For Abe, this would be an important step toward normalizing Japan and its military.” | |
The changes in the defense report would continue a broader shift in military strategy begun under an opposition government three years ago that ended Japan’s cold-war-era focus on fending off a Russian invasion from the north in favor of developing a more dynamic air-sea capability to defend its far-flung islands to the south. Even before then, Japan had been slowly strengthening its ability to respond to threats from North Korea’s increasingly sophisticated missile and nuclear programs, and to China’s growing assertiveness. | |
Since taking office in December, Mr. Abe has nudged Japan even farther toward a more robust military. This year, his government passed the first increase in Japan’s defense budget in a decade, though the size of the gain was tiny compared with China’s growth in military spending. | |
Friday’s report also contained repeated calls for finding ways to deepen cooperation with the United States, which has 50,000 soldiers and sailors in Japan. Mr. Abe has made close ties with Washington a centerpiece of his defense strategy, saying Japan must increase its military capabilities to share more of the security burden that the United States now bears in the region. | Friday’s report also contained repeated calls for finding ways to deepen cooperation with the United States, which has 50,000 soldiers and sailors in Japan. Mr. Abe has made close ties with Washington a centerpiece of his defense strategy, saying Japan must increase its military capabilities to share more of the security burden that the United States now bears in the region. |
Some in Mr. Abe’s party have already been calling for strengthening Japan’s military capabilities by developing or buying from the United States cruise missiles or other weapons that could be used to launch a strike on a North Korean missile before it was launched. However, on Friday, Mr. Onodera stressed that any such weapons, if acquired, would be used only if Japan was attacked first and thus did not represent a shift from the purely defensive nature of the Japanese military, called the Self-Defense Forces. | |
The caution reflects the challenge that Mr. Abe faces as he seeks to raise Japan’s military profile in a region where memories of Japan’s wartime aggression remain raw. During visits to Southeast Asian nations, Mr. Abe has tried to cast Japan as a reliable partner that can help offset the growing influence of China, which has been embroiled in heated territorial disputes with many nations in the region. On Friday, Mr. Abe invited China’s leader, Xi Jinping, to an immediate summit meeting aimed at lowering tensions. | |
Still, analysts and politicians say Mr. Abe’s message of a more robust military has struck a chord among a Japanese public that feels increasingly anxious as China has appeared to challenge the long-held military dominance of the United States in Asia. This has fed growing calls for Japan to build up its own ability to defend itself, while also trying to keep the United States engaged in the region at a time when the Pentagon faces deep budget cuts. | |
“Over the last few years, the Japanese people’s feelings about the national security environment, and also about the Ministry of Defense and the Self-Defense Forces, have changed,” Mr. Onodera told reporters. “This has led to the current revision” that the Liberal Democrats have under way. | “Over the last few years, the Japanese people’s feelings about the national security environment, and also about the Ministry of Defense and the Self-Defense Forces, have changed,” Mr. Onodera told reporters. “This has led to the current revision” that the Liberal Democrats have under way. |
The anxiety over China has also led to a growing public acceptance of the Japanese military, which was long blamed for leading Japan into catastrophic defeat in World War II. In one symbolically important change, the report on Friday called for creating a single, unified command for Japan’s army, the Ground Self-Defense Forces, to improve its coordination and efficiency. That would reverse a decision made after Japan’s postwar armed forces were created in 1954 to break the ground forces into several smaller regional commands so they would be too weak and divided to hijack the civilian government, as the Imperial Army did during World War II. | |
In another significant step, the report called for increasing Japan’s military presence in Southeast Asia by helping those nations build their own defense capacities to respond to possible Chinese provocations. The report also called for closer military cooperation with Australia and South Korea, two other former targets of Japan’s early-20th-century aggression. | |
In addition, the report called for building up the country’s ability to help Japanese citizens during a terrorism or hostage crisis like the one in Algeria earlier this year, in which nearly 40 gas plant workers were killed, 10 of them Japanese. | |
Many of the changes were stated only vaguely in the report and had to be elaborated upon by Mr. Onodera. He said Japan was considering the acquisition of drones like the American-made Global Hawk, though he refused to name China as a possible target of surveillance. He also said Japan was considering the purchase of tilt-rotor aircraft like the United States military’s Osprey as part of an established plan to build an amphibious infantry unit similar to the Marines that could defend outlying islands. | |
“Japan has 6,800 islands,” Mr. Onodera said. “Any country should be able to defend itself.” | “Japan has 6,800 islands,” Mr. Onodera said. “Any country should be able to defend itself.” |