Is Japan’s military fit for purpose?

Source Link

Rattled by the rise of China, Tokyo has introduced a record increase in defence spending. But experts say it also needs a complete change in mindset Rina Gonoi is releasing a book about her time in Japan’s Ground Self-Defense Forces © FT montage/Getty Images Is Japan’s military fit for purpose? on twitter (opens in a new window) Is Japan’s military fit for purpose? on facebook (opens in a new window) Is Japan’s military fit for purpose? on linkedin (opens in a new window) Save current progress 0% Kana Inagaki and Leo Lewis in Tokyo MAY 4 2023 110 Print this page Receive free Japanese politics & policy updates We’ll send you a myFT Daily Digest email rounding up the latest Japanese politics & policy news every morning. Next Wednesday, Rina Gonoi will publish her account of two harrowing years as a member of Japan’s Ground Self-Defense Forces. It is a blow that will land heavily and with devastating timing. 

The book, Raising My Voice, will hit Japan with a grim depiction of life in uniform. Gonoi’s description of a sexual assault involving four drunken officers — a story that emerged last year, triggering an investigation and a string of dismissals — forced unprecedented self-examination on the nation’s military. Her shocking allegations arrived at what should have been a pivotal moment of confidence and optimism for the SDF, a military force that has existed since 1954 in an uneasy compromise with a constitution that forbids Japan from maintaining “war potential”. In December 2022, the government of Prime Minister Fumio Kishida granted the SDF its biggest budget expansion in its postwar history. The ¥43tn ($314bn) boost over the next five years simultaneously underlined the threat of China’s military rise and delivered the message that the SDF must be significantly more fit for purpose. 

The question, though, is whether the government’s ambitions are simply too big, too psychologically difficult and too late to address with cash alone. “People inside the defence ministry say ¥43tn is enormous but is ¥43tn really such an enormous amount for Japan?” says Kazuhisa Shimada, former vice-minister for defence and executive secretary to Shinzo Abe, Japan’s longest-serving prime minister who was assassinated last year. “Considering Japan’s national strength, a budget that is worth 1.7 per cent of its gross domestic product is not a surprising amount, and the bigger problem is the fact that people are so surprised by this amount,” he says. Former SDF members, defence ministry officials and military experts point to the same problem: a military with extraordinary resources to spend but with a mindset in need of a top-to-bottom update and formidable internal and external challenges. The SDF, by the government’s own admission, has a chronic recruitment problem and a talent shortage. It lacks public permission to engage in anything beyond the barest minimum of force in the national interest. 

It is unclear, given that it has never been put to the test, whether its men and women are mentally and practically ready to fight and protect. Some of these challenges arise from the SDF’s history of budgetary, societal, bureaucratic and political constraints. Some come from its difficulties in convincing the general public that its national protector is even a necessity while protection by the US is guaranteed by treaty. Others point to the challenge caused by the awkwardness with which the SDF has evolved: a force that has deliberately denied itself a globally competitive arms industry and the ability to integrate fully with the US and its allies. For Gonoi, the main obstacle arises from the SDF’s resistance to reform. “Before saving the Japanese people, I want the SDF to be an organisation that can first protect its own people. 

That’s why I hope very strongly that the SDF will change,” the 23-year-old wrote. Gonoi’s SDF career should have been a long one. As an 11-year-old, she was rescued from the terrifying chaos of the 2011 Tōhoku quake and tsunami by a female officer. It inspired Gonoi to sign up at a time when the nation’s military could not be more desperate for young, patriotic volunteers. For decades, the SDF has existed on the fringes of a society that has been conditioned by history to treat its military with suspicion. SDF officers are rarely seen in uniform in the streets of Japanese cities; their vehicles must pay motorway tolls even when on manoeuvres, and many people regard the SDF merely as a disaster relief service that happens to divert trillions of yen into fighters, hypersonic missiles and aircraft carriers. The former SDF officer Rina Gonoi receives an apology from officials at Japan’s defence ministry. For Gonoi, the main obstacle for the organisation arises from its resistance to reform © Kota Kiriyama/The Yomiuri Shimbun/Reuters For a long time, the severe shortage of components caused by budget constraints hampered flights of the SDF’s fighter jets, forcing it to secretly swap in parts from idled military equipment. One former US military officer, who has worked closely with the Japanese Ministry of Defence over many years, says that the granting of the expanded budget, though welcome, had also served to expose the extent of the difficulties Japan’s military faces if it is to become a more effective force. 

“They need to completely rebrand the SDF as protectors of the nation from an enemy, not just a natural disaster,” he says. “They need to make these men and women heroes, when currently they are like a dirty secret the country feels it has to hide away.” Catalogue of shortcomings In mid-March, just a few months after Japan’s parliament had waved through the new defence budget, many of the world’s largest arms manufacturers convened in Tokyo for the most extensive trade fair of its type ever hosted by Japan. Exhibitors at the Defence and Security Equipment International show say this was a prime opportunity for countries such as Israel, Australia, Sweden, France and Germany to remind Japan’s MoD just how globally it could now take its shopping basket. The buzz about the show was not surprising. At the end of last year, the Kishida administration released three new national security documents laying out ambitions that mark a departure from its SDF strategy, which has historically been shaped by a heavy reliance on the US. 

President Joe Biden and Japan’s prime minister Fumio Kishida in Tokyo last year. Historically, Japan’s SDF has denied itself the ability to integrate fully with the US and its allies © Eugene Hoshiko/EPA-EFE “Japan will achieve a new balance in international relations,” one document says. The line expressed Tokyo’s intent to address Washington’s calls for bigger burden-sharing to ensure stability in the Indo-Pacific region. As part of that shift, Japan plans to acquire counterstrike capabilities to respond to threats from China and North Korea. Its expanded shopping list includes ¥5tn to develop stand-off defence capability including the purchase of Tomahawk cruise missiles from the US and ¥3tn to enhance integrated air and missile defence capabilities. 

But a more pessimistic reading of the three documents — in particular the 55-page defence build-up programme — is that they catalogue the many shortcomings of the SDF and the absence of well co-ordinated military planning. Lines that admit, for example, that there is “no prospect of an increase in the number of recruits” raise the question of how and where the MoD should begin to give the SDF the teeth it needs. “You can buy all the weaponry you want, but you need people to run them. They are getting the right stuff, but not the people,” says Stephen Nagy, a professor of politics and international studies at the International Christian University in Tokyo. Beyond the eye-catching purchases of drones, the largest portion of the budget, ¥15tn, will be used to boost the SDF’s “sustainability and resilience”. The phrase conceals the extent of the basic shortages the military is wrestling with, from ammunition stockpiles and equipment to ageing facilities that lack sufficient earthquake resistance measures and infrastructure such as air conditioning. 

Defence experts say that acknowledging those fundamental shortcomings is significant progress for the SDF. According to Shimada, the SDF had been traditionally resistant to revealing the parts shortages for fear that it would expose its frailties. Sugio Takahashi, head of the defence policy division at the National Institute for Defense Studies, says the objective of the new spending plan is quite narrow: to ensure that all the military equipment the SDF possesses can be used when needed. At present, only half the equipment is estimated to be fully operational. “In the next five years, other countries will also increase their defence budget so just because Japan is going to spend more money, that may not guarantee that it [will] be able to prevent a war,” Takahashi says. 

“But the biggest highlight of the new budget is to return to a condition where the equipment is ready to use,” he adds. “The question of fulfilling SDF personnel will be a challenge for the next five years.” Reluctant recruits Since the new budget was announced, tensions in the region have only heightened. Last month, China’s armed forces simulated precision strikes on key targets in Taiwan and the waters around the island. Military experts warn that Japan continues to underestimate the risk that it would be involved in a Taiwan contingency. “Is the SDF prepared to fight to defend Japan? Of course it is not,” says Valérie Niquet, head of the Asia programme at the Foundation for Strategic Research. She adds that while Japan wants to give the message that it is putting more resources into defence, what it can practically do is still extremely limited. 

A Chinese navy vessel in the Taiwan Strait, as tourists look on from Pingtan Island. Military experts say Japan is underestimating the risk it would be involved in if China were to invade Taiwan © Greg Baker/AFP/Getty Images “The problem is training. The capability is not zero, but they have to start thinking that war is possible and I do not think they do,” she says. “They have to imagine actual combat in a war and they haven’t done that since 1945. Most of the young people they recruit do not really think they will have to fight.” Until now, analysts say, Japan has been reluctant to run simulation exercises for fear they would expose too many gaps in the existing forces. Another problem for the SDF is its inability to recruit the numbers it needs. 

Japan’s demographic reality — the population shrank by 556,000 in 2022 — means it is competing in a labour market where there are now roughly 135 jobs available to every 100 applicants. A job in the SDF is not seen as either a financially or socially desirable choice. The benefits are poor and the incentives are limited. “The US military has a recruitment problem and we can offer college scholarships, a decent salary, and people coming up to you in a shopping mall to thank you for your service. In Japan they can’t offer any of that,” says one Japan-based former US naval officer. In fiscal 2021, the SDF recruited 13,327 people. Its current size is 230,754, below its target of 247,154 people. The new budget has been criticised for increasing spending on military equipment while leaving the number of SDF personnel unchanged. 

If the SDF can achieve its hiring target, though, it can theoretically increase its personnel by 7 per cent. A big part of the problem, say former SDF officers, lies in the perceived status of the military beyond the job itself. For all of the patriotism and self-sacrifice it demands of its personnel, the SDF’s constitutional position and the squeamishness around the subject mean that it is not seen by many as a “respectable” career. Hundreds of Japanese municipalities still refuse annual requests from the MoD to share the names and addresses of residents turning 18 so that they can be sent recruitment literature. Another recruitment-related issue, says Robert Dujarric, the director of the Institute of Contemporary Asian Studies at Temple University’s Japan campus, is that the SDF is still largely in the dark about how its existing membership would fare if confronted with the necessity for combat. It has trained them for it in theory, but for many the primary experience has been in disaster relief. 

Militaries such as the UK and US, which have been almost constantly engaged in some combat for decades, know much more about what they are looking for in recruits. “Japan is a peacetime military. The day they start fighting we get a good or a bad surprise,” says Dujarric. Many of the challenges in implementing the boosted defence spending are also beyond MoD’s scope. If the SDF were to use a civilian airport in the case of an enemy invasion, for example, it would need to resolve the issue of how to transport civilians who want to leave the country. Airport use also falls under the transport ministry’s jurisdiction and other decisions including the establishment of a new ammunition warehouse or nuclear shelter would also involve obtaining approval from local municipalities. People close to the MoD say the central government will be critical in breaking the bureaucratic silos and filling the gap between local and national co-ordination in handling a crisis. 

“There are a load of challenges in implementing these three documents. They include many policies that the MoD alone cannot deliver and that is why the political side and the prime minister’s office will be important,” Takahashi, the defence policy expert, says. One former Japanese officer, who has advised a succession of administrations on how to protect Japan against cyber attack, says that the SDF’s role in that issue was a perfect symbol of the many questions that swirl around its overall ability to defend the country. The SDF’s cyber war unit, though created with grand ambitions, is heavily constrained by the lack of access granted by the private sector — including the owners of critical infrastructure that might be targeted by an enemy like electricity grids.

There is also an absence of “big picture” thinking that Japan could soon be engaged in all-out cyber warfare with another country. Here too the recruitment problem is acute. “If you look at the UK, the reputation of the UK military and especially its cyber unit is very good. In Japan, it isn’t. It’s really difficult to get good people to join the SDF. The MoD needs to recognise that and completely change how it recruits,” the Japanese officer says. Beyond the immediate challenges, experts say that there need to be far broader changes in Japan — such as more robust security processes and the expansion of its arms exports industry — for the bigger spending to have a more meaningful impact. 

Yoji Koda, a retired vice-admiral of the Maritime Self-Defense Force, says the money to buy Tomahawks and the development of longer-range homegrown missiles would be wasted if Japan were not able to use the weapons effectively through the sharing of real-time intelligence data with US and its allies. That is currently difficult. Tokyo does not have a security vetting system that is comparable to the US and the UK. “The SDF can hardly do what’s in front of them. They don’t even have their own ammunition nor do they have sufficient strength training or nutritional management,” Koda says. “That’s why I’m saying this budget is beyond their competence and it’s utter pie in the sky.” Data visualisation by Ian Bott and Keith Fray