Japan permits long-range weapons to deter competitors

• Japan unveils new national security strategy.
• The country’s largest military expansion since World War II.
• Tripling defense budget and departing from its pacifist constitution.

Japan revealed a new national security strategy on Friday that indicates the country’s largest military expansion since World War II, tripling defense budget and departing from its pacifist constitution in response to growing threats from regional competitors.

The National Security Strategy (NSS), the National Defense Strategy, and the Defense Force Development Plan are three security documents that have been approved by the government, according to Prime Minister Fumio Kishida in an early-evening televised address in Tokyo.

These documents are intended to strengthen Japan’s defense capabilities in the face of an increasingly unstable security environment.

According to Kishida, the new laws contain provisions that would give Japan the capacity to directly attack another nation’s territory in an emergency or under certain conditions, or “counterstrike capabilities.”

According to Defense Minister Yasukazu Hamada, the Prime Minister had earlier in December given his finance and defense ministries instructions to secure funding to raise Japan’s defense budget to 2% of the country’s current GDP in 2027.

By implementing the new defensive measures, Japan is defying the interpretation of its post-World War II constitution, which placed restrictions on its Self-Defense Forces, limiting their use to defending the Japanese country.

But the hostile security environment in Tokyo is at its worst in decades. With its defense overhaul, Japan describes one of those rivals – China – as its “biggest strategic challenge,” public broadcaster reported Friday.

Longtime foe China has been expanding its naval and aviation forces in regions close to Japan while claiming sovereignty over the Senkaku Islands, a group of uninhabited islands in the Sea of Japan, commonly known as the East Sea.

Japan scrambles jets practically daily in reaction to Chinese planes flying close to its airspace, while Chinese ships have been often making excursions near the islands, which Beijing names the Diaoyus.

China has been increasing its military pressure on Taiwan, whose stability Japanese officials have deemed essential to the security of Japan itself.

Taiwan is a self-governing island. In reaction to US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taipei in August, Beijing launched five missiles that landed in Japan’s exclusive economic zone close to Taiwan.

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