Fearing China, Japan looks to its defenses
 
Philip Bowring IHT
Sunday, October 10, 2004
Tokyo's arms buildup
 
HONG KONG The news that Japan is thinking about developing pre-emptive strike capability was an eerie early warning of possible things to come in Northeast Asia. But like South Korea's nuclear experiments, it should come as little surprise.
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Foreign critics, headed by China, will doubtless argue that herein lie the seeds of a new Japanese militarism. Others will remind the Japanese that Pearl Harbor, though ultimately a failure, was the model of a pre-emptive strike.
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But no amount of foreign criticism - least of all from China - is likely to halt the gradual shift in Japan's defense policy posture, and in the attitudes of the Japanese people toward military preparedness.
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The recommendations of a security policy advisory panel set up by Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi not only appear to mirror the prime minister's own views but are designed to break taboos and prepare Japanese and foreigners alike for a new era.
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This is not just generational change. The antiwar sentiments of post-1945 Japan were partly a product of revulsion against the recent past, but equally important was the ability to parade a pacifist constitution and sentiments while prospering under the U.S. defense umbrella.
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The Japanese are being changed by the circumstances around them. The most obvious is China. Although the report by Koizumi's panel avoids singling out China, the fact is that China has three things that Japan does not have - a nuclear arsenal, long-range missiles and substantial territorial claims (the South China Sea and Taiwan) - that in principle, at least, are a threat to its neighbors.
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In short, it is China that wants to change the status quo by making up for any reduction in U.S. presence or influence in the region. Whether the decline of U.S. power in the Western Pacific comes about voluntarily or not, the Japanese must work with the assumption that it is going to decline, as earnestly as the Chinese will it to come about.
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In addition, Japan must take into account the uncertain future of the Korean Peninsula. The current North Korean missile and nuclear threats are probably more rhetorical than real, but in an era of declining U.S. power in the region, any Korean future is fraught with political uncertainties - and the certainty that Korean technological know-how will continue to grow.
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Japan knows it lacks strategic arms of any sort - for pre-emptive strikes or retaliatory ones - at a time when China has the ability to hit the United States itself. Koizumi's panel warned against any decision to go nuclear. That is hardly surprising given the consequences for Japan's relations with the United States, let alone with its neighbors. But while nuclear weapons without delivery systems are mere symbols, existing delivery systems - like Japan's - can easily be adapted to carry strategic nuclear weapons.
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There is nothing inevitable about an arms race in Northeast Asia. The U.S. umbrella may remain for a long time to come. Japan's naval capability is so far ahead of China's that the gap is unlikely to close for the foreseeable future. This will deter China from forcibly exercising its South China Sea claims and may be another obstacle to attacking Taiwan - an island of immense strategic importance and as close to Japan's Ryukyu islands as to the Chinese mainland.
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But Japan's more visible and outward-looking defense buildup will happen so long as China continues to place so much emphasis on military modernization, strategic weapons and historical claims. At present there is a rough balance between the economic self-interest that China and Japan have in closer cooperation and their historical rivalries. But Chinese attitudes, as well as armaments, are fostering a sense of vulnerability in Japan. Obvious signals of a revenge mentality in China are the frequent drumming up of anti-Japanese sentiments and opposition to Japan's permanent membership of the United Nations Security Council.
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China and Japan may come to the realization that they can share leadership of an East Asian prosperity sphere. They may recognize that the interests of a continental power do not have to clash with those of a maritime nation - in which case they may be able to come to an informal agreement to let history find its own solutions to territorial claims and mutually desist from an arms race.
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But reaching such mutual recognition could be difficult if China, for the first time since a late Ming Dynasty foreign foray, sees itself to be a maritime as well as continental power and the natural hegemon of the relatively small, trade-oriented nations of Southeast Asia.



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