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When shield becomes spear: Is Japan closing off its security options?
PM Kishida has taken a strong stand in response to an increasingly hostile security environment. Yet Japan’s more muscular defence policy could paradoxically make it more vulnerable.
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Japan’s more muscular defence policy could paradoxically make it more vulnerable, says the writer.
PHOTO: AFP
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For all the years after the United States and Japan signed their defence alliance in 1952, the US has played the role of spear – the likely attack edge of a conflict in which either of the two nations should find themselves in the Indo-Pacific theatre.
Japan itself, bound by its post-war Constitution to not have a formal military but only “Self-Defence Forces”, was the shield.
