PRESS

WILL JAPAN RISE TO THE CHALLENGE?
China’s rapid ascent has spurred Japanese policymakers
to reallocate considerable material resources
and to expend intellectual energy on hard power
during an era of fiscal austerity. Chinese behavior
in recent years suggests that the stakes now involve
nothing less than Japan’s and China’s future places in
maritime Asia. At the very least, Tokyo’s choices have
narrowed: it can either accommodate Beijing in the
near future, or it can act now to preserve the freedom
of action it has enjoyed for decades. Not since the 1969
Richard Nixon Doctrine—a presidential call to America’s
Asian allies to protect themselves against external
threats, even as the United States retrenched—
has Japan confronted such strategic danger and
stark options.
Only sound strategy will help Tokyo navigate the
uncertainties of living in an unstable security environment.
The extent to which Japan can shape its hard
power to serve an effective strategy will depend on
meaningful progress along multiple fronts. Tokyo
must pivot even more decisively away from its northward
orientation toward Russia—an anachronistic
Cold War legacy—and toward its southern flank
along the Ryūkyūs. Japan must stubbornly hold the
line there, maintaining high levels of alertness, even
while keeping its cool in the face of persistent Chinese
probes and provocations. To do so, the SDF must develop
unprecedented levels of cooperation and trust
among its services to secure an extended front far from
the Home Islands. Above all, Tokyo must sustain the
political will and invest in the capabilities necessary
to take up the Chinese challenge. Only thus can Japan
hope to stay in a competition that promises to be a
long one.
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