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Japan shows
some muscle
By Axel
Berkofsky
Japan's defense planners are
clearly on a roll. Initiatives, alone or with the
US, to boost Japan's security policy profile and
capabilities have been so numerous that
commentators and analysts are beginning to have
trouble seeing the forest for the trees. But let's
give it a shot anyway.
The country's
defense planners and hawks have put in a lot of
overtime since last December, when Japan's revised
National Defense Program Outline was implemented.
The new guidelines, greeted at the time with only
very limited enthusiasm in China and South Korea,
replace Japan's 1995 defense guidelines, ease its
decade-long ban to export weapons and weapons
technology, and, among others, authorize Japan's
military to fight a "potential terrorist threat"
inside and outside the country. They also call for
an increase of Japanese contributions to
international peacekeeping missions and speedy
progress developing a US-Japan missile defense
system protecting Japan from North Korean
ballistic missile attacks.
As expected,
the part of the guidelines that called China a
"potential threat" to Japan's security infuriated
Beijing, which for its part instantly urged the
Japanese government to publish the defense
guidelines minus the "China threat" section.
Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi of
course did no such thing and decided to hold talks
with the US on joint strategies to care for
security in the Taiwan Strait instead.
And
there is more. The December 2004 defense
guidelines also called for a review of the
US-Japan defense guidelines and, through them, for
the strengthening of bilateral military
cooperation in East Asia to fight regional and
global evil-doers.
Tokyo and Washington
got down to business without further ado and
formally announced in May they would revise their
so-called US-Japan Guidelines for Defense
Cooperation, implemented in 1997.
Whereas
the current bilateral defense guidelines do not
explicitly mention the Taiwan Strait as a
playground for US-Japan bilateral military
cooperation, the revised guidelines are expected
to do just that. So far, the geographical scope of
possible US-Japan military cooperation in Asia has
been referred to as "areas surrounding Japan even
if all interested parties, including China, agreed
a long time [ago] that Taiwan and the Taiwan
Straits are very much part of that vague
geographical concept".
There is still
little clarity, however, on when exactly
Washington and Tokyo will put their plans to
upgrade their alliance on paper. Although both
countries are optimistic that a joint statement
elaborating on details for the revision of the
guidelines could still be published by the end of
June, it now seems likely that the hawks in both
Washington and Tokyo might have to hold back for a
few additional months.
Already there is
talk about postponing the joint statement until
this autumn, even if the US seems keen on getting
a Japanese commitment in writing to help keep
China and its growing military influence in check
sooner rather than later.
That the US has
asked Japan to become militarily (even) more
assertive right now seems to show that the
Pentagon and controversial Secretary of Defense
Donald Rumsfeld have rediscovered China as a
military threat. Rumsfeld and his associates have
over the last several weeks voiced their
"concerns" on numerous occasions about China's
growing military expenditures, its saber-rattling
tactics toward Taiwan and Beijing's plans to shop
for European high-tech military equipment once the
European Union lifts its weapons embargo imposed
after the Tiananmen massacre in 1989. (Although no
final decision has been made, the EU is eager to
lift its 15-year-old arms embargo on China, much
to the displeasure of the US.)
Japan, too,
worries about its increasingly assertive neighbor
but seems to want more from the upgrade of the
alliance with the US than scaring China.
The upgraded alliance, Tokyo hopes, will
also be accompanied by a reduction ("realignment"
in diplomatic lingo) of US troops stationed in
Japan. That, however, is pretty much off the
agenda as far as the US is concerned, at least
judging by the rhetoric coming out of the
Pentagon. The 47,000 US troops in Japan are there
to stay and will only be reduced when we say so,
has been the message coming from the Pentagon over
recent months.
Tokyo as it turns out this
time will not cave in that easily and thinks it
has another trump card up its sleeve. Last month
the government also announced plans to shorten the
duration of bilateral agreements with the US on
sharing the costs of hosting US forces in Japan.
Whereas currently Japan and the US negotiate a new
pact every five years, Tokyo wants to reduce the
term to two years, possibly allowing Japan to
negotiate cuts in financial support every two
years.
The current Special Measures
Agreement between Tokyo and Washington will expire
in March 2006 and the US has already indicated
that Japan might be asked to come up with even
more cash after the planned realignment of US
forces in Japan. The agreement covers Japanese
government support for labor, utilities and
training relocation costs incurred by US forces in
Japan. Bottom line: shortening the bilateral
agreement and further reducing the cash flow from
Japan are non-starters as far as Washington is
concerned. The US$5 billion Tokyo spends yearly on
US forces protecting Japanese citizens from North
Korea and international terrorists is money well
spent, according to Washington.
The US is
also keen to boost "interoperability" between US
and Japanese armed forces when it revises the
bilateral defense guidelines. Japan, however, is
slightly less enthusiastic about interoperability
as it could go along with joint US-Japan commando
structures in the case of a regional contingency.
"Joint commando", Tokyo fears, will be a synonym
for "US commando", authorizing trigger-happy US
generals to order Japanese military to join the
fighting in the Taiwan Strait or elsewhere.
Political realities and Japan's infamously
slow decision-making process aside, the revision
of the guidelines, Washington and Tokyo hope, will
be in place by the end of 2006. Drawing up revised
contingency plans (one for North Korea, one for
the Taiwan Strait and probably several others for
the rest of the region), however, can easily take
another couple of years.
And then there
are Japan's plans to shoot down incoming North
Korean missiles. The country's Defense Agency
appears to be in a rush and plans to install a new
sensor system to detect, track (and eventually)
shoot down ballistic missiles in no time. The
so-called Advanced Infrared Ballistic Missile
Optical Sensor System will be installed on
aircraft later this month to monitor missile
launches 24 hours a day, seven days a week with
high altitude, unmanned reconnaissance planes
equipped with the flashy new system.
But
"monitoring" only will not be good enough forever,
Japan's Defense Agency chief Yoshinori Ono has
said. Japan, the outspoken Ono announced recently,
will enter joint development of a state-of-the-art
missile defense system the with the US as early as
fiscal 2006. And even now Japan only wants the
best to defend itself from incoming rogue missiles
(North Korean).
Tokyo has only recently
agreed to buy a US-made missile defense system
(the sea-based Standard Missile 3, SM3) with a
defense capability of several hundreds of
kilometers. The system to be jointly developed
with the Pentagon would have about double that
range defense agency officials cheer. To avoid
legal problems (read: to make legal what is
illegal under Japan's constitution) the government
last December issued a statement that placed joint
development and production of missile defense
systems outside of Japan's long-standing ban to
export weapons and weapons technology.
Both governments, reportedly in
preparation for the development of the missile
defense system, are also planning to establish a
joint operations center at Yokota Air Base in
Tokyo. Through US early-warning satellites,
Japan's armed forces will receive information on
"suspicious" activities at North Korean missiles
sites at the same time as the US military, and not
10 minutes later. This is especially helpful for
the defense of Japanese territory as it takes less
than 10 minutes for North Korean missiles to reach
Tokyo.
Back on planet Earth in the
meantime, Tokyo and Washington have agreed to
carry out their first joint interception test for
a sea-based missile shield next March in Hawaii.
If things go well, an interceptor missile will
shoot down a mock target over paradise island. To
create the legal basis in Japan for intercepting
the real thing, Japan's House of Representatives
recently passed a bill to revise Japan's
Self-Defense Forces Law in order to authorize the
armed forces to intercept incoming missiles with a
missile defense system.
The bill, however,
still needs to pass parliament's Upper House to
become law, thereby authorizing the military to
deploy Standard Missile 3 interceptors on vessels
and ground-based Patriot Advanced Capability 2
interceptors. The military, of course, is eager
and warns that North Korea has deployed up to 200
Rodong missiles capable of reaching Japanese
territory in less than 10 minutes. China, too, the
conservative newspaper Yomiuri Shimbun and other
alarmist commentators warn continuously, has
already deployed more than 100 intermediate-range
missiles capable of reaching Japan and everywhere
else in Asia.
"Threatened" by a US-Japan
missile defense system, China for its part will
probably feel once again "obliged" to increase the
number of missiles it has targeted at Taiwan, even
if Tokyo and Washington point out in parrot-style
that the system is purely defensive.
All
the action on Japan's defense and security front
is music to the ears of the country's defense
hawks. They have long believed Japan needs to arm
itself as much as possible to be able to turn to
credible saber-rattling tactics should North Korea
(or anybody else) in the region decide to launch a
few rogue missiles toward downtown Tokyo.
Japan's recent far-away-from-home missions
in the Indian Ocean and Iraq, helping the US to
fight an ill-fated war against terrorism, have
freed Japan's armed forces from its long-standing
"laughingstock image" for good, the military has
said.
And sure enough, China isn't
laughing either.
Dr Axel
Berkofsky is senior policy analyst at the
Brussels-based European Policy Center (EPC). The
views expressed here are his own.
(Copyright 2005 Asia Times Online Ltd. All
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