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Is Japan's Aging Peace Aging Gracefully?
With Japan's Aging Peace: Pacifism and Militarism in the Twenty-First Century, Tom Phuong Le has written what is arguably the most comprehensive and compelling scholarly book-length study to address the question "can Japan become a major military power?" Moreover, the book answers with a resounding "no." Le devotes two chapters to explaining the demographic and technical-infrastructural constraints on Japan's industry and economy that he identifies as major barriers to Japan's reemergence as a major military power. Nonetheless, at the heart of Le's argument are claims that antimilitarism, peace culture, and normative restraints prevent Japan from reemerging as a major military power, which is what one would expect from an unabashedly constructivist work.
Two years after its publication, the material constraints identified in Le's book, especially demographic, but also technological and economic, have changed little or become even more binding. But what about the ideational constraints on the country's reemergence as a military power, specifically antimilitarism, peace culture, and political and normative restraints? While they still exist, it is easy to argue that since 2021, and especially 2022, these ideational constraints have become far less limiting. Many observers argue that Russia's invasion of Ukraine, and China's large-scale military exercises around Taiwan following the visit of U.S. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi to that island in August 2022, have redrawn the baseline for how the Japanese public views issues of war and peace, creating a far more permissive environment for Japan to "finally cast off pacifism" (something that pundits have been telling us at regular intervals over the past thirty years has just been achieved) and reemerge as a great military power. Certainly, after Russia's invasion of Ukraine, opinion polls in Japan showed a jump in support for increasing military spending. A plurality or small majority of those polled also supported Japan's acquisition of counterstrike capabilities, which would allow the country to attack military bases in foreign countries. Following this shift, the Kishida administration announced a dramatic increase in Japan's defense spending (although less than the doubling that had originally been discussed) as well as plans to [End Page 179] acquire offensive counterstrike capabilities.1 Based on these developments, many are ready to write an obituary for Japan's pacifism, antimilitarism, and normative constraints. This would imply that, apart from the material constraints he identifies, the ideational side of Le's book has not aged well.
Although I do not emphasize the role of norms and pacifism as security policy constraints in my own work, and although I think the influence of antimilitarism in Japan has faded over time as trust in both the Japan Self-Defense Forces (JSDF) and civilian control has risen, I do not agree with those who argue that all constraints on postwar Japanese security policy have been thrown off. These constraints remain far more limiting than is commonly recognized. Nonetheless, I argue here that these are not the constraints of antimilitarism, pacifism, or norms, but rather the long-standing attitudes of the Japanese public toward remilitarization, which I first identified as attitudinal defensive realism in my book, Rethinking Japanese Public Opinion and Security: From Pacifism to Realism?2
In 2022, Russia's invasion of Ukraine and China's large-scale military exercises around Taiwan both had a significant impact on Japanese public opinion and defense policy, but these events did not motivate Japan to throw off the postwar constraints it has been operating under and reemerge as a great military power. Rather, the result has been to cause Japanese public opinion and government policy to double down on territorial defense. What is clearly absent from the mainstream of the new security debate, and even from Japan's new basic security documents that the Kishida administration issued in December 2022 (most notably, the National Security Strategy, the National Defense Strategy, and the Defense Buildup Program),3 are any signs that Japan is moving in the direction of reemerging as a military power prepared to project military force overseas, even in the case of its neighbor Taiwan.
Moreover, it is important to recognize that the major developments in Japan's security policy in 2022 owe more to the challenge that China has [End Page 180] posed to Japan's territorial integrity in the Senkaku Islands since 2012 than to either the Russian invasion of Ukraine or even China's exercises around Taiwan, although the latter did matter significantly in that they appeared to signal further risks to Japan's territorial integrity.4 Since September 2012, China's policy of sending maritime police vessels into the territorial waters of the Senkaku Islands, and even harassing Japanese fishing boats there, represents the first sustained challenge to Japan's territorial integrity since 1945. These activities have prompted the Japanese public, based on its attitudinal defensive realism, to demand the military be strengthened for territorial defense, based on the public's overwhelming belief that the Senkaku Islands are Japanese territory. China's challenge to Japan's control over the islands has thus had a long-term, radicalizing impact on Japanese security policy and played a significant role in the return to power of hawkish Shinzo Abe in late 2012.5 Since then, Japan gradually has been building up an anti-access/area denial (A2/AD) strategy covering the Senkaku and the Ryukyu islands. The new policies outlined in Japan's 2022 National Security Strategy and National Defense Strategy represent less of a departure than a culmination of this trend.
The impact of both Russia's invasion of Ukraine and China's military exercises near Taiwan has not been to motivate the Japanese public or elites to believe that their response should be to start deploying the JSDF overseas to defend its allies in international conflicts, not even to defend Taiwan. Nor have events motivated the public or most elites to think that the country would become more secure if it participated militarily in international conflicts alongside the United States and its allies. Rather, considering the Russia-Ukraine war and a potential Taiwan crisis has prompted ordinary Japanese to more easily imagine their own country being invaded the same way that Ukraine was, and thereby to support doubling down on strengthening territorial defense. They see Japan as a potential victim, not a potential savior.
The influence of this shift in public opinion can be seen in the three security documents approved by the Kishida administration in December 2022. They hardly mention Taiwan at all and do not envisage any direct role for Japan in Taiwan's defense. They also make clear that Japan will not [End Page 181] engage in preemptive attacks or take the initiative to defend Taiwan or any other nation—for Japan to be involved in a China–Taiwan conflict, China will have had to fire the first shot at Japan (including U.S. bases and forces within Japanese territory). While both pundits and cynics might conclude that the Japanese government can simply abandon this constraint at a moment's notice, that this pledge was written into Japan's 2022 security framework means that it would be politically costly to remove and that its inclusion appears to have been a precondition (perhaps for Komeito) to acquire counterstrike capabilities in the first place. Here, we can see the continued influence of some of the constraints that Le identifies in his book, although these do not limit Japan's defense of its own territory. This constraint, and the lack of any commitment to defend Taiwan, means that Japan will not be able to effectively plan, exercise, or shape the JSDF for overseas missions to defend Taiwan.
Rather, the National Security Strategy and National Defense Strategy focus on the defense of Japanese territory, most notably Yonaguni and the other Sakishima islands in the western Ryukyu Island chain as well as the Senkaku Islands, where there is a strong public consensus in favor of strengthening territorial defense. For example, although acquiring several hundred Tomahawk cruise missiles will provide Japan with a modest counterstrike capability, an arguably more important and larger thrust in the security and defense strategies is the new focus on building shelters and hardening JSDF bases against attack, measures that are important for territorial defense but do little to project Japanese power overseas.
Finally, it will be easier to make effective use of the JSDF's new bases on Miyakojima, Ishigaki, and Yonaguni if the military concentrates on territorial defense as opposed to defending Taiwan. The rallying cry of local opponents to these bases is the possible entrapment of these islands in a war over Taiwan, while the role of the bases in defending of the Senkaku Islands has generated deafening silence. Demonstrations over basing have their origins in the antimilitarism and peace culture that Le analyzes in Japan's Aging Peace. As noted, however, the demonstrators are not objecting to territorial defense, and a major demand of many of these demonstrators is that the Japanese government build shelters for civilians on the islands hosting new missile bases, demands more consistent with attitudinal defensive realism than pacifism. At the same time, community relations matter. In the past, for example, the JSDF had been forced to temporarily remove all its weapons from Miyakojima Island due to residents' claims that the JSDF had misrepresented when and where weapons were being [End Page 182] deployed to this island. Moreover, as these new island bases are small, the ability of truck-mounted missile batteries deployed there to survive Chinese counterstrikes is low, unless they can move beyond the narrow confines of these bases. The ability to deploy beyond their bases, and especially the ability to exercise doing so, will depend on overcoming local opposition. That is more likely to be achieved by focusing on territorial defense.
In conclusion, many of the nonmaterial constraints that Le identified in Japan's Aging Peace still inhibit Japan's emergence as a military power that can use force overseas. On the other hand, the remaining constraints related to the defense of Japanese territory, including counterstrike capabilities, have effectively vanished. [End Page 183]
paul midford is a Professor in International Studies at Meiji Gakuin University (Japan). Prior to this, he taught at Kanazawa University, Lafayette College, Kwansei Gakuin University, and the Norwegian University of Science and Technology. He can be reached at <paulmid@k.meijigakuin.ac.jp>.
Footnotes
1. These capabilities are initially to take the form of several hundred U.S. Tomahawk cruise missiles, until Japan's own indigenous anti-ship missile (the T-12) is fully redeveloped as a general-purpose long-range strike missile and deployed by early next decade or later.
2. Paul Midford, Rethinking Japanese Public Opinion and Security: From Pacifism to Realism? (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2011). Attitudinal defensive realism refers to the public attitude that military power has utility for territorial defense but lacks utility as a foreign policy tool that can be employed beyond national territory.
3. Cabinet of Japan, National Security Strategy of Japan (Tokyo, December 2022) ≈ https://www.cas.go.jp/jp/siryou/221216anzenhoshou/nss-e.pdf; Ministry of Defense (Japan), National Defense Strategy (Tokyo, December 16, 2022) ≈ https://www.mod.go.jp/j/policy/agenda/guideline/index.html; and Ministry of Defense (Japan), Defense Buildup Program (Tokyo, December 16, 2022) ≈ https://www.mod.go.jp/j/approach/agenda/guideline/plan/pdf/program_en.pdf.
4. In particular, Japan noted the symbolism of several Chinese missiles falling inside Japan's exclusive economic zone, and Chinese military drones making a roundtrip to Taiwan via the Miyako Strait near Okinawa, even though both can be seen as exercises of freedom of navigation under international law.
5. Shinzo Abe served two terms as prime minister: 2006–7 and 2012–20.