Good news, bad news in Japan’s military reawakening

Chinese leader Xi Jinping has done what no American president ever could. He got Japan to get serious about defense after decades of pathological overdependence on US forces.

But here’s the problem: Being serious about defense and actually being able to defend oneself are different things. Japan already has a large and powerful defense force – on paper at least.  Its military power has been rated #7 in the world.

And in recent years Japan has undertaken to double defense spending, buy and develop long-range missiles, signed defense agreements with several foreign countries, is poised to establish a Joint Operations Command and is pushing the Americans to operationalize their US Forces Japan headquarters.

And the Japan Self Defense Force (JSDF) is doing more and increasingly complex exercises with the Americans, the Australians and others.

That’s the good news. But here’s the not-so-good news: the JSDF still isn’t a real fighting force. It’s not prepared to fight a war in terms of organization, logistics, command and control, hardware and weaponry, combat-casualty replacement, reserve forces, or even psychologically.

It has some good niche capabilities, particularly in the Maritime Self Defense Force (MSDF). Submarines, anti-submarine warfare, maritime and aerial surveillance, mine warfare and naval surface combatants are all good – as are Japan’s space capabilities and missile defense.

But the JSDF’s inability to conduct joint operations – combining all three services – is a huge problem. Without this, the JSDF isn’t the sum of its parts. But they understand the problem and are finally trying to fix it. It will take time to get it right.

The quality of JSDF personnel is generally excellent but they suffer from decades of poor treatment in terms of pay and housing and benefits, and a general lack of respect from Japan’s political class and so-called elite classes.

The JSDF is about half the size it needs to be to cover the many missions it must handle. MSDF and Air Self Defense Force (ASDF) in particular should be doubled in size.

The Ground Self Defense Force (GSDF) is about the right size (about 140,000) but needs to be totally revamped to become a warfighting outfit rather than something more like a National Guard.