Published on September 8, 2016. This essay introduces a front-page column from the September 5 issue of Sankei Shimbun by Yoshiko Sakurai. It confronts China’s military expansion and America’s strategic shift, arguing that Japan faces its greatest postwar security crisis and must urgently reform its Self-Defense Forces. A realist analysis that both Japanese and Americans should heed.

This is a paper written by a true realist, a paper that all Japanese citizens, and of course the American people as well, must listen to carefully.
2016-09-08
The following is a column by Yoshiko Sakurai, published on the front page of the September 5 issue of Sankei Shimbun under the title “Urgently Reform the Self-Defense Forces,” and it is a realist analysis that all Japanese citizens, and Americans as well, must heed.

After the war, Japan’s security was protected by the United States.
The Japanese people came to regard this extremely strange, other-country-dependent security environment as something as natural as air.

However, the United States is fundamentally revising its defense strategy in response to China’s extraordinary military expansion.

As a result, Japan has now been forced to carry out almost all homeland defense by itself in all areas except nuclear weapons.

This is a situation Japan faces for the first time since the war.

If Japan cannot respond to this major change, it will not survive, yet our country has still not responded adequately.

How can Japan and its people possibly be fully protected under these circumstances.

One even wonders whether those at the core of the government, especially those responsible for national defense, are spending sleepless nights.

Those who have sounded warnings about this greatest postwar crisis, the changing security environment, include Kazuhito Mochida and others, policy proposal committee members of the Japan Forum for Strategic Studies and former Western Army Commander of the Ground Self-Defense Force.

He points out that the United States continues to retreat in the face of China’s A2AD strategy designed to block forward deployment of U.S. forces.

Until now, Japan’s planning assumed that when China advanced to the First Island Chain, U.S. aircraft carriers would quickly arrive, the U.S. military would take the initiative against China, and U.S. forces would strike the Chinese mainland.

This was understood as the U.S. Air-Sea Battle strategy.

ASB assumes the effectiveness of U.S. nuclear deterrence, maintains a military balance through conventional forces to deter conflict, wears down China’s national power through a prolonged war, and leads to the end of hostilities.

By contrast, China’s approach is called Short Sharp War, a short-duration, high-intensity strategy.

It is the idea of concentrating all non-nuclear power to win a localized short, decisive battle.

Under current U.S. operational plans, if signs of Chinese missile launches are detected, U.S. aircraft carriers and naval and air forces withdraw to the east of the Second Island Chain, leaving Japan to confront the enemy directly.

If that is the case, it is obvious that Japan’s defense must be fundamentally reexamined.
The Self-Defense Forces suffer from overwhelming shortages in both equipment and personnel.

In addition, both the Constitution and the Self-Defense Forces Law are deeply steeped in the spirit of exclusively defensive defense, strictly limiting the actions and offensive capabilities of the Self-Defense Forces.

The United States envisions defense of the First Island Chain as a long-term war, but the frontline states of the First Island Chain are Japan, Taiwan, and the Philippines.

Even setting aside the other two countries, does Japan have the strength to endure a “long war.”

According to a public opinion survey by the weekly magazine AERA, Japanese who do not even accept a war of self-defense account for 30 percent of men and more than 50 percent of women.

Under such circumstances, it is impossible for the Self-Defense Forces, operating under severe restrictions, to fully defend the First Island Chain.

At that point, Japan would be suppressed by the Chinese military.

At a time when a nightmare may become reality, it is the role of the government to sound repeated alarms and convey the crisis to the people.

As for what Japan would be forced to do under the Chinese military, it is worth recalling the tragedies suffered by fellow Asian nations.

When China once occupied Mongolia, it forced Mongolian troops to attack Tibet.

Once Japan is subdued, China will likely force the Self-Defense Forces to be sent to the front lines as China’s advance troops.

It would be a tragedy.

To be continued.