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 The planned 2.6 percent increase over five years, announced on
Tuesday, reverses a decade of decline and marks the clearest sign
since Prime Minister Shinzo Abe took office a year ago that he wants
a bigger military role for Japan as tension flares with China over
islands they both claim.
Abe's top priority has been reviving a long-sluggish economy, but he
has also pledged to strengthen Japan's military and boost its
security profile to meet what he says is a threat from China's rapid
military buildup and recent actions to back its claims to
Japanese-held islands in the East China Sea.
"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," Japan said in its first national
security strategy, one of three plans approved on Tuesday.
"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."
Abe's government also vows to review Japan's ban on weapons exports,
a move that could reinvigorate struggling defense contractors like
Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd and Kawasaki Heavy Industries Ltd.
The policies, including a five-year military buildup and a 10-year
defense guideline, call for stronger air and maritime surveillance
capabilities and improved ability to defend far-flung islands
through such steps as setting up a marine unit, buying unarmed
surveillance drones and putting a unit of E-2C early-warning
aircraft on Okinawa island in the south.
Japan will budget 23.97 trillion yen ($232.4 billion) over the
coming five years for defense, up from 23.37 trillion yen from the
previous five years.
Under current procurement practices, the five-year spending would
have been 24.67 trillion yen, but the government expects to save 700
billion yen from streamlining procedures to cut costs, officials
said.
Military spending had fallen for 10 years until Abe boosted the
defense budget 0.8 percent this year. The Defense Ministry is
seeking a 3 percent rise in the year from next April, the biggest
increase in 22 years, although much of the growth reflects higher
import costs due to a weaker yen.
In the two decades through last year, Japan was the sixth-biggest
military spender, just behind Britain, with outlays rising 13
percent in constant 2011 dollar terms, according to the Stockholm
International Peace Research Institute. By contrast, China's defense
spending exploded more than five-fold, vaulting the country to
second place from seventh.
Defence Minister Itsunori Onodera denied that the plan was aimed at
any country and said better China ties were vital.
"This is a country with which we aim to have a strategic, mutually
beneficial relationship. It is also a country we have deep ties
economically, historically and culturally. It is important for ties
with this important country to improve further," he told a news
conference.
China and Japan have been embroiled in an increasingly strident row
over tiny islands, which Japan calls the Senkaku and China calls the
Diaoyu. Tension spiked late last month when Beijing announced an
air-defence zone over a wide area including the islands, prompting
protests from Tokyo, Washington and Seoul and raising fears that a
minor incident in the disputed sea could quickly escalate.
Sino-Japanese ties have been overshadowed for years by what China
says has been Japan's refusal to admit to atrocities committed by
Japanese soldiers in China between 1931 and 1945.
China's Xinhua news agency said they were clearly aimed at China and
it warned Japan against "big-power geopolitics".
"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 neighbors instead of angering them with
rounds and rounds of unwise words and policies," state-run Xinhua
said.
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Past Japanese governments have stretched the limits of a postwar
Constitution that renounces war and says Japan will never have an
army or navy. Abe wants to go further, including lifting a ban on
fighting overseas or aiding an ally under attack. CASH TO FOLLOW?
Hostilities between the world's second- and third-biggest economies
would likely drag in the largest, the United States, which is
treaty-bound to defend Japan in the event of war.
U.S. contractors would be major beneficiaries of Abe's increased
spending. These include V22 Osprey maker Boeing Co, lead F-35
fighter-jet contractor Lockheed Martin Corp, missile-fabricator
Raytheon Corp, and Northrop Grumman Corp, which builds the Global
Hawk unarmed drone.
Another corporate winner could be Britain's BAE Systems PLC, which
through its American subsidiary, U.S. Combat Systems, is a major
supplier of "amtrack" assault amphibious vehicles to the U.S.
Marines.
The thrust of the defence update is in line with a review three
years ago by the party Abe ousted last December. His spending
increases suggest Abe is more willing to back his policies with
cash, although Japan's big public debt — more than twice the size of
its economy — still acts as a brake.
"In 2010 we said more or less the same thing, but the money didn't
follow," said Narushige Michishita, a security expert at the
National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies. "Whether it will
result in better capability is yet to be seen, but the willingness
to do more on defence is definitely there."
Still, given China's annual double-digit increases in defence
spending, Japan will have to rely heavily on cooperation with the
United States and others in the region to maintain the status quo.
"Without partners, there is no way we can check China and prevent it
from becoming more assertive," Michishita said
Indeed, Abe's national security strategy calls for Japan not only to
upgrade its cooperation with the United States but strengthen ties
with South Korea, Australia, Southeast Asian countries and India.
Abe and Southeast Asian leaders called at a Tokyo summit on the
weekend for freedom of the air and sea, a veiled reference to China
which has territorial rows with several members of the Association
of South East Asian Nations.
Japan's long-range plans also mark a shift from its Cold War posture
of defending against a Russian attack from the north, toward a
potential conflict with China to the west and south. The defence
plan cuts Japan's tanks by 400 to 300 over 10 years, while adding
some faster, more maneuverable combat vehicles that could be flown
in, say, to retake islands.
The new policy outline also calls for Japan to beef up its ability
to defend against ballistic missile attacks, such as from
unpredictable neighbor North Korea.
But it stops short of referring to the acquisition of the capability
to strike enemy bases overseas, a costly and controversial step that
would further distance Japan from the "purely defensive" defence
posture to which it adopted after its defeat in World War Two. ($1 =
103.1400 Japanese yen)
(Additional reporting by Nobuhiro Kubo and Tim Kelly in Tokyo and
Ben Blanchard in Beijing; writing by Linda Sieg and William Mallard;
editing by Robert Birsel)
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