Japan retools military to face China fears
Review to include a strengthening of defences around disputed islands
- Stephens On the way to a new global balance
- Japanese growth data fails to alleviate gloom
- Japan to shift military towards China threat
- Fresh push to lift Japan arms export ban
- Editorial Japanese defence
Japan retools military to face China fears
By Mure Dickie in Tokyo
Published: December 17 2010 03:25 | Last updated: December 17 2010 07:11
Japan has ordered a historic refocusing of its military forces to strengthen the defences of southern islands seen as threatened by China's rising power.
The new National Defence Policy Guidelines promise a more mobile military with additional submarines but fewer tanks, a move based on the view that Japan faces a greater threat from China.
The military has resisted previous attempts to revise its Cold War posture despite the virtual evaporation of such a threat with the collapse of the Soviet Union.
The guidelines – the first new defence framework since the left-leaning Democratic party won power last year – highlight China's rise as a "great power".
They express concern about the rapid expansion and modernisation of the Chinese military, and its increasing ability to project force far beyond its shores.
"The insufficient transparency of China's military affairs and security guarantees is becoming a cause for concern in the regional and global community," the guidelines say.
They stress the need to strengthen island defences to better secure in particular the south-western Nansei chain that runs from Japan's main islands down to near Taiwan.
Defence planners worry that China could challenge Japanese and US military dominance in the area. These fears have been recently fuelled by Beijing's fierce reaction to the arrest of a Chinese fishing boat captain by Japanese coast guard near the Japanese-controlled but Chinese-claimed Senkaku islands.
The guidelines, which set the framework for defence policy for the next decade, also lay out plans to ensure the military is better able to take part in international "peace co-operation activities" and to respond to any threat from North Korea.
The number of submarines is to be increased from the current 16 to 22, while tank forces – many of which are based on the northern island of Hokkaido – are to be cut from the current 830 tanks to just 400.
However, implementing the cuts could prove a challenge given an apparent lack of urgency among commanders at the Ground Self Defence Force, the Japanese army, for achieving the target of 600 tanks set out in the policy guidelines issued in 2004.
Pressure is growing on the military, though, for cost savings, given that the refocusing of forces will not be accompanied by any significant budget increase.
A separate midterm defence plan approved by the cabinet on Friday anticipates military spending of about Y23,490bn ($279bn) over five years, suggesting that Japan is going to maintain defence spending at broadly current levels.
Defence officials believe Japan could cut the cost and raise the effectiveness of its military procurement by easing a ban on arms exports. That would allow joint development of sophisticated weapon systems with allies and their sale to friendly nations.
Strong political opposition prevented such a move being included in the guidelines. But the government kept the door open for a shift by promising to "examine" policies to respond to the fact that such international co-operation had become "mainstream among advanced countries".
In a recent interview with the Financial Times, Jun Azumi, a senior defence official, called for "full and open" discussion that could allow an easing of the restrictions while ensuring arms exports remained within the "bounds of a peaceful nation".
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Japan to shift military towards China threat
By Mure Dickie in Tokyo
Published: December 13 2010 11:01 | Last updated: December 13 2010 11:01
Defence policy guidelines set to be unveiled by Tokyo this month are likely to contain bad news for Japanese tank commanders – and an even less welcome message for policymakers in neighbouring China.
Officials and analysts say the keenly awaited National Defence Policy Guidelines will signal a historic refocusing of Japan's army and other forces toward securing the line of small islands in the southern Nansei chain that stretches from Japan’s main islands toward Taiwan and are seen as threatened by China's rapidly growing military power.
The new priorities spell a redistribution of resources away from tank units and other forces originally deployed in areas such as the northern island of Hokkaido to defend against a feared full-scale invasion from the Soviet Union.
Many analysts say Tokyo has been slow to match what has been a sharp increase in China's ability to project power in the waters up to and beyond the lightly-populated Nansei archipelago.
Tokyo has already deployed more advanced fighters to the southern island of Okinawa, the largest and most populated in the Nansei group, and beefed up army units there, but China's deployment of new submarines, supersonic anti-ship missiles and advanced fighters is seen as challenging US and Japanese military superiority in an area that includes sea lanes vital to the trade-dependent economy.
Japanese concerns have been fuelled by the increasingly assertive tone of Chinese diplomacy – and in particular Beijing's fierce reaction to the arrest of a Chinese fishing boat captain that clashed with Japanese coast guard vessels near the Senkaku islands – known in China as the Diaoyu group – which Tokyo says are part of the Nansei chain.
Kunihiko Miyake, a security expert at the Canon Global Institute, says the incident helped generate the political will to overcome institutional resistance to change from within the army – officially known as the Ground Self Defence Force in a nod to Japan's pacifistic constitution.
It also helped win over members of the left-leaning ruling Democratic party, which ousted the long-ruling conservative Liberal Democratic party last year, says Mr Miyake.
"Probably we have to thank the captain of the Chinese fishing boat for helping us make this important decision on military posture," he says. "This is potentially a real breakthrough in the history of the Japanese Ground Self Defence Force."
The implications of the decision to make strengthening southern defences a priority are unlikely to be spelled out in full detail in the new guidelines, though Japanese media say GSDF tank numbers could be cut by one-third to free up funds.
Early steps are likely to include new island radar stations, with small army units to guard them. Some analysts say anti-ship missiles should later be deployed along the Nansei chain to support naval forces in the area.
Mr Azumi declined to discuss such specifics, but says the new policy will stress in particular the need for greater military mobility so that forces can be deployed quickly by air or sea to wherever they might be needed.
"Island defence is not just a matter of stationing 500 or 1,000 men on an island," the vice-minister says. "As we know from our tough fight against the US in the (1941-45) Pacific war, it's no use leaving them standing on their own. You need to have a lot of back-up and support."
The defence ministry also wants the new guidelines to set the stage for the acquisition of new submarines and destroyers, and for a long-delayed decision on an advanced fighter to replace its fast-ageing fleet of F-4 Phantoms.
Yet even with the public worries about China and about nuclear-armed North Korea – whose recent attack on a South Korean island is fuelling calls for an expansion of Japan’s anti-ballistic missile defences – planners still face severe spending constraints.
A huge fiscal deficit means the defence ministry cannot even be sure of stemming years of defence budget cuts.
“Given the regrettable lack of détente in East Asia ... [we are arguing that] it is important to maintain defence spending,” says Mr Azumi on the internal budget battle.
“Before you can fight China, you have to go to war with the finance ministry.”
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On the way to a new global balance
By Philip Stephens
Published: December 16 2010 21:55 | Last updated: December 16 2010 21:55
We are living through one of history’s swerves. A multipolar world has been long predicted, but has always seemed to be perched safely on the horizon. Now it has rushed quite suddenly into the present. Two centuries of western hegemony are coming to a close rather earlier than many had imagined.
The geopolitical balance is adjusting accordingly. China is asserting itself in east Asia. India is building a blue-water navy. Turkey and Brazil are seeking to translate regional power into international kudos. Indonesia is hedging between Washington and Beijing. Europe battles against irrelevance; America with a burgeoning budget deficit and political gridlock.
Predictions of the passing of US primacy are premature. For all its troubles, America remains the sole superpower – the only nation able to project power in every corner of the earth. One of the under-noticed stories of 2010 has been the return of the US to Asia. Unnerved by Beijing and the lethal unpredictability of North Korea, China’s neighbours have clamoured for protection from Uncle Sam.
The picture of US power painted by secret diplomatic cables is essentially flattering. America’s pursuit of its national interest coincides most of the time with the provision of public goods for the rest of us. Washington worries in private as much as it does in public about the impact on global security of nuclear proliferation, failing states, terrorism and regional conflicts.
The other side of the WikiLeaks coin is that the US is an inadequate superpower. The diplomatic exchanges show how its unrivalled power has left the US unable to impose its solutions in the world’s troublespots. Only this month we saw Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu wreck Barack Obama’s efforts to promote peace in the Middle East.
The world’s rising states are at a stage where they want to enjoy power without responsibility. Putting a kind interpretation on its latest muscle-flexing, China is the adolescent who has just discovered he has the physical strength of an adult. In ignoring Deng Xiaoping’s admonition to bide its time, Beijing is squandering soft power accumulated over a decade.
India wants the respect conferred by great power status, but is reluctant to give up the street credibility conferred by its old non-aligned leadership role. Delhi is also strangely incapable of confronting enmities in its own neighbourhood. Turkey wants to look east as well as west, but has yet to balance its new ambitions for Muslim leadership with its old attachment to Euro-Atlantic integration.
Europe is in bad shape. What started out as a private sector banking crisis has become a public sector debt crisis. The eurozone is under siege from the markets. The real threat is political. The economic shock of the continent’s relative decline against a rising Asia has merged with the continuing political aftershocks from the fall of the Berlin Wall two decades ago.
A united, more unapologetically nationalist Germany, has upended the European Union’s political equilibrium. The Union worked when leadership was shared by France and Germany. But Berlin now wants to call the tune. The single currency may be rescued, but I am not sure there is great enthusiasm for a German Europe. As for Britain, its fresh-faced prime minister has shown no interest in, nor aptitude for, crafting anything resembling a foreign policy.
Japan, where I have spent this week at a series of security discussions hosted by the German Marshall Fund of the US and the Tokyo Foundation, seems trapped in semi-permanent denial. Though alarmed by clashes with China in the contested East China Sea, Japan has had five prime ministers in three years. This game of political musical chairs somehow seems easier than thinking about a strategic response to the insecurities of east Asia.
Russia counts itself among the rising powers. But it is a declining state trapped in its past. For reasons of domestic politics and of attention-seeking abroad, Russian leaders continue to pretend that the enemy lies in the west. National pride, they judge, can be restored only by standing up to the US and Europe.
The real perils are closer to home – endemic corruption, demographic decay and a hollowed out petro-carbon economy. Elsewhere, the strategic challenges come from Islamist extremism and the possibility of China and India bursting their borders in Russia’s depopulated eastern territories. Russia’s long-term interests lie in closer integration with the west. Dmitry Medvedev, Russia’s president, may grasp this. Vladimir Putin, his predecessor and likely successor, sticks with the old story.
The lazy way to describe the new geopolitical landscape is one of a contest between the west and rest – between western liberal democracies and eastern market economy autocracies. Neat as such divisions may seem, they miss the complexities. None are more determined, for example, than Russia and China to keep India from securing a permanent seat on the UN Security Council. Few are more worried than India by China’s military build-up.
A more sanguine view of the re-ordered world looks to the Group of 20 nations as an instrument to forge a broader consensus about east-west and north-south co-operation. There is some cause for optimism in respect of global economic governance; far less so when it comes to security and foreign policy.
The rising nations prize state power over international rules, sovereignty over multilateralism. The transition to a new order is likely to see more rivalry and competition than co-operation. The facts of interdependence cannot be wished away but they will certainly be tested. It is going to be a bumpy ride. A pity then that much of the west seems intent on hiding under the bedcovers.
More columns at www.ft.com/philipstephens
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