Will Japan fight?
alliance between America and Japan would face several tests. If America came to Taiwan’s defence—itself hardly a given—it would need approval from Japan to use its bases there, which host 54,000 American troops. Would Japan accede? China might offer not to harm Japan if it refused.
But America would remind Japan of the long-term consequences. “If we don’t say yes, the alliance is over," says Kanehara Nobukatsu, a former Japanese official. Then Japan would have to decide whether to act itself.
The Diet, Japan’s parliament, would probably at least consider the situation to have “important influence", a legal designation that authorises non-combat support, such as providing fuel, medical care and logistical assistance. Entering combat would be trickier. The SDF is allowed to use force if Japan itself is attacked.
Those powers would be invoked if China fired missiles at American bases in Japan, or launched a simultaneous assault on the Senkaku/Diaoyu islands, which Japan controls but China claims. A law passed in 2015 also permits the use of force if another country is attacked and the Diet deems it “survival-threatening" for Japan. This construct makes it easy, with enough political will, to unshackle the SDF.
Yet it also creates every opportunity not to. If Japan decided to fight, it would have to choose where and in what capacity. Japanese law limits any use of force to “the minimum extent necessary".
Planners foresee Japan largely as the shield to America’s spear—defending its own territory and American bases, freeing America to take on China. “Japan takes care of itself, and America defends Taiwan," says Kawano Katsutoshi, a former chief of Japan’s joint staff. That might involve dispatching its diesel-powered
. Read more on livemint.com
