Opinion by David Ignatius: It takes a lot to break Japan’s post-1945 stance of restraint in military matters. But China and Russia have accomplished that by convincing leaders that they need “counterstrike” capability to protect themselves against threats.
Another wake-up call came in August, when China fired five missiles into Japan’s “exclusive economic zone” during a spasm of military exercises after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan. “We have protested strongly through diplomatic channels,” said Nobuo Kishi, Japan’s former defense minister who now serves as a special adviser to the prime minister. The lesson was that “nothing in the Taiwan Strait stays in the Taiwan Strait,” Rahm Emanuel, the U.S.
“Kishida understood early that the Russian attack on Ukraine represented a blending of the Indo-Pacific and European worlds. He saw a fundamental challenge to world order,” says Campbell. So, rather than adopt the usual approach of relying on the United States to fix matters, he explains, Kishida “decided to make common cause with Europe.”The heart of Japan’s security problem is missiles, and not just from China; North Korea regularly tests ballistic missiles that overfly Japanese territory.
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