Japan shifts balance of power

The new year has a long way to run. But Friday’s visit to the White House by Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida – his first to Washington since taking office – may turn out to be “the most significant diplomatic event’’ of 2023, as The Wall Street journal predicted. It reflects an important shift in the world’s strategic balance, as Japan emerges from its post-war pacifism. Mr Kishida has also held talks with his counterparts in France, Italy, Canada and the UK, making clear the key role Japan sees for itself in light of Chinese military aggression, and marshalling support from the world’s leading democracies.

He has good reason for doing so, warning “Ukraine today may be Asia tomorrow”. Against that backdrop, the agreements the Japanese leader reached with Joe Biden and the US administration are important for countries across the Indo-Pacific, including Australia. Built on the foundations of the Kishida government’s historic decision to increase defence spending to 2 per cent of GDP by 2027 – a move that will give Tokyo the third-largest military budget in the world after the US and China – the agreements place Japan in the frontline of confronting Chinese communist aggression in the region, especially towards Taiwan. Chinese ambassador to Australia Xiao Qian’s bizarre suggestion last week that Japan might repeat its 1942 bombing of Darwin reflects China’s discomfort about the development. Mr Xiao was responding to comments in this newspaper by Japanese ambassador Shingo Yamagami, warning Australia and Japan should be “vigilant” towards China and that Beijing’s more constructive tone was yet to be matched by a shift in behaviour.

The agreements go further than the important “strategic alignment” Mr Kishida reached with Anthony Albanese in Perth in October. That meeting scaled up defence co-operation and established a vital new basis for “enhanced interoperability between the ADF and Japan’s Self-Defence Forces through more sophisticated joint exercises and multilateral exercises with partners (and) mutual use of (military) facilities”.

Following Mr Kishida’s Washington visit, the US has pledged to support Tokyo’s plans for building a force of long-range missiles. This will include US Tomahawk cruise missiles, with a range of 1600km, that would be important in any conflict over Taiwan. The US is normally extremely reluctant to provide Tomahawks, even to its closest allies. That the Biden administration has resolved to supply them to Tokyo as Japan embarks on its 2 per cent of GDP ($US315bn over five years) rearmament is deeply significant. The US has also announced a vital reshuffle of it 18,000 Marines on Okinawa, at the southern end of the Japanese islands. They are being redeployed into formations of rapid-response groups of 2000, equipped with powerful anti-ship weaponry. The reconstituted Marine Corps units are likely to be deployed on small islands southwest of Okinawa, less than 160km from Taiwan.

With China continuing to send large numbers of warplanes over Taiwan, the message to Beijing is clear. As Lieutenant General James Bierman, commanding officer of the US Third Marine Expeditionary Force and of Marine Forces in Japan, said, Washington and its Indo-Pacific Pacific allies “are emulating the groundwork that (has) enabled the Western countries to support Ukraine in resisting Russian aggression”. Doing so has been part of Mr Kishida’s strategy since he met Mr Albanese. In talks with Prime Minister Rishi Sunak in London, he received strong British support, including an agreement for joint military exercises and for British troops to be deployed in Japan and vice-versa.

While Japan has been invigorating its bilateral relationships and infusing them with co-operation over defence and security, it has also been active in Ukraine, becoming a major supplier of non-lethal military aid to help Kyiv defeat Vladimir Putin’s illegal invasion. But it is in Japan’s immediate neighbourhood that its defence awakening faces the greatest threat, not just from China and whatever it might do in Taiwan, but from the rogue regime in Pyongyang as it builds more powerful rockets and threatens to inflict nuclear catastrophe on Japan and Seoul. The boost in Japan’s military spending to levels NATO countries such as Germany have failed to achieve is timely. A new study by the Washington-based Centre for Strategic and International Studies says: “While other (US) allies (including Australia and South Korea) are important in the broader competition with China and may play some role in the defence of Taiwan, Japan is the linchpin.”