32 2GM Thursday April 28 2022 | the times
Wo r l d
in Washington. “To step up to the plate
as part of the club of nations that wants
to maintain a rules-based liberal world
order, but as the most important US ally
in Asia.”
Boduszynski said it was no coinci-Japan’s ruling party is proposing to
double the defence budget to about
£86 billion, breaking restrictions
imposed after the Second World War as
fears grow of threats from China and
Russia.
The historic move would mean mili-
tary spending rising to 2 per cent of
GDP, the benchmark set by Nato mem-
bers, and will be welcomed by Washing-
ton after two decades of US pressure.
The Liberal Democratic Party
(LDP), led by Fumio Kishida, the prime
minister, has governed Japan almost
continuously since 1955. It cited the
“crisis” caused by the war in Ukraine as
a factor behind the decision, amid a
backdrop of growing regional threats
from China, Russia and North Korea.
Japan has adopted a pacifist stance
internationally but gradually loosened
restrictions in the US-written constitu-
tion imposed after the war, which
denied it the right to maintain a mili-
tary and allowed it to defend itself only
under a direct attack. Changes drawn
up in 2015 gave Japan a right of “collec-
tive self-defence” when placed in
“apparent danger” as a result of an
attack on the US, its closest ally.
Nobuo Kishi, the defence minister,
responded positively to calls from
senior LDP members for the spending
increase and strategic changes to give
its armed forces what it called “counter-
strike capabilities” against aggressors.
“Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is
ongoing. In a situation that can be
called the biggest current crisis for the
international community, we must
drastically strengthen Japan’s defence
capabilities,” said Kishi, the younger
brother of Shinzo Abe, the former
prime minister, who saw through the
earlier constitutional relaxations.
Defence spending has traditionally
been kept to about 1 per cent of GDP
and a large majority of the population
agrees with the pacifist stance. How-
ever, hawkish views are gaining ground
in Tokyo with China’s aggression in the
South and East China Seas, North
Korea testing new weapons, and ten-
sions flaring with Russia over disputed
islands after Japan imposed sanctions
over the invasion of Ukraine.
“I think the US will applaud this as a
culmination of something they have
been asking Japan for for a very long
time,” said Mietek Boduszynski, a
former US diplomat in Tokyo now at
the Truman National Security Project
Japan doubles arms
spending to counter
threat from China
dence that the new spending level was
projected to be 2 per cent of GDP. “It’s
not an arbitrary number, it is the Nato
number that is something the US has
been pushing its allies in Europe toward
for a long time. Japan is not a Nato ally,
obviously, but it’s part of being in that
larger club of like-minded nations.”
South Korea’s defence budget is
about 2.85 per cent of GDP. China’s is
estimated at between 1.75 and 2 per
cent, whereas Russia’s is put at more
than 4 per cent, although reliable
figures for both countries are unavai-
able.
The government’s coalition partner,
Komeito, the political wing of a signifi-
cant Buddhist organisation, is generally
opposed to moves away from the paci-
fist elements of the constitution. It is
likely to be the main barrier for the
changes going through.
“This is something that publicly and
privately will be very welcomed by the
Biden administration,” said Isaac Stone
Fish, author of America Second: How
America’s Elites Are Making China
Stronger. “The US sought to keep
Japan’s defence spending low until the
rise of China over the last several
decades. Especially over the last
decade, policymakers in Washington
have quietly and sometimes not so
quietly encouraged Japan to increase
its military spending.”
He added: “This is a historically
important move for Japan and could
really impact Japan’s relationship with
China. Japan has long justified its mili-
tary spending because of North Korea
but it was always a wink-wink nudge-
nudge towards China as well because
China certainly poses a larger military
threat to Japan than North Korea does.
Beijing is trying to contain the fallout
from the Russia-Ukraine war but has to
understand that the war is a good
excuse for countries around the region
that have contentious relationships
with China, especially Japan, to up their
own military spending.”
Japan does not like to boast about its
naval capabilities because of its require-
ment to maintain only self-defence
forces, but step by step it has built a navy
worthy of a growing military power.
Just as the US, first under President
Obama and now under President
Biden, adapted its defence and security
strategy to focus on Indo-China, so
Tokyo began building the most
advanced warships to counter Chinese
maritime threats and defend against
the missile capabilities of North Korea.
To underline its aim to build a navy to
confront China’s growing military
power, Japan has started to convert the
second of two Izumo-class helicopter
carriers into fully-fledged aircraft car-
riers that can take the US F-35B joint
strike fighter, and last month it com-
missioned the first of a new class of
frigates that will have multiple roles,
including an anti-air warfare capability.
Twenty-two of the Mogami-class
frigates are planned.Farmer stumbles upon a
Japan
Gavin Blair To k y o
David Charter Washington
Michael Evans
When Nidal Abu Eid was digging his
farmland in Gaza the last thing he
expected to make sprout from the soil
was a Canaanite goddess of love, hunt-
ing and war.
His first thought on washing the dirt
off a 9in-high limestone head adorned
with a serpent crown was that it might
be worth something, but he had no idea
of its great cultural significance.
Palestinian archaeologists say the
statue, believed to represent the god-
dess Anat, is 4,500 years old. It has gone
on display at Qasr al-Basha, one of
Gaza’s few museums.
Jamal Abu Rida, the director of the
Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities,Gaza
Anchal Vohra BeirutBehind the story
I
ron Bottom Sound in the
Solomon Islands serves as a
watery grave for more than
200 ships and 700 aircraft,
the legacy of the 1942-43
Battle of Guadalcanal to stem
Japan’s advance in the Pacific
(Bernard Lagan writes).
In all, 26,000 people died in
the fight for the Solomons, a
wispy archipelago of about 900
islands and atolls 1,000 miles off
the northern tip of Australia.
Eight decades on, the battle
still claims victims among the
700,000 islanders. About 15 are
killed each year by the
unexploded bombs, shells and
munitions strewn across the
islands. That the huge amount of
ordnance has been left for so
long is but one example of the
neglect of the Solomons; a
disregard that has contributed to
its sudden alliance with China.
This tightening of ties has
triggered alarm across the
Pacific and the US and turned
the run-up to next month’s
Australian general election into a
campaign over who can best deal
with China’s menace: Scott
Morrison, the centre-right prime
minister, or Anthony Albanese,
the Labor Party leader.
The security agreement that
Manasseh Sogavare, the
Solomons’ prime minister, signed
last week with China allows for
the movement of its troops and
armed police to his nation and
the berthing of its warships. This
is ostensibly to “protect the
safety of Chinese personnel and
major projects” in the islands.
Australia believes that it will lead
to Chinese military bases on its
doorstep, a fear that is shared by
the US.
Some of Australia’s leading
military thinkers, including Peter
Jennings, a former deputy
secretary of defence who now
leads the Australian Strategic
Policy Institute, have forecast
that Chinese cargo planes will
probably begin arriving in
Honiara, the Solomon capital,
before the election on May 21.
“Their model is what they’ve
done in the South China Sea,
which is to move quickly and
decisively before people are able
to gather their thoughts and
resist,” Jennings said this week.said the Bronze Age statue had been
carefully examined by experts. “Such
discoveries prove that Palestine has
civilisation and history, and no one can
deny or falsify this history,” he said.
“This is the Palestinian people and their
ancient Canaanite civilisation.”
Abu Eid, who farms in Khan Yunis, in
the south of the strip, told the BBC: “We
found it by chance. It was muddy and
we washed it. We realised that it was a
precious thing, but we didn’t know it
was of such great archaeological value.
“We thank God, and we are proud
that it stayed in our land, in Palestine,
since the Canaanite times.”
Gaza, once an important land route
connecting ancient civilisations of
Egypt, the Levant and Mesopotamia, is
believed to hold a trove of antiquitiesFumio Kishida
wants to meet the
Nato benchmarkT
he King of the Netherlands
is having to defend himself
to his people after his
approval rating fell to a
postwar low (Bruno
Waterfield writes).
As the Dutch celebrated their
King’s Day holiday yesterday, it was
revealed that less than half of hissubjects had “confidence” in
Willem-Alexander, according to a
survey by the broadcaster NOS.
The figure has fallen to 47 per cent
from 76 per cent in 2020.
Such was the severity of the
figures that, breaking with palace
convention, the king responded
insisting that, unlike autocrats or
dictators, he welcomed criticism.
“I have always said that polls
don’t do much for me. But what I
do like is constructive criticism. If
you don’t have that, you can end up
like Putin and nobody wants that,”
he said while at a street party in the
city of Maastricht. “If that is not
possible, you will get situations like
in a dictatorship.”
The survey was taken afterDutch king
stands up to
criticism as
approval falls