Sheila Smith

How does Japan balance its avowedly pacifist constitution and its technologically sophisticated and growing Self-Defense Forces against rising regional threats? How do Japan’s neighbors, South Korea and China, in particular, view the rearming of Japan? And while Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is labeled a right-wing nationalist, what do the Japanese people think about shifting security trends and the future of the island’s defense?

Sheila Smith, senior fellow for Japan studies at the Council on Foreign Relations and author of the upcoming book Japan Rearmed: The Politics of Military Power, offers answers to some of these questions. Smith emphasizes that in developing its military capabilities Japan is responding to a complex regional situation and an uncertain future.

Japan’s post-war constitution enshrines pacifism with its renunciation of the use of force. The text of Article 9 also forswears maintaining “land, sea, and air forces, as well as other war potential.” In what ways has the Japanese interpretation of these restrictions evolved over time?

Early on, Japan's political leaders established that the right of self-defense was inherent in the UN Charter and thus Japan, too, would be able to develop the capability to defend itself. This was established in the Diet committee that reviewed the draft of the U.S. Occupation authorities, and so the postwar debate that followed after Japan regained sovereignty in 1952 was how to interpret what was necessary for self-defense. Diet debate over the Self-Defense Forces (SDF) law in 1954 became the first place this was deliberated, and many of the basic issues Japanese still consider were raised then. But over time, as the SDF developed the capability to take over territorial defense missions from U.S. forces, debate blossomed into what sorts of things should define the military capability of the SDF. Over time, these debates shifted focus from what kinds of weapons were acceptable to what kind of missions the SDF could perform, and then to the possibility of SDF participation in international coalitions in the post-Cold War era (such as UN Peacekeeping Operations and post-9/11 U.S. coalitions in the Indian Ocean and now in the South China Sea). I trace this trajectory of deliberations in Japan Rearmed to show just how far Japan has come in thinking about the utility of its military as a partner in regional and global security.

What regional security factors have contributed to this evolution?

During the Cold War, the military flashpoints were beyond Japan – on the Korean Peninsula and across the Taiwan Straits. Japan, and the SDF, offered logistical support to U.S. operations elsewhere. After the Cold War, however, this began to change. First, North Korea began to develop weapons of mass destruction and the missiles needed to deliver them, and then China began to invest more deeply in its military capability, especially its maritime forces. For the first time, the possibility that Japan might be the target of attack became far more believable, and indeed, after the tensions over the Senkaku Islands, the possibility that Japan might be attacked first – rather than as part of a broader regional wide conflict – emerged.

How have Japan’s neighbors viewed Tokyo’s military modernization efforts?

To be sure, neither South Korea nor China, both victims of Japan's military expansion in the first half of the 20th century, welcome a militarily powerful Japan. But South Korea and Japan have both been U.S. allies, and in the most recent spate of missile launches by the North Koreans, cooperated closely in synchronizing their responses. China has viewed Japan's military might with some realism, but has openly criticized Japanese prime ministers who visit the Yasukuni Shrine or who proffer revisionist accounts of history. Recently, tensions between Japan and China have receded somewhat from the 2010 and 2012 clash over the Senkakus, but both nations scrutinize each other's military power carefully and their militaries operate in far greater proximity and with greater frequency than ever before. Even South Korea has become more sensitive to Japanese operations, and a recent incident where an ROK naval vessel locked its fire control radar on a Japanese surveillance aircraft has seriously strained relations.

Critics of Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe label him a right-wing nationalist, categorizing his efforts to reform Article 9 as little more than militarization. What do you make of that description?

I doubt that Prime Minister Abe would take issue with the label “nationalist,” but while he has been in office since 2012 he has worked hard to reduce concerns about his revisionism. The Abe statement of 2015 [on the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II] was not what many expected; indeed, it was a far more pragmatic statement of his sense of responsibility for working to ease regional concerns about his views on Japan's past.

In terms of military operations, the Abe cabinet’s reinterpretation of the right of collective self defense in 2014, and the security legislation that followed in 2015, have far more impact on the SDF and its operations than the recent suggestion by the prime minister of adding text to Article 9. The right of collective self defense allows the SDF to deploy and, if needed, use force alongside the United States but also other nations if it is in Japan's security interests. It also allows the SDF to play a more active role in UN Peacekeeping Operations, to protect others who may be in danger. The limits on the SDF ability to work with others had long been criticized by partners in the field who have had to compensate for the inability of Japan’s military to accept risk when deployed. For some, however, this reinterpretation was still too limited, especially for the prime minister’s advisors who advocated a full acceptance of the responsibilities inherent in the UN collective security concept.

It remains to be seen whether the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), Abe’s party, will endorse his idea of adding a sentence that claims the SDF to be constitutional under the current constitution. This has less impact on the military operations of the SDF, and more impact on the political debate over its legitimacy.

You note in your book that when Abe began advocating for the revision of Article 9, the public response was muted. How much public support is there, in your assessment, for revision of Article 9 and the modernization of Japanese military policy more broadly?

Given the uproar over the new security laws in 2015, I expected far greater reaction in Japan to the proposal to touch Article 9. Public opinion polling remains divided over revision of the constitution generally, but particularly over Article 9. The prime minister’s proposal was in fact designed to gain the support of other parties, and unlike some in the LDP who had drafted an earlier version for revision, Abe did not seek to change the name or the orientation of the SDF in his proposal.

Polling over the past decade, however, does reveal more and more Japanese are worried about their nation’s defenses. This suggests there is a disconnect between views on the constitution’s revision and on having the capability to defend Japan. In December last year, the Abe cabinet passed new National Defense Program Guidelines, a 10-year defense plan, along with an initial five-year procurement plan. Defense spending is set to increase somewhere between 1.2 to 3 percent in the coming years, depending on how fast the Ministry of Defense can purchase new weapons systems. These include a sophisticated land-based upgrade to Japan's ballistic missile defenses, modernization of air defenses, including new fighters, a new space command, and joint cyber and EMP defenses, as well as hardening of Japan’s largest destroyers to allow for vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) fighters. This is a significant upgrade for the SDF, but there was very little public outcry.

To what extent is the more recent Japanese military modernization push a response to persistent U.S. calls for increased “burden-sharing” from its allies?

These changes have been long overdue as Japan’s neighbors are rapidly challenging its ability to defend itself. China’s defense budget is now at least three times larger than Japan’s, and North Korean demonstration of its missile proliferation has revealed Japan’s lack of retaliatory options. Ballistic missile defenses alone may not be enough and Tokyo is already openly considering whether to invest in more offensive options. To date, the United States has been more than willing to offer offensive capability to complement Japan’s defensive oriented military. With both China presenting the U.S.-Japan alliance with a serious challenge and with the Trump administration openly calling for U.S. allies to spend more and do more for their own defenses, we are likely to see Tokyo move to acquire ever more hard power.

Up ahead next year are negotiations between Japan and the U.S. over Host Nation Support, Japanese funding for the presence of forward deployed U.S. military forces. If the U.S.-ROK negotiations are any indication of how this “burden-sharing” conversation might go, we should expect this to be a difficult discussion. Unlike past iterations, however, the Abe cabinet has very clearly opted to invest in its own military capability.