Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba discusses nuclear sharing, NATO model

Japan's new prime minister, Shigeru Ishiba, has only been in office for three weeks. However, even though he comes from the Liberal Democratic Party, or Jiminto, which has ruled the country since 2012, the man has his own positions on many issues, particularly on defense issues.

Thus, in his inaugural speech, he called for the creation of a nuclear military alliance in the Pacific, modeled on NATO in Europe, breaking with the anti-nuclear and peaceful tradition of the country, which does not even have an army, but a self-defense force.

Going even further, Shigeru Ishiba even mentioned, for Japan, the possibility of participating in a shared deterrence, on the model of certain NATO countries, which is more akin to a revolution, for modern Japanese political culture, than to an evolution, as observed in other countries. However, these bold overtures, by the new Japanese head of state, have very little chance of finding a favorable echo, with Washington.

Japan faces unprecedented security challenge since end of World War II

It is true that Japan followed a trajectory quite different from that of Germany or other European countries, defeated in the Second World War. Thus, while the Federal Republic of Germany quickly recovered a functional government, as early as 1949, it was not until 1952 that Japan did the same.

Furthermore, while the German constitution was of German design, that of Japan was written directly by the American occupation forces, under the control of General MacArthur. In fact, the country's military forces are not armies, but self-defense forces, integrated into a defensive system that remains, even today, partly under the control of the American forces still deployed in the country.

It was no surprise, then, when Tokyo confirmed the order for 142 F-35 A and B from the United States, just a short time after Donald Trump, then in the White House, demanded that Japan correct the very unbalanced trade balance between the two countries in 2019.

Since this episode, however, the security situation in the country has evolved considerably, with the rapid expansion of the Chinese armies, equipped with more modern and efficient equipment, an increasingly demonstrative Russia, militarily speaking, in this theater, and a North Korea, which multiplies the demonstrations of force, particularly in the field of MRBM and IRBM ballistic missiles, capable of reaching Japanese territory.

So, after having been relatively unspoiled throughout the Cold War, and after having been in the front row to benefit from the emergence of the Asian dragons, Japan is today in the heart of one of the most geopolitically unstable areas on the planet, with one leg in Korean tensions, another in Sino-American tensions around Taipan, and with border disputes with Russia.

Japan under triple nuclear threat from China, Russia and North Korea

Although Japan has only a self-defense force, and not a real army, the country is one of the best protected in the region. Thus, the Japanese self-defense forces have an active force of nearly 250.000 men and women, and nearly 60.000 operational reservists, more than the largest European army, the French army.

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