“
In thirty years, the Chinese defense budget has been multiplied by 44. It has doubled in ten years.
Every year, we spend 5000 billion yen when China spends - officially - four times more.
We must change
”: thus lamented last May the former Japanese Minister of Defense Taro Kono.
Has he been heard?
On Friday, Tokyo announced an exceptional increase in its military spending and a change in philosophy, intended to respond, mainly, to the "
new and unprecedented strategic challenge
" of the rise of China.
Such an announcement was unthinkable a few years ago.
Strapped by its "pacifist" Constitution since 1946, Japan maintains, as an army, "Self-Defense Forces" (FAD) theoretically without projection capabilities.
But the Russian attack on Ukraine, the pacing of Hong Kong and China's increasingly explicit threats to Taiwan have overcome the reservations of public opinion, which now supports "normalization"...
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