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Japanese missile defense: A matter of
timing
By Axel Berkofsky
Japan should be able to shoot down North Korean
missiles on its own. This is the most recent
announcement from Japan's Defense Agency, and it is
already causing the usual controversy in Japan and
protests from its neighbors in East Asia.
Last
month the 2003 edition of Japan's White Paper for
Defense urged the country's policymakers finally to give
the green light for missile defense in order to be
prepared to deal with "unpredictable threats, such as
ballistic missile and terrorist attacks". The Defense
Agency followed up on the White Paper and is requesting
200 billion yen (US$1.7 billion) for fiscal 2004 and
2005 to buy US Patriot Advanced Capability (PAC-3)
anti-missile systems as well as US SM-3s (Standard
Missile 3).
The SM-3s, to be deployed on Aegis
destroyers, are designed to intercept incoming missiles
from outer space, and the PAC-3 system, deployed at four
ground-to-air missile units, are set to shoot down
missiles before they hit the ground.
In theory
at least the PAC-3 backup might indeed be necessary,
claim many military analysts (usually outside the
Pentagon and Japan's Defense Agency) who are not so sure
that the SM-3s are reliable enough to shoot down
anything from outer space. Japan's military begs to
differ, claiming that PAC-3 surface-to-surface missiles
have successfully been tested during the recent war
against Iraq. To set the record straight, however,
analysts point out that the PAC-3s, deployed in Kuwait
during the war, did in reality not manage more than two
interceptions.
Japan's newly aroused enthusiasm
for missile defense of course is not a coincidence now
that the United States has decided to start deploying a
global missile defense network and is equipping its own
Aegis destroyers with PAC-3 systems by 2004. Tokyo,
analysts claim, has no choice but to jump on the
missile-defense-system train, and US intelligence
warning of 200 North Korean Nodong missiles capable of
reaching Japan will do its share to speed up the
Japanese decision-making process.
If the Nodong
missiles, however, are really as fast and accurate as
the Pentagon is trying to make everyone believe, Japan
won't shoot down much at all, being reduced to hoping
that Washington will remain on schedule with its
missile-defense plans protecting friends and allies all
over the globe.
Furthermore, critics maintain,
firing a couple of missiles at the same time could very
easily make a missile-interception system useless -
engineers compare it to trying to hit a bullet with
another bullet.
Well-founded criticism on the
feasibility of the missile-defense system aside, the
Defense Agency hopes to be equipped with complete (as
opposed to as yet "inefficient") defense capabilities by
the end of 2010.
If at all (or more or less)
feasible, up to 1 trillion yen, however, could be spent
on the missile-defense technology before the first
surface-to-air PAC-3 system can be deployed at bases in
Narashino, Takeyama, Kasumigaura and Iruma by 2007 to
protect the Tokyo area.
The military's cheers
are premature, claims the Japan Times in a recent
editorial maintaining that the original joint US-Japan
research on the feasibility of the regional theater
missile defense (TMD) system has to "yet to produce a
conclusion".
Unless the Defense Agency knows
more than the Japanese public, the most recent call to
buy US missile-defense hardware off the shelf instead
does indeed suggest that TMD has been put on the back
burner for the time being.
Far from it, counters
the military, which requested another 8 billion yen to
"continue joint research for next-generation missile
defense", just in case.
At least, other
commentators conclude, Japan has made up its mind on
missile defense after years of insisting that a decision
whether to move from the "research phase" on to the
"development phase" of the system is yet to be made. Not
many, however, have ever seriously believed that Tokyo
would not go ahead with developing missile-defense
technology after having invested more than 15 billion
yen over the past five years.
A review of
"defense mobilization procedures" is next on the wish
list of the Japanese military. The armed forces say the
prime minister needs to be equipped with the authority
to give the go-ahead to shoot down missiles at very
short notice, given that North Korean missiles are able
to hit Japanese territory in less than 10 minutes. Under
the current legal framework, Japan's prime minister
needs to issue a mobilization order after time-consuming
Security Council and cabinet sessions before ordering to
pull the trigger.
Richard Halloran, freelance
journalist and former correspondent for the Washington
Post and the New York Times, thinks that Japan is not
yet up to the job of making quick decisions, blaming the
country's culture of consensus for its indecisiveness.
"It will be a use 'em or lose 'em military decision that
must be made in 120 seconds, something no Japanese has
done for more than half a century," Halloran wrote in
the Japan Times.
That's the cue for US Secretary
of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, who will visit Japan next
month. Rumsfeld, not known for any ambitions to make
military decisions with the blessing of others, has
reportedly put missile defense on top of the agenda for
his visit to Tokyo. If his usual impatience and bullying
are anything to go by, he is likely to "inform" his
Japanese counterpart on the advantages of making up
one's mind real quick over finding a consensus when
missiles are flying over Japanese soil.
Indeed,
the United States in recent months has urged Japan to
stay on course with regards to missile defense, and
pressure might become stronger now that the Pentagon has
(once again) found out that Chinese missiles are able to
hit US military bases on Okinawa. Beijing, a recent
Pentagon reports claims, has increased the number of
deployed missiles able to reach Taiwan and Okinawa from
100 to 450 over recent years.
A strong opponent
of joint US-Japanese missile-defense projects, China is
believed to have increased the number of missiles by 75
per year in an attempt to discourage the United States
and Japan from working on a missile-defense system
eventually unable to deal with the growing number of
Chinese missiles. The opposite is the case, of course.
The more the number of Chinese missiles grows, the more
the US and Japan want to develop and deploy the system.
This looks like the beginning of a new arms race in
East Asia to Chinese Defense Minister Cao Gangchuan, who
met with his Japanese counterpart Shigeru Ishiba in
Beijing last week. Missile defense, he complained, will
lead to a new escalation in Japan's defense spending.
And Cao certainly knows about rising military spending,
given that China's defense budget has seen two-digit
growth per year over at least the past decade.
Whereas the Japanese military insists that the
budget for regular defense spending will not be affected
by missile defense, others suspect that the government
will be forced to come up with a supplementary budget
before too long given the expense of this technology and
hardware.
Japanese governments have proved to be
quite good at feeding the economy or the armed forces
with supplementary or "emergency" budgets over the past
decade, and a neighbor such as North Korea will remain
reason enough to spend some extra cash on defense.
Pacifists and other party-spoilers in Japan step
in, however, warning that missile defense violates
Japan's self-imposed ban on executing the right to
collective self-defense. Japan might be forced to shoot
down a missile not even targeted at Japan, they fear.
The Defense Agency, however, sees no collective
self-defense on the horizon, claiming that radar systems
stationed on Aegis vessels would be "able to identify if
the target of the incoming missiles was Japan or not".
This of course sounds plausible only to diehard
advocates of missile defense, although there is still
hope that Pyongyang will opt against running amok in
East Asia, thereby keeping Japan's military from playing
with high-tech US toys just yet.
Axel
Berkofsky, PhD, is a research fellow and policy
analyst for the European Institute for Asian Studies,
Brussels. Views expressed in this article are his
own.
(Copyright 2003 Asia Times Online Co,
Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact content@atimes.com for
information on our sales and syndication policies.)
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