The foreign and defense ministers of Japan and the United States have signalled, even as Prime Minister Kishida was meeting President Biden, that a major shift in Japanese strategy in countering China has occurred. This, in addition to the doubling of Japan’s defense budget from 1 percent to 2 percent of GNP, means that the U.S. and Japan are going to become much more active in cooperating to check China’s military expansion.
It has never been fully clear what Japan would do if the U.S. and China engaged in any military conflict. But now it’s clear. They would cooperate and be side-by-side with us.
This completely changes the strategic calculations that China might be making. The Chinese have figured that the Japanese would be too intimidated to stand up to them and put their business interests at risk. But it appears that the launching of the ballistic missiles over Taiwan last August just after Nancy Pelosi visited is triggering a clear response. Some of the missiles landed in Japanese waters. The agreements being made today also suggest, without saying so explicitly, that Japan would be active in defending Taiwan if it were to come under attack. Chinese leader Xi Jinping clearly erred in seeking to overwhelm and intimidate his neighbors through military pressure as well as gray-zone techniques such as militarized fishing fleets that violate other nation’s territorial waters. Xi has clearly overplayed his hand and now he’s going to face the blowback..
