7 novembre 2018 | International, Aérospatial, Naval, Terrestre, C4ISR, Sécurité
David J. Bercuson
With 18 diesel electric submarines, four so-called “helicopter destroyers” that look suspiciously like small aircraft carriers, 43 destroyers and destroyer escorts, 25 minesweepers and training ships, fleet oilers, submarine rescue ships and other vessels, Japan's navy — the Maritime Self-Defense Force — is the second largest in Asia and one of the largest in the world. It is also highly advanced technologically and is growing all the time. The two 27,000 ton Izumo-class helicopter destroyers, the largest in the fleet, with flat flight decks and islands on the starboard side of the vessels, are small compared to the United States Navy's Nimitz-class aircraft carriers (approximately 100,000 tons) or Britain's new Queen Elizabeth-class carriers (65,000 tons). But if equipped with the new short-take-off-and-vertical-landing F-35B stealth fighter they will still pack a powerful punch. And Japan is considering adding more of these aircraft carriers to its fleet and advanced U.S.-style Aegis class destroyers, capable of shooting down medium-range ballistic missiles.
The irony in all of this is that Japan's post Second World War constitution still contains a provision — Article 9 — that prohibits it from possessing any offensive military capability. In the early 1950s, Japan began to build its self-defence forces and now has a powerful navy, a modern medium-sized air force that will soon fly the F-35 along with specially built F-15s, alongside more than 300 fighter aircraft and 50,000 personnel, and a growing land army and marine sea landing capability.
Are these military assets “defensive” in nature?
Partly, but aircraft carriers, high-speed destroyers, modern fighter aircraft and assault ships are surely as offensive as they are defensive. And Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has made it plain that in less than two years, he intends to seek to change the Japanese constitution to drastically curtail any obligation Japan has to maintain a purely defensive capability. In other words, he will ask the Japanese people and legislature to bless what Japan has already done.
That could be more problematic than people realize.
Like Germany, Japan suffered greatly in the Second World War. Virtually all its great cities were levelled either with atomic bombs (Hiroshima and Nagasaki) or fire raids that were carried out by giant B-29 bombers at low altitude at night. The attacks burned the heart out of Japan's cities. In March 1945, 100,000 people were killed in one night in a fire raid on Tokyo and many acres of the city were burned to the ground. Submarine blockades of Japan drastically curtailed food and fuel supplies. Hundreds of thousands of Japanese soldiers were killed either in the United States' march across the Pacific or in the Russian invasion of Manchuria near the end of the war. Japan was a prostrate nation by the end of 1945 and its ancient system of government was a shambles.
Full article: https://nationalpost.com/opinion/david-j-bercuson-why-japan-is-building-its-military-fast
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Lee Berthiaume OTTAWA -- The federal government is predicting Canadian defence spending will inch closer to its NATO promises in the coming years than originally expected -- though not because Ottawa is planning to send new money the military's way. All NATO members, including Canada, agreed in 2014 to work toward spending the equivalent of two per cent of their gross domestic products on defence within the next decade as the military alliance sought to share the burden of defending from new threats like Russia and China. Two years ago, when they unveiled their defence policy, the Liberals said the government would hit 1.4 per cent by 2024-25. But Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan this week said, without providing details, that defence spending would instead reach 1.48 per cent of GDP. An increase of that size could represent close to $2 billion more per year for the military. However, the Department of National Defence told The Canadian Press that there are no new investments on the horizon for the Canadian Armed Forces beyond what's already in the Liberals' policy. Instead, Defence Department spokesman Daniel Le Bouthiller attributed the change to slower-than-expected economic growth over the next few years and more spending on non-military specific activities like veterans' benefits and the Canadian Coast Guard. The government has included such activities in its calculations since 2017 to try to address complaints from the U.S. and other NATO allies that Canada was not investing enough in its military. NATO approved the change. "Approximately two-thirds of the increase from 1.40 to 1.48 per cent is due to increased (other government department) forecasts and one-third due to fluctuating GDP forecasts," Le Bouthillier said in an email. Canada currently spends about 1.31 per cent of GDP -- a common measurement of a country's economic output -- on defence and has no plan to reach NATO's two per cent benchmark, a fact that has made it a target for U.S. President Donald Trump. Trump labelled Canada "slightly delinquent" on defence spending during a meeting in London last week in which he publicly grilled Prime Minister Justin Trudeau about Canada's number before subsequently stepping up his calls for the government to meet the NATO target. "He's not paying two per cent and he should be paying two per cent," Trump said during a meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Dec. 4. "It's Canada. They have money and they should be paying two per cent." The Liberal government has in fact refused to say whether it believes in the two-per-cent target and has instead repeatedly pointed to Canada's contributions of forces and equipment to NATO missions in Latvia, Iraq and other places as a better measurement of its contributions to the military alliance. The spending target is an imperfect way of measuring how much individual countries are contributing, said Stefanie von Hlatky, an expert on NATO and the military at Queen's University in Kingston, Ont. But all allies are facing pressure to show Trump that they are stepping up on defence spending, she said, which is doubly true for Trudeau after his meeting with the U.S. president in London. "I think there's a little bit of pressure now to maybe update those numbers and probably some rejoicing that it looks better on paper," von Hlatky said. "If we're looking to impress Trump with these minor adjustments, maybe it's all for naught. But there is definitely added pressure with every NATO meeting and NATO summit. And we know it's going to come up as long as Trump is president." Conservative defence critic James Bezan accused the Liberal government of playing a numbers game to make Canada look better rather than investing in the Armed Forces. "It's a sad state of affairs for our military heroes when Justin Trudeau can only improve defence spending figures by engineering a made-in-Canada recession and playing a shell game with other departments' budgets to inflate the numbers," he said. This report by The Canadian Press was first published on Dec. 13, 2019. https://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/slower-than-expected-economic-growth-to-help-canada-s-defence-spending-numbers-1.4728602