Japan’s Shift to Robust Military Ally
A more dangerous world is changing the relationship.
POLITICO (“Why Japan is the latest ally moving Biden’s way“):
When President Joe Biden sits down with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida on Friday, it will mark a major tete-a-tete that could have profound implications for U.S. policy toward a critical part of the globe.
It’s also an opportunity for Biden to underscore how his diplomatic efforts in the face of new geopolitical threats are bringing allies into closer alignment, and delivering in an area where Donald Trump’s sharp-elbowed approach largely failed to achieve results.
Kishida comes to the White House fresh off of outlining a plan for his country to shed its postwar constraints, both political and psychological, and increase its defense spending and boost military capabilities to not just deter attacks but to strike enemies if necessary. It’s a profound shift for Japan, long averse to militarization and wary of getting dragged into global conflicts.
Kishida’s newly stated goal of increasing Japan’s defense spending to 2.7 percent of the country’s gross domestic product GDP by 2027 comes on the heels of German Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s Zeitenwende address. Days after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Scholz declared the war a “turning point,” reason enough, he said, to finally boost Berlin’s defense spending to 2 percent of Germany’s GDP, reversing decades of extreme caution on military matters following the end of the Cold War.
Both announcements are remarkable about-faces for nations with complicated histories. They come just a few years after Trump tried bullying allies into recommitting to their own defense. Many are doing exactly that — but on Biden’s watch.
“What Kishida has announced is just as significant as what Scholz did,” said Ian Bremmer, the president of The Eurasia Group, a global risk assessment firm. While the shift is largely precipitated by the changing security environment, he added, “Biden’s leadership has made it easier for Japan to lean in because they know he’s going to be there. Trump has really receded. I’m just not hearing Japanese leaders worried about Trump’s return as they were.”
Kishida’s trip to Washington is the last stop on a week-long trip to meet with G-7 allies ahead of the May summit he will host in his home city of Hiroshima that will focus, in part, on nuclear disarmament. It also will come as he has been weakened at home by a series of scandals.
“Kishida needs a bear hug from Biden, and Biden can give it to him,” said Joshua Walker, president and CEO of the U.S.-based Japan Society.
With little progress around a broader trans-Pacific trade agreement, the meetings are likely to focus on defense issues and technology, specifically limiting exports of semiconductors to China.
They also could center on Japan’s concerns about regional stability, which have deepened amid North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s recent resumption of a brazen regime of missile tests and China’s recent saber rattling about Taiwan.
“Most of Tokyo’s concern focuses on China, but North Korea continues to demonstrate it should not be forgotten,” said Sheila Smith, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. “The longer-term balance of power across the Indo-Pacific will be determined by how integrated the strategies of Japan, the U.S., Australia and India can be.”
Biden and Kishida agree on that. The White House, in fact, has been heartened by Kishida’s response to the war in Ukraine — which began just months after he was elected — and his willingness to condemn Russia’s invasion and impose strict sanctions alongside the U.S. and European allies. That’s a major reversal from 2014, when Japan sought to avoid taking sides following Russia’s annexation of Crimea. In an interview last week with the Washington Post, Kishida also echoed Biden’s view that Moscow’s unprovoked invasion is about not just the fate of eastern Europe but the rules-based international order itself.
“We see a much greater convergence of how Japan looks at the world and how the U.S. looks at the world,” said one senior administration official, who agreed to discuss the bilateral meetings on the condition of anonymity. Tokyo’s shift to a more forward-leaning posture on defense, the official continued, “reflects the tremendous degree of confidence that comes from U.S. investments in the alliance.”
While I gave Joe Biden tremendous credit for normalizing engagement with key allies and partners and don’t believe this would be happening were we in a second Donald Trump administration, the fact of the matter is that the security environment, not his leadership, is the primary driving factor here.
WaPo’s David Ignatius is right to declare “A menacing Russia and China pull Japan out of its past.”
It takes a lot to break Japan’s post-1945 stance of reticence and restraint in military matters. But China and Russia have accomplished just that — by convincing Japanese leaders that they need “counterstrike” capability to protect themselves against growing threats.
Japan’s hawkish new stance will be on display Friday at a White House meeting between visiting Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and President Biden. The Japanese leader will explain his decision in November to seek parliamentary approval to spend 2 percent of gross domestic product annually on defense, roughly doubling what Japan has been spending.
“This is an inflection point” for Asia, argues Kurt Campbell, who oversees regional policy for Biden’s National Security Council. It moves Japan from reliance on its own soft power and U.S. weapons to a real military partnership. And it redraws the security map, framing a NATO-like alliance of containment in the Indo-Pacific as well as the Atlantic.
Why is Japan taking this step toward remilitarization? One galvanizing moment for Japanese leaders, U.S. officials say, was when China and Russia flew six heavy bombers near Japan in a joint exercise on May 24, as Tokyo was hosting a meeting of the “Quad” partnership of Australia, India, Japan and the United States.
Japan expressed “serious concerns” about the flights. But China and Russia did it again in late November, sending two Chinese heavy bombers and two Russian planes over the Sea of Japan. This time Tokyo expressed “severe concerns,” again with no apparent response.
Another wake-up call came in August, when China fired five missiles into Japan’s “exclusive economic zone” during a spasm of military exercises after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) visited Taiwan. “We have protested strongly through diplomatic channels,” said Nobuo Kishi, Japan’s former defense minister who now serves as a special adviser to the prime minister. The lesson was that “nothing in the Taiwan Strait stays in the Taiwan Strait,” Rahm Emanuel, the U.S. ambassador to Tokyo, told me in an interview.
Japan has moved from talk to action over the past year. A big reason is shock over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, coming less than a month after Russia and China announced a “no limits” partnership. “The world has changed in a dramatic fashion, and the Japanese know it,” Emanuel said.
Similarly, American Enterprise Institute scholars Zack Cooper and Eric Sayers explain “Japan’s Shift to War Footing” in War on the Rocks:
For the first time in decades, Tokyo and Washington are seriously preparing for the possibility of a major conflict in the near term. As Japan’s new National Security Strategy warns: “The possibility cannot be precluded that a serious situation may arise in the future in the Indo-Pacific region, especially in East Asia.” Yesterday, alliance leaders announced a set of defense posture changes, updated command relationships, and new training arrangements. In short, the U.S.-Japan alliance is shifting to a war footing.
It might seem obvious that Japan and the United States should be preparing to fight a war in the Indo-Pacific region. After all, the allies face mounting challenges from three nuclear-armed adversaries: China, Russia, and North Korea. Over the last decade, the United States and Japan have responded by slowly but deliberately reinforcing military capabilities to deter conflict. But President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine and General Secretary Xi Jinping’s growing pressure on Taiwan have reminded leaders in Tokyo and Washington that even carefully crafted deterrence efforts can fail, and the consequences can be dire. A more robust set of responses in the face of new uncertainty has become necessary.
[…]
Experts have rightly noted that this is not a revolutionary rejection of pacifism but rather a more modest set of evolutionary changes in Japanese security policy. Indeed, major elements of Abe’s transformational agenda remained unaccomplished at the time of his assassination last year. But many of the limits introduced by Japan’s pacifist constitution and history are now being relaxed or adjusted. Japan’s increased defense spending and adoption of counterstrike capabilities are just two examples of the shift that is occurring under Kishida’s leadership.
Indeed, Japan’s preparation for conflict has heretofore lagged that of America’s other top allies. South Korea and the United States have a combined command and experience responding together to frequent provocations from North Korea. Australia has fought alongside America in every major conflict in the last century. And the NATO allies are facing war on their doorstep; fought together in Afghanistan; and were active in the Balkans conflicts after the end of the Cold War. The U.S.-Japanese alliance, by comparison, has some catching up if it is to be fully prepared for a major contingency.
This week therefore marks the beginning of a major — and remarkably rapid — shift in Japan’s approach. Some of the details have already been announced by the Security Consultative Committee, the bilateral meeting of defense and foreign ministers/secretaries known colloquially as a 2+2 Meeting. These announcements show that three major transformations are underway simultaneously: 1) a defense spending surge in Tokyo, 2) reimagined command relationships, and 3) substantial posture and capability changes. Each is important on their own, but together they amount to a wholesale change in the U.S.-Japan alliance’s approach to deterrence and warfighting.
Former Biden NSC member Christopher Johnstone takes to Foreign Affairs to argue, “To Make Japan Stronger, America Must Pull It Closer.“
As Japan pursues its new vision, the two close allies need a new command and control architecture, far deeper levels of information-sharing, and expanded cooperation between their defense industries. It is also time to revisit the cost-sharing arrangement that has long supported the U.S. military presence in Japan.
[…]
Japan’s development of a counterstrike capability in particular will require the two countries to work much more closely together. At least at first, and perhaps over the long term, Japan will need to rely on U.S. intelligence, targeting, and damage assessment capabilities to respond to an attack with strikes of its own. Japan does not possess those capabilities today. Any scenario in which it is launching long-range strikes against targets in North Korea or China—or even “active defense” cyber-operations, which penetrate and disrupt an adversary’s computer networks—would almost certainly coincide with military actions taken by the United States, underscoring the need for tight coordination based on a common understanding of the threat. Washington and Tokyo will need a dynamic ability to identify priority targets, determine who will mount the attacks and how, and assess the damage inflicted and whether further action is required. For the first time, the United States and Japan will need to be able to coordinate the use of force against targets outside Japan.
But unlike the U.S. alliance with South Korea, the U.S.-Japanese alliance was never designed to enable integrated military operations. When the alliance was created, Japan was essentially a platform for projecting U.S. power, a staging area for U.S. operations elsewhere in the region. This arrangement derived from Japan’s postwar constitution and the attendant policy restrictions on Japanese military activity. In the early days of the Cold War, Japan was never intended to become an important military partner for the United States. Japan’s Self-Defense Forces (SDF) and U.S. forces in Japan therefore built parallel and separate command structures, an arrangement that remains in place today—even as Japan has gradually expanded and strengthened the SDF’s roles, missions, and capabilities over the last two decades.
[…]
Washington will also need to share more information with Tokyo to fully leverage Japan’s planned investments in defense, intelligence, and cyber-capabilities. Tactically, a credible Japanese counterstrike or cyberdefense capability will depend on a common real-time operational picture that integrates information collected by both countries. Strategically, a shared understanding of threats assembled from the full range of intelligence, including information gathered by spies on the ground, will also ensure that Washington and Tokyo’s approaches to the major challenges of the day are consistent. Information cannot be shared in one direction only; the United States must also benefit from Japan’s plans to strengthen its collection of intelligence gleaned from humans, signals, imagery and open sources.
Deepening the sharing of information and intelligence will require trust. Japan has historically been plagued by lax information-security practices. Despite significant progress over the last decade, including passage of the Secrets Protection Act under Abe in 2013, the Japanese government still lacks common information classification standards, a robust system for vetting personnel, and rigorous cybersecurity protocols that apply to all sensitive government networks. These problems reinforce the widespread view in the U.S. government, frequently more perceived than real, that “Japan leaks.”
While somewhat comical in light of so many senior US officials getting caught mishandling classified materials, this is a real concern. Currently, only the Anglophone Five Eyes allies are in the true circle of trust, with key NATO allies in a somewhat lower status in that regard. Johnstone argues for setting out a roadmap to get Japan on equivalent status.
It certainly makes sense for Japan and Germany, historic great powers with robust economies, to shake off the shame of their role in a war that ended almost 80 years ago and become bigger players in their respective regional security architectures. It is clear that Russia and China are both revisionist powers willing to use military power to reshape the world order.
“If you want peace, prepare for war” is ancient advice and conventional wisdom. Alas, as with so many aphorisms, there is a contradictory one: what international relations scholars call “the security dilemma”: “actions taken by a state to increase its own security cause reactions from other states, which in turn lead to a decrease rather than an increase in the original state’s security.” There’s a fine line between preparing for war and provoking one.
Another key relationship to watch is how Japan and South Korea move closer together. There is still a lot of historical and cultural animosity between the two. It will be a delicate dance that the two will have to manage to build a trust relationship.
The more interesting feature to the announcement is that the rest of the far East Asia region appears to be okay with these developments. In the past, the reaction to similar explorations throughout SE Asia, China, and South Korea was to ask the US “Are you gonna let this happen??!!?? This isn’t what we agreed to, ya know!” I guess a couple of decades of the proverb I used to hear in Korea–China sneezes and the rest of Asia asks “Am I catching a cold?”–seem to have had an impact.
The Xi government of China is like a Bond supervillain – they started monologuing, proclaiming their ambitions and demonstrating their lack of respect for anyone and everyone not a member of the CCP. Had Xi just kept the mask in place for another decade or so he’d have been in a much stronger position. But no, he has to strut and bluster and make sure the world knows that China should be feared, not trusted, and now he’s got a re-arming Japan.
Not quite the fantastic fool that Putin is, but a close second. Putin got Sweden, Finland and a re-arming Germany; Xi’s getting Japan, as well as a newly-awake Australia, and hopefully a rapprochement between Japan and South Korea. Now we need to stuff Taiwan full of weapons and bring India more fully on-side as a naval power in the Indian Ocean, and China’s military ambitions will be check-mated.
Xi needs to abandon his notion of overtaking the West – he hasn’t got the geography for it. Instead he should be looking north, to uninhabited, resource-rich Siberia. Hundreds of millions of Chinese are pressed right up against all that empty Russian space.
@Michael Reynolds: The Bond supervillain descriptor is apt. My students—and American foreign affairs types generally speaking—constantly gripe that the Chinese are so much more strategically minded than we are because they can plan for the long term, yada yada yada. But we’ve been the world’s preeminent power for more than a century for a reason. We’re a hegemonic power that presents itself as a benign guarantor of the global commons and the liberal order whereas they’re a regional power presenting themselves as the rightful hegemon to whom all should bow down.
I think we were seen as more benign before Iraq and Afghanistan, and to a lesser extent Libya and Syria.
Steve
@steve:
It depends on who the target audience is. Regardless, the four cases are wildly different.
*Pretty much everyone warned against the Iraq invasion, with on the UK enthusiastically on our side (although plenty of others went along).
*Afghanistan was almost universally supported after the 9/11 attacks and, for the most part, our intentions there remained honorable if unachievable.
*Libya was pursuant to UNSCR but got off the rails because we totally washed our hands of it once Gaddafi was toppled. The only ones really upset were Russia and China, who supported UNSCR 1973 but contended in hindsight that we overstepped its remit; they’re lying.
*Syria has been a complete clusterfuck but I don’t know what the alternative was. Going in to topple Assad would have been nuts, especially in light of the other three. Doing nothing would have been a humanitarian disaster even bigger than the one that’s unfolded. So, we essentially hedged our bets and satisfied no one.
@steve:
Were we? That’s an honest question. I’m too young to know how the world viewed our foreign affairs benignity after the Viet Nam war, Mossadegh, Panama and Nicaragua, etc. I know the first Gulf War gave a reset as such, but the further away we get from the Iraq war (I don’t think Afghanistan weighs on our benignity) the more I wonder if the damage to America’s rep was acute, or even just a confirmation that America’s gonna America.
@Neil Hudelson:
Much of the world has a very different notion of what might constitute hegemonic tyranny. People who’ve seen real thuggery from far less powerful governments than ours may tend to shrug off the American behavior that upsets the western Left. IOW we may look like bullies to the student body of Brown University, while looking restrained and generally well-motivated to people in tougher corners of the world. All things are relative, and relative to every other hegemon in history, we’re sweethearts.
@James Joyner: @Michael Reynolds: Not to mention that there is a large number of leaders who view the good side of Western dominance as a problem. Russia doesn’t care what Assad does in Syria and in fact will be glad to help him slaughter hundreds of thousands if they get enough out of it in return. The West, on the other hand, are constantly yapping about human rights.
One concern here is the growing historical revisionism in Japan with regards to WW2, and one has to wonder if the US increasing military ties to Japan may not end up hurting our ties with other countries like South Korea.
The decision to host a G-7 summit in Hiroshima is concerning as it ties into the whole “Japan was the real victim in WW2” mythology the Japanese right is increasingly pushing.
@Stormy Dragon:
Japanese also has a big Q-anon style “wacky religious cult” problem in its politics that doesn’t get a lot of press coverage in the US.
@Stormy Dragon:
My hope would be that SK could focus on the larger issue of current defense, less on the appalling refusal of the Japanese to accept the reality of their history.
One of the more jarring images I’ve ever encountered, was a large, color mural of a B-29. . . in a Japanese venue. The Robot Restaurant also has – or did when I was there – a mock-up of a B-29 from which hang smiling, waving, bikini-clad young women. To my admittedly Western mind it was like going to a Jewish deli and finding Arbeit Macht Frei on their door. Or, if not quite that, then at least a London pub festooned with V-2 tchotches.
And this is Tokyo, we’re talking about, Tokyo where there are no buildings predating 1945. Odd way of dealing with the past.
Interesting that China has recently been trying to play down its partisanship of Russia, in conversations with Europeans, according to usually well informed reporters.
Partly I suspect this reflects the surprised realisation in Beijing that a lot of European policy leaders are very extremely, pissed-off about China’s initial open support for Russia. Chinese “friendly neutrality” toward Russia would be understandable to Europeans, as a desire for China not to alienate a potential ally.
But open partisanship indicates China conceives of Russia as a military ally. Which, in any likely crisis, makes Russia a weapon aimed at the head of Europe.
Sod that.
OTOH, the US might find it helpful to take a second look at some of it’s industrial “re-shoring” policies. In a situation where European industry is facing very high energy costs etc. programs that attract corporation to relocate production not from China, but from Europe to the US, are not likely to win friends in European parliaments.
A little more finesse, difficult as it is given competing interest in Congress and executive branches, and understandable limits on White House focus, opens the prospect of a “G#” cooperative western trade/industrial/technology strategy.
@Michael Reynolds:
Exactly.
As Raymond Aron pointed out, Britain was willing to fight to the death to avoid German (or Russian) hegemony. Also France, for that matter.
Our willingness to put up with the pax American is not just because we think your movies and music are cool.
Compared to almost any European imperium, especially the Russian/Soviet, even that of our sweet lovable Brittanic selves (just ask the Irish), Americans are pussycats.
(Central America and the Congressional coddling of United Fruit’s squawks of “it’s Cahmunisum!” notwithstanding)
The postwar Japanese constitution renounced war as a means of settling conflicts and established a military supposedly only for defense. In English they pledged no belligerence. OK, there have already been a lot of word games around this and what Japan is now doing is understandable and probably necessary. But we had one country committed to non-aggression and it’s sad to lose that.
@James Joyner: I mostly agree with you and I’ve commented here before that as hegemons go, we’ve been pretty benevolent, and largely seen as such. But wrt/ Iraq and Afghanistan I would quote Talleyrand, “It is worse than a crime, it is a mistake.” Whatever our intentions, and however one parses the morality, they ended up being stupid.
James- I think that our initial actions in Afghanistan may have been acceptable to most people but it turned into a 20 year stay, we killed a lot of civilians, granted we weren’t trying to do so, we grossly overpromised on our results and then we just left. We didnt try to extract wealth out fo the place as they didnt really have any but it still had overtones of an occupation.
Steve
@steve:
The numbers of Afghans killed by US forces was minimal.
The overwhelming majority were killed by other Afghans.
The problem was always that trying to impose a Kabul central authority on the regions, and especially on the Pashtun, was asking for trouble.
Add to that
– trying to make that Kabul government a “modernizing” force,
– pursuing anti-opium policies that really annoyed both peasants and warlords, and
– failing to brace Islamabad over it’s continual double-dealing
And you have a perfect recipe for constructing a quagmire.
As in Iraq, the US problem was it neither acted like a occupying overlord, nor a hands-off hegemon, nor a not-bothered neutral.
Blundereing about and hoping for the best in a situation, without cold calculation of interest, and force requirements of options, and local political realities.
And of US national interest, consensus opinion, and commitment level.
See also Vietnam.
@JohnSF: Cheney, Rumsfeld, et al were told they had enough troops to win the war, but that to occupy the country and maintain order they’d need three times as many troops. They might be forgiven if they’d had any compelling reason to invade Iraq. But they didn’t.
This may be prompted by recent demonstrations of US instability. The Japanese must feel a need to prepare for the eventuality of a serious, perhaps total, melt-down. Complete dependance on the US for one’s national security requires a more faith than it once did.
This discussion reminds me of an aphorism coined (supposedly) by some nameless British functionary when asked why it was necessary to found NATO. “It’s to keep the Russians out, the Americans in, and the Germans down.” It looks as though Japan and even South Korea (which is now hinting that it may develop its own nuclear arsenal) are thinking along the same lines.
@SC_Birdflyte: The nameless functionary was Hastings Lionel Ismay, 1st Baron Ismay–the first Secretary General of NATO.
@James Joyner:
As nameless functionaries go, not the most nameless…
@gVOR08:
The main reason was the performative “defiance dance” act of Iraq; and its repeated and ongoing breaches of the ceasefire terms of 1991.
Probably a better response would have been a regime (= Hussein) elimination airstrike campaign.