Japan’s Defense Policy

Ichiro Suzuki



One of the new global trends in the 2020s is growing importance of national security and defense. In Asia, China has thinly disguised geopolitical ambition, with rapidly rising defense budget since the early years of the 21st century and growing frequency of skirmishes in East and South China Sea with neighboring countries. While its ratio of defense budget to GDP is relatively modest at 1.5% reportedly, China’s breakneck economic growth rate until not so long ago has made it a huge sum that can affect the status quo. Then, in February 2022, Russian tanks rolled into the soil of Ukraine, for the first invasion into a sovereign state since WWII, (if Russian takeover of Crimean Peninsula isn’t included.). In its fifth year, the Ukraine War continues to wage, with no clear end in sight. Then, as soon as coming back to the White House at the beginning of 2025, Donald Trump has been openly offending Europe for their lack of efforts to defend their own land. Aside from how his thinking was presented to others, Trump hit the point correctly. Europe has been excessively reliant on the U.S. on their security. Having been indulged in coziness of pacifism for far too long, Europe faced rude reawakening twice, originally by Putin and then by Trump. 

Japan’s defense has been restricted by its pacifist constitution. The U.S. occupation force authored it in 1947, in the hope that Japan would never exercise its military might again to solve conflicts with other countries. Devastating misconducts that led to WWII would never to be repeated. It is a constitution full of idealism that fit the needs of the time immediately after the war. In 1949, two years after the Japanese Constitution was adopted, however, West Germany had to be rearmed in the face of expansion of communism in Europe. Since the Constitution prohibited rearming Japan, the newly created armed forces had to be awkwardly called Self Defense Forces, when the outbreak of the Korean War in 1950 drove the U.S. to rearm Japan. Since then, Japan’s defense efforts have been literally confined to what was originally designed for the SDF, defending the country’s territory against foreign foes, who were communists at the outset. It was a relatively clear-cut definition of what they could and could not do. In the recent decades, after the fall of communism, however, the SDF’s duties have become much less straightforward. At the beginning of 1991, when communism was falling, the Gulf War broke out, revealing a problem hidden in the decades-old Constitutional constraints on defense. Under the flag of the United Nations, the United States and other western democracies went onto military operations to liberate Kuwait from Sadam Hussein’s Iraq. Japan stood by due to the constraints despite being a huge beneficiary of stability in the Middle East. The vast majority of Japan’s crude oil imports comes through the Strait of Hormuz. Re-interpretations of the Constitutions had to be made in the face of the new reality, instead of amending it. Such re-interpretations still keep the SDF from combat participation but allow them in some post combat activities, such as peace keeping operations and mine-sweeping. This is what they did following the Gulf War and the 2003 Iraq War. 

Then, ten years ago, another reinterpretation was made to allow the SDF to be involved in action, after heated debate at the Diet. In the event of the country’s ‘existential crisis’ the SDF may act in concert with the U.S armed forces. This situation assumes China’s invasion into Taiwan. Last October PM Takaichi’s response to a question on existential crisis has infuriated China, freezing the bilateral relationship since then. 

In the ongoing Iran War, the President of the United States has been asking Japan, along with other U.S. allies, to make some contribution to his war efforts. The U.K. and Europe have been so far reluctant to be involved directly in part due to unclear legality of this military action. In her recent visit to Washington, Prime Minister Takaichi told President Trump that there are things that Japan legally can and can’t do. That is correct. Under the circumstances of the 21st century, however, Japan would probably have to make some active moves to help the allies even without the SDF’s combat participation. It has become increasingly difficult to keep refusing for a Constitutional reason. The Constitution might have be amended if necessary. After all, no single word has been changed in the Constitution since its birth almost 80 years ago. PM Takaichi made it clear that she wants to have it amended. Voters today are aware of the changing world. They have grown tolerant on greater defense spending. After having been capped at 1% of GDP for decades, defense budget has been rising the last ten years, to reach 2% with a prospect of rising further. 

In this backdrop, however, amending the Constitution is still no easy task even for popular Takaichi. It’s never been done and resistance for change remains sticky. For decades, it’s been a taboo even to discuss it, to begin with. A decade from now, it might not have been done yet, and Japan keeps offering allies not so visible helps which might be still important. That said, it is still critical to make the first step forward to the direction of Constitutional change. No country has left it untouched for eighty years. Not doing anything is simply an option.

About the author: Mr. Suzuki is a retired banker based in Tokyo, Japan.