Vol. 78/No. 16      April 28, 2014

The historic shift led by Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is aimed foremost at the governments of China and North Korea. Tokyo seeks to strengthen its enduring alliance with Washington, which has some 50,000 troops in Japan, a nuclear powered aircraft carrier nearby and is focusing military attention to the East. At the same time, the Japanese rulers are preparing to become more self-reliant and self-acting in use of military power abroad to advance their interests — independent from its main imperialist ally.

Pointing to the need to take “a more assertive approach,” Abe announced that decisions on arms, equipment and military technology sold abroad will be overseen by a new National Security Council.

The shift is not being ignored by Beijing. “Japan’s policy on military security concerns the region’s stability,” said Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei at a news conference in response to the lifting of the weapons export ban.

Japanese Defense Minister Itsunori Onodera issued an order April 3 for destroyers in the Sea of Japan to strike any ballistic missile launched by North Korea. Pyongyang fired two medium-range missiles over the sea March 26, a day before 15,000 U.S. and South Korean troops launched a 12-day amphibious landing drill. The scale of the exercise, “is greater than any others in the past,” an unnamed U.S. military spokesman told Agence-France Presse.

In his recent visit to Japan, Defense Secretary Charles Hagel announced April 6 that Washington will send Tokyo two more Aegis destroyers equipped with anti-ballistic missile technology over the next three years, bringing the total to seven.

Last year military spending increased for the first time in 11 years, and is projected to rise about 5 percent over the next five years to a total of $240 billion.

Japan’s military ranks fifth in the world in total spending. But the 1947 constitution — imposed upon the country since its military defeat and occupation by Washington — prohibits the establishment of a standing army and its use abroad. Tokyo’s armed forces are officially an extension of its police force and ostensibly for defensive purposes only.

Prime Minister Abe, who took office in December 2012, is the main spokesman for the militarization effort on behalf of the majority of Japan’s ruling class. His “life’s work,” in his own words, is to revise the constitution to remove limits on development and use of military power. But he has thus far sought to achieve the change, wrote Reuters, “through a cabinet decision rather than a politically tougher amendment to the constitution.”

The National Security Council has strengthened the role of the prime minister and the Cabinet Office in military matters. Its creation coincided with parliament passing a state secrets law that imposes harsher sentences for leaking of classified information.

Japan’s cabinet approved a “national security strategy” in December, which includes purchasing drones, stealth aircraft, anti-missile destroyers, submarines and setting up a Marine-style amphibious brigade, trained to capture territory in sea-launched operations.

The announcement came a few weeks after Beijing declared an air defense identification zone over the East China Sea that includes the uninhabited Diaoyu Islands — called Senkaku by Tokyo — which Japan controls but are claimed by Beijing, whose growing economic and political influence in the region is second only to the pace of its military buildup.  
 
 
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