Buildup in Japan

For months Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone and his government have been carefully preparing Japanese public opinion for the first defense budget that would breach the previously sacrosanct ceiling of 1% of gross national product. When the cabinet approved a defense budget a few days ago that indeed pierced the 1% ceiling, though by just four-thousandths of a percentage point, Nakasone and his aides were nonetheless kept busy denying opposition charges that Japan had reembarked on the road to militarism.

In fact, while the cracking of the 1% limitation is an important symbolic development, the Japanese are very far from developing military might of the sort that could threaten their neighbors, or even defend the home islands against a large-scale Soviet invasion.

As an economic superpower, Japan could afford to spend a lot more on defense. The fact that it doesn’t is clearly a factor in the country’s economic success. Everything considered, however, Japan’s reluctance to build military power commensurate with its economic strength is a good thing.

The Soviet military threat to Japan has grown in recent years. The Soviet Union now deploys 41 divisions east of Lake Baikal. It has more than 160 SS-20 nuclear missiles aimed at Asian targets; 2,400 combat aircraft, including 85 long-range bombers, and a large Pacific fleet that includes two small carriers and 85 other surface combatants.

Most of this Soviet power is really aimed at China. But the Japanese are uncomfortably aware that their geographical proximity to the Soviet Union, and their occupation of the choke points through which Soviet warships must move from their North Pacific bases, make them a potential target, too.

The Soviets have established major air and naval bases in Vietnam, athwart the sea lanes that carry most of Japan’s energy supplies from the Middle East. Of more direct concern, the Russians have deployed troops in the northern islands seized from Japan at the end of World War II. They have conducted large-scale landing exercises obviously aimed at intimidating the Japanese, and routinely violate Japan’s air and sea frontiers.

Under prodding from the United States, which is overextended in the Pacific area, Japanese military spending has in fact been going up. Nakasone has gone far beyond his predecessors in frankly recognizing Japan’s responsibility to build military forces capable of repelling a limited Soviet attack --or holding off a major Soviet thrust until American military power could be brought to bear.

The fact is, however, that even if the current five-year defense plan is fully implemented, Japanese military spending will climb to only 1.4% of GNP by 1991, and Japan will still be incapable of defending against a non-nuclear Soviet attack without massive American help.

The Japanese obviously are hoping that their defense buildup, modest as it is, will placate U.S. critics who charge that Japan is getting a “free ride”--and thus help to fend off protectionist trade moves. It would be unwise, however, for Congress and the Administration to press for a major acceleration of Japanese rearmament as some kind of substitute for satisfactory adjustment of trade and investment issues.

No amount of U.S. pressure could produce a timely Japanese consensus in favor of a major rearmament program; although Japanese public opinion is slowly changing, anti-militarist sentiments are still deeply rooted. Equally important, other nations in East Asia, with unpleasant memories of Japanese occupation in World War II, do not want to see a major resurgence of Japanese military power in the region. And, as some Japanese point out, Americans cannot be sure that a serious rearmament program--once under way--would stay within bounds that the United States itself would like.

The greatest contributions that the Japanese could make to peace and security in East Asia are a major expansion of economic aid--true aid, not the existing pattern of grants or loans tied to the purchases of Japanese goods--and adjustment of Japanese trading practices to give other Asian nations, as well as the United States, a fair shot at the Japanese market.

If the U.S. economy continues to wallow along with enormous trade deficits, it will not be able to afford Pacific military forces of the sort necessary to cope with growing Soviet military power. The most helpful thing that the Japanese can do is to accelerate the implementation of economic-reform plans that would make Japan a more constructive partner in world trade.