Will Tokyo’s Arms Exports Help or Hurt U.S Interests in Asia?

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s current political problems obscure the striking speed with which he successfully tackled thorny and long-standing security policy problems, including the lifting of the country’s arms export ban. In very short order, Abe adjusted Japan’s security institutions, selectively enhanced its military power, and diversified its strategic partnerships, all while committing even more fully to the U.S. alliance relationship. His government reached out to establish a range of new security partnerships beyond the alliance – creation of near-peer partnerships with India and Australia, capacity-strengthening overtures to ASEAN states, intelligence-based cooperation with South Korea, and, in arguably its boldest initiative, even an attempt to neutralize the most threatening peer competitor, China, by finding common ground with Russia. After the populist electoral revolutions in Britain and the United States in 2016, he and Angela Merkel stood nearly alone as champions of open markets and free trade.

Many of the items on Abe’s long list for security policy reform were inherited from an era in which even conservative Japanese governments found it more advantageous to tie their own hands and lash themselves to the pacifist post of Article 9 of the Japanese Constitution than to adopt policies that could be used by political opponents to connect them to World War II-era militarism. The United States was all too eager to underwrite Japan’s cheap ride with troops, markets, and technology. Consequently, Japan lived far longer than necessary with self-imposed constraints on its defense budget, limits on the use of force and collective self-defense, and a ban on exports of defense equipment.