In an age of performative authoritarianism, power can be loud—or it can be real. Nowhere is this more evident than in the Indo-Pacific, where the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) stages vast displays of hardware: carrier launches, missile drills, choreographed flypasts, and headlines proclaiming that this is the Chinese Century as the 20th was the American Century. Yet beneath the theater, a quieter, more enduring strategy is taking shape—one that Japan may be mastering.
The world, distracted by CCP grandstanding, rarely notices. But this is no accident. It is deliberate concealment: an approach that prizes readiness over spectacle, and quiet mastery over brash display. It can be wise, the ancient strategist Sun Tzu observed, to appear weak when you are strong. Japan’s restraint, often mistaken for weakness, is strategic misdirection—concealing the steel beneath the silence.
Where tyrannies roar to appear invincible, liberal democracies must endure by remembering—not only how to fight, but why they must.
Japan’s defense budget for fiscal 2024 stood at ¥7.95 trillion—nearly $54 billion—part of a sweeping five-year plan totaling ¥43 trillion under its 2022 National Security Strategy. That figure is set to reach 2 percent of GDP by 2027, marking its largest military investment since the Second World War. The message is quiet but unmistakable: Japan builds not to provoke, but to endure. It does so without fanfare, assuming unheralded leadership—guiding the region not through domination, but through cooperation and example. The CCP cannot protest Japan’s moves here too loudly; doing so would puncture its fiction that Beijing dominates Asia. The irony is plain: The more the CCP blusters, the more it obscures the steady rise of its rivals—led, increasingly, by Japan.
And it does so as an ally of the United States. The fourth-richest country on Earth, Japan is not merely rising in the shadow of American power—it is helping to hold the edifice of the liberal order in place. While some in Washington flirt with retreat or gaze longingly at the myth of an older and happily insular America, Tokyo remains anchored. It is not hedging against the alliance but honoring it—more faithfully, at times, than many in the West. The U.S.-Japan partnership is no longer a one-sided compact.
There is a quiet miracle in this alliance. Less than a century ago, Japan was America’s fiercest adversary in the Pacific—the architect of Pearl Harbor, the force behind the Rape of Nanking and the Bataan Death March, the empire that plunged Asia into flames. Two nations met in righteous fury. But after fire came mercy. In the ashes of defeat, Japan did not simply yield—it turned. What followed was not humiliation, but something more profound: repentance, reconstruction, renewal. From occupation rose friendship; from enmity, alliance. The swords once raised against the United States now stand guard beside it—not by coercion, but by covenant. This is not a mere convergence of interests. It is a bond born of memory and moral clarity, sanctified by sacrifice, and upheld not by spectacle, but by the quiet dignity of nations that have suffered, learned, and chosen the better path. This contrast exposes a hard-earned truth: Power that performs soon fades, but power that remembers endures.
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The CCP’s approach is built for the camera. Take its aircraft carriers. The 2022 unveiling of the Fujian, China’s most advanced carrier, was theatre: speeches, drones, matching helmets. As of May 2025, the ship has not yet been deployed. It is on its seventh sea trial; state media aired a brief electromagnetic launch on May 6, while warning that years of debugging lie ahead. The Liaoning—a retrofitted Soviet Kuznetsov-class hull purchased as scrap metal from Ukraine in the 2010s—relies on a ski-jump ramp for planes to take off and land. So does the domestically built Shandong. This design limits their J-15 fighters’ payloads to under 12 tons. During 2023 drills, the Shandong managed 120 deck operations in 48 hours, while the U.S. Navy’s Gerald R. Ford logged 170 sorties in 8.5 hours. China’s carrier doctrine remains untested, its logistics unproven under fire.
The ocean floor is strewn with the wrecks of fleets that mistook spectacle for substance. Kublai Khan’s vast invasion fleet, built in the 13th century with flat-bottomed hulls unsuited to open waters, was torn apart by typhoons. Russia’s Black Sea Fleet, hailed as a symbol of dominance, was humbled by Ukrainian ingenuity in the past year—its flagship Moskva sunk, its submarines bottled up, its amphibious force inert. Russia’s own Kuznetsov carrier is one in name only; its soot-blackened deck rusts in decay, its crew condemned to die on the front lines in Ukraine. It was never truly effective—and will likely never sail again—yet an exported version of this crumbling Soviet relic is the cornerstone of the CCP’s carrier ambitions. If Russia, hardened by years of war, could not deliver on its threats, what hope has the CCP’s People’s Liberation Army-Navy—a force built to be photographed, not to fight? History’s lesson is clear: Those who confuse bluster for strength are claimed by the waves, their illusions dissolved beneath the foam.
Japan learned that lesson—at great cost. In the Second World War, it built the largest battleships ever to sail: Yamato and Musashi, immense leviathans of steel with terrifying payloads and near-mythic dimensions. They were symbols of imperial might, designed to awe the world. But they could not alter the tide. Outpaced by air power, unsupported by strategy, they were sunk by enemy aircraft, entombed beneath the very waters they were meant to command. Today’s Japan remembers what such spectacle delivers.
So its method now is quieter, but no less determined. The Izumo-class ships—Izumo and Kaga of the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force (JMSDF)—seem modest as they slip through crowded ports. Yet beneath their decks, a profound transformation is underway. Both hulls are being reengineered to operate F-35B Lightning II fighters. Kaga completed its first F-35B trials off California in November 2024. Izumo’s refit, under way in Yokohama, is due for completion by 2027, with vertical-landing trials off Yokosuka as early as 2026. Japan has authorized up to 42 F-35Bs—enough for credible air wings on both ships. Each deck-coating trial, each yard period, advances the JMSDF toward a level of technological and maritime superiority unmatched in Asian navies since 1945—quietly, deliberately, unassumingly.
Crucially, this is not a decoupled effort. Japan’s F-35B program, carrier retrofits, and missile procurement are woven tightly into its relationship with the United States. The American presence in Japan—through bases, technology-sharing, and joint drills—acts as both a shield and a forge. Japan’s quiet rearmament is not just tolerated by Washington—it is enabled, welcomed, and, increasingly, matched by U.S. planners who see Tokyo as the cornerstone of regional defense. As Washington’s strategic gaze pivots to the Pacific, Japan stands already there, eyes fixed, feet planted.
Japan also builds for resilience ashore. Its partnerships are practical: low-interest loans for Philippine coast guard vessels and radar systems; Official Development Assistance for Vietnam’s infrastructure; submarine training for Malaysia and Indonesia; and large-scale exercises such as Keen Sword and Malabar that knit it to the United States, India, and Australia. Tokyo recently launched its Official Security Assistance program, delivering a ¥1.6 billion coastal-radar package to Manila—small at $10 million, but still, the first Japanese defense grant since 1945. These quiet steps weave a regional network of defense—in stark contrast to the CCP’s debt traps, wolf-warrior diplomacy, and growing alienation of its neighbors.
Japan remembers. Article 9 of its constitution—which enshrines pacifism as official state doctrine—ensures that every rivet on every hull must be drilled as an act of self-restraint. Its 2022 National Security Strategy remains rooted in defensive posture and public accountability. It is a strategy shaped by memory. Izumo and Kaga, decks shimmering beneath the rising sun, recall what happens when ambition strays too far from prudence. They signal resolve: never again imperial, never again unprepared, never again adrift.
Deterrence is not merely a matter of missiles and budgets. It begins in memory. A nation that forgets what war truly is—its fires, its famine, its shame—begins to fantasize about power without cost. That is the CCP’s peril. But Japan remembers. And it is precisely that memory—of overreach and ruin, of Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and surrender—that sharpens its self-control and steadies its resolve. In a world where strength is often confused with aggression, Japan offers a rare model: power held in check not by fear, but by the moral clarity that only true memory can provide.
Unlike tyranny, lasting power is not spectacle, but the long, patient tending of a nation’s soul. It is an inheritance, not a slogan—an heirloom of democratic legitimacy, carried from the living to the unborn. Japan’s ships bear not only aircraft but the weight of memory: the humility of defeat, the decades of hard-won peace, the resolve to stand ready—though never eager—to fight again. In the silence between launches, Japan reaffirms an older covenant: that freedom is not secured by spectacle, but by sacrifice.
That same covenant shapes how Japan acts beyond its shores. In contrast to China’s coercive Belt and Road diplomacy, Japan offers the Indo-Pacific something rare: a liberal power that builds without demanding submission. Where Beijing entraps nations in debt and dependency, Tokyo extends loans with restraint, aid with humility, and infrastructure with no strings attached. It does not buy allegiance—it earns trust. While China exports surveillance systems, dual-use ports, and the architecture of control, Japan helps build lighthouses, radar stations, and railways—quiet instruments of sovereignty. In a region weary of hegemony, this difference is vital.
It is also precisely where America’s strategic hopes now reside. Washington does not need a proxy in Asia. It needs a partner. And in Japan, it has one—deeply integrated, morally serious, and willing to bear the weight of regional leadership. As Washington debates its global commitments, it would do well to look eastward, not just for help, but for a reminder: that strength is not measured by noise or numbers, but by the steadfastness of those who remember why they fight.
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Japan’s strength lies not on the parade ground or the television screen. It is not a roar across the waves, but the steady pulse of a keel that cuts deep—holding its course to deter the horrors of war. In a region overshadowed by authoritarian bluster, Japan quietly defends the traditions of a free and peaceful order. And if the fight comes, it will not be the loudest voice that carries the day, or the largest fleet that rules the seas, but the nations that remember who they are, what they stand for, and why they deserve to endure. Lasting power is not found in posturing, but in quiet preparation—in the courage to hold the line, and in the memory of those who sailed before.
In this, Japan is not merely a partner—it is a model. A nation that once forsook peace now safeguards it. A former empire that remembers what power is for. Europe should take heed. Britain—once the steward of liberty across the seas—has allowed its fleet to dwindle, its purpose to blur, its defense to depend too heavily on American grace. Successive governments, Labour and Conservative alike, have treated national security as a ledger entry rather than a covenant. But liberty cannot long survive as a line item. Nor can America be expected to carry the burden alone. The transatlantic alliance is not a favor—it is a fraternity. And the fraternity of free nations cannot endure if its members forget what binds them. Japan has remembered. Quietly, steadfastly, it has restored its role—not in domination, but in defense of the order that saved it from itself. For those who have eyes to see, it stands now as a reminder: that the strength of a nation lies not only in what it can build, but in what it refuses to forget.
And across the democratic world, memory is beginning to return. The long peace dulled Europe’s instincts—but the war in Ukraine has sharpened them again. Germany, after years of restraint, is now Europe’s largest defense spender. Its military outlays rose 28 percent in 2024 to nearly €90 billion, surpassing NATO’s 2 percent target. France has not restored conscription, but President Macron has introduced a nationwide civic-service initiative to foster resilience. NATO’s European members have increased defense spending by over 30 percent since 2021. The European Commission has launched a €800 billion “Readiness 2030” initiative to modernize industry and streamline joint procurement. These are not token efforts. They are signs of a continent reawakening—not only to danger, but to duty.
The question is whether America remembers. It, too, was forged in fire—at Lexington, at Gettysburg, at Omaha Beach—and from that fire came a covenant: not of conquest, but of liberty bounded by law, tempered by sacrifice, and upheld through memory. That covenant was never America’s alone. It was the beginning of a fraternity among free nations—a bond of duty as much as of principle. That memory, too, is fading. And in Japan’s quiet resolve, America may yet find not only a partner—but a reminder of what it once vowed to defend.
Photo: South Korean Defense Ministry via Getty Images
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