Should’nt the society and culture of a country also be taken into account?
Are the Japanese particularly peaceful in their pursuits? Or do they still think of military tradition as honorable and something to be admired?
This could be very influential in deciding if they could have a strong military because, if the society is too peacefu, the soldiers will have a harder time adapting to military life and might be less motivated to fight.
They could have all the military technology in the world but if their society isn’t willing to use it then its pretty useless.
Also, are Japan’s soldiers conscripts or are they all volunteers? This can also make a huge difference in them becoming a military power.
Rating a country’s defense spending by raw dollars does not provide an accurate picture of actual military power, because the price of labour and materials (esp. labour) varies so much from country to country.
To use a quick example, Canada and India spend about the same amount of money on defense - but the Indian military is vastly larger and has a nuclear capability. Canada’s expenditures catch up with India primarily because a Canadian soldier makes a hell of a lot more money than an Indian soldier.
Not only are they all volunteers, they are all civil servants, as if they were police or firefighters. They can actually just up and quit. (That pesky article in the MacArthurian Constitution renouncing the right of a sovereign nation to wage war or maintain a military, y’know…)
The society, post WW2, has been effectively socialized into not so much a pacifistic one, but one that is averse to the military. Virtually nobody in any sort of track to political or corporate leadership will pass by the military.
The Japanese aren’t currently too impressed by the military. The populace, and especially the mainstream press, get very out-of-sorts whenever the government of the day does anything they consider to be military ambition.
Essentially, the JSDF (Japan Self Defense Force) is a national police force with a single focus: defending the national territory from armed attack. That’s not a bad motivation no matter how peaceful the home society is.
The current government is examining if their constitution permits them to use some of their technology in a pre-emptive attack on North Korea.
(1) Japan does not have conscription. Its armed forces are 100% volunteer. Additionally, there is no military service obligation (at least there wasn’t in the early 1990s) for a graduate of the military service academy.
(2) The US had both volunteers and conscripts during WWII. Turned out we were a pretty good military power at the end of it.
Hell, if an anti-American administration was elected in Japan, they could even go after the U.S. Pacific Fleet, and do some serious damage. Didn’t Tom Clancy write something of the sort in “Debt of Honor”? Not terribly plausible, but an interesting what-if exercise.
This is going to come across a bit strong. I am no military expert. I am, however, pretty knowledgable about modern-day Japan and her people.
Japan as a ‘peace-loving’ nation is hogwash; the country is but two generations removed from about three consecutive nations of wars (vs China, Russia, and WWII). Japan loves to trot out the ‘peace-loving nation’ crap; they don’t like it pointed out that it’s only been in the last 50 years that this has held true, and it was only because another country basically told them they hadn’t played nice last time, so no more toys for them. Some point to the Edo (Tokugawa) period. True it was 200-plus years of peace - but a) it came only after a brutal 200-year stretch of nearly constant civil war.
The technology obviously is there. If needed, the money would also be thee. But, if for no other reason, I would say that Japan would be a strong military force because of its people: after living in Japan for about half my life (and almost my entire adult life), I can honestly say that the population at large remain docile sheep. They’d drink whatever kool-aid the government told them to drink.
The only good thing at present is that most people know that the government is broke - people are opposing efforts to boost military spending not because of any altruistic belief, but because they know the government can barely keep the national pension program solvent as it is.
I’m going to follow this up by pointing out that Japan is also a slightly psychotic nation, by western standards. Sure, this is my anime-influenced fanboy opinion, but I swear to god, not even the US is as obsessed by re-winning WWII as they are. Furthermore, the odd cross of that horribly sick fake bushido culture of the WWII era and enforced pacifism is what created that utter loyalty of the ‘docile sheep’ culture. By and large, the japanese culture is monomaniacal. People obsess over one thing, and one thing alone to degrees unheard of in America. Their jobs, whatever. They are utterly loyal, and that’s part of what makes them docile sheep… if it’s not their direct sphere of interest, they don’t care.
Note that this is a generalization, and as accurate as any generalization, of course.
In my opinion, it’d take maybe a year to get the country obsessive over a war. Especially if they felt there was some noble goal. Say, ‘to save the poor people of North Korea from themselves, and rule them in an enlightened manner.’
War is bad, of course, but war for a good cause, why, that’s really helping people!
Of course, this is me from outside. Am I wrong? I don’t know. Just my opinion. Feel free to correct it.
Why would the Japanese even need to expand their military? I just counted that the US has over 20 bases, airfields, camps, etc in Japan and Okinawa and somewhere in the neighborhood of 52k troops stationed at these posts, and that’s not even counting the number of troops and bases we have in South Korea. Aren’t the point of these installations to keep North Korea in check?