Japan–whose annual military budget of $50 billion is one of the largest in the world–is still far from having conventional offensive capabilities. Its so-called Self-Defense Forces lack essential equipment like cruise missiles, aircraft carriers and long-range bombers. Still, the country recently completed a deal with the United States to upgrade its Aegis radar system with SM-3 intercept missiles onboard four of its destroyers. Tokyo is also in the process of purchasing Patriot PAC-III antiballistic missiles, which would be used to intercept inbound projectiles. In addition, the government recently bought fighter jets with aerial refueling capabilities. Tokyo insists that its new weapons are strictly for defense. But some of the new hardware, including the SM-3 missiles and Boeing 767 AWACS (Airborne Warning and Control System), do have offensive capabilities.
The changed attitude is most obvious in Japan’s missile defense plans. In the 1960s, when Japan built its BADGE (Basic Air Defense Ground Environment) air-defense system, it specifically rejected U.S. cooperation in the project. Tokyo similarly rebuffed U.S. overtures to participate in satellite launches in 1998. But now, says Richard Samuels, a professor of Japanese politics at MIT, “we are seeing Japan make a second move–from regional security to an emphasis on global security. They are now participating in a missile defense system that requires intimate cross-communication of the most sophisticated variety.” Japan’s investment in the project reportedly totaled some $2 billion between 2004 and 2005, and last March the United States and Japan completed a cooperative test flight of the SM-3 with an advanced, Japanese-designed nose cone.
Koizumi will be stepping down in September–and his successor will help decide whether Japan formally ditches, or continues to cling to, the pacifist Article 9 in the country’s Constitution. Shinzo Abe, the current front runner, is a well-known hawk. “Abe is likely to push the constitutional debate [on Article 9],” says Mansanori Nishi, a senior official at the Japan Defense Agency’s Technical Research and Development Institute. “He’s regarded as a bit of a radical on constitutional issues.” His main challenger, Yasuo Fukuda, would probably take “a more pragmatic approach,” but will certainly be forced to address these military issues as well, says Michael Green, former special assistant to U.S. President George W. Bush for national-security affairs and currently at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Japan isn’t ready to become a full-fledged military power–its past still hangs too heavily in the region for that–but it isn’t going to be a shrinking violet anymore, either.
