Wrong horse, wrong race: Japanese militarisation and Japan’s real security needs

Richard Tanter

Nautilus Institute for Security and Sustainability

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Prime Minister Abe Shinzo on upgrading the Defence Agency to the

Ministry of Defence

"a landmark event that marks the end of the postwar regime and will lay the groundwork for building a new state."

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Security of the society:Minister of Labour, Health and Welfare,

Yanagisawa Hakuo

“ The number of women between the ages of 15 and 50 is fixed. The number of birth-giving machines (and) devices is fixed, so all we can ask is that they do their best per head."

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Japanese security - old tensions

• Russia - Northern Territories• The weight of history

– Russia– China– Koreas

• the benefits and costs of the US alliance

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Japanese security tensions - new stories

• Whose version of “Global responsibilities”?• North Korea - again• South Korea• Taiwan• mega-terrorism• sea-lanes and Southeast Asia• oil and gas - China and Russia • the rise of China per se• US extended nuclear deterrence

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Japan-centred hemisphere

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The view from China, Russia and Korea

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What is new: Heisei militarization

• hollowing-out Article 9• shift from “defensive defense” to “threat-

based defence”• upgrading and expanding military forces• willingness to rely on military solutions• legitimation of use of military force abroad• closer operational integration with US forces • growing possibility of weapons of mass

destruction

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New security thinking

• The past: – Yoshida doctrine– defensive defence and comprehensive defence– the culture of Article 9

• The future: – Proportional (to threats) defence– “Great power realism” – The new nationalism

New policy developments in Heisei militarisation

Special forces

Intelligence

Overseas deployments

Missile defence

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The fading taboo - the nuclear option

• The means necessary– nuclear device– targeting capacity– delivery capacity

• The impediments– US– public opinion– IAEA and NPT

• The pressures• The chances

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Strategic contexts for Japanese risk

• Japanese politics - chronic crisis and democratic deficits

• delegitimising Japanese democracy abroad - history, sex and negative soft power

• the brevity of the American “unipolar moment”• Japan’s choice: US vs. China?• the delayed American choice on China • the implausible solidity of Market-Leninism in

China• the restructuring of East Asia?

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Five high impact, East Asia-relevant global problems as Japanese security threats

• climate change - sudden or progressive

• infectitious disease pandemic

• energy and resource depletion and competition

• Cross-border pollution

• regressive consequences of globalisation - cultural and economic

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Characteristics of global problems

• complex and inter-related• pose acute vulnerability to humans• cause and effect often separated• time sequences and rates of change

complex, unpredictable • national solutions inadequate• governmental solutions inadequate • can only be solved jointly and simultaneously

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Wrong horse, wrong race

• The anachronism of Great Power Realism for Japan

• The problem of nationalisms– Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Russian and

American

• What has been jettisoned in Japan • The real security imperatives from regional

expressions of global problems• Alternative potentials