Japan to Put Brakes on Military Buildup : Defense: The slowdown recognizes that Cold War tensions have faded. Host nation support for U.S. troops will grow.

In its strongest acknowledgment to date that Cold War tensions are fading in Asia as well as Europe, the Japanese government Thursday announced a five-year defense spending plan that will put the brakes on a longstanding policy of steady military buildup.

The plan, approved by Prime Minister Toshiki Kaifu’s Cabinet, would also boost Japan’s host nation support for U.S. troops stationed here by about $1.7 billion over the next five years.

Tokyo has been under pressure from U.S. officials and congressional critics to increase its contribution to the upkeep of about 50,000 U.S. servicemen and women in Japan, especially since the crisis in the Middle East erupted in August. Japan is offering to gradually raise its share of yen-denominated expenses, such as civilian wages and utilities at installations, from the present 40% to 50% by 1995.

At the same time, the Kaifu administration decided to cap the growth in defense spending at 3% a year and to sharply curtail a program of front-line military hardware procurement that has, since the mid-1970s, made the so-called Self-Defense Forces into a formidable military with state-of-the-art weaponry.

The new “Mid-Term Defense Buildup Program,” as the five-year plan is called, also cuts the authorized number of ground troops from 180,000 to 153,000. That is the number under arms in the Ground Self-Defense Force, owing to recruitment difficulties. Further cuts in all branches will be studied.

“The Asia-Pacific region, although more complicated than Europe, has been affected by the changes in U.S.-Soviet relations, and there are positive moves toward a decrease in tension,” Chief Cabinet Secretary Misoji Sakamoto said.

The Cabinet decision follows an explosive debate in Parliament over a ruling party proposal to dispatch personnel to the Persian Gulf, theoretically to support the U.S.-led military intervention there in a vaguely specified noncombat role.

Asian neighbors victimized by imperial Japan during World War II raised objections, however, and the pacifist domestic opposition bitterly attacked the plan as opening the door to future revanchism. A humiliated Kaifu shelved his “U.N. Peace Cooperation” legislation early last month.

Rather than seeking an expanded role for the Japanese military--as the conservative wing of the Liberal Democrats envisioned in the aborted gulf bill--the new five-year plan appears to signal coming retrenchment for a military establishment that many postwar Japanese have despised, ignored, or at the very least, felt acute discomfort toward.

Spurred on by U.S. officials, the Defense Agency’s budget has been increased by 5% to 6% annually for more than a decade, despite tight fiscal constraints. Only the foreign aid budget has consistently had greater increases. The government set a nominal defense spending ceiling of 1% of gross national product in 1976, but a booming economy has ensured steady growth for the military.

Japan now has the world’s third-largest defense budget, when military pensions are counted.

Total defense outlays for the fiscal years 1991 through 1995 will be an estimated $172 billion at current exchange rates, Sakamoto said.

Yet the plan limits spending growth in real terms to 3%, a figure roughly in line with normal fiscal expansion for other government agencies. Sakamoto said this target would be subject to revision only after three years--and only downward.

More emphasis than in the past will be placed on logistic support and troop welfare in lieu of weaponry, a Foreign Ministry official said.