New defence and security strategies ordered by Japan's conservative prime minister, Shinzo Abe, and approved on Tuesday, include the creation of a new amphibious unit modelled on the US marines, which would be called on to retake islands captured by an enemy – a clear response to Chinese naval and aerial activity near the disputed Senkaku islands.
Relations between Japan and China have sunk to their lowest point in decades over the East China Sea islands, which are administered by Japan but also claimed by China.
Over the past year Chinese surveillance ships have made regular incursions into waters near the islands, and last month Beijing increased the pressure on Tokyo when it declared an air-defence identification zone across a wide area of the East China Sea that includes the Senkakus, known in China as the Diaoyu. The islands' location makes them strategically important, and they are thought to lie amid potentially huge natural gas deposits.
Abe said the new guidelines did not mark a departure from Japan's postwar pacifism or the strictly defensive posture of its armed forces.
"The strategy is designed to make our foreign and security policy clear and transparent both at home and abroad," he said. "We will do our part in contributing to global peace and security further."
Allusions to China's military spending, however, and its increasing naval activity in the region signal Japan's intention to bolster its military in the face of an "increasingly tense" security environment.
In a clear reference to Chinese activity near the Senkakus and Beijing's recent insistence that foreign aircraft identify themselves before using the air-defence zone, Japan accused China of ignoring international norms.
"China is attempting to change the status quo by force in the skies and seas of the East China Sea and South China Sea and other areas, based on its own assertions, which are incompatible with the established international order," the country's first national security strategy, launched on the same day as the defence guidelines, stated.
"China's stance toward other countries and military moves, coupled with a lack of transparency regarding its military and national security policies, represent a concern to Japan and the wider international community and require close watch."
The defence guidelines said, however, that Japan would "promote security dialogues and exchanges with China and develop confidence-building measures to avert and prevent unexpected situations".
On a recent visit to both countries, the US vice-president, Joe Biden, said he was deeply concerned by China's imposition of the air-defence zone, saying it has increased the risk of accidents and miscalculations that could quickly spiral into armed conflict.
"We will continue to explain ourselves by sending people directly to the surrounding countries, starting with China," Japan's foreign minister, Fumio Kishida, said on Tuesday.
China responded by accusing Japan of indulging in "big-power geopolitics" aimed at its increasingly powerful neighbour. "If Japan really hopes to return itself to the ranks of a 'normal country', it should face up to its aggression in history and cooperate with its Asian neighbours instead of angering them with rounds and rounds of unwise words and policies," the state-run Xinhua news agency said.
Japan's projected defence budget is a significant shift from the reduced spending plans outlined by the left-of-centre government that Abe's Liberal Democratic party replaced almost exactly a year ago.
The revised policy calls for better air and maritime surveillance and an improved ability to defend disputed islands such as the Senkakus.
Between 2014 and 2019, Japan plans to buy three unmanned drones from the US, as well as 28 F-35A fighters, 17 Osprey aircraft and five naval destroyers, including two with Aegis anti-ballistic missile systems. The guidelines also include the acquisition of an additional six submarines, taking Japan's total to 22.
Tokyo will set aside ¥23.97tn (£143bn) over the next five years to fund its military expansion, up from for ¥23.37tn from the previous five years.
The guidelines stop short, however, of referring to any acquisition of the ability to strike enemy targets overseas, a controversial move that would be at odds with its pacifist constitution.
Japan's neighbours are expected to dispute its claim that its postwar pacifism has "garnered significant praise and respect from the international community".
Abe has yet to hold official talks with his counterparts in Beijing and Seoul amid territorial disputes and disagreement over Tokyo's interpretation of its wartime conduct, including its use of tens of thousands of mainly Korean women as sex slaves before and during the second world war.
In a passage likely to cause further unease among its neighbours, Japan's security strategy makes the case for a carefully nurtured "love of country" to replace what conservatives, including Abe, have called the "historical masochism" of the postwar years.
Beijing and Seoul have also voiced concern over Abe's plans to revise the constitution to allow Japanese troops to play a more active role overseas, including exercising the right to collective self-defence, and coming to the aid of an ally under attack.
"Many people worry inside Japan and outside that maybe Abe hasn't really learned the lesson from the wartime history of Japan and that there's a danger that a greater role played by Japan actually means the rise of militarism in the long term," said Koichi Nakano, professor of international politics at Sophia University in Tokyo.
But officials in Tokyo pointed out that Japan's defence spending had only recently increased, by a meagre 0.8%, after a decade of decline.
"Japan's defence budget has been shrinking for the past 10 years, but China's has increased 30 times over the past 20 years," a senior foreign ministry official said on condition of anonymity. "That's a big factor in the change we are seeing in the security environment around Japan. That's the fact of the matter."
Narushige Michishita, a national security expert at the national graduate institute for policy studies in Tokyo, said the security and defence overhauls were designed to end Japan's isolationism almost seven decades after the end of the war.
He told Associated Press: "Isolationism was very convenient and comfortable, but now China is rising rapidly and the US commitment to Asia is not growing, so maybe we should be a little more proactive."
Source: theguardian.com/
Author: Justin McCurry
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