Japan released its national security strategy last week to present a more aggressive stance over what it sees as a direct threat from China. 

The strategy will focus on its relationship with the U.S. while increasing its own military spending by 2 percent. Japan has the world’s third-largest economy.

Tokyo aims to spend $313 billion, with a focus on its “counter-strike capability,” which will include money earmarked for U.S. Tomahawk cruise missiles, hypersonic weapons, and surface-to-ship cruise missiles, the Financial Times reported. It marks Japan’s largest military increase since WWII. The money would make Japan the world’s third-largest military spender behind the U.S. and China.

Japan, like the U.S., called China its “biggest strategic challenge.” 

The U.S. and Western media has accused China of becoming more assertive in the region and called the new military spending almost essential for Tokyo, which signed Article 9 of its constitution that forbids the country from using its military from settling international disputes. 

The Guardian noted that the U.S. occupation forces put the rule in play at the end of WWII.

But the feeling in Washington is that the law is outdated and Japan should have better capabilities to strike China in the event of an attack. 

Lloyd Austin, the U.S. defense secretary, said in a statement that he welcomed Japan’s strategy documents… “which reflect Japan’s staunch commitment to upholding the international rules-based order and free and open Indo-Pacific.”

“We support Japan’s decision to acquire new capabilities that strengthen regional deterrence, including counter-strike capabilities,” he said.

Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said Japan finds itself near countries that are carrying out projects to enhance their militaries which could result in a “unilateral attempt to change the status quo by force.”

“These are also now becoming more outstanding. In the next five years, in order to fundamentally reinforce our defense capabilities we will implement a defense build-up program,” he said.

Wang Wenbin, the Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson, blamed Tokyo for “hyping up the ‘China threat’ to find an excuse for its military buildup.”

TREND FORECAST: The Trends Journal has reported extensively on how Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has been used as a reason for nations to ramp up their military spending. (See “JAPAN INCREASES MILITARY BUDGET BY 56 PERCENT WITH EYE ON CHINA,” and “JAPAN: WILL CHINA ATTACK TAIWAN LIKE RUSSIA INVADED UKRAINE?”.)

Ankit Panda, a Stanton senior fellow in the nuclear policy program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace—an oxymoron as exemplified by Panda’s warmongering imbecility—told CNN that Japan has an incredibly capable military and in a time of a “large-scale conflict in East Asia, including a possible conflict in the Taiwan Strait, Japan would have a very important and capable role to play.”

Again, as we had forecast, the islands of Japan will be wiped off the face of the earth should they engage in a war with China, but this is ignored by the mainstream media which has an unbroken history of selling war, fear, hate, and hysteria.