New era ‘requires more military muscle’

Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida pledged alongside US President Joe Biden to modernize his country’s military, warning that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine had opened a dangerous new era and could embolden China, AFP reported.

Welcoming Kishida at the White House, Biden hailed the Japanese government’s announcement last month that it will double defense spending over the next five years and develop new capabilities.

“Let me be crystal clear: the United States is fully, thoroughly, completely committed to the alliance and more importantly to Japan’s defense,” Biden said.

Japan has been officially pacifist since its defeat in World War II but has been shedding past sensitivities as China rapidly expands its military and North Korea relentlessly tests missiles.

In a speech after his White House meeting, Kishida cast his defense strategy as a historic turning point in the US-Japan alliance in the same league as the mutual defense treaty of 1960.

“Russia’s aggression against Ukraine has marked the complete end of the post-Cold War world,” Kishida said at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies.

“If we let this unilateral change in the status quo by force go unchallenged, it will happen elsewhere in the world, including Asia,” Kishida said, in likely a veiled allusion to fears of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan.

The relationship with China, Kishida said, “is the most critical challenge for both Japan and the United States.”

Japan has joined Western powers in imposing sanctions on Russia and has provided humanitarian, although not military, aid to Ukraine since President Vladimir Putin invaded in February 2022.

Kishida called it a “major shift” in Japan’s policy toward Russia following marathon but unsuccessful talks to resolve a dispute over islands seized by Soviet troops shortly after Tokyo’s surrender in 1945.

Kishida was visiting Washington at the end of a tour of Group of Seven nations as Japan starts its year leading the elite club of industrial democracies, in which the country is proud to be the only non-Western member.

“Japan’s participation in the measures against Russia transformed the fight against Russia’s aggression against Ukraine from a transatlantic one to a global one,” Kishida said.

Biden in the Oval Office meeting hailed Japan’s firmness on Ukraine.