Grant Newsham
Chinese leader Xi Jinping has done what no American president ever could. He got Japan to get serious about defense after decades of pathological overdependence on US forces.
But here’s the problem: Being serious about defense and actually being able to defend oneself are different things. Japan already has a large and powerful defense force – on paper at least. Its military power has been rated #7 in the world.
And in recent years Japan has undertaken to double defense spending, buy and develop long-range missiles, signed defense agreements with several foreign countries, is poised to establish a Joint Operations Command and is pushing the Americans to operationalize their US Forces Japan headquarters.
And the Japan Self Defense Force (JSDF) is doing more and increasingly complex exercises with the Americans, the Australians and others.
That’s the good news. But here’s the not-so-good news: the JSDF still isn’t a real fighting force. It’s not prepared to fight a war in terms of organization, logistics, command and control, hardware and weaponry, combat-casualty replacement, reserve forces, or even psychologically.
No comments:
Post a Comment