Following Japan’s defeat in World War II, the US took pains to ensure that Japanese militarism could never again pose a threat to the Asia-Pacific region or the world. As in Germany, these efforts were profoundly successful. For almost eight decades, Japan has eschewed foreign adventures and violent conflict. Pacifism was not only enshrined in its constitution, it also became deeply rooted in its political culture. By relying on the US and its network of alliances and global partnerships, Japan could focus on itself, building economic strength rather than military, emerging as one of the world’s largest and most advanced economies.
However, over the past decade or so, the geopolitical environment has grown more dangerous and Japanese leaders have increasingly recognized the need for a change. Some have proposed abolishing Article 9 of the Japanese constitution, which stringently limits the use of force to self-defense. This has been a contentious topic, owing to sharp divisions on the matter within the Japanese electorate.
Nonetheless, in the face of threats such as North Korea’s nuclear program and Chinese revisionism, public support for deepening Japan’s defense policy coordination with the US has grown.
According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, Japan ranked 10th globally in military spending last year, putting it behind not only the US, China and Russia, but also India, Saudi Arabia, the UK, Germany, France and South Korea. In relative terms, Japan spends only about 1 percent of its GDP on defense, leaving it 106th in the world, far behind the US (3.45 percent), the UK (2.23 percent), France (1.94 percent), Italy (1.68 percent), Germany (1.39 percent) and Canada (1.24 percent).
However, Japan now aims to catch up. In Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida’s budget for this year, defense is to receive 26.3 percent more than it did last year. This is merely the first increase in pursuit of a larger program known as the Fundamental Reinforcement of Defense Capabilities. Over the next five years, defense expenditures are projected to increase to a total of ￥43 trillion (US$298 billion), up from about ￥26 trillion over the previous five-year period.
The Japanese public supports such a change. According to a Nikkei survey conducted in December last year in the middle of budget discussions for this fiscal year, 55 percent of respondents supported the Fundamental Reinforcement, whereas 36 percent opposed it.
Sensing that there are growing threats to Japan and its neighbors — not least Taiwan — the public recognizes the need to develop a greater deterrence capacity, even if doing so is expensive. Russia’s unprovoked war of aggression against Ukraine might be playing out on the other side of the Eurasian continent, but it nonetheless sent a shockwave through the Japanese polity.
Suddenly, a major military power with the world’s largest nuclear arsenal had taken it upon itself to redraw the map of Europe, brazenly violating the UN Charter.
If the world is entering a new era of rearmament and hard power, Japan’s “peace constitution” and soft power might no longer be sufficient to ensure its national security. Gone are the years after World War II when 1 percent of GDP could be considered the ceiling for defense spending. Back then, left-wing parties even suggested that Japan’s Self-Defense Forces were unconstitutional.
However, almost no one thinks this way any longer. Japan and its fellow G7 members might have no wish to change the “status quo” by force; but other countries clearly do.
While a majority supports the Fundamental Reinforcement, there is a deeper disagreement when it comes to paying for the increased defense spending. As Kishida made clear during the budget debate, tax increases are necessary even after retaining budget surpluses and slimming down other expenditures. Hence, a NHK survey conducted in February showed that only 23 percent of respondents favored a tax increase to finance an increase in defense spending, while 64 percent opposed it.
When the Japanese Diet finally approved the budget for the Fundamental Reinforcement on June 16, it did not specify when taxes would increase or whether the additional revenues would come from corporate income taxes, personal income taxes, consumption taxes or elsewhere.
The implication is that Japan has agreed to expand its defense capability, while punting off the question of how to pay for it.
Kishida would most likely postpone any tough decisions until after the next general election, which is expected sometime in the next two years. It is hard to blame him. Tax increases never make for a good campaign platform. Then again, the same could be said of defense weakness in the face of mounting threats to national security.
Takatoshi Ito, a former Japanese deputy vice minister of finance, is a professor at the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University and a senior professor at the National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies in Tokyo.
Copyright: Project Syndicate
Donald Trump’s return to the White House has offered Taiwan a paradoxical mix of reassurance and risk. Trump’s visceral hostility toward China could reinforce deterrence in the Taiwan Strait. Yet his disdain for alliances and penchant for transactional bargaining threaten to erode what Taiwan needs most: a reliable US commitment. Taiwan’s security depends less on US power than on US reliability, but Trump is undermining the latter. Deterrence without credibility is a hollow shield. Trump’s China policy in his second term has oscillated wildly between confrontation and conciliation. One day, he threatens Beijing with “massive” tariffs and calls China America’s “greatest geopolitical
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) made the astonishing assertion during an interview with Germany’s Deutsche Welle, published on Friday last week, that Russian President Vladimir Putin is not a dictator. She also essentially absolved Putin of blame for initiating the war in Ukraine. Commentators have since listed the reasons that Cheng’s assertion was not only absurd, but bordered on dangerous. Her claim is certainly absurd to the extent that there is no need to discuss the substance of it: It would be far more useful to assess what drove her to make the point and stick so
US President Donald Trump’s seemingly throwaway “Taiwan is Taiwan” statement has been appearing in headlines all over the media. Although it appears to have been made in passing, the comment nevertheless reveals something about Trump’s views and his understanding of Taiwan’s situation. In line with the Taiwan Relations Act, the US and Taiwan enjoy unofficial, but close economic, cultural and national defense ties. They lack official diplomatic relations, but maintain a partnership based on shared democratic values and strategic alignment. Excluding China, Taiwan maintains a level of diplomatic relations, official or otherwise, with many nations worldwide. It can be said that
The central bank has launched a redesign of the New Taiwan dollar banknotes, prompting questions from Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislators — “Are we not promoting digital payments? Why spend NT$5 billion on a redesign?” Many assume that cash will disappear in the digital age, but they forget that it represents the ultimate trust in the system. Banknotes do not become obsolete, they do not crash, they cannot be frozen and they leave no record of transactions. They remain the cleanest means of exchange in a free society. In a fully digitized world, every purchase, donation and action leaves behind data.
RSS