Japan flexes its military muscle at China, and Trump

Straits Times

08-06-2025

Japan is transforming its long-restricted military into a potent force to operate alongside America's ships and soldiers. PHOTO: REUTERS
OKINAWA - The ship-slaying missiles of the Japanese army's 7th Regiment are mounted aboard dark green trucks that are easy to move and conceal, but for now, the soldiers are making no effort to hide them.
Created in 2024, the fledgling regiment and its roving missile batteries occupy a hilltop base on the island of Okinawa that can be seen for miles.
The visibility is intentional. The 7th is one of two new missile regiments that the army, called the Ground Self-Defence Force, has placed along the islands on Japan's south-western flank in response to an increasingly robust Chinese navy that frequently sails through waters near Japan.
'Our armaments are a show of force to deter an enemy from coming,' said Colonel Yohei Ito, the regiment's commander.
China is not their only target. The display is also for the United States, and particularly President Donald Trump, who has criticised Japan for relying too heavily on the presence of US military bases for its security.
The missiles are part of a defence buildup that is central to Japan's strategy for appealing to Mr Trump. While Tokyo is now deep in negotiations with Washington over lifting new tariffs, its top priority is improving security ties.
On June 6, Japan's trade envoy, Mr Ryosei Akazawa, met for 2 1/2 hours in Washington with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Mr Howard Lutnick, the secretary of commerce, for talks on a tariff-lifting deal that will probably see Tokyo promise large purchases of energy, computer chips and weapons.
By adding new missiles and other advanced weapons, both American-made and domestically developed, Japan is transforming its long-restricted military into a potent force with the skills and technology to operate alongside America's ships and soldiers, to demonstrate that Japan is an indispensable partner.
'We want to be sure the US has our backs, and enhancing our conventional military capabilities is the way to do that,' said Mr Nobukatsu Kanehara, who was deputy head of national security policy from 2014 to 2019 under then-prime minister Shinzo Abe. 'We want to show President Trump that we are a valuable and essential ally.'
Given the growing military strength of nearby China and also North Korea, Japan wants to upgrade the defence alliance with the US by becoming a fuller-fledged military partner and moving further from the pacifism enshrined in its constitution adopted after World War II.
With the war in Ukraine stirring fears of a similar Chinese move on the democratic island of Taiwan, Japan announced in 2022 it would double spending on national security to about 2 per cent of gross domestic product. The resulting defence buildup is now underway.
Japan is buying expensive weapon systems from the US like the F-35B stealth fighter and Tomahawk cruise missiles that will give Japan the ability to strike targets on enemy soil for the first time since 1945.
The spending is also revitalising Japan's own defence industry. At a trade show in May near Tokyo, Japanese manufacturers displayed weapons currently under development, including a hypersonic missile, a laser system for shooting down drones, and a jet fighter to be built with Italy and Britain.
Japan is also demonstrating a new resolve to fight alongside the United States during a future crisis. When he visited Tokyo this spring, Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth praised a plan to create a new 'war-fighting headquarters' in Tokyo where Japanese and American commanders will work side by side.
'During our discussions, I told him how Japan is making our own strong efforts to drastically strengthen our defence capabilities,' Mr Gen Nakatani, the Japanese defence minister, said after meeting with Mr Hegseth. 'We face the most severe security environment that Japan has encountered since the end of the war.'
It has been made even more severe by the uncertainty from Washington. While Japan's leaders and policymakers see strong support from Mr Hegseth and other hardliners on China, like Secretary of State Marco Rubio, they remain worried about America First isolationists who could try to pull back the US military in Asia.
There is also the unpredictability of Mr Trump. Their biggest fear is that the president might suddenly strike a grand strategic deal with China's leader, Mr Xi Jinping, that would cede Japan and its neighbours to Beijing's sphere of influence.
'We need to convince Mr Trump and the Maga camp that Japan is too good to give away,' said Professor Satoru Mori, a professor of international politics at Keio University in Tokyo. 'It's in the US interest not to let Japan fall into China's sphere.'
The Chinese government has criticised Japan's acquisition of offensive weapons as a return to wartime militarism.
Japan is hedging its bets by reaching out to other partners. In addition to the fighter plane jointly developed with Britain and Italy, it has strengthened defense relations with Australia, offering to sell it advanced Japanese-made frigates.
Tokyo also sent a warship and soldiers to the Philippines in May to join a multinational military exercise for the first time.
If Washington proves unreliable, Japan has an ultimate fallback: tons of plutonium stockpiled from its civilian nuclear power industry, which it could use to build a nuclear arsenal of its own. So far, the national trauma from the 1945 atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki has kept such an option off the table.
'We need to think about a Plan B, if the US does withdraw from Asia,' said Mr Kazuto Suzuki, director of the Institute of Geo-economics, a Tokyo-based think tank. NYTIMES
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