Japan on Friday laid the foundation for the country’s defense and security policies for years to come, signaling that Tokyo is now more ready than ever to shed some of the postwar constraints on its military.
Prime Minister Fumio Kishida’s government passed revisions to three key security documents after months of debate, outlining a tough new stance in a region where China continues to flex its military muscle near Taiwan, North Korea’s nuclear and missile threats remain unceasing, and Russia’s bloody invasion of Ukraine has stoked fears that others in Asia could take a page from their playbook.
“Looking at Japan’s surroundings, it is facing the most severe and complex security environment since the end of World War II,” according to the country’s new National Security Strategy (NSS), which also noted growing pressure “by those seeking to unilaterally change the status quo by force.”
Most notable among the changes to the documents is the formal introduction — after years of debate — of a so-called counterstrike capability that allows Japan to hit enemy bases and command-and-control nodes with longer-range standoff missiles. The move gives Tokyo a powerful deterrent in the powder-keg region but also raises questions about the future of the country’s defense posture.
Critics of the counterstrike capability have called it a possible violation of Japan’s exclusively defense-oriented posture under the war-renouncing Article 9 of the Constitution. However, the government has long viewed the capability as constitutional so long as three conditions for the use of force are met: that an armed attack has occurred or is imminent; that there is no other way to halt an attack; and that the use of force is limited to the minimum necessary.
Speaking during a news conference at the Prime Minister’s Office in Tokyo after the Cabinet approved the documents’ revisions, Kishida stressed that the world is currently “at a historical crossroads” and that this had required Japan to act with urgency.
“The new security policy is a major shift from the postwar security policy,” he said, adding that the changes, including the counterstrike capability, are “within the scope of the Constitution” and that the country’s exclusively defense-oriented policy would remain in place.
“Japan’s path as a peaceful nation will remain unchanged,” he said.
Prime
Minister Fumio Kishida attends a November meeting of an experts’ panel
on strengthening Japan’s defense capabilities at the Prime Minister’s
Office in Tokyo. | KYODO
According to the new NSS, missile attacks against Japan “are a real threat,” and the counterstrike capability is “key” to deterring aggression from neighbors such as China and North Korea, which have “dramatically improved” their own weapons capabilities.
Still, there are fears that the vagueness surrounding restrictions on the exercise of the capability — the government has said it will determine its use “in light of individual and specific circumstances” — could erode Japan’s defense-oriented posture.
The new NSS aimed to quell some of these concerns, explicitly stating that the capability falls “within the scope of the Constitution and international law and does not change Japan’s concept of exclusively defense-oriented policy, while also specifically noting that “there is no change in the fact that pre-emptive strikes … are not permitted.”
To put the capability into practice, Japan will extend the range of its homegrown Type-12 standoff missiles and buy U.S.-made Tomahawk cruise missiles with a range of about 1,600 kilometers within five years, according to revisions in the two other security documents: the National Defense Strategy (NDS), which outlines the country’s basic defense policy and future direction, and the Defense Program, a defense spending and procurement plan based on the other documents.
The Tomahawks, for which a price tag has not yet been determined, are intended to fill any immediate gaps in the initial five-year plan while the range of the Type-12 missiles is extended. Total costs for the standoff capability are expected to be around ¥5 trillion.
In a move that could give Tokyo political cover, the documents signaled that the counterstrike capability is also intended to be an element of a larger plan moving Japan toward an integrated air and missile defense system, with Tokyo pledging to “fundamentally strengthen” its detection, tracking and interception capabilities. The system will require increased cooperation with the U.S. military.
U.S.
and Air Self-Defense Force fighters take part in a joint drill over the
Sea of Japan in November. | DEFENSE MINISTRY JOINT STAFF OFFICE / VIA
KYODO
Jeffrey Hornung, a senior political scientist at the U.S.-based Rand Corp., said the acquisition of a counterstrike capability “in and of itself does not necessarily affect the exclusive defense orientation,” since it is an extension of Japan’s existing defense efforts.
“How these weapons are used, and the associated concepts and doctrines, however, is where a contradiction is possible if Japan seeks to deploy those assets in a pre-emptive manner,” he said.
Another factor complicating the debate is that the definition of “defense” continues to change as technologies and capabilities evolve.
“Being able to ‘defend’ from greater distances and across different domains … has become a new military focus, so I think such counterstrike capabilities are legitimate, given China’s aggressiveness and its growing long-range weapon arsenal,” James Schoff, senior director of the U.S.-Japan NEXT Alliance Initiative at the Sasakawa Peace Foundation USA, said, referring to Beijing’s large arsenal of missiles that put Japan firmly within its crosshairs.
To pay for the new weapons and systems, Kishida broke a long-standing taboo in Japan late last month by instructing his defense and finance chiefs to secure a defense budget equal to 2% of gross domestic product by 2027. Just a week later, he ordered the five-year spending plan to be hiked to around ¥43 trillion ($315 billion).
The 2% target, enshrined in the NSS, and the ¥43 trillion plan, laid out in the country’s Defense Program, would put Japan on par with NATO’s defense spending standard, signaling a clear departure from the country’s informal cap on outlays of around 1% of GDP.
Models
of military equipment and a giant screen displaying Chinese leader Xi
Jinping are seen at an exhibition at the Military Museum of the Chinese
People’s Revolution in Beijing on Oct. 8. | REUTERS
Another notable change to the documents is their focus on the coming decade to better reflect Japan’s longer-term defense goals and prepare for a possible emergency over self-ruled Taiwan.
This timeline is seen as critically important for Japan in terms of building up its defense capabilities, especially as the U.S. security strategy called the 10-year period “a decisive decade for America and the world.” Japan offered similar views in the latest security documents, especially when it comes to fears of a looming conflict over Taiwan.
“China has intensified coercive military activities around Taiwan, and concerns about peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait are rapidly increasing not only in the Indo-Pacific region, including in Japan, but also with the entire international community,” according to the NSS.
China has vowed to unify Taiwan with the mainland, by force if necessary. In recent years, Beijing has ramped up military pressure on the democratic island, including by conducting military training at a nearly nonstop clip nearby. This pressure culminated in August, when it lobbed five ballistic missiles inside Japan’s claimed exclusive economic zone near Okinawa Prefecture for the first time ever, during large-scale military drills.
While Kishida’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party had sought to label China a “threat” in the NSS, the government took things down a notch in deference to objections from Komeito, the ruling bloc’s junior member, and ultimately referred to the Asian powerhouse — and Tokyo’s top trading partner — as “the greatest strategic challenge that Japan has ever faced.”
Japan has traditionally been very cautious with language used to describe security threats in official documents. But in a signal that it increasingly views Beijing as a danger, the NDS retained a reference to the “threat” some believe it represents by noting in the document that the August missile launches had been “perceived as a threat by local residents.”
The moves represent a dramatic departure from Japan’s 2013 NSS, in which Tokyo spoke of enhancing “a mutually beneficial relationship based on common strategic interests with China.”
Members
of the Self-Defense Force’s Amphibious Rapid Deployment Brigade take
part in a joint airborne landing exercise with U.S. Marine Corps members
at Higashifuji training field in Gotemba, Shizuoka Prefecture, in
March. | REUTERS
Indeed, the new NSS indicates that those days are long gone, highlighting “serious concerns” over China’s “attempts to unilaterally change the status quo” in the East and South China seas and a lack of transparency over its defense budgets and military buildup.
The NSS also described nuclear-armed North Korea, which has conducted a record-breaking flurry of missile tests this year, as aiming to strengthen its capabilities “qualitatively and quantitatively at a maximum speed,” presenting Japan with “an even more serious and imminent threat than before.”
The documents also detail Japan’s plans to transition to an “active cyberdefense” policy that aims to prevent cyberattacks before they occur, a move that would see it dramatically expand the number of SDF cyberexperts from a core of about 890 people currently to one of about 4,000 by fiscal year 2027, with the number of Defense Ministry and SDF cyberpersonnel altogether hitting approximately 20,000.
They also note Japan’s plan to create a permanent joint command capable of centrally overseeing the Ground, Maritime and Air Self-Defense Forces.
Experts such as Sebastian Maslow, a lecturer at Sendai Shirayuri Women’s College, say the revised documents essentially boil down to two main aspects, namely acquiring more credible deterrence and denial capabilities and expanding Japan’s role within its alliance with the United States, the latter of which will also help strengthen the U.S.-led defense posture in the Indo-Pacific.
“These steps, which expand bilateral defense cooperation, ultimately signal a shift from Japan’s traditional role as a ‘shield’ in the ‘shield-and-sword’ relationship with Washington,” Maslow said.
This increase in capabilities and sophistication will enable greater integration with U.S. and partner forces at a time when Washington can no longer guarantee a favorable regional balance of power by itself.
At a glance: Japan’s updated security and defense documents
The following is the gist of the government’s three key security and defense-related documents updated on Friday, including its long-term policy guidelines, the National Security Strategy. Japan:
- will acquire so-called counterstrike capability, allowing it to strike targets in enemy territory to deter attacks.
- will allocate about ¥43 trillion ($315 billion) for defense spending over five years from fiscal 2023, setting target of boosting annual defense outlays to around 2% of GDP in fiscal 2027.
- will retain an exclusively defense-oriented security policy.
- will consider reviewing strict guidelines on exporting defense equipment.
- views China as the “greatest strategic challenge,” North Korea as a “graver, more imminent threat than before” and Russia as a “serious security concern.”