The Diplomat author Mercy Kuo regularly engages subject-matter experts, policy practitioners, and strategic thinkers across the globe for their diverse insights into U.S. Asia policy. This conversation with Kuni Miyake \u2014 special adviser and board member of The Canon Institute for Global Studies in Tokyo, president of the Foreign Policy Institute, visiting professor at Ritsumeikan University, and former senior diplomat in the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs \u2014 is the 522nd in \u201cThe Trans-Pacific View Insight Series.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Identify the key factors fueling Japan\u2019s so-called \u201crising militarism.\u201d<\/p>\n
With the exception of a few pundits both in Japan and abroad \u2013 whom I refer to as \u201cpost-World War II utopian pacifists\u201d \u2013 almost no one believes that Japan is \u201cbecoming militaristic.\u201d At the recent Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore, only one participant, whose government is non-democratic, spending almost five times more on military than Japan, and continuously threatening its neighbors, engaged in such \u201cpropaganda.\u201d Japan\u2019s Minister of Defense thoroughly refuted in response.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The vast majority of the Japanese public, who have supported democratic civilian control over the armed forces for more than 80 years, would likely be perplexed by this kind of question itself.<\/p>\n
Analyze Prime Minister Takaichi Sanae\u2019s calculus in strengthening Japan\u2019s Self-Defense Forces as a way to fortify the Japan-U.S. security alliance.<\/p>\n
Fortifying the Japan-U.S. security alliance is not the \u201cpurpose\u201d of Japan\u2019s efforts to enhance its deterrence, but merely the \u201cresult\u201d of it. Since World War II, and particularly after the Vietnam War, power balance among major countries in the Indo-Pacific region had relatively been well maintained. It was not until the 2010s that this regional balance of power began to break down. Since then, the military buildup by our huge neighbor, especially in maritime domains, including the East China Sea and the South China Sea, has heightened concerns among nations in the Indo-Pacific region \u2013 including Japan and Southeast Asia\u00a0 \u2013 that seek to maintain the status quo.\u00a0<\/p>\n
It is only natural that recent Japanese administrations, including Ms. Takaichi\u2019s, have worked to expand necessary deterrence capabilities of Japan in cooperation not only with the United States or Australia, our \u201callies,\u201d but also with these neighboring countries, and this approach has garnered understanding from the majority of nations in the region.<\/p>\n
Examine Tokyo\u2019s position and pronouncements on Taiwan vis-\u00e0-vis Beijing\u2019s retaliation.<\/p>\n
Japan\u2019s position on Taiwan has remained unchanged since the normalization of bilateral relations with China in 1972. What is changing is the military policy toward Taiwan adopted by some countries, and Japan, the United States, and neighboring nations are growing increasingly concerned about this. Japan\u2019s stance remains unchanged: it opposes any attempt by any country to \u201calter the status quo by force\u201d and seeks to maintain the status quo in the surrounding region, including the Taiwan Strait.<\/p>\n
Explain Tokyo\u2019s threat perception of North Korea\u2019s cooperation with Russia and dependence on China.<\/p>\n
Japan\u2019s policy toward North Korea has consistently been based on the 2002 Japan-North Korea Pyongyang Declaration, which aims to \u201ccomprehensively resolve outstanding issues such as abductions, nuclear weapons, and missiles, settle the unfortunate past, and work toward the normalization of bilateral relations between Japan and North Korea.\u201d However, recent changes in North Korea\u2019s military and economic ties with China and Russia must be viewed as negative developments that could heighten regional tensions and increase threats to Japan, the United States, and South Korea. Going forward, Japan will continue to work closely with the international community \u2013 including the United States and South Korea \u2013 under the principles of \u201cdialogue and pressure\u201d and \u201caction for action\u201d vis-\u00e1-vis North Korea.<\/p>\n
Assess Tokyo\u2019s ability to fund growing militarism amid an aging population, declining birth rate, and slow-growth economy, while aiming to maintain its regional leadership and partnership with the United States.\u00a0<\/p>\n
To reiterate, condemning Japan\u2019s coordination with the United States \u2013 an ally working jointly to expand regional deterrence \u2013 as \u201cmilitarism\u201d is missing the point and nothing more than a propaganda campaign by elements seeking to alter the regional status quo, which fail to face history and reality head-on.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Although Japan faces challenges amid a declining population and a maturing economy, in terms of security, it will continue to maintain a highest degree of civilian control under its parliamentary democracy while sustaining cooperation and coordination with regional allies and friends, including the United States.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Diplomat author Mercy Kuo regularly engages subject-matter experts, policy practitioners, and strategic thinkers across the globe for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":76852,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[374,8,49281,12258,14334,16546,33,5892,9473],"class_list":["post-76851","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-japan","tag-east-asia","tag-japan","tag-japan-militarization","tag-japan-military","tag-japan-military-buildup","tag-japan-taiwan-policy","tag-nihon","tag-security","tag-u-s-japan-alliance"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76851","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=76851"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76851\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/76852"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=76851"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=76851"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=76851"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}