Japan is all set to further strengthen its bilateral and multilateral defence exchanges with India. This will include service-to-service exchanges in a broad range of fields including maritime security and also cyber security.
On Friday, a new national security plan was unveiled that signals the country’s biggest military buildup since World War II, it also talks about doubling defense spending and in face of the growing threats from regional rivals veering away from its pacifist constitution.
Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida
On Friday in a televised address the Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said the government had approved three security documents. To bolster Japan’s defense capabilities, amidst an increasingly unstable security environment there is the Defense Force Development Plan. Other two documents are: the National Security Strategy (NSS), and the National Defense Strategy.
In the event of an emergency and under specific circumstances, in his address the Japanese PM stated that the new measures include provisions that would enable Japan to possess “counterstrike capabilities.”
These three new documents come ahead of Japan taking a seat on the UN Security Council as well as hosting the Group of Seven (G7) summit in 2023.
Highlights
In the New National Defence Strategy which Japan announced on Friday, Russia has been mentioned 19 times, China 39 times, and it calls for deeper security cooperation with India.
It also talks about increasing its defense spending.
Since World War II, this is a major policy overhaul announced by Tokyo.
India
The new National Defence Strategy that Japan released a day ago states that it will promote training and exercises as well as defense equipment and technology cooperation with India.
And, “As a nation in the Indo-Pacific region, Japan will further promote efforts to realize a FOIP by deepening cooperation with like-minded countries through the Japan-US Alliance as a cornerstone and through efforts such as the Japan-US-Australia-India (QUAD) partnership”.
On China
According to the report China has been continuing and strengthening its unilateral changes to the status quo by force and such attempts. It calls China the “greatest strategic challenge in ensuring the peace and security of Japan and the peace and stability of the international community”.
China has been focusing on strengthening its capabilities in several new domains like the space and cyber domains. As far as nuclear forces are concerned it is highly likely that by the end of the 2020s China has plans to possess at least 1,000 deliverable nuclear warheads.
The report has stated that Russia has strengthened its collaboration with China in terms of military, and towards this it has conducted activities which include joint flights with bombers and joint navigations with naval vessels.
According to reports, earlier this month the Japanese PM had instructed his defense and finance ministers to increase the country’s defense budget to around 2 percent of current GDP in 2027.
In the document, Japan has described China – as its “biggest strategic challenge.”
While claiming the Senkaku Islands, which is uninhabited Japanese controlled chain in the Sea of Japan, as its own sovereign territory, China has been growing its air forces as well as naval forces around.
China has also been upping its military pressure on Taiwan, and earlier this year in August it had fired five missiles. These had landed in Japan’s exclusive Economic Zone near Taiwan.
