Japan Moves to Strengthen Military Amid Rivalry With China

Japan Moves to Strengthen Military Amid Rivalry With China

TOKYO — Taking his nation another step further from its postwar pacifism, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe approved a new defense plan on Tuesday that calls for acquiring airborne drones and amphibious assault vehicles to strengthen Japan’s military as it faces the prospect of a prolonged rivalry with China over islands in the East China Sea.

While Mr. Abe described the plan “proactive pacifism,” it reverses a decade of military spending cuts to offset a rapid military buildup by China and the relative decline of American influence.

The spending plan was approved by the cabinet in tandem with a new national security strategy that calls for creating a more dynamic military force, as well as loosening self-imposed restrictions on exporting weapons and nurturing a stronger sense of patriotism in Japan’s public.

Under the new strategy, Japan will build closer military ties with the United States, whose 50,000 military personnel stationed here still form the basis of Japan’s national security. However, Japan will also strengthen its purely defensive forces by acquiring new weapons and capabilities that would have once been unthinkable for a nation that long viewed its military with suspicion after its disastrous defeat in World War II.

Japan will “build a comprehensive defensive posture that can completely defend our nation,” according to the new national security strategy. “China is attempting to alter the status quo by force in the skies and seas of the East China Sea and South China Sea and other areas based on assertions that are incompatible with the established international order.”

Political analysts have said China’s assertive stance in the dispute over the islands have made Japan’s once adamantly pacifist public more willing to accept an expanded role by its military, called the Self-Defense Forces.

The new security strategy also calls for raising Japan’s regional profile by building security ties with other Asian nations, though it is unclear how much a stronger Japanese military will be welcomed by neighbors such as South Korea, where memories of Japan’s early 20th-century militarism are still raw.

The plan announced Tuesday will raise total military spending over the next five years by 1.2 trillion yen, or $12 billion, to $246 billion, reversing a long decline in spending. While that represents an increase of almost 5 percent, it is still far below the annual double-digit rises in Chinese military spending.

According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, Japan had the fifth-largest military budget in the world last year, while China was ranked second behind the United States.

Much of Japan’s new spending will go to beef up its ability to monitor and defend its southwestern islands, including those at the center of the heated standoff with China, which are known as the Senkaku in Japan and Diaoyu in Chinese. To do this, Japan will station more early warning aircraft in Okinawa and buy three unarmed Global Hawk drones.

The five-year spending plan l also calls for the acquisition of beach-assault vehicles and American Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft to equip a new Marine Corps-style amphibious infantry unit that can defend and recapture remote islands.

On Tuesday, the cabinet also approved a revised 10-year military strategy that calls on Japan to create a more mobile military that can deal with contingencies on far-flung islands, as well as so-called gray zone conflicts that might involve small numbers of terrorists or paramilitary attackers. It calls for the army to maintain its current level of about 160,000, reversing earlier plans to shrink that number. And it said Japan would study whether it should buy or develop long-range strike capability, such as a cruise missile, that would allow it to destroy a threat like a North Korean ballistic missile before it could be launched.

Japan has so far eschewed such clearly offensive weapons to maintain the purely defensive nature of its military, whose existence already pushes the limits of a postwar Constitution that bars the nation from possessing “land, sea and air forces, as well as other war potential.” Mr. Abe wants to go even further by stretching the definition of self-defense to include action taken on behalf of allies under attack, allowing Japan to, for example, shoot down a North Korean ballistic missile heading toward the United States.

However, that doctrine, known as collective self-defense, has run into stiff public opposition, including from a small Buddhist political party within Mr. Abe’s own ruling coalition. On Tuesday, the top government spokesman, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, said consideration of collective self-defense would be put off until next year at earliest.