Das Land, das zu Donald Trump nicht Nein sagen kann: Japan braucht einen Plan B zur militärischen und wirtschaftlichen Abhängigkeit von den USA. Möglicherweise gibt es keinen (Financial Times)

This is a must-read for anyone interested in Japan’s defense policy in this new era. Some excerpts-

>“It’s turning into a bad, almost abusive, relationship,” says Margarita Estévez-Abe, a Japan expert at Syracuse University. “The more Japan tries to please, the worse it is treated.”
But geography is what makes Japan’s dilemma stand out most of all.
With Trump due to meet Chinese President Xi Jinping in May, Tokyo’s nightmare scenario, say Japanese officials, would be an agreement to establish a “G2” that would prioritise US-China relations at the expense of Japan and other longstanding US allies in the Indo-Pacific.
“That is what worries me,” says Taro Kono, a former foreign and defence minister, who frets that Japan has limited means to resist such an outcome.

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>Kono, the former foreign and defence minister, thinks the US’s recent conduct means that “middle powers like Japan” need to act collectively — “maybe create a United Nations 2.0” — to avoid being governed by the whim of an unreliable ally.
“The countries that want to create a new world order have to act now,” he says, making an argument now gaining some traction among Japan’s political class.
Some US allies have also used such language. Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney became the talk of the World Economic Forum in Davos this year by calling on the middle powers to unite as the world’s old rules-based order collapses. Spain’s Pedro Sánchez led European opposition to Trump’s “illegal” attack on Iran.
But Japan, notes Robert Dujarric, co-director of the Institute of Contemporary Asia Studies at Temple University, does not have good alternatives to the US alliance, and Washington knows that.
Unlike a country such as Brazil, he says, Japan sees itself as being in a dangerous neighbourhood, with China, North Korea and Russia nearby. But to deal with such a threat on its own “would take 10 to 15 years of investment”.

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>“Japan is certainly hedging — investing in its own defence industrial base and diversifying security ties — but the reality is that for the foreseeable future there is no alternative for Tokyo to the alliance with Washington,” Johnstone adds. “There remains a confidence in Tokyo that, at the end of the day, the Trump administration needs Japan to achieve its objectives in Asia.”

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>“If we go nuclear, we sacrifice conventional military spending. Asian co-operation is possible but provides no nuclear umbrella and accepting Pax Sinica is out of the question,” he adds.
“So we are left with plan A plus — an enhanced relationship with the US, more military spending and more military industrial co-operation,” Kotani says. “There is no plan B.”

Archived link- https://archive.is/amZ47#selection-1987.0-1999.147

This is heavily slanted to existing establishment positions. The entire article reads as if people are suddenly shocked by Trump exposing the fragility of the US-Japan alliance when that fragility has been baked into it for decades and has been a major point of concern since the original Nixon China shock.

The options have always been (a) bolster independent military power (including nukes), (b) develop an Asia-Pacific NATO with SE Asian countries, Aus, NZ, etc., (c) detente with China and Russia.

All of these remain perfectly plausible options with the main stumbling block being the lack of effort to establish the groundwork to make them more feasible, and the entrenched mindset of so many of the pol/bureau class.

Taro Kono exemplifies this by basically fretting that Japan didn’t do enough to preempt US demands *“We should have boosted our military and our defense industry, and altered the constitution; now we can’t make America happy“* (paraphrasing)

Hatsue Shinohara hits the nail on the head (likely unintentionally): *“With China-Japan relations having declined so much, we need our ally,” she adds. “We are used to being a subordinate nation.”*

This subordination is not accidental, it has been carefully cultivated by the USA through organizations like Culcon, conditioned military and intelligence dependency, and the effective selling out by the LDP of the establishment of any independent Japanese security policy that prioritized Japanese interest regardless of American concerns.

Tetsuo Kotani: *“If we go nuclear, we sacrifice conventional military spending.“*

I’d love to see his number because I very much doubt his conclusion. Japan’s current defense budget is $58 billion and likely to climb steadily in coming years. South Korea has estimated the entire North Korea nuclear program to have been developed for less than $5 billion. Japan is far more technically advanced in this area than NK ever was and a ‚breakout capability‘ would probably cost about the same. The cost jumps up when you want an operational deterrent though (this is delivery systems such as subs, bombers, and ICBMS, plus the support systems, hardened bases, etc.) but a small scale deterrent might be had for the low tens of billions, and a more robust one for double that. Expensive but something that should be possible with Japan’s growing budget alongside modernization of its defense forces (and lessons from Ukraine and Iran should have shown how cost-effective both tech-driven and geographically oriented denial strategies can be).

This also nullifies his concerns about forming an Asian alliance, while his suggestion of Pax Sinica being „out of the question“ has no justification offered. Japan’s past relationship with China has fluctuated wildly from positive to negative, usually based on good trade being replaced with US-driven security tensions. China is a highly fragile country, economically, politically, and in security terms (given the 15+ countries it has territorial or maritime disputes with). Writing it off so offhandedly simply shows how little thought is still being put into a ‚Japan first‘ security policy that truly sets aside any concerns for the US alliance insofar as it does not support Japan’s future wellbeing.