Japan isn’t known for being an aggressive country in the world of foreign affairs. Successive Japanese governments have taken pains to emphasize their peacelike nature, a direct consequence of Tokyo finding itself on the losing side of the most horrific war of the 20th century. Japan’s constitution renounces the use of force as a “means of settling international disputes,” and at $54 billion as of last year, its defense budget is extremely modest compared with its $4.9 trillion economy.
Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, however, no longer believes Tokyo’s traditional defense policy and military outlays are sufficient. The security dynamics in East Asia today are much different and arguably more threatening to Japan than they were in the decades after World War II, even when one accounts for the fact that Tokyo has a U.S. security guarantee and about 55,000 U.S. troops are stationed in Japanese territory. Kishida wants Japan’s defense budget to double over the next five years, a massive investment for a country with the highest ratio of debt to gross domestic product in the developed world.
Even so, the international security environment in Japan’s neighborhood is pushing policymakers and lawmakers to support what would ordinarily be off the table. Japanese officials normally reluctant to weigh in on some of the region’s most controversial security disputes are now doing so far more liberally. Koichi Hagiuda, chairman of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party’s Policy Research Council, not only criticized China for its increasing belligerence over Taiwan but did so during a trip to the self-governed island. While one has to be cautious in extrapolating too much from a single event, Hagiuda’s comments at least suggest that some in Tokyo’s policy elite are no longer content with sitting back and quietly registering their disapproval. Warning China of destabilizing what has been a relatively calm and orderly balance of power between Asia’s great powers is now deemed more important than keeping friction at a minimum.
