Japan increases military budget
Print Edition
Japan is to buy stealth fighters, drones and submarines as part of a splurge on military hardware that will beef up defense of islands at the center of a territorial row with China, it said yesterday.
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s Cabinet agreed to spend 24.7 trillion yen (US$240 billion) between 2014 and 2019 in a strategic shift toward the south and west of the country — a 5 percent boost to the military budget over five years.
The revised five-year defense plan was adopted along with a new national security strategy that reflects Abe’s drive to raise the profile of Japan’s military.
“Many people worry inside Japan and outside that maybe Abe hasn’t really learned the lesson from the wartime history of Japan and that there’s a danger that a greater role played by Japan actually means the rise of militarism in the long term,” said Koichi Nakano, an international politics professor at Sophia University in Tokyo.
Its military has been officially pacifist since its defeat. Its well-equipped and highly professional services are limited to a narrowly defined self-defense role.
The latest plans come with the establishment of a US-style National Security Council expected to concentrate greater power in the hands of a smaller number of politicians and bureaucrats.
New guidelines said Tokyo will introduce a “dynamic joint defense force” intended to help air, land and sea forces work together more effectively.
Abe said the shift would allow Japan’s military to better shoulder its responsibilities on the global stage.
US Secretary of State John Kerry said in Manila yesterday that his country backed the re-armament plan, saying it had been planned with the United States beforehand.
The new hardware will include three drones, 52 amphibious vehicles, 17 Osprey hybrid helicopters and five submarines — all designed to boost maritime surveillance. The spending will also encompass two destroyers and 28 F-35 fighter jets, a stealth plane far superior to the F-15s currently in service.
The jets will be Japan’s first stealth-capable fighters.
The defense plan adopted in 2010 by the now-opposition Democratic Party of Japan cut military spending by 750 billion yen, or 3 percent.
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