Japan OKs enemy base strike capability in major defense policy shift

1 comment

1. Keita Nakamura, 16 December 2022, 21:17 JST.

   Excerpt:

   >Japan decided Friday to acquire the capability to strike enemy bases and double defense spending in a dramatic shift in its postwar security policy under the nation’s war-renouncing Constitution, provoking a harsh backlash from China.

   >With the security environment surrounding Japan becoming unstable amid threats from China, North Korea and Russia, Tokyo, which has rejected warfare for the past 77 years, will be able to directly attack another country’s territory in case of an emergency.

   > 

   >Obtaining the ability to deter attacks from outside forces, called a “counterstrike capability,” was stipulated in the government’s three key defense documents, including the National Security Strategy, updated by Prime Minister Fumio Kishida’s Cabinet.

   >Critics note that the Constitution only allows Japan to act in self-defense, but the NSS said the nation needs to have the ability to “make effective counterstrikes in an opponent’s territory as a bare minimum self-defense measure.”

   >The NSS mentioned that Japan is facing the “most severe and complicated security environment” since World War II, while the government has pledged to stick to its commitment to the “exclusively self-defense-oriented policy” and “not to become a military power.”

   Further reading:

   *Adoption of the new “National Security Strategy (NSS)”
   (Statement by Foreign Minister HAYASHI Yoshimasa)*, 16 December 2022, https://www.mofa.go.jp/press/release/press4e_003192.html