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Japan flexes its military muscles with US support

In a delicate ballet 7,500m above the open sea, four Japanese F-15s pull up to a US Air Force tanker, the insignia of the rising sun shining from their wings. One by one, they maneuver into range of the tanker's refueling boom, hold their position, then dip their wings and vanish.

American military planners say it's the look of the future -- a deeply interwoven relationship with a credible Japanese ally ready to deploy overseas and share the burden of keeping the peace in a volatile region.

To the US crew, the mock refueling is just another day's work.

"The skill level is the same, the planes are the same," said boom operator Mike Webster. "It's basically just like working with our own people."

The only difference, he says, is the language, but both sides manage with English.

In Washington, it's called "interoperability" and it's a top military priority. With its own forces engaged in Iraq and elsewhere, the US needs to strengthen its alliances and draw on its friends for whatever support it can get. And since the end of World War II, Japan has been Washington's best friend in Asia.

But the idea of a beefed-up Japanese military doesn't resonate well through the region.

As the two-week refueling exercise was being carried out late last month, relations between Japan and neighboring China were plunging to their lowest point in years, largely over Japanese wartime aggression that left millions of Chinese dead, and over Tokyo's bid for a permanent seat on the UN Security Council.

There is no consensus in Japan, either.

Negotiations on a broad reworking of the military alliance with Washington are reportedly bogging down because the government is divided over just how far Japan should follow Washington's call.

The bigger question is whether Japan should even be a military power.

The US-led occupation forces disbanded Japan's military after World War II and helped write a constitution that barred Japan from using "the threat or use of force as a means of settling international disputes."

Washington soon realized it needed to build an ally to counter communism in Asia, and Japan passed a law in 1954 that paved the way for establishing its Self-Defense Forces. Though the decision was denounced by many who saw it as unconstitutional, the government argued that the military force is legal because it is strictly defense-oriented.

That argument is becoming hard to sustain.

Japan has more than 240,000 active-duty troops and an annual defense budget bigger than the UK's. Its air force has more than 160 F-15s and its spy satellites keep watch on North Korea.

Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, who advocates a constitutional change to free up the military, has pushed the envelope even further, sending hundreds of soldiers to southern Iraq for humanitarian activities and more to Southeast Asia to provide tsunami relief.

"Japan is America's only reliable partner in Asia, and Washington wants Japan to make a big contribution in its efforts in the region," said Takehiko Yamamoto, professor of international relations at Tokyo's Waseda University.

Yamamoto said Tokyo, for its part, wants to bolster its troops largely because of the perceived threat from China and regional wild card North Korea, which is developing nuclear weapons and has missiles that can deliver them to Japan.

This week the Japanese Defense Agency said its fighter jets scrambled 13 times last year in response to Chinese military aircraft approaching their airspace, up from only twice in 2003. And on Sunday North Korea apparently test-fired another missile into the Sea of Japan. However, Japanese and South Korean officials said it was a small missile unrelated to anything nuclear.

Yamamoto said the political constraints on Japan's military posture have eased.

"Collective security used to be seen as unconstitutional. But it seems the Japanese government believes it need only reinterpret -- not change -- the constitution to justify its policy shifts."

Two areas have long been taboo -- the development of nuclear weapons and the acquisition of aircraft carriers or other means of projecting power overseas.

The nuclear ban, driven by memories of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, remains firm.

But the Defense Agency announced plans in 2001 to buy a 13,000-tonne destroyer with a flight deck for anti-submarine helicopter operations. Opponents called it a mini-aircraft carrier.

The day when Japan refuels US F-15s, meanwhile, may not be far away. In two years, Japan's first tanker, a Boeing 767, will be delivered to a military airfield in the central Japanese city of Nagoya.
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