Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida. AP.
New Delhi: Japanese premier Fumio Kishida is on a whirlwind tour of Japan’s G7 allies to culminate in Washington to bolster the island nation’s defence capabilities to counter China, which Japan has declared as the biggest strategic challenge for the country.
Kishida, though affecting a shift away from Japan’s post-World War-2 policy of pacifism, has received an overwhelming support from the public, though to the chagrin of a small section that has cited the country’s constitutional framework that rejects aggression.
But Kishida’s policy shift is far from a crude bulldozing of Japan’s constitution or an open threat to China to challenge the balance of power that is regionally hugely tilted towards the latter.
To understand Japan’s bullish outreach to non-American long-term allies one needs put it in the context of the fact that US’s help envelope has shrunk in recent times. Japan knows that it will need others in its fight with China.
Policy pundits in Japan are full seized of the fact that Russian invasion of Ukraine has exposed hitherto veiled, even very thinly, geopolitical and diplomatic fault lines forever: it can’t divorce economy from politics ant further; can’t carry business-as-usual trade with China and Russia.
At the heart of this argument is also Japan’s bid to normalise its status as just another developed nation that is arming itself as per the need of the hour and long-term strategic geo-political considerations, since the world has come to see Japan just as a pacifist nation. Japan is altering its own status quo, so to say.
Its first step in the direction of defence normalisation was the decision to hike the defence budget to 2 per cent by 2027, bringing itself at par with its own NATO allies.
Japan and Australia have agreed to share intelligence more than in the past as also to expand military cooperation, apart from teaming up with the UK and Italy to develop next generation fighter jet.
In the latest with the US, the two countries have extended cooperation into space, with the US announcing that it will deploy better forces in Japan.
In Britain, Kishida’s deal creates the legal framework for paving the way for deploying troops on each other’s soil. Japan has already signed a similar agreement with Australia.
But, as pointed earlier, Kishida’s moves are quite subtle, so much so, as not to openly challenge China, but convey that Japan would not take things lying down, thereby forcing China to second-guess its own aggression.
Kishida’s moves are not so aggressive or effective to disturb the balance of power with China as it has come to be obtained, but just enough to trouble China.
As Japan is the host of this year’s G7, a lot can be expected on the table and all this added to the Quad cooperative framework involving India, Japan may well end up encircling China in a way that despite having all the arsenal in the world, China may not have its hands free to pull the trigger.
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